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Committee of Administrators (CoA) appointed by the Supreme Court of India filed a contempt petition on Wednesday in the apex court against former Indian football chief and NCP leader Praful Patel. The petition accused Patel of “impliedly” admitting to having “arranged” a letter from world football governing body FIFA and Asian Football Confederation (AFC) threatening a ban on India. In the petition, the CoA has also named seven other Indian football administrators along with Patel for allegedly interfering in the “administration of justice, and the willful and flagrant disobedience” of Supreme Court orders. ALSO READ | FIFA Suspends Indian Football Federation Over Third-party Influences The CoA has requested the court to bar Patel from “holding any football related posts forthwith, including and not limited to positions in FIFA and AFC”, where he is a member of the Executive Council and a Vice-President, respectively. Cause of Contempt Petition The CoA said in its … [Read more...] about Praful Patel ‘Arranged’ a Letter From FIFA Threatening a Ban on India, Accuses Supreme Court Mandated Panel

Former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak appealed to the nation’s supreme court to overturn the 12-year prison sentence imposed on him for misappropriating over $9.4 million in the 1MDB Scam. Razak allegedly misappropriated funds from the SRC International which was a subsidiary of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) – the nation’s sovereign wealth fund. What is the 1MDB Scam? The 1MDB Scam is related to the 1MDB which was once a Malaysian state fund set up in 2009 to fund infrastructure projects across Malaysia. Najib Razak was the chairman when the sovereign wealth fund was founded. The scam is considered to be one of the largest corruption scandals where the US justice department says funds worth more than $4.5 billion were embezzled. The funds initially meant for funding projects across the country were used to fund the lifestyle of Malaysian prime minister’s wife Rosmah’s lavish shopping habits, pay off politicians ahead of polls and even for the filming of the … [Read more...] about 1MDB: Malaysia Ex-PM, Involved in One of the World’s Biggest Scams, Moves Court to Drop Sentence

Virtual court proceedings could be a permanent feature of judiciary functioning in the days to come, hoped Chief Justice of Telangana High Court Ujjal Bhuyan on Monday. Addressing the gathering after hoisting the national flag on the High Court premises on the banks of Musi river here, the CJ said the courts rose to the occasion during the pandemic by functioning online. With this, virtual courts became a reality and in the future, could become permanent part of the judiciary, he said. The COVID-19 pandemic adversely affected the functioning of judiciary for the past two years. Junior lawyers, among other sections, were seriously affected due to disruption of court work during the pandemic. The CJ said Advocate General B.S. Prasad had informed him that the corpus fund for advocates created by the State government was ready. Soon, the disbursal of financial assistance could begin, he said. Recalling different works accomplished by the HC in the past one year, the CJ said the … [Read more...] about CJ hopes virtual courts become permanent feature

China announced sanctions on Tuesday on seven Taiwanese officials after accusing them of being ‘diehard’ ‘Taiwan independence separatists’, TaiwanNews reported citing Chinese government mouthpiece Xinhua . The sanctions came after an American congressional delegation departed the island-nation on Monday. Along with the diplomat and the Taiwanese parliament’s vice president, Beijing also targeted ruling-party Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) three other lawmakers. The following individuals will face sanctions and will be barred along with their family members from entering China, including Hong Kong and Macau: Taiwan’s Representative to the US Hsiao Bi-khim National Security Council Secretary-General Wellington Koo Vice President of the Legislative Yuan Tsai Chi-chang Deputy Secretary-General of the DPP Lin Fei-fan Legislator Ker Chien-ming (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu (DPP) Chairperson Chen Jiau-hua (NPP) The ban also extends to institutions, companies … [Read more...] about China Sanctions Seven Taiwanese Officials but Pattern of Curbs Exposes Xi’s Hate for Ruling Party DPP

A Colorado law that prohibits the release of all information in child abuse and neglect cases violates the U.S. Constitution, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last week. The law violates the First Amendment because it is too broad when it prohibits the release of any information contained in reports or records in child abuse and neglect cases in the state’s child welfare system, including information that does not identify the involved child, the Denver-based federal appeals court found. The ruling comes out of a years-long dispute between Denver family law attorney Jessica Peck and the Colorado Department of Human Services. In a 2019 Westword article , Peck accused Denver Human Services of wrongly seeking to take a 3-year-old girl from her mother. After she spoke publicly about the case — without identifying the girl — a judge warned her not to continue sharing information with the media. Under current law, anyone who violates confidentiality in a child welfare … [Read more...] about Colorado child abuse confidentiality law violates First Amendment, federal appeals court finds

