Several Philippines families filed a communication  with the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Tuesday, accusing President Rodrigo Duterte of murder during his war on drugs. The communication is the second filed with the ICC, the first of which was filed in April 2017. The ICC began preliminary examination in February. The communication charges  Duterte with crimes against humanity in [...]

Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal on Thursday overturned  the government’s approval of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. A number of groups challenged the approval, including several First Nations and two cities, saying that the First Nations were not adequately consulted and that there was no meaningful dialogue about the project. The Federal Court of Appeal [...]

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said Thursday that Indian authorities detained five activists and raided the homes of several others on Tuesday for allegedly inciting caste-based violence in January. Maharashtra police arrested the activists based on India’s principle counter terrorism law, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act . Authorities allege that their actions at a large [...]

The UK Supreme Court  ruled  on Thursday that denying the widowed parent’s allowance to an unmarried mother was illegal. The widowed parent’s allowance, or 39A, is a contributory social security benefit payable to men and women with dependent children. Prior to this decision, a widowed parent can only claim the allowance if they were married to [...]

The Supreme Court of Israel  on Wednesday denied appeals from business tycoon Nochi Dankner and his co-defendant Italy Strum and sentenced each to an additional year in prison for charges related to stock fraud. Dankner, former controlling shareholder  of IDB Holding Corporation, was sentenced in 2016 to two years. He was convicted for engaging in fraudulent transactions [...]

The Canadian province of British Columbia filed a class action lawsuit Wednesday in the Supreme Court of British Columbia targeting 40 pharmaceutical manufacturers, including maker of OxyContin Purdue Pharma. The lawsuit aims to recover opioid-related costs incurred by the government’s healthcare system in the midst of the opioid epidemic. “In court, we will argue that [...]

The Myanmar government on Tuesday rejected  the findings of a UN investigative panel that the country’s military may have engaged in genocide and other human rights abuses during last year’s crackdown on Rohingya Muslim minorities, characterizing the findings of the report as “false allegations.” The statement, which was issued by government spokespeson Zaw Htay, was published in a state-owned [...]

Kenya’s High Court on Wednesday suspended criminal proceedings against Deputy Chief Justice Philomena Mwilu , who was arrested on charges of corruption on Tuesday. Mwilu was taken into custody for questioning at the Supreme Court by Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DIC) and has since been released on bond. Shortly before the arrest, Mwilu was [...]

Several human rights groups signed a letter  on Tuesday calling on Google to end its efforts to develop a censored search engine for China, code named Project Dragonfly. The letter accuses Google of “accommodating the Chinese authorities’ repression of dissent,” which would cause Google to participate in China’s violations of freedom of expression and privacy of [...]

US State Department legal advisor Jennifer Newstead urged judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) Tuesday to deny Iran’s request to order the US to suspend the re-imposition of sanctions by President Donald Trump in May. The first wave of US sanctions was imposed on Iran on August 7 with the rest of the [...]