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Israel revokes permit of Palestinian foreign minister
Topics |
2021/03/22 13:24
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Israel on Sunday revoked the VIP permit of the Palestinian foreign minister after he returned to the West Bank from a trip to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Israeli and Palestinian officials confirmed.
The move appeared to be Israeli retaliation for Palestinian support for the ICC’s war crimes investigation against Israel.
A Palestinian official said Foreign Minister Riad Malki was stopped Sunday as he entered the West Bank from Jordan through the Israeli-controlled crossing. Malki’s VIP card was seized, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was discussing a sensitive diplomatic issue. Losing the VIP status makes it harder for him to move through Israeli military checkpoints in the West Bank, and traveling abroad will require Israeli permission.
Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter, confirmed the incident, but directed questions to the Shin Bet security agency, which declined comment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office declined comment.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, announced earlier this month that she was opening an investigation into possible war crimes by Israel committed in the occupied West Bank and blockaded Gaza Strip.
The investigation is expected to look at the Israeli military’s conduct in a 2014 war against Hamas militants and during months of mass protests along Gaza’s frontier with Israel in which dozens of Palestinian were killed or wounded by Israeli gunfire. Israel has said its actions were legitimate acts of defense.
The probe also is set to examine Israel’s settlement policies in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, areas captured in 1967 and claimed by the Palestinians for a hoped-for independent state.
According to the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, Malki met with Bensouda last Thursday and urged her to expedite the investigations “to end the era of impunity and to start the path of accountability” of Israel.
The investigation was launched in response to a request by the Palestinians, who joined the court in 2015 after being granted nonmember observer status in the U.N. General Assembly.
Israel has fiercely condemned the investigation, accusing the ICC of bias and saying it has no jurisdiction since the Palestinians do not have a state. Israel is not a member of the ICC, but its citizens could be subject to arrest abroad if warrants are issued.
The court said last week it has sent formal notices to both sides about the impending investigation, giving them a month to seek deferral by proving they are carrying out their own investigations.
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Florida man gets 11 years for trafficking 78 pounds of meth
Headline News |
2021/03/16 15:25
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A Florida man has been sentenced to 11 years in prison on a federal drug trafficking charge drug in a case that involved one of the largest seizures of methamphetamine in Montana history.
U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen sentenced Nicholas James Imhoff of Caple Coral, Florida during a Tuesday hearing in federal court in Missoula.
Police found 78 pounds (35 kilograms) of meth in a rented minivan driven by the 30-year-old defendant after he was stopped for speeding on an interstate near Columbus, Montana in February 2020.
Imhoff pleaded guilty in September to possession with intent to distribute meth, under a plea deal with prosecutors that resulted in the dismissal of a drug conspiracy charge .
Authorities said the meth seized in the case had an estimated street value of up to $1.2 million and was the equivalent of 280,000 doses of the drug.
The seizure was “by far the largest amount of meth we’ve seen in a single traffic stop,” John Barnes, a spokesperson for the Montana Department of Justice, said at the time.
In December, Canadian law enforcement seized more than 500 pounds of meth (228 kilograms) from a truck that was hauling produce across the border from Montana into Alberta. It was the largest meth seizure on record at a land border crossing in Canada, according to the Canada Border Services Agency.
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Colorado court: Speed-reading bills violates constitution
Law Center |
2021/03/15 10:59
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The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled that state Senate Democrats violated the constitution in 2019 when they responded to Republicans’ request that bills be read at length by having computers speed-read the bills in an intelligible garble.
The Colorado Sun reports that in a 4-3 ruling released Monday, the court ruled the speed-reading tactic violated the constitution’s mandate that legislation be read at length upon request.
“There are unquestionably different ways by which the legislature may comply with the reading requirement,” Justice Carlos Samour Jr. wrote in the majority opinion. “But the cacophony generated by the computers here isn’t one of them.”
Minority Senate Republicans were trying to delay Democrats’ attempts to overhaul oil and gas regulations by asking that bills be read aloud — including a 2,000-page measure. When Democrats resorted to computers, Republicans sued. A lower court found for the minority party.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Monica M. Marquez wrote that the court should give direction on how legislation ought to be read in the future.
