The New Mexico Supreme Court upheld a Democratic-drawn congressional map that divvied up a conservative, oil-producing region and reshaped a swing district along the U.S. border with Mexico, in an order published Monday.

All five justices signed a shortly worded order to affirm a lower court decision that the redistricting plan enacted by Democratic state lawmakers in 2021 succeeded in substantially diluting votes of their political opponents — but that the changes fell short of “egregious” gerrymandering.

The Republican Party argued unsuccessfully that the new district boundaries would entrench Democratic officials in power, highlighting the 2022 defeat of incumbent GOP Congresswoman Yvette Herrell by Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabe Vasquez.

Democratic state lawmakers argued that the 2nd District in southern New Mexico remains competitive, with just a 0.7% margin of victory in the 2022 election.

The district is one of about a dozen in the national spotlight as Republicans campaign to keep their slim U.S. House majority in 2024. Courts ruled recently in Alabama, Louisiana and Florida that Republican-led legislatures had unfairly diluted the voting power of Black residents. Legal challenges to congressional districts are also ongoing in Arkansas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Utah.

State Republican Party Chairman Steve Pearce said the legal outcome in New Mexico “leaned heavily on the closeness of the previous election” in which a “popular Republican incumbent” was defeated by a lesser-known rival.

Six teenagers go on trial Monday in Paris for their alleged roles in the beheading of a teacher who showed caricatures of the prophet of Islam to his class, a killing that led authorities to reaffirm France’s cherished rights of expression and secularism.

Samuel Paty, a history and geography teacher, was killed on Oct. 16, 2020, near his school in a northwest Paris suburb by an 18-year-old of Chechen origin who had become radicalized. The attacker was in turn shot dead by police.

Paty’s name was disclosed on social media after a class debate on free expression during which he showed caricatures published by the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, which triggered a newsroom massacre by extremists in January 2015.

All hearings at a Paris juvenile court are to be held behind closed doors in accordance with French law regarding minors. The defendants arrived Monday morning at the Paris court, their faces hidden behind masks and hoods, accompanied by their families. The media are not allowed to disclose their identity.

Among those going on trial, a teenage girl, who was 13 at the time, is accused of making false allegations for wrongly saying that Paty had asked Muslim students to raise their hands and leave the classroom before he showed the cartoons. She later told investigators she had lied. She was not in the classroom that day and Paty did not make such a request, the investigation has shown.

Five other students of Paty’s school, then 14 and 15, are facing charges of criminal conspiracy with the aim of preparing aggravated violence to be committed.

They are accused of having waited for Paty for several hours until he left the school and of having identified him to the killer in exchange for promises of payments of 300-350 euros ($348-$406).

Georgia’s state Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to approve rules for a new commission to discipline and remove state prosecutors, meaning the commission can’t begin operating.

Some Republicans in Georgia want the new commission to discipline or remove Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for winning indictments of former President Donald Trump and 18 others.

In an unsigned order, justices said they have “grave doubts” about their ability to regulate the duties of district attorneys beyond the practice of law. They said that because lawmakers hadn’t expressly ordered justices to act, they were refusing to rule one way or the other.

“If district attorneys exercise judicial power, our regulation of the exercise of that power may well be within our inherent power as the head of the Judicial Branch,” justices wrote. “But if district attorneys exercise only executive power, our regulation of the exercise of that power would likely be beyond the scope of our judicial power.”

State Rep. Houston Gaines, an Athens Republican who helped guide the law through the state House earlier this year, said he believed lawmakers could as soon as January remove the requirement for the court to approve the rules, letting the commission begin operating.

“This commission has been years in the making — and now it has its appointees and rules and regulations ready to go,” Gaines wrote in a text. “As soon as the legislature can address this final issue from the court, rogue prosecutors will be held accountable.”

Georgia’s law is one of multiple attempts nationwide by Republicans to control prosecutors they don’t like. Republicans have inveighed against progressive prosecutors after some have brought fewer drug possession cases and sought shorter prison sentences, arguing Democrats are coddling criminals.

Beyond the hurdle of state Supreme Court approval of rules, four district attorneys are suing to overturn the commission, arguing that it unconstitutionally infringes on their power.

Double-amputee Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius was granted parole on Friday, more than a decade after shooting his girlfriend through a toilet door at his home in South Africa in a killing that jolted the world.

He will be released from prison on Jan. 5, but will be constantly monitored by parole officials for five years until his sentence expires, the Department of Corrections said.

Pistorius’ parole will come with other conditions, Department of Corrections spokesman Singabakho Nxumalo said outside of the prison where Pistorius has been incarcerated in the South African capital, Pretoria, for killing Reeva Steenkamp.

Pistorius won’t be allowed to leave the area of Pretoria where he is set to live without permission from authorities. He will also attend a program to deal with anger issues and another program on violence against women. He will have to perform community service.

“Parole does not mean the end of the sentence. It is still part of the sentence. It only means the inmate will complete the sentence outside a correctional facility,” Nxumalo said. “What will happen is that Mr. Pistorius will be allocated a monitoring official. This official will work with him until his sentence expires.”

Nxumalo said the monitoring official would need to be notified of any major events in Pistorius’ life, including if he wants to move to another home or get a job.

“We have to be informed of each and every activity,” Nxumalo said.

