Search Results for: Commonwealth

Australia’s coalition government and the Labor Party Wednesday passed legislation enabling the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum to proceed at the end of 2023. The Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Amendment Bill of 2022 amends the Referendum (Machinery Provisions) Act of 1984 to align the referendum with federal voting on issues such as postal voting and foreign [...]

Three former staff members of a mental hospital in Virginia were arrested and charged Thursday with second-degree murder in connection with the death of a man who was brought to the institution from jail earlier this month. According to Dinwiddie County Commonwealth Attorney Ann Cabell Baskervill, Irvo Otieno, 28, passed away on March 6 while [...]

The US Court of Appeals of the Third Circuit Tuesday ruled against Adelphia Gateway, LLC (Adelphia) in a challenge to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Hearing Board’s jurisdiction to hear challenges to Adelphia’s planned natural gas compressor project. Circuit Judge Thomas Ambro authored the opinion of the court. The court ruled that Adelphia’s [...]

A former Australian government lawyer Tuesday informed a royal commission that he withheld legal advice that the Robodebt scheme, an automated debt assessment and recovery method utilized by Services Australia from 2015 through 2019, was illegal. Former chief counsel for the Department of Social Services (DSS) Paul Menzies-McVey told the inquiry that he was aware [...]

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro Thursday announced that he will not issue execution warrants while in office, thus continuing a moratorium on the death penalty in Pennsylvania. The governor also called on the PA General Assembly to abolish the death penalty in Pennsylvania. Speaking in Philadelphia, Shapiro shared that his view of the use of the [...]

Australian First Nations group the Gomeroi people are preparing to file their native title appeal against the Santos Narrabri Gas Project, a multi-billion-dollar project aiming to build up to 850 gas wells in the state of New South Wales. The National Native Title Tribunal ruled in December that the public benefit of the project outweighed [...]

Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles Thursday announced that Australia will strip Chinese-made security cameras from government buildings amid fears that the cameras pose a security risk. The move comes after Shadow Cyber Security Minister James Paterson conducted an audit which revealed that nearly 1000 units of surveillance equipment manufactured by Chinese-linked companies Hikvision and Dahua [...]

The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania Tuesday declared that the state’s public education system is unconstitutional due to its inequitable and inadequate funding across districts. In 2014, six Pennsylvania school districts, along with a collection of parents and advocacy organizations, filed a lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE), the Governor and a variety of [...]

The town of Alice Springs in Australia’s Northern Territory has faced unprecedented levels of crime in recent years. Alcohol-related crimes have increased by 55 percent in the town since 2020, and as a result, alcohol restrictions have now been introduced in Alice Springs. Concerns have arisen, however, due to the stereotyping of the large indigenous [...]

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly Monday told the House of Commons that Iran “will be held to account” for the execution of British-Iranian citizen and former Iranian Deputy Minister of Defence Alireza Akbari. Cleverly called the execution a “cowardly and shameful act of leadership” and said that the Iranian government had misused the death penalty [...]