Latest news with #Supreme Court
France 24
a day ago
- Politics
- France 24
Bangladesh's largest Islamist party holds mega rally
The Jamaat-e-Islami party has gained significant momentum since the ousting of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in a popular uprising last year. During her tenure, Hasina took a hardline stance against Jamaat, even cancelling its registration as a political party. For decades, Jamaat was barred from holding public rallies. Last month, the Supreme Court restored the party's registration, paving the way for its participation in elections slated for next April. "We have suffered a lot in the last 15 years. We went to jail, we were robbed of our political rights," Mohammad Abdul Mannan, a 29-year-old party activist, told AFP. Demonstrators braving the sweltering heat in the capital demaded changes to the distrution of seats, calling for proportional representation. "We've gathered here in masses to press our seven-point demand, which includes participatory representation in parliament," Mannan said. "Elections shouldn't be held unless our demands are fulfilled." After independence, Jamaat was banned. It later re-emerged and registered its best electoral performance in 1991 when it secured 18 seats. The party joined a coalition government in 2001, but failed to build lasting popular support. "We want a proportional representation system so that winners can't take all -- we too deserve a voice," Mannan said. Tens of thousands of demonstrators began swarming the Suhrawardy Udyan memorial in capital Dhaka by midday, spilling out into the surrounding park. Some wore T-shirts bearing the party's logo, others sported headbands inscribed with its name, while many displayed metallic badges shaped like a scale — the party's electoral symbol. Md Shafiqul Islam, 58, travelled from Bogura — a stronghold of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which is eyeing a landslide victory in the polls. "I felt it was my duty as a Muslim to attend. Jamaat-e-Islami promises to establish an Islamic country, and that's why I came," Shafiqul told AFP. During Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami supported Islamabad, a role that sparks anger among many Bangladeshis today. Bangladesh's war crimes tribunal sentenced several of Jamaat-e-Islami's senior leaders to death for their roles in the war, executing four of them. Many Bangladeshis believe the party must acknowledge its past to regain public trust and become a viable electoral force. But at the rally, supporters offered a different take. "Jamaat is being blamed unfairly," said a 33-year-old private service holder, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity.
CNA
3 days ago
- Business
- CNA
South Korea's top court upholds acquittal of Samsung boss in fraud case
SEOUL: South Korea's highest court on Thursday (Jul 17) upheld the acquittal of Samsung Electronics chief Lee Jae-yong after he was cleared of a slew of charges linked to a controversial merger, ending a years-long legal drama at the tech titan. Prosecutors claimed the deal was designed to seal control of the company for Lee, at a cost to shareholders, accusing the 57-year-old of stock price rigging, breach of trust and accounting fraud. He was originally cleared of the charges at a trial late last year, and that was upheld by an appeal court in February, a decision that was challenged by prosecutors. However, the Supreme Court upheld the original decision on Thursday, bringing an end to the saga. "All appeals were dismissed and the lower court's rulings were upheld," court documents seen by AFP said. The charges related to the 2015 merger between Samsung C&T - a construction and engineering firm - and Cheil Industries. Lee did not appear at the court, but Samsung's legal team welcomed the ruling, saying it "clearly affirms the legality of the merger between Samsung C&T and the accounting practices of Samsung Biologics". "We express our sincere gratitude to the court for its wise and thorough judgement after five years of careful deliberation," they added. Lee was jailed for 18 months in a separate fraud and embezzlement case following a sweeping investigation that also brought down former president Park Geun-hye in 2017. Lee, current executive chairman of Samsung Electronics, the crown jewel of South Korea's sprawling Samsung group, was released on parole in August 2021, having served half his sentence. He received a presidential pardon the following year, then returned to management shortly afterwards, and was officially named executive chairman in October 2022. With the acquittal, experts say Lee is now in a position to take on a more visible leadership role at South Korea's largest conglomerate. "Chairman Lee is likely to resume a more public role, with his leadership becoming more visible through overseas trips, investment announcements and participation in major events," Kim Dae-jong, a professor at Sejong University, told AFP.
Washington Post
4 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Want to build stuff? Congress needs to make it easier.