Pistorius won’t wear a monitoring bracelet as that is not part of South African parole procedure, Nxumalo said. Pistorius’ sentence will expire on Dec. 5, 2029.

The decision to grant parole was made at a hearing at the prison earlier Friday.

Pistorius, who turned 37 this week, has been in jail since late 2014 for the Valentine’s Day 2013 killing of model Steenkamp, although he was released for a period of house arrest in 2015 while one of the numerous appeals in his case was heard. He was ultimately convicted of murder and sentenced to 13 years and five months in prison.

House Republicans issued a subpoena Tuesday to a federal prosecutor involved in the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden, demanding answers for what they allege is Justice Department interference in the yearslong case into the president’s son.

Rep. Jim Jordan, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, called on Lesley Wolf, the assistant U.S. attorney for Delaware, to appear before the committee by Dec. 7, according to a copy of the congressional subpoena obtained by The Associated Press.

“Based on the Committee’s investigation to date, it is clear that you possess specialized and unique information that is unavailable to the Committee through other sources and without which the Committee’s inquiry would be incomplete,” Jordan wrote in an accompanying letter to Wolf.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The subpoena to Wolf is the latest in a series of demands Jordan and fellow Republican chairmen have made as part of their sprawling impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. His youngest son Hunter and brother James received subpoenas last week as Republicans look to gain ground in their nearly yearlong investigation, which has so failed to uncover evidence directly implicating the president in any wrongdoing.

The inquiry is focused both on the Biden family’s international business affairs and the Justice Department’s investigation into Hunter Biden, which Republicans claim has been slow-walked and stonewalled since the case was opened in 2018.

Wolf, who serves with David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware in charge of the case, has been accused by whistleblowers from the Internal Revenue Service of “deviating from standard investigative protocol” and showing preferential treatment because Hunter Biden is the president’s son.

Republicans have claimed that it was clear that the prosecutors didn’t want to touch anything that would include Hunter Biden’s father. In one instance, Gary Shapley, an IRS employee assigned to the case, testified that in a meeting with Weiss and Wolf after the 2020 election, he and other agents wanted to discuss an email between Hunter Biden associates where one person made reference to the “big guy.” Shapley said Wolf refused to do so, saying she did not want to ask questions about “dad.”

Other claims relate to an August 2020 email in which Wolf ordered investigators to remove any mention of “Political Figure 1,” who was known to be Biden, from a search warrant. In another incident, FBI officials notified Hunter Biden’s Secret Service detail in advance of an effort to interview him and several of his business associates in order to avoid a potential shoot-out between two law enforcement bodies.

Justice Department officials have countered these claims by pointing to the extraordinary set of circumstances surrounding a criminal case into a subject who at the time was the son of a leading presidential candidate. Department policy has long warned prosecutors to take care in charging cases with potential political overtones around the time of an election, to avoid any possible influence on the outcome.

Thailand’s Cabinet on Tuesday approved an amendment to its civil code to allow same-sex marriage, with an expectation for the draft to be submitted to Parliament next month.

Karom Polpornklang, a deputy government spokesperson, said the amendment to the Civil and Commercial Code will change the words “men and women” and “husband and wife” to “individuals” and “marriage partners” for same-sex couples to be able to receive the same rights that heterosexual couples receive.

He said the law would guarantee the right to form a family in a relationship between same-sex couples, adding that the next step will be an amendment to the pension fund law to recognize same-sex couples as well.

Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin told reporters that the draft law is expected to be proposed to Parliament on Dec. 12. If it becomes law after Parliament’s approval and King Maha Vajiralongkorn’s endorsement, Thailand will be the third place in Asia, after Taiwan and Nepal, to allow same-sex marriage.

While famous for being an LGBTQ+ friendly country, Thailand has struggled to pass a marriage equality law. Parliament last year debated several legal amendments to allow either marriage equality or civil unions, which do not grant same-sex couples all the same rights as heterosexual couples. All of the bills failed to be passed before the parliamentary session of the previous government ended.

The new government led by the Pheu Thai party, which took office in August, revived the attempt to pass a marriage equality bill, which it had promised during its election campaign.

Democrats urged the Wisconsin Supreme Court to overturn Republican-drawn legislative maps Tuesday, with conservative justices questioning the timing of the redistricting challenge, while liberals focused on the constitutionality of the current maps and what the process should be for adopting new ones.

The fight comes ahead of the 2024 election in a battleground state where four of the six past presidential elections have been decided by fewer than 23,000 votes, and Republicans have built large majorities in the Legislature under maps they drew over a decade ago.

The lawsuit was brought by Democratic voters the day after the court flipped to majority 4-3 liberal control in August. They want all 132 state lawmakers to stand for election under new, more favorable maps in 2024.

Conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley most aggressively questioned the motives of Democrats and repeatedly referenced newly elected liberal Justice Janet Protasiewicz saying during her campaign that the current maps are “rigged.”

“Everybody knows that the reason we’re here is because there was a change in the membership of the court,” Bradley said.

Attorney Mark Gaber, from the Campaign Legal Center, said the timing of the lawsuit had nothing to do with the election result. He said the challenge over whether the districts are unconstitutionally not contiguous would have been filed, regardless of the makeup of the court.

“I don’t see that as a partisan issue,” Gaber said.

Taylor Meehan, attorney for the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature, said the lawsuit was meritless, brought too late, and that Democrats only filed it because control of the court flipped.