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A round-up of human rights stories from around the world. Biden tells Xi US and China must not ‘veer into conflict’ in first call for months | China | The Guardian

Police conduct rules in Utah have been revised to explicitly ban sexting or masturbation while on duty. The gap in the rulebook was discovered by the Utah Peace Officer Standards and Training Council in a number of recent cases of officer discipline, FOX13 reports.

Matheson has been named Irish tax firm of the year and Irish transfer pricing firm of the year by the International Tax Review (ITR) for the second year in a row. The firm won the accolades at the ITR EMEA Tax Awards 2021, widely recognised as one of the benchmarks for excellence in the field of int

The UK government has unveiled its first-ever "super courtroom", which will allow up to a dozen defendants to face trial at the same time. The first super courtroom has been created at Manchester Crown Court, which has been revamped to create a space which is three times the size of a normal courtro

The Biden administration has announced plans to sue the state of Texas over an extremely restrictive new law banning abortions in the state after six weeks of pregnancy. The Supreme Court of the United States last week rejected an emergency petition brought by Texas abortion clinics against the law,

Employment lawyer Ciarán Ahern has joined McInnes Dunne Murphy as a partner. Mr Ahern joined the firm this month from A&L Goodbody, where he was an associate in the employment department after having trained and practised as an employment solicitor there for 10 years.

Plans to give more powers to the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) to investigate wrongdoing by gardaí have reportedly been criticised as "draconian" by Garda Commissioner Drew Harris. Mr Harris told the Oireachtas justice committee that gardaí under investigatio

Criminal cases took an average of 193 days to be dealt with in the Northern Ireland courts last year as the Covid-19 pandemic slowed the justice system to a crawl. New statistics show that the average time taken for a case to be dealt with across all courts rose by 29.5 per cent last year and stood

Belfast firm KRW LAW LLP has welcomed the acquittal of four participants in an anniversary convoy for the Birmingham pub bombings who were prosecuted under Covid-19 regulations. Six people who took part the convoy in Birmingham last November, which involved hundreds of cars and motorbikes, were issu

Children with special needs and disabilities in Northern Ireland are "being forgotten" in the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Children's Law Centre (CLC) has warned. The law centre issued a statement yesterday in response to reports of disabled children facing severe negative impacts as a res

Irish judge Anthony Collins has been appointed as an Advocate-General of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). Judge Collins was nominated by the Irish government earlier this summer to fill the vacancy created by its appointment of Advocate-General Gerard Hogan to the Irish Supreme Cou

Planners and construction industry representatives will give evidence on proposals to scrap strategic housing developments to the Oireachtas housing committee later today. The joint Oireachtas committee on housing, local government and heritage resumes pre-legislative scrutiny of the general scheme

The Pope sent 15,000 ice creams to inmates at two Rome prisons in an act of charity this summer. The Office of Papal Charities said on Tuesday that it "has made small evangelical gestures to help and give hope to thousands of people in Rome's prisons".

A new review will examine the statutory framework for ethics in public life and make recommendations for legislative reform. The Department for Public Expenditure and Reform will undertake the review of ethics legislation, which will include an examination of the outstanding recommendations of the M

Niall Moran examines the stalemate between the United Kingdom and the European Union on the implementation of the Northern Ireland Protocol. On July 21, the UK government published its command paper seeking fundamental change to the rules governing trade in goods and the “overarching instituti