Legal News

Correctional Service Canada (CSC) has announced that it will begin vaccinating federal prisoners against the COVID-19 virus. The CSC expects to begin vaccinating older and medically compromised federal inmates on Friday, January 8, under the recommendation of the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI). In compliance with NACI recommendations, the CSC will administer the vaccine [...]

Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced the Chinese government on Wednesday for intimidating individuals seeking reparation for abuses linked to the government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The human rights group alleged that the government has instituted a campaign of harassment against citizens demanding that the government take responsibility for misconduct related to the virus. The [...]

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule Tuesday that limits the use of scientific research that does not make public all data collected from the study. The new regulation, titled Strengthening Transparency in Pivotal Science Underlying Significant Regulatory Actions and Influential Scientific Information, does not automatically disallow the use of any data from [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Monday that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s restrictions on the number of attendees at religious gatherings were likely to be a violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. The Court enjoined the state from enforcing these limits, put in place to address [...]

Rights organizations decried the four year prison sentence handed down to Zhang Zhan, a citizen-journalist, by a Chinese court on Monday. She was found guilty of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” charges sometimes used by authorities to quell dissent. Zhang, a 37-year-old former lawyer, had reported on the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan beginning in February. [...]

New York State Department of Health officials announced on Saturday that they would launch a criminal investigation into a network of health clinics. The investigation is based on speculation that the provider, ParCare Community Health Network, violated the state’s guidelines in obtaining the COVID-19 vaccine and distributing it to members of the public. According to [...]

President Trump finally signed a coronavirus relief package Sunday after several days’ delay. The president signed the bill Sunday night, but issued a statement that “wasteful items need to be removed” from the bill, indicating that the White House would send a “redlined version” back to Congress “insisting that those funds be removed from the [...]

Over 500 bereaved relatives of COVID-19 victims in Italy announced Wednesday that they were pursuing civil action against Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, Health Minister Roberto Speranza and Governor Attilio Fontana of Lombardy, one of Italy’s worst-affected regions. The plaintiffs are members of a committee named “Noi Denunceremo” (we will go to court), which has committed [...]

Following a death row inmate testing positive for COVID-19, several US senators Tuesday sent a letter to the Department of Justice’s Inspector General requesting that he open an investigation into why the Trump administration resumed federal executions after a 17-year hiatus. The US federal government has executed 10 people since July, and three more are [...]

The US Congress Monday passed the Tibet Policy and Support Act (TPSA). The Senate passed the bill as an amendment to a 5,000-page spending bill, which also includes COVID-19 relief. The House of Representatives had previously passed the bill reaffirming the US government’s support for Tibet in January of 2020. The TPSA establishes that the United [...]