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Dane County health officials didn't violate free speech protections when they cited a Middleton cafe for advertising itself as a “mask-free zone” during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Helbachs Cafe posted a sign in July 2020 saying the shop was a “mask-free zone” in defiance of a county mask mandate. The county cited the cafe three times for failing to comply with the mandate and the shop eventually lost its lease. Helbachs responded with a lawsuit alleging the county retaliated against the cafe for exercising free speech rights. A three-judge panel from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that to prove the county retaliated over the sign the cafe had to show a pattern of such retaliation against other businesses. The cafe failed to produce any evidence suggesting that, the judges found. The cafe's attorney, listed in online court records as Brent Eisberner, didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment. … [Read more...] about Court: Mask order didn’t violate shop’s free speech rights

President Donald Trump’s unwillingness to concede the election is bad news for many reasons. One is that it all but guarantees that some portion of his followers will refuse to recognize the Biden administration’s legitimacy—just as some people did not recognize the Trump administration’s legitimacy, or the Obama administration’s legitimacy before it. President-elect Joe Biden is promising a return to normalcy, but the perception by some substantial part of the electorate that the American president is illegitimate is no longer an aberration in American politics. It is normal. This may have all started with Bob Dole. Although people tend to think of the former Senate majority leader, now 97 years old, as an old-school Republican of the pre-scorched-earth era, he was as early as 1993 a chief source of chaos and destabilization. When Bill Clinton routed the incumbent George H. W. Bush in the 1992 presidential election—bringing the Democrats to the White House for the first time in 12 … [Read more...] about What Bob Dole Hath Wrought

Within an hour of news breaking that the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down Roe v. Wade, the phones at the Boulder Valley Women’s Health Center started ringing. Not just one or two calls, but at least a dozen — coming from states where patients had appointments scheduled, but had to cancel them and scramble to find alternatives after the ruling stripped away constitutional protections for abortion and allowed states with trigger bans to immediately outlaw the procedure. The Boulder clinic only performs abortion procedures on Fridays and usually has same-day appointments open. Now, two weeks after the ruling, they’re scheduled at least a week out and staff is double-booking in case of cancellations. Dr. Kelly Peters, the clinic’s medical director, said she’s grateful to live in a supportive state like Colorado, but it’s important to keep talking about the need for abortion services and compassionate care. “The only good thing that I see right now is that it is making people angry … [Read more...] about Roe fell and the phones started ringing. Colorado abortion clinics hit with out-of-state demand

William Ruto was Monday declared the victor of Kenya’s hard-fought presidential poll, but the outcome sparked a split in the election commission and some violent protests in his defeated rival’s strongholds. Ruto won with 50.49 percent of the vote on August 9, narrowly ahead of Raila Odinga on 48.85 percent, Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission chairman Wafula Chebukati announced after an anxious days-long wait for results. With tensions running high after the disputed outcome, the 55-year-old president-elect vowed to work with “all leaders”. “There is no room for vengeance,” said Ruto. “I am acutely aware that our country is at a stage where we need all hands on deck.” AFP correspondents reported that police fired live rounds as protests erupted in a Nairobi slum that is an Odinga stronghold. Police also fired tear gas in his lakeside bastion of Kisumu where demonstrators threw stones and erected roadblocks with large chunks of rock. “We were cheated,” Isaac Onyango, … [Read more...] about Kenya’s William Ruto Declared President-elect in Disputed Vote Outcome

As India is celebrating 75 years of Independence, the police continue to be in the public gaze, most often for antagonistic reasons. Criminal laws and procedures, though modified, and the shadows of India’s colonial legacy do not appear to leave the police agency any time soon. Changes to the IPC India’s parliamentarians rose to the occasion and passed The Probation of Offenders Act, 1958, with an objective more to reform, rather than punish, offenders. Realising the urgent need to check the social evil of dowry, the Dowry Prohibition Act was passed in 1961. More revolutionary changes were made in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in 1983 and 1986 and by introducing Sections 498A (cruelty by husband and his relatives) and 304B (dowry death) along with certain amendments in the Evidence Act. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, was enacted in 1989. The definition of rape has been widened and offences related to sexual assault made tougher. … [Read more...] about The shackles of 1861 need to go