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A woman has become the first person in Denmark to be charged with wearing a full-face veil in public, after a ban came into effect on August 1. The new law has provoked protests and criticism from human rights groups. It does not mention burkas and niqabs by name, but says "anyone who wears a garment that hides the face in public will be punished with a fine".
Source: bbc.co.uk

The retirement age in the Netherlands is to be raised to 67 by 2021. Now a publication put out by the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute has sparked a debate on the subject. According to the report, people with lower qualifications should be able to retire earlier than the more highly educated.
Source: eurotopics.net

Abortions were temporarily banned in the Primorsky Territory, Yakutia and the Ryazan Region as part of the "Give me My Life!" campaign. For several years now it has been organized by the Foundation for Social and Cultural Initiatives led by Svetlana Medvedeva, the wife of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
Source: meduza.io

Judges who want to continue working in Poland’s Supreme Court can do so until the European Union’s top court rules on the legality of measures effectively allowing the government to choose the court’s staff, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday. ECJ is assessing judicial reforms by the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party that are seen by human rights and opposition groups as undermining democracy and judges’ independence.
Source: reuters.com

More than 300 lawyers attend the occupants of the boats arriving at the Port of Malaga. At each landing, several lawyers are called to assist migrants, many of them seek asylum, international protection or are victims of trafficking.
Source: eldiario.es

A judge in the UK’s high court ruled that there were grounds for a dissolution of a religious marriage that was not recognized by British law.
Source: jurist.org

Barristers and solicitors protesting about cuts don’t attract the same level of public support as doctors and nurses. What goes on in the courts is not widely understood, and most people do not expect to need a publicly funded lawyer in the way that they rely on hospitals. Nevertheless, access to justice is a fundamental democratic right, and the chaos and failure unfolding across the legal system as the result of cuts should concern everyone who cares about justice.
Source: www.theguardian.com

Former inmate Ruslan Vakhapov has turned activist, and said he had come to report from one of Russia’s most important prison torture cases in the past decade.  His testimony to the Public Verdict Foundation, a Russian human rights NGO, about the brutality meted out inside the prison was later backed up by a 10-minute video of an inmate, Evgeny Makarov, being slowly beaten unconsciousness.
Source: theguardian.com

Products that don't use recycled plastic will cost 10 percent more in the future, according to a government plan. The proposed initiative is one part of a series of measures to get the country to recycle all its plastic.
Source: dw.com