The European Parliament on Wednesday adopted the Media Freedom Act to protect journalists and press freedoms. The new law was adopted with 464 votes in favor, 92 against and 65 abstentions. The act forbids EU member states from compelling journalists to disclose their sources and deploying surveillance spyware against journalists. A new European Board for [...]

The UN Security Council (UNSC) adopted a resolution on Friday, calling on all parties involved in the conflict in Sudan to immediately cease hostilities during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and negotiate for a sustainable resolution. The ongoing internal armed conflict between the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group (RSF) and the Sudan Armed Forces [...]

The Hong Kong government released the new national security bill on Friday and sent it to the Legislative Council (LegCo) for deliberation. The bill consists of nine parts, including criminalizing several national security offenses not covered in the 2020 National Security Law but listed in Article 23 of the Hong Kong Basic Law. The bill [...]

Italy detained a German non-governmental rescue vessel Humanity 1 for 20 days, after the Libyan Coast Guard intervened in the rescue operation with armed forces. SOS Humanity, the German search and rescue organisation, contended that the Italian authorities detained the ship based on false accusations and demanded the ship be released immediately. The captain of [...]

The Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal unanimously ruled Tuesday that seven activists’ “systemic proportionality challenge” to the constitutionality of Section 17A(3) of the Public Order Ordinance is not reasonably arguable. While the court refused to grant leave to the activists on their systemic proportionality challenge, the court accepted their “operational proportionality challenge” and scheduled [...]

The Hong Kong government “strongly condemned” self-exiled activist Ted Hui Chi-fung in a statement on Monday for intimidating government officials and obstructing the course of justice by appealing to the public to carry out doxxing against public officers who handled his case. In the statement, the government condemned Hui for disseminating a list of public [...]

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled 5-4 on Friday that Canada’s Constitution protects Canadians’ internet protocol (IP) addresses from unreasonable search. The police are required to obtain prior judicial authorization before obtaining an IP address for criminal investigations, provided by Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Writing for the majority, Justice [...]

The French Senate adopted the constitutional bill to include the right to abortion in the French constitution on Wednesday. The Bill was passed with 267 senators voting in favour of the Bill and 50 against. The bill sought to enshrine the freedom to resort to voluntary termination of pregnancy into Article 34 of the French [...]

The New Zealand Parliament started on Tuesday the first reading of the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Bill. The amendment seeks to repeal the previous government’s initiatives in controlling tobacco sales. The previous government set the Smokefree 2025 goal, to reduce smoking rates for all population groups to less than 5 percent. The government [...]

The Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (CFA) refused to grant leave to the government on Friday to appeal the acquittals of seven pro-democracy activists. The lower court overturned the activists’ convictions for organizing an unauthorized assembly but upheld their convictions for participating in an unauthorized assembly. The lower court reasoned that leading and directing [...]