Blog Housekeeping Readers will no doubt recall my post last week on stem cell clinics. It seems to have achieved a wide audience – wide enough to include the legal profession, at any rate. Below are copies of a letter I have recently received, and what better place than here to address the points it raises? Since the AAAS was copied on this, let me start off by saying that the phrase “editorially independent” at the top of every page of my blog means what it says. The AAAS and Science Translational Medicine have no editorial input or responsibility whatsoever for the contents of this blog; they find out what I’m writing about the same time everyone else does (when...
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Boris Johnson's plan to consider suspending Parliament in order to force through a no-deal Brexit on October 31, could be ruled illegal. A group of parliamentarians and lawyers are appealing to a Scottish court to seek a guarantee that proroguing Parliament for the purpose of forcing through a no-deal Brexit would be against the law. It relies on the precedent of a previous successful case which found that the UK government was free to unilaterally revoke Brexit. The court is set to rule within weeks, potentially forcing Johnson to seek another Brexit extension. Boris Johnson's plan to force Britain out of the EU by the end of October "do or die" could soon be ruled illegal by a Scottish...
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Ige’s Veto Of Civil Asset Forfeiture Bill Makes No Sense Every July, as the deadline arrives to either sign or veto bills in Hawaii, there seems to be a bit more suspense than one might expect when the same political party controls the Legislature and the governor’s office. The good news is that Gov. David Ige is no rubber stamp for his fellow Democrats. The bad news is that some of his vetoes are ill-advised. The latest example is his rejection of a measure to reform Hawaii’s civil asset forfeiture program. House Bill 748 passed both houses of the Legislature unanimously, and with good reason. Last year a state audit found that the Attorney General’s Office, which administers the...
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A former police officer turned lawyer says the government's proposed gun register is political grandstanding and won't make New Zealand safer. The government is rolling out the second phase of its gun reforms in response to the 15 March mosque shootings, which includes creating a gun register to record gun owners when they get a licence, get one renewed, buy or sell firearms. Phil Mitchell, who's also a hunter, told Morning Report the register, which is expected to cost around $50 million would be better spent by police enforcing existing gun laws. "It hasn't made a difference anywhere else, if you look at the experience of Canada, Australia and the UK - who all have similar registers, it'...
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South Africa’s former President Jacob Zuma threatened on Friday to walk away from a judicial commission of inquiry into corruption, throwing the process into temporary confusion and uncertainty. An agreement was later cobbled together that will maintain Zuma’s participation in the process. But it may be a short-lived truce as he is likely to continue to use the threat of a walk-out as leverage over how his evidence and its truthfulness are tested. For those that have attentively followed the former President’s legal and political strategy over the past two decades – referred to in some quarters as his “Stalingrad” strategy – this will have come as no great surprise. Over the past months,...
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MBW’s Inspiring Women series profiles female executives who have risen through the ranks of the business, highlighting their career journey – from their professional breakthrough to the senior responsibilities they now fulfil. Inspiring Women is supported by INgrooves. “This business is built on passion. I wholeheartedly believe that if you’re not truly passionate about music, you shouldn’t be in it.” There’s no doubting Michelle Jubelirer’s passion for artists. Probe her about Halsey, Migos, Fletcher, Paul McCartney, Lil Baby, Beck, Maggie Rogers, Vince Staples or a bundle of other Capitol Music Group- affiliated acts, and she’ll speak in remarkably animated, passionate tones...
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T he Arlington-based Mack Molding is asking a judge to dismiss a wrongful termination lawsuit, saying that a former employee’s husband secretly recorded private phone calls and that her attorney abused the discovery process. The company also asked for the lawyer to be disqualified. In a pleading to the Superior Court in Bennington filed last week, Mack Molding’s attorneys said Donald Gates, whose wife Angela Gates lost her job at the company in 2016, “surreptitiously and improperly recorded private intra-corporate communications between Mack Molding company officials,” including private conversations that involved the litigation. “The secret recordings were not...
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Scott Austic murder appeal questions police evidence in Boddington murder of Stacey Thorne Updated July 22, 2019 21:12:24 The family of a murderer who claims he was wrongfully convicted of stabbing his pregnant girlfriend, and that police may have planted evidence against him, hopes a new appeal hearing will lead to his name being cleared. Scott Austic is serving a life jail term for the 2007 murder of 35-year-old Stacey Thorne, who was stabbed 21 times in her home in Boddington, south-east of Perth. She was 22 weeks pregnant with Austic's child, and it was alleged at his trial he had fatally stabbed her because he did not want her to have the baby. He has always maintained his innocence...
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Tears of joy and cheers filled a courtroom in the Hutt Valley when a grandmother was granted custody of her six-month-old mokopuna after a long battle with Oranga Tamariki. For what is likely to be one of the first times, a judge has applied section 7AA in a decision granting a grandmother custody of her grandchild after a long battle with Oranga Tamariki. Section 7AA, part of the changes to the Oranga Tamariki Act that kicked in at the start of this month, ensures Oranga Tamariki must commit to its Treaty of Waitangi obligations and prioritise the whakapapa of children in their care. As soon as the judge announced his decision, that after six months in foster care the baby was going to be...
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Earlier this month, both candidates vying to be the next prime minister signed a ‘Veteran’s Pledge’ campaigned for by the Sun newspaper. As well as promising to pass a law before the next general election putting a stop to ‘vexatious investigations’ into historical allegations of misconduct against servicemen and women, including in Northern Ireland, the politicians also pledged to create a new cabinet-level Office of Veterans Affairs. They would also ‘enshrine the Military Covenant into law’, so ‘the injured and bereaved are given special attention’. The Military Covenant is a promise from the nation that those who serve in the armed forces, and their families, will be treated fairly. But...
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