The High Court asked for information about Rohingya voters. Three person including Deputy Comissioner of Cox's Bazar, the Election Commission have been asked to submit this list to the court by June 6. At the same time, 38 Rohingyas have been asked to be removed from the voter list of Eidgah Union of Cox's Bazar. A High Court bench of justice Naima Haydar and justice Kazi Zeenat Haque passed an order on Wednesday (April 24). The judge issued this order following the writ of local voter Hamidur Rahman. Supreme Court lawyer Md Siddik Ullah Mia, on behalf of local voter Md Hamidur Rahman, lodged a writ petition with the High Court on Tuesday seeking directives for the exposure of the number of Rohingyas enlisted as voters in Cox's Bazar. Additionally, it called for instructions to exclude them from the voter registry and to halt polling in Eidgaon union until the list is revised. Advocate Md Siddik Ullah Mia said that 38 Rohingyas have taken National Identity Card (NID) of Bangladesh after being included in the voter list of Eidgaon union. 

The ban on the former president's candidacy for the newly formed MK party has been lifted despite a criminal conviction. The ruling ANC could lose its absolute majority for the first time since 1994 in May elections. A South African court on Tuesday overruled electoral authorities' decision to bar former President Jacob Zuma from running in the country's general elections next month. South Africans will on May 29 vote for a new parliament, which will in turn elect the president. What do we know about the decision? "The decision of the Electoral Commission... is set aside," the Electoral Court wrote in its ruling seen by AFP news agency.  The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) decided last month to bar Zuma from running for a seat in Parliament on behalf of the uMkhonto weSizwe Party (MK). The IEC disqualified Zuma over his 2021 conviction and jailing for contempt of court. He was sentenced to 15 months after he refused to testify to a panel investigating corruption under his government. However, the Electoral Court overturned the decision.  South Africa does not allow people sentenced to more than 12 months in prison without the option of paying a fine to run in elections. Zuma's lawyers had argued that the sentence did not disqualify him as it followed civil rather than criminal proceedings and had been shortened by a remission. ANC struggling in polls MK is expected to cut into the vote share of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). Opinion polls show that the ANC, which has been rocked by several corruption scandals, could lose its absolute majority in parliament for the first time since the end of apartheid in 1994. If it does not achieve an outright majority of seats, the ANC will be forced to seek the support of smaller parties to form government. MK is projected to receive substantial support in the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal, which is Zuma's home region.  

A judge said prosecutors sufficiently alleged that Guo engaged in a pattern of racketeering through four fraud schemes The businessman is accused of defrauding thousands of investors out of more than US$1 billion A US judge on Tuesday rejected exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui’s bid to dismiss an indictment accusing him of defrauding thousands of investors out of more than US$1 billion. US District Judge Analisa Torres in Manhattan said prosecutors sufficiently alleged that Guo engaged in a pattern of racketeering through four fraud schemes, and that proving it was a matter for trial. Lawyers for Guo did not immediately respond to requests for comment after business hours. Guo has pleaded not guilty to 12 criminal charges that included securities fraud, wire fraud, unlawful monetary transactions and conspiracy, including for money laundering. According to the indictment, Guo and his accomplices defrauded investors in a media company, cryptocurrency and other ventures. The indictment said Guo took advantage of his prolific online presence and hundreds of thousands of followers by promising outsize financial returns and other benefits. In reality, the scheme allowed the co-conspirators to enrich themselves and family members, and fund Guo’s “extravagant lifestyle”, the indictment said. Two co-defendants face related criminal charges, including one defendant charged with obstruction. Also known as Ho Wan Kwok and Miles Kwok, Guo is a critic of China’s Communist Party and business associate of former US president Donald Trump’s one-time adviser Steve Bannon. Guo has been jailed in Brooklyn since his March 2023 arrest, with Torres and a federal appeal court rejecting his proposed US$25 million bail package last year. Jury selection in his trial is scheduled to begin on May 20. Prosecutors also sought the forfeiture of various assets including bank accounts, a US$37 million yacht, a New Jersey mansion, a Bugatti, a Lamborghini and a Rolls-Royce. Guo filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Connecticut in February 2022. That case was later combined with the bankruptcies of other companies he controlled. Torres has twice rejected Guo’s bid to stay the bankruptcy proceedings. Source: South China Morning Post

