The Supreme Court of India on Monday ordered a special constitutional panel of five judges to consider a series of petitions related to same-sex marriage. The 15 petitions at issue were filed by same-sex couples and LGBTQ+ activists between 2020 and 2022. Collectively, they aim to change provisions in the secular Special Marriage Act (SMA) [...]
Minister Alexandre de Moraes of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) Wednesday fined messaging app Telegram 1.2 million reals ($236,495) for failing to comply with judicial orders to suspend five accounts supporting former President Jair Bolsonaro in connection with the January 8 storming of state institutions. In an event reminiscent of the January 6, 2020 attack [...]
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Wednesday released the Cumulative Impacts Addendum to provide legal guidance on addressing how pollution and other factors cumulatively impact the health and welfare of vulnerable groups to a disproportionate extent over time. The 52-page document details several statutes and regulations which could allow accounting for the lived experience of [...]
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) Wednesday filed an 86-page brief with the Supreme Court in response to two cases against President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan: Joseph Biden v. State of Nebraska and Department of Education v. Myra Brown. The brief agrees with a district court’s holding in Nebraska that the States challenging [...]
The lower house of the Indian parliament Monday passed a bill establishing a central scheme for the purchase and sale of carbon credits. The bill also promotes clean energy by obligating certain large consumers of electricity to use renewable energy and conserve energy. The Energy Conservation (Amendment) Act seeks to amend the two-decade-old Energy Conservation [...]
The US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Wednesday approved two bills that would expand the safety and privacy accorded to children and teenagers on commercial electronic platforms. The move is seen as a response to concerns over algorithms used by social media platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube. The first bill, the [...]
Two men from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Tuesday pled guilty in federal court to charges of trafficking protected animal products from the DRC into the US. Herdade Lokua and Jospin Mujangi admitted before the US District Court for the Western District of Washington they had worked with a middleman since November 2019 to [...]
The European Parliament Wednesday voted to advance legislation which would include certain gas and nuclear energy-related activities in the European Union (EU) list of environmentally sustainable activities. This inclusion, subject to strict conditions, aims to enable EU members’ transition to climate neutrality by 2050. In 2020 the EU passed the Taxonomy Regulation, setting out a [...]
A coalition of ten environmental groups Wednesday sued the US Department of the Interior (DOI) and its Bureau of Land Management for resuming auctions to lease public lands with oil and gas reserves in eight western states. The environmental groups claim the auctions violate two laws and are incompatible with President Joe Biden’s climate-related promises. [...]
The US Supreme Court Tuesday ruled in a 5-4 decision that federal courts may not order states to transport inmates to find new evidence without first deciding of any resulting evidence would be admissible in court. In 1993 Raymond Twyford was convicted of aggravated murder and sentenced to death by an Ohio jury. Twyford was [...]