If lawmakers care as much about housing costs, energy prices, climate change, domestic manufacturing and economic growth as they claim, Congress should take a cue from a big ruling in the Supreme Court's latest term. The way things were going, building a highway, or maybe even fixing a street, might have been stopped in court on the grounds that it could encourage the production of more cars running on internal combustion engines and hence contribute to climate change. To the chagrin of some environmental groups, the Supreme Court thankfully curbed the increasingly absurd abuse of the 1970 National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) to block all sorts of building — including projects crucial to protecting the environment. From here, Congress should ease construction of critical infrastructure even further. The court decided that the U.S. Surface Transportation Board could approve an 88-mile train track even if it might move crude oil from Utah to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The board didn't have to assess the potential future impacts if the new track encouraged more oil drilling on one end and more oil refining on the other. 'A relatively modest infrastructure project should not be turned into a scapegoat for everything that ensues from upstream oil drilling to downstream refinery emissions,' wrote Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh for the court. Justice Sonia Sotomayor agreed: 'The Surface Transportation Board would not be responsible for the harms caused by the oil industry, even though the railway it approved would deliver oil to refineries and spur drilling.' Though the decision might seem narrow, its implication for the future of infrastructure is potentially momentous. It pushes back against the demands for increasingly stringent environmental reviews under NEPA, which opponents not always motivated by environmental concerns have used to block train tracks, pipelines, transmission lines, hydroelectric dams and wind farms. 'The goal of the law is to inform agency decision-making, not to paralyze it,' Kavanaugh wrote. 'Congress did not design NEPA for judges to hamstring new infrastructure and construction projects.' The decision frees agencies from having to review all the conceivable direct and indirect environmental consequences of any given project now and in the distant future. In so doing, it should spur broader reconsideration of how environmental impacts interact with other priorities, to better balance societal costs and benefits. That would involve Congress. Court NEPA review of an infrastructure project is not the best vehicle to decide whether the federal government should help or hinder the development of fossil fuels or renewable energy. Right now, it's too easy for President Donald Trump suddenly to advocate for the welfare of whales off the coast of Massachusetts to stop an offshore wind farm there. It's also suspicious for environmental champions to dismiss the welfare of whales only when it gets in the way of wind energy. Environmental review should come down equally hard on a natural gas pipeline and a high-voltage transmission line that cut through the same ecosystems. To draw more sensible lines, Congress should reevaluate which environmental impacts society must tolerate and which it must avoid at all costs — looking at the variety of restrictions it has imposed on development. In the 1970s, a 'new' species of freshwater fish called the snail darter was discovered during NEPA research into the building of the Tellico Dam in Tennessee. For the project to be completed, Congress had to exempt it from the Endangered Species Act. It turned out that the fish was not endangered. It wasn't a separate species. Opponents of the dam 'discovered' it to get the dam stopped. Questions about what should be protected are not going away. A flower called Tiehm's buckwheat might stand in the way of a Nevada lithium mine green-lit by the Biden administration. 'They're turning this flower's only known habitat into an industrial site, condemning it to extinction,' said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity, which is suing. Maybe the idea of protecting every ecosystem at any cost should be reconsidered. The flower, which apparently grows only on 10 acres in the proposed mine's footprint, is a close relative of other buckwheats. Is it a distinct species? Perhaps it could be grown elsewhere? Perhaps the battle against climate change — which will require lithium to build lithium-ion batteries to power electric vehicles — should take precedence? NEPA review had grown to require every government decision to survive endless judicial challenges, poorly serving the nation and the natural environment in which it sits. Congress should not leave it to courts to fix. America needs a new debate over how it interacts with the environment. Only the people's representatives can have it.
The Independent
5 days ago
- Health
- The Independent
Equalities watchdog guidance delayed until later in year
Guidance from Britain's equalities watchdog including on trans peoples' use of certain spaces is likely to be delayed until later this year. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said it received more than 50,000 responses to its code of practice consultation. The commission had been expected to present final guidance to women and equalities minister Bridget Phillipson by the time Parliament broke up for summer next week. But in an update on Tuesday, the regulator said it was continuing to review the thousands of responses and would be amending its draft code over the summer. In an update on its website, the commission said: 'We received over 50,000 responses to our code of practice consultation. 'We are working at pace to review these and will use our findings to amend the draft code of practice over the summer. Keep checking this page for further updates.' The commission had earlier tripled the length of time for feedback, from an original proposal for a two-week consultation, following criticism from some that this was too short a timeframe. Following a Supreme Court ruling in April, which said the words 'woman' and 'sex' in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex, the commission issued draft guidance on a range of topics, including trans peoples' participation in sport and use of toilets. According to the draft, a birth certificate could be requested by a sports club or hospital if there is 'genuine concern' about what biological sex a person is. Elsewhere, the draft code said trans people can be excluded from competitive sport 'when necessary for reasons of safety or fair competition', and gave an example of how some services might be able to adapt to 'offer toilets in individual lockable rooms to be used by both sexes'. The code stated that a service provided only to women and trans women or only to men and trans men 'is not a separate-sex or single-sex service' under the Equality Act and could amount to unlawful sex discrimination against those of the opposite sex who are not allowed to use it. Commission chairwoman Baroness Kishwer Falkner previously said there was an 'obvious' demand since the court's ruling for 'authoritative guidance' for a range of providers from businesses to hospitals to sports clubs.
Telegraph
5 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
Ghislaine Maxwell refused appeal over sex trafficking
The Trump administration has urged the Supreme Court to reject an appeal from Ghislaine Maxwell, the convicted sex trafficker and former associate of Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell, 63, is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Florida for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse underage girls. Her lawyers had asked the court to review her conviction, arguing she was protected under a 2008 non-prosecution agreement Epstein struck with prosecutors in Florida. 'That contention is incorrect, and petitioner does not show that it would succeed in any court of appeals,' wrote D John Sauer, the US solicitor-general. The move comes amid growing anger from Donald Trump's Maga base, many of whom have accused the administration of suppressing evidence of Epstein's alleged connections to powerful individuals. List 'sitting on my desk' Their frustration intensified after Pam Bondi, the attorney general, announced that the Justice Department had closed its Epstein investigation, claiming there was 'no incriminating client list' or evidence to suggest he had blackmailed high-profile figures. Just months earlier, Ms Bondi had said such a list was 'sitting on my desk'. The backlash has triggered the largest internal rebellion Trump has faced since returning to the White House in January. In response, aides are reportedly considering steps to placate supporters, including removing redactions from Epstein-related files and appointing a special counsel to re-examine the case. Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 of five federal counts relating to her role in Epstein's abuse network. During her six-week trial, four women testified that Maxwell had recruited and groomed them for Epstein at his homes in New York, New Mexico, Florida and the Virgin Islands. Her legal team argued that the original deal Epstein struck in 2008, which protected his co-conspirators, should have also applied to Maxwell. 'A defendant should be able to rely on a promise that the United States will not prosecute again, without being subject to a gotcha in some other jurisdiction that chooses to interpret that plain language promise in some other way,' wrote David Markus, Maxwell's lawyer.
