Alarming Rise in Requests for Interim Measures

The number of applications might be on the rise in Strasbourg, but the number of requests for interim measures has seen an even sharper increase: a rise of 4000 % in the last four years. If this were a company, the shareholders would be jubilant, but alas this rise reflects growing problems rather than profits. The majority of the requests relate to asylum and immigration matters. The steep rise prompted the Court to issue a statement addressed at states, applicants and lawyers. The statement emphasizes that the Court is not an appeals tribunal for asylum and immigration issues. This is the whole statement:

Governments, applicants and their lawyers urged to co-operate fully with European Court, following “alarming rise” in requests to suspend deportation

European Governments, applicants to the European Court of Human Rights and their lawyers are today being urged to improve co-operation with the Court, regarding requests to suspend deportation, extradition or expulsion, following a 4,000% increase in the number of such requests coming to the Court.

The Court’s President Jean-Paul Costa has issued the statement in the light of the “alarming rise” in the number of these requests (1) for interim measures, under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court, to the “already over-burdened Court”. Under this rule the Court can indicate to the Government concerned any measures (such as suspending deportation) which it considers should be taken while it is examining a case.

Mr Costa reminds Governments, applicants and their lawyers of the Court’s proper but limited role in immigration matters, emphasising their respective responsibilities to "co-operate fully" with the Court. He also stresses that the Court is not an immigration appeals tribunal.

The statement reads as follows: “Between 2006 and 2010 the Court saw an increase of over 4,000 % in the number of requests it received for interim measures under Rule 39 of the Rules of Court. In 2006 the Court received 112 requests. That figure had increased to 4,786 for 2010.

In particular, between October 2010 and January 2011, the Court received around 2,500 requests for interim measures concerning return to one particular State, including 1,930 such requests against Sweden. The vast majority of those applications were incomplete, with insufficient information and documentation to permit the Court to make any proper assessment as to the risks attendant on return. In addition, in 2010, more than 2000 requests were made in respect of the United Kingdom, 400 against the Netherlands and more than 300 against France.

When there is such a large in-flow of applications, it is often not possible for the Court to contact applicants individually to ask for missing documents. Because of a lack of information about proposed dates of return, it is difficult for the Court to make a proper assessment of which applications should be given priority.

More importantly, there is a risk that the small minority of applicants who do face a genuine threat to life and limb in the country of destination will not have their cases examined in time to prevent removal.

Moreover, because of the need to process these applications as a matter of urgency, and given the limited human resources available, the Court and its Registry may be hindered in the performance of their case-processing duties under the European Convention on Human Rights.

It must be underlined that, according to its case-law and practice, the Court will only request a Member State not to deport, extradite or expel a person where, having reviewed all the relevant information, it considers that he or she faces a real risk of serious, irreversible harm if removed. An interim measure requested in this way has binding legal effect on the State concerned.

However, the Court is not an appeal tribunal from the asylum and immigration tribunals of Europe, any more than it is a court of criminal appeal in respect of criminal convictions. Where national immigration and asylum procedures carry out their own proper assessment of risk and are seen to operate fairly and with respect for human rights, the Court should only be required to intervene in truly exceptional cases.

For the Court to be able effectively to perform its proper role in this area both Governments and applicants must co-operate fully with the Court.

In particular it is essential that:

▪ applicants and their representatives respect the Practice Direction on Requests for Interim Measures. In particular, requests for interim measures should be individuated, fully reasoned, be sent with all relevant documentation including the decisions of the national authorities and courts, and be sent in good time before the expected date of removal. The widespread distribution of application forms to potential applicants is not and should not be seen as a substitute for proper legal representation in compliance with these conditions. It must be emphasised that failure to comply with the conditions set out in the Practice Direction may lead to such cases not being accepted for examination by the Court.

▪ Member States provide national remedies with suspensive effect which operate effectively and fairly, in accordance with the Court’s case-law and provide a proper and timely examination of the issue of risk. Where a lead case concerning the safety of return to a particular country of origin is pending before the national courts or the Court of Human Rights, removals to that country should be suspended. Where the Court requests a stay on removal under Rule 39, that request must be complied with.

The practice direction for lawyers can be found here (as Appendix 2)

Credit where credit is due

Posted by Eric Weigle, Software Engineer, and Abe Epton, Publisher Technical Specialist

News publishers and readers both benefit when journalists get proper credit for their work. That can be difficult, with news spreading so quickly and many websites syndicating articles to others. That’s why we’re experimenting with two new metatags for Google News: syndication-source and original-source. Each of these metatags addresses a different scenario, but for both the aim is to allow publishers to take credit for their work and give credit to other journalists. Here’s how to use these metatags:

• syndication-source indicates the preferred URL for a syndicated article. If two versions of an article are exactly the same, or only very slightly modified, we're asking publishers to use syndication-source to point us to the one they would like Google News to use. For example, if Publisher X syndicates stories to Publisher Y, both should put the following metatag on those articles:
  <meta name="syndication-source" content="http://www.publisherX.com/wire_story_1.html">
  


• original-source indicates the URL of the first article to report on a story. We encourage publishers to use this metatag to give credit to the source that broke the story. We recognize that this can sometimes be tough to determine. But the intent of this tag is to reward hard work and journalistic enterprise. For example, to credit the publication that broke a story you could use a metatag like this:
  <meta name="original-source" content="http://www.example.com/burglary_at_watergate.html">

In both cases, it's perfectly valid for a metatag to point to the current page URL. It's also fine for there to be multiple original-source metatags on one page, to indicate a variety of original reporting leading up to the current article. If you’re not sure of the exact URL to provide in either case, just use the domain of the site that should be credited.