A Dhaka court accepted the charge-sheet filed in a case against  against Dr Yunus, 13 others for allegedly embezzling Tk 25 crore from the company. Dhaka Metropolitan Sessions Judge Ash Shams Zaglul Hossain passed the order today (April 2) for further proceedings  the case was sent to Dhaka Special Judge Court-4. The court fixed May 2 for the next hearing of the case. Grameen Telecom director, Md Shahjahan, one of the accused who failed to appear before the court on this day, the court canceled his bail and issued an arrest warrant. Earlier, Dr. Yunus and other accused appeared in the court around 1:45 pm. On May 30 last year, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC)  filed a case against 13 people, including Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, for embezzling Tk 25.22 crore from Grameen Telecom's workers' welfare fund. Gulshan Anowar Pradhan, Deputy Director of Anti- Corruption Commission filed the case. On February 1, ACC Deputy Director Gulshan Anwar Prodhan, also the investigation officer of the case, submitted the charge sheet against 14 people, including Dr. Muhammad Yunus.

A court has suspended a 14-year prison sentence for Imran Khan relating to gifts he received as prime minister. However, he remains in custody and faces a deluge of other criminal charges. An appeals court in Pakistan suspended a graft conviction for former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife on Monday, his spokesperson said. The ruling throws out a 14-year sentence, but the couple won't be released as they are already serving prison terms for other cases. The 71-year-old former prime minister now has more than 170 criminal cases hanging over him, which include treason and illegal marriage. What was the case about? Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were charged with illegally selling gifts during his time as prime minister that should have landed in a state treasury known locally as the "Toshakhana." The gifts included perfumes, diamond jewelry, dinner sets, and six Rolex watches, among other things worth more than $500,000 (€470,000) in total. The Islamabad High Court said on Monday that the couple's graft sentence will remain suspended until a final decision after the Eid holiday, according to Khan's lawyer, Ali Zafar. The court reportedly ruled that the original hearing failed to meet the legal requirements for a fair trial. "No evidence backs up this conviction," Zafar told reporters outside the court. Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party said the legal cases against him were politically motivated to keep him out of politics after he fell out of favor with the country's powerful military generals. Khan, however, remains popular among the general population.  

The High Court has postponed the decision to ban political organisations and activities in Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) and allows student politics. Justice Md Khasruzzaman and Justice KM Zahid on Monday (April 1) passed the order over hearing a writ petition. Earlier in the morning, a writ petition was filed with the High Court seeking permission continue systematic student politics on BUET. The writ petition was filed in the relevant branch of the High Court. On October 11, 2019, BUET student Imtiaz Hossain Rahim filed the writ petition challenging the legality of the 'emergency notice' issued by the BUET authorities.  

The 31-year-old is standing trial for murder after allegedly attacking two women near Germany's famed Neuschwanstein castle, one of the country's most visited sites. The trial of a US man accused of murder and rape near Germany's famed Neuschwanstein Castle began on Monday. The 31-year-old is alleged to have pushed two fellow US tourists into a ravine close to the popular tourist attraction in the southern state of Bavaria last June. One of the women died as a result of her injuries. What we know about the attack The women, aged 21 and 22, had been hiking on June 14, 2023, during a visit to Germany following graduation from university.  Having approached and then persuaded the women to follow him down a trail to a lookout point near the Marienbrücke bridge, the man allegedly shoved the younger woman to the ground and proceeded to undress her. When the 22-year-old woman intervened, he is said to have pushed her down a slope. German prosecutors suspect the man then strangled the younger woman until she was unconscious before raping her and also throwing her down the slope. The 22-year-old suffered serious injuries but survived. The younger woman was air-lifted to hospital by mountain rescue but later died from her injuries. The man is charged with murder, rape resulting in death, attempted murder, grievous bodily harm and possession of child pornography, after files were allegedly found on his phone and computer. The trial is taking place over six days at a district court in the town of Kempten. A verdict is expected in mid-March. Neuschwanstein castle is one of the most most popular tourist sites in Germany, attracting around 1.5 million visitors a year.

