This story illustrates another legal barbarity (see below), but also that some sanity has finally prevailed. Here a baby born on June 30 was technically left stateless because his parents were unmarried. From July 1, however, the father’s status as a parent is recognised.

Under Section 9 of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which came into force this month, children born to unmarried parents can take their nationality from their father.
Mr Poole said: “You don’t have to get permission to be in any EU country any more, but all the old laws to do with your child’s nationality still applied until now.
“Fathers had no status or rights unless they were husbands too, so it’s good they have changed the law, but they should take consideration of people like Leo who have already been caught out. It’s outrageous.”

The next step must surely be to make this retrospective. I know some people affected by this, and they might be forced at some stage, against their principles, to marry, which is ludicrous. There surely must be the possibility of a human rights case in this.

In Pakistan, women previously denied bail are being allowed it after a small legal change by President Musharraf. Not much, but any small advance in changing repressive laws should be appaluded.

Seventy women awaiting trials on charges such as murder and adultery have been released on bail from jails in eastern Pakistan after President Pervez Musharraf amended a law to give them the right to bail – a right previously denied to women in Pakistan.
Mr Musharraf amended the controversial Hudood Ordinance last Friday to allow women awaiting trial on charges of adultery and other crimes to qualify for bail. The women were freed in the past two days from jails in various cities in the eastern Punjab province, provincial prisons chief Sarfaraz Mufti said.

No explanation is given as to why women specifically should be denied bail, but one can guess. Whereas I recall celebrated cases of rape and murder of women by men in Pakistan where the men have been walking around free.

No such signs of civilisation in the US, however, where a mother who was obviously acutely mentally ill is for the second time on trial for murder for killing her five children. The first jury convicted her of capital murder but that was overturned on a technicality.

Her lawyers say she suffered from severe postpartum psychosis and did not know it was wrong to kill seven-year-old Noah, five-year-old John, three-year-old Paul, two-year-old Luke and six-month-old Mary.
Prosecutors say Yates knew her actions were wrong because she waited until her husband left for work to drown the children in the tub and then made an emergency phone call, and later told a detective that she was a bad mother and wanted to be punished….
Saeed acknowledged that if someone is psychotic, discontinuing an anti-psychotic medicine could make the person’s condition worse.