In 2019, Democrats began negotiating with Republicans to avoid further stalling tactics — and the GOP has since slowed down work on other occasions to force Democrats to make deals. |
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High court orders full disability for worker whose lost limb
Law Center |
2021/03/11 11:00
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The South Dakota Supreme Court has ordered the state to grant a man whose lower leg was amputated as a result of a work injury permanent and total disability benefits.
Steven Billman was working at Clarke Machine when he cut his foot on a metal shaving in February 2015. His foot became infected and surgeons at Avera Hospital in Sioux Falls had to amputate his right leg just below the knee.
Billman is 64 and has multiple medical conditions, including diabetes. The state Department of Labor and Regulation granted Billman partial disability payments for 2 1/2 years. In 2018, Billman argued that he deserved permanent, total disability benefits, the Rapid City Journal reported.
The department said that while Billman did have some disabilities, he could still do some physical work, has the ability to adapt and learn new technology, and that his age doesn’t prevent him from finding work.
Billman appealed to the Hughes County Court where Judge Christina Klinger upheld that he was not unemployable and inappropriately limited the geographical size of his work search.
The justices this week concluded the department’s determination that Billman is not unemployable” is clearly erroneous.”
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Nepal Parliament, reinstated by high court, begins session
Court Watch |
2021/03/07 16:23
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After being reinstated by the nation’s Supreme Court, Nepal’s Parliament began a session on Sunday that will likely determine the future of the prime minister and the government.
The split in the ruling Nepal Communist Party has left Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli without the majority of votes in Parliament required for him to continue in office. Oli so far has refused to step down and is determined to continue.
A vote of no confidence against Oli is likely to be brought by the splinter group from his own party, which would force him to step down. The group has not yet made a formal decision.
Oli would have to get the support of other political parties in Parliament in order to stay in power. The process could take days, leaving an unstable political situation in the country.
Oli had the president dissolve Parliament in December and announce fresh elections after the rift in the party. Last month, the Supreme Court ordered the reinstatement of Parliament in response to several cases filed with the court charging that Oli’s decision to dissolve the legislature was unconstitutional.
Since Parliament’s dissolution, there have been regular street protests against Oli by tens of thousands of people in Kathmandu and other cities.
Oli became prime minister after the party won elections three years ago. His party and that of former Maoist rebels had merged to form a strong Communist party to win the elections.
However, there has been a power struggle between Oli and the leader of the former Maoists rebels, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who is also co-chair of the party. The two had previously agreed that they would split the five-year prime minister’s term, but Oli has refused to allow Dahal to take over.
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Mississippi told to pay $500K to wrongfully imprisoned man
Court Watch |
2021/03/03 14:33
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A judge is ordering the state of Mississippi to pay $500,000 to a Black man who was wrongfully imprisoned more than 22 years and was tried six times in a quadruple murder case.
Curtis Flowers was released from prison in December 2019, months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a district attorney had excluded Black jurors from his trials. Flowers had spent years on death row.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in September that she would not try Flowers a seventh time in the 1996 slayings and a robbery that took place at a furniture store in Winona. He had been in custody since 1997.
In November, Flowers sued the state seeking compensation for wrongful imprisonment. Court papers show the attorney general’s office agreed to his request.
Montgomery County Circuit Judge George Mitchell on Tuesday ordered the state to pay Flowers $500,000. That is the maximum allowed under a 2009 state law, which says the state can pay $50,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment, for a up to 10 years.
Mitchell also ordered the state to make a separate payment of $50,000 to Flowers’s attorneys.
Flowers was convicted four times: twice for individual slayings and twice for all four killings. Two other trials involving all four deaths ended in mistrials. Each of Flowers’s convictions was overturned.
In June 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out the conviction and death sentence from Flowers’s sixth trial, which took place in 2010. Justices said prosecutors’ pattern of excluding Black jurors from his trials was unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court ruling came after American Public Media’s “In the Dark” investigated the case. The podcast recorded jailhouse informant Odell Hallmon in 2017 and 2018 recanting his testimony that Flowers had confessed to him.
The first six trials were prosecuted by the local district attorney. Flowers was still facing the 1997 indictments in December 2019 when a judge agreed to release him on bond. The district attorney handed the case to the attorney general, and her staff spent months reviewing it before deciding not to go forward because of a lack of credible witnesses.
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