Thailand's royal defamation law is among the strictest in the world, but the biggest party in parliament was hoping to change that. A court has ruled the party's plan for reform was illegal and has ordered them to stop. Thailand's Move Forward party's plan to change the royal defamation law, among the world's strictest, was dealt a severe blow on Wednesday. The country's Constitutional Court ruled the plan to reform the lese majeste laws protecting King Maha Vajiralongkorn was illegal. The court found it was "tantamount to overthrowing the democratic regime of government with the king as head of state." In recent years, at least 260 people have been prosecuted under the law in Thailand, a country that considers respect for the monarch to be a core part of its national identity.  This law is highly regarded by many royalists and seen as sacred. The strict enforcement of insult laws has been widely criticized for stifling freedom of expression.   Key policy reform shattered Although the progressive Move Forward won the most votes in last year's general election, it had been excluded from a coalition to form a government. The party won on a promise to reform Thailand's strict royal insult laws, reduce the power of the military, and break up business monopolies.   The court on Wednesday said the party's plan to reform the royal defamation law showed "an intent to separate the monarchy from the Thai nation, which is significantly dangerous to the security of the state." "There are prohibitions on the exercise of rights and freedoms that affect the country's security and peace, order of the state, and good morals," it said. Move Forward insisted its was not attempting to overthrow the monarchy. "The verdict will not impact Move Forward, but also democracy and freedom for all Thais," its leader Chaithawat Tulathon said.   Lese majeste law stifling Whereas the monarchy was mostly considered sacrosanct under the popular former king, Bhumibol Adulyadej, who passed away in 2016, a seemingly growing number of Thais have demanded legal reform since the coronation of his successor. King Maha Vajiralongkorn's personal life, including his residence in Germany, has been controversial, as has what some Thais consider his overstepping of constitutional boundaries by engaging in politics. A wave of youth-led protests began in 2020, and a central theme was the reform of the lese majeste law. The demonstrations were notable for the expressed public criticism of the royal family. Earlier this month, a 30-year-old man in Bangkok was sentenced to 50 years for a series of Facebook posts deemed insulting to the monarchy. In March last year, a man was jailed for two years for selling satirical calendars featuring rubber ducks that a court said defamed the king. The yellow bath toys were an unexpected symbol of the mass youth-led street protests that shook Bangkok in 2020.

In a setback for China’s real estate sector, the Hong Kong court ordered the under-debt real estate company Evergrande to liquidate after two years of running out of cash and defaulting in 2021, The New York Times reported on Monday. The order will set off a race by lawyers to find and grab anything belonging to Evergrande that can be sold. It reported that after the company defaulted in 2021, investors around the world scooped up the property developer’s discounted IOUs, betting that the Chinese government would eventually step in to bail it out. Evergrande is a real estate developer with more than USD 300 billion in debt, sitting in the middle of the world’s biggest housing crisis. There isn’t much left in its sprawling empire that is worth much. And even those assets may be off-limits because property in China has become intertwined with politics. Evergrande, as well as other developers, overbuilt and overpromised, taking money for apartments that had not been built and leaving hundreds of thousands of home buyers waiting on their apartments. Now that dozens of these companies have defaulted, the government is frantically trying to force them to finish the apartments, putting everyone in a difficult position because contractors and builders have not been paid for years, The New York Times reported. The order is also likely to send shock waves through financial markets that are already sceptical about China’s economy. What happens next in the unwinding of Evergrande will test the belief long held by foreign investors that China will treat them fairly. The outcome could help spur or further tamp down the flow of money into Chinese markets when global confidence in China is already shaken. “People will be watching closely to see whether creditor rights are being respected,” said Dan Anderson, a partner and restructuring specialist at the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. “Whether they are respected will have long term implications for investment into China.” The New York Times said in its report that China needs investments from foreign investors now more than ever in its recent history. Financial markets in mainland China and Hong Kong, which has for years been entry point for foreign investment, have received such a blow that officials are scrambling to find policy measures like a stock market rescue fund to shore up confidence. And China’s housing market shows little signs of returning to the boom days, in part because Beijing wants to redirect economic growth from construction and investment. Rising diplomatic tensions between the United States and China, which has led to large outflows of foreign money from China, is not helping. Investors are looking to the resolution of the Evergrande case to see how China will handle disputes over its deadbeat companies, of which there are dozens in the property sector alone. Specifically, they will want to see whether the people who are now tasked with carrying out the liquidation will be recognized by a court in mainland China, something that historically has not happened. Under a mutual agreement signed in 2021 between Hong Kong and Beijing, a mainland Chinese court would recognize the Hong Kong court-appointed liquidator to allow creditors to take control of Evergrande assets in mainland China. But so far only one of five such requests to local Chinese courts has been granted. The New York Times reported that Monday’s decision, which was handed down by Judge Linda Chan, had already been delayed multiple times over the past two years as creditors and other parties agreed to adjourn to give the company more time to reach an agreement with creditors on how much they might be paid. As recently as last summer, it seemed as though Evergrande’s management team and some of its offshore creditors that had lent the company money in U.S. dollars in Hong Kong were closing in on a deal. The talks hit the brakes in September when several high level executives were arrested and, eventually, the founder and chairman, Hui Ka Yan, was detained by police. The court’s decision on Monday was “a big bang,” Anderson said, that will “lead to something of a whimper as liquidators chase assets.”  Source: ANI