Although these metatags are already in use by our systems, you may not notice their impact right away. We'll need some time to observe their use "in the wild" before we can make the best use of them. But we're hopeful that this approach will help determine original authorship, and we encourage you to take advantage of them now.

To learn more about how these metatags work, and how you can implement them for your site, visit our Help Center article.

Update 2/11/11:

We've had a lot of interest in these meta tags, particularly in how the syndication-source tag relates to rel=canonical. After evaluating this feedback, we’ve updated our system to use rel=canonical instead of syndication-source, if both are specified.

If you know the full URL, rel=canonical is preferred, and you need not specify syndication-source.

If you know a partial URL, or just the domain name, continue using syndication-source.

We've also had people ask "why metatag instead of linktag"? We actually support both forms for the tag, and you can use either. However, we believe the linktag form is more in line with the spirit of the standard, and encourage new users to implement the linktag form rather than the metatag form we originally proposed.

Carving Report -Interview with Johnny Sparks Rm 11

On Monday, Mr Miles Kau Kau, a tutor in Maori Arts came to school to show children from Rooms 9, 10 and 11 how to do soap carving. First we put a piece of paper over the soap and drew over the pattern. Then when we took the paper off, we could see the pattern on the soap. Next we got a special tool and carved over the lines. We had to cut away more of the soap around the pattern we wanted.

At lunch we cut around the outside to make it stand out more. Next we smoothed it over with a chisel. We added three pieces of paua , two for our parents, and one for ourselves. We carved more patterns to show how many brothers and sisters we had. Lastly we decorated the base.

It was awesome and Miles was lots of fun. We sang heaps of Maori songs with him as we did our carving.

Enhancements to Google News for smartphones

Posted by Arun Prasath, Tech Lead, Google Mobile News

Last November, we redesigned Google News for mobile access on smartphones including Android, iPhone and Palm Pre. Today, we're globally rolling out new usability and visual enhancements that we hope will make browsing news on your smartphone easier.

We expanded the story space to make tapping on articles easier and more accurate. Tapping anywhere on an article headline or snippet opens it up, and clicking on a section heading opens up that topic section on your screen.

In addition, the default view of stories is now collapsed which reduces scrolling time. You can 'expand' a story by tapping on 'More sources', which brings you to related stories from other sources. The screenshots below show the collapsed and expanded view of a story.

Collapsed:


Expanded:


So, pick up your smartphone, point your browser to http://news.google.com, and catch up on news on the go.

Wellington Visit

Well what a great day was had by all!

It started off with a very early rise for everyone involved (the bus left from the school grounds around 5.50am to transport the group to the airport).

They arrived in Wellington in time for breakfast and from there they were taken on a guided tour and lunch at Te Papa. They also had a ride on the “High Ride” and visited several of Te Papa’s Discovery Centres.

The highlight of the afternoon was a great tour of the Rugby Union Headquarters where the group were shown some very fascinating memorabilia and given a very interesting tour and talk. They were fortunate enough to be able to have their group photo taken with the Tri Nations Cup and some of the students even had their photo taken wearing on of the gold medals recently won at the Commonwealth Games.

The group later travelled to Parliament and although there was not time for a tour of the buildings they did have their photo taken on the steps of parliament buildings and were able to view the beehive and have a picnic afternoon tea on the Parliament lawn.

A short walk from parliament took the group to the cable car where they had a trip up the hill to the botanic gardens. This gave the group a chance to have a walk around to enjoy the marvellous Wellington weather and to take in the fantastic views from the top of the hill. After having their evening meal at McDonalds the group were transported back out to the airport to await their flight back to Christchurch.

As many parents will already be aware, a group of very happy but tired students arrived back in Christchurch after having spent a day in Wellington. We know that the memories of this day will be a highlight in their lives for many years to come.

All the students must be commended for their behaviour on this trip. They were all in Wellington as ambassadors for our school and they certainly represented us well at all times.

We would especially like to thank Shirley McDonnell for the tremendous amount of time and effort she put in once again to plan and book this trip for our year 6 children. Shirley’s organization was superb down to the last little detail and this certainly ensured the success of the whole day.

Zone Sports Success!

Yesterday 17 Senior students travelled to Hillmorton High school for the Zone Athletic Sports Day. Our students competed in Sprints, Long Distance, High Jump, Long Jump, Discus and Shot Put. Everyone showed their Addington Attitude and had a wonderful day.

Congratulations to Grace Sorby who came second in the Long Jump and Caleb Gregory who came second in the 50 m Sprint. Both Grace and Caleb have qualified for the Central Zones. Well done!

A huge thank you to those parents who helped with transporting our team down to Hillmorton and were able to cheer our children on. It was much appreciated.

Farewell to Mrs Teear

This afternoon Amanda Teear was farewelled at a full school assembly. Mrs Teear had taught at Addington for almost 7 years and said that they were the best teaching years of her life!

Te Tipuranga, Whanau Kowhai, Room 10, and the Green Team all paid tribute to the wonderful contributions she had made to life at Addington school.

Ms Heath thanked Mrs Teear for being such a great teaching practitioner, collegue and friend.

We will all miss her sense of fun and fantastic contributions to teaching at our school and wish her all the very best for the future.