The Chinese balloon that floated over US airspace last week before being shot down by a US military jet Saturday has raised questions of international law on both the US and Chinese sides. The US claims that the balloon was a spy balloon, while China maintains that it was a civilian scientific research balloon that had strayed off course. On Friday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken canceled a planned trip to Beijing. Speaking at a news conference, Blinken said: It’s very important to emphasize that the presence of this surveillance balloon over the United States, in our skies, is a clear violation of our sovereignty, a clear violation of international law, and is clearly unacceptable, and we’ve made that clear to China.…
Tag: trending legal news
Postal Code For Chinese Manufacturers To Be Required By US CBP Beginning This Weekend
As part of a continued effort to enforce the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) and to provide early warning to importers and their representatives that goods may have been produced in the Xinjian Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) ) will require businesses to provide a valid postal code for Chinese manufacturers from which they are importing goods when reporting via the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) system beginning on March 8, 2023. The following Q&A will help your business understand the steps it needs to take to comply with the requirements: Q. When does this requirement go into effect?…
Pope, Anglican, Presbyterian leaders denounce anti-gay laws | World
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis was backed by the ceremonial head of the Anglican Communion and top Presbyterian minister in calling for gays to be welcomed by their churches as he again decreed laws that criminalize homosexuality as unjust. The three Christian leaders spoke on LGBTQ rights during an unprecedented joint airborne news conference Sunday while returning home from South Sudan, where they took part in a three-day ecumenical pilgrimage to try to nudge forward the young country’s peace process. They were asked about Francis’ recent comments to The Associated Press, in which he declared that laws that criminalize gay people were “unjust” and that “being homosexual is not a crime.”…
Facebook loses legal challenge at EU’s top court
LONDON – Facebook lost a legal challenge Tuesday at the European Union’s top court over a groundbreaking German anti-trust decision that limited the way the company uses data for advertising. The European Court of Justice said competition watchdogs can consider whether companies like Facebook comply with the continent’s strict privacy rules, which are normally enforced by national data privacy regulators. The court ruled that antitrust authorities can take into account any violations of data privacy rules as they investigate whether tech giants are abusing their dominance in the market by boxing out competitors. “We are evaluating the court’s decision and will have more to say in due course,” Facebook parent Meta said in a statement.…
Unfair Contract Terms change: Is your business ready?
In late 2022, the Treasury Laws Amendment (More Competition, Better Prices) Bill 2022 passed both houses of the federal parliament. The relevant laws take effect from 9 November 2023 and significantly bolster the Unfair Contract Terms (UCT) regime in Australia.For business owners and managers who are unfamiliar with the UCT regime, now is the time to revisit these laws. Unfair Contract TermsUCT laws have been in place since 2010 for consumer contracts, and since 2016 for ‘small business contracts’.The purpose of the UCT laws is to prevent reliance on unfair terms in standard form contracts when dealing with consumers and small businesses.…
Canada’s Online News Act Targets Facebook and Google
The Canadian Parliament has passed a law that will require technology companies to pay domestic news outlets for linking to their articles, prompting the owner of Facebook and Instagram to say that it would pull news articles from both platforms in the country. The law, passed on Thursday, is the latest salvo in a push by governments around the world to force big companies like Google and Facebook to pay for news that they share on their platforms — a campaign that the companies have resisted at virtually every turn. With some caveats, the new Canadian law would force search engines and social media companies to engage in a bargaining process — and binding arbitration, if necessary — for licensing news content for their use.…
This scientist shaped a new law that moves Canada away from toxicity testing on animals
For decades, researchers have relied on animals to test whether chemicals are toxic to humans. But science has developed alternatives, and a new Canadian law will require them to move in those directions. This week, Bill S-5 was passed by the Senate and was given a royal assent. It includes language that brings Canada closer to “modernized toxicity testing,” according to a Windsor researcher who helped shape the legislation. Charu Chandrasekera says laboratories of the future will be forced to turn to other methods to determine whether chemicals are safe — instead of using rats, mice and dogs. Windsor Morning7:42Animal Testing For decades, researchers have relied on animals to test whether chemicals are toxic to humans.…
Residential schools: Report on denialism in Canada
OTTAWA – Canada should give “urgent consideration” to legal mechanisms as a way to combat residential school denialism, says a new report from the independent special interlocutor on unmarked graves. Justice Minister David Lambetti said he was open to such a solution. Kimberly Murray made the call in an interim report released Friday, just over a year after she was appointed to an advisory role focused on how Ottawa can help Indigenous communities search for children who died and disappeared from residential schools. The former executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada spent much of the past year traveling the country and hearing from different communities, experts and survivors.…