The top UN court hands down an initial decision Friday in a case against Israel over alleged genocide in Gaza, a landmark ruling closely watched in the Middle East and around the world.   The top UN court hands down an initial decision Friday in a case against Israel over alleged genocide in Gaza, a landmark ruling closely watched in the Middle East and around the world.     The International Court of Justice could order Israel to stop its military campaign in Gaza, sparked by the unprecedented October 7 attacks by Hamas, or to facilitate humanitarian aid.     The court will not however pass judgement on whether or not Israel is actually committing genocide in Gaza.     At this stage, the ICJ will hand down emergency orders before considering the wider accusation of genocidal acts in Gaza -- a process that will likely take years.     The case has been brought by South Africa, which says that Israel is in breach of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, set up in the ashes of World War II and the Holocaust.     "South Africa does not need to prove that Israel is committing genocide," said Juliette McIntyre, international law expert from the University of South Australia.     "They simply need to establish that there is a plausible risk of genocide occurring," she told AFP.     Over two days of hearings earlier this month in the gilded halls of the Peace Palace in the Hague, a world away from the violence in Israel and Gaza, robed lawyers argued over the technicalities of the Genocide Convention.     "Genocides are never declared in advance," declared Adila Hassim, a top lawyer for South Africa.     "But this Court has the benefit of the past 13 weeks of evidence that shows incontrovertibly a pattern of conduct and related intention that justifies a plausible claim of genocidal acts," she added.     - 'World is upside down' -     The case has sparked fury in Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaring that "the world is upside down".     Israel's lawyer Tal Becker dismissed Pretoria's case as a "profoundly distorted factual and legal picture" and a "decontextualised and manipulative description of the reality" on the ground.     Showing the court images of the brutal Hamas attack, Becker said that "if there have been acts that may be characterised as genocidal, then they have been perpetrated against Israel".     Becker denied that Israel's operations were aimed at the citizens of Gaza. The army's aim was "not to destroy a people, but to protect a people, its people, who are under attack on multiple fronts", he said.     The ICJ's rulings are binding on all parties, but it has no mechanism to enforce them. Sometimes they are completely ignored -- the court has ordered Russia to stop its invasion of Ukraine for example.     Netanyahu has already suggested he does not feel bound by the court, saying "no one will stop us -- not The Hague, not the Axis of Evil and no one else".     - 'Huge' symbolic impact -     "It is conceivable that an order by the court would not have any significant influence on Israel's military operation," said Cecily Rose, assistant professor of public international law at Leiden University.     But if the court decides there is a risk of genocide in Gaza, it could still have a ripple effect, notably on other nations that back Israel politically or militarily.     "It makes it much harder for other states to continue to support Israel in the face of a neutral third party finding there is a risk of genocide," said McIntyre.     "States may withdraw military or other support for Israel in order to avoid this," she added.     In addition, she noted the "huge" symbolic impact of any ruling against Israel under the Genocide Convention, given its tragic history.     In its submission to the court, South Africa acknowledged the "particular weight of responsibility" of accusing Israel of genocide but said it was bound to uphold its duties under the Convention.     Israeli lawyer Becker retorted that "there can hardly be a charge more false and more malevolent than the allegation against Israel of genocide".     The October 7 Hamas attack resulted in the death of around 1,140 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.     At least 25,700 Palestinians, around 70 percent of them women, young children and adolescents, have been killed in the Gaza Strip in Israeli bombardments and ground offensive since then, according to the Hamas government's health ministry.