#REUTERS-LEGAL

[und-dann-war-es-fast-gut]

Wenn er NICHT mit DIR ins Kino will, ist das ein Zeichen für eine queere Storyline und weil Nolin einmal zusammen im Kino waren, konnte das nichts werden…

[benjaminallhope-fulltimemind]

This a big win for everyone as cases like these establish a precedent, with said precedent it's harder for AI companies to win in future cases especially with arguments used in this case. AI isn't the future and we should take comfort in that.

[hale-my-nathan]

Trump Weird News - Headless Chicken At Work? 04

[engineering-world]

Thomson Reuters & HighQ: Legal Business Management

Thomson Reuters, HighQ & Legal Tracker in the UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, and MENA. We offer Legal Business and Legal Spend Management

[headlinehorizon]

Thomson Reuters Unveils Groundbreaking AI Tools for Legal Research

Discover the latest news from Thomson Reuters as they revolutionize legal research with their state-of-the-art AI tools.

[randombusinessoflawthoughts]

REPORT: Dynamic Law Firms consistently invest more in Business Development than Static Law Firms

The numbers have been crunched and the results are in: ‘Dynamic Law Firms’ invest considerably more in their business development and marketing activities/departments than static firms are willing to do. According to the latest (8th) iteration of Thomson Reuters Institute’s 2023 Dynamic Law Firms Report, Dynamic Law Firms consistently invest greater sums in their business development and…

[saywhat-politics]

Exclusive: White House wants deep cut in US funding for war crimes investigations, sources say

OMB recommends cutting funding for war crimes, accountability programs

Recommendation does not mean final decision

Impacted programs include work over alleged Russian atrocities in Ukraine

WASHINGTON/THE HAGUE, June 26 (Reuters) - The White House has recommended terminating U.S. funding for nearly two dozen programs that conduct war crimes and accountability work globally, including in Myanmar, Syria and on alleged Russian atrocities in Ukraine, according to three U.S. sources familiar with the matter and internal government documents reviewed by Reuters.

The recommendation from the Office of Management and Budget, which was made on Wednesday and has not been previously reported, is not the final decision to end the programs since it gives the State Department the option to appeal.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/white-house-wants-major-cut-us-war-crimes-accountability-funding-sources-say-2025-06-26/

[nudityandnerdery]

Trump to revoke legal status for 240,000 Ukrainians as US steps up deportations | Reuters

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-plans-revoke-legal-status-ukrainians-who-fled-us-sources-say-2025-03-06/

What a piece of shit.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered billionaire Elon Musk on Wednesday to name a legal representative for his messaging platform X in Brazil within 24 hours or face the site's suspension in the country, a court decision showed.

Lol [29 Aug 24]

[contemplatingoutlander]

When the Germans are worried that America is becoming an autocracy under Trump--people need to pay attention. After all, they've seen all this before.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House has Germany’s diplomatic corps bracing for what it sees as a deliberate dismantling of United States democratic norms.

A confidential memorandum written by Andreas Michaelis, Germany's ambassador to the U.S., warns of an agenda of “maximum disruption” that could redefine the American constitutional order.

The document, obtained by Reuters and addressed to German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, outlines stark concerns about the erosion of democratic norms under Trump’s second administration.

Michaelis describes Trump’s vision as one focused on the “maximum concentration of power with the president at the expense of Congress and the [U.S.] states.” According to the document, key democratic institutions, including the legislature, law enforcement and the media, risk an erosion of their independence and could be “misused as a political arm.” 

The memo also highlights the involvement of Big Tech companies, which Michaelis claims could be granted “co-governing power.” [...] The briefing memo underscores Trump’s reliance on the judiciary to advance his goals. Michaelis notes that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decisions to expand presidential powers could enable Trump to bypass traditional checks and balances. [...] The document further raises concerns about Trump’s ability to exploit legal loopholes for political ends. These include potentially using the military domestically in cases of “insurrection” or “invasion,” an act that could test the boundaries of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which generally bars military involvement in law enforcement. [...] Meanwhile, Musk is accused of manipulating algorithms and blocking accounts critical of his platform. The ambassador warns of a “redefinition of the First Amendment,” suggesting a troubling merger of political and technological influence.

[emphasis added]

[political-us]

The Dow is on track for its worst April since 1932—the bleakest year of the Great Depression. Nearly a century later, markets are once again facing economic turbulence on a historic scale.

Trump's approval rating drops to 42%, the lowest it's been since he became president, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

A cutting-edge microscope at Harvard Medical School could pave the way for major breakthroughs in cancer detection and aging research—but its progress is now at risk. The scientist who created the software to analyze its images, 30-year-old Russian-born Kseniia Petrova, has been held in immigration detention for two months. Arrested in February at a Boston airport, Petrova is now detained in Louisiana, facing possible deportation to Russia, where she says she fears imprisonment for protesting the war in Ukraine. Her case highlights the tension between immigration policy and the U.S.'s reliance on global scientific talent.

The Department of Homeland Security denied Mahmoud Khalil permission to be present for the birth of his first child, which took place Monday at a hospital in New York. Instead, Khalil had to experience the moment over the phone from Jena, Louisiana—more than 1,000 miles away from his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, who delivered their baby boy. The case has sparked criticism over DHS's handling of family and humanitarian considerations.

The White House is considering policies to encourage more Americans to marry and have children, including a potential $5,000 “baby bonus,” according to The New York Times. The proposals align with a broader conservative push to address falling birth rates and promote traditional family values. Other ideas on the table include reserving 30% of Fulbright scholarships for applicants who are married or have children, and funding educational programs that teach women about fertility and ovulation.

A group of Venezuelan migrants facing removal under a broad wartime authority challenged the Trump administration’s deportation process at the Supreme Court, arguing the notices they received don’t meet legal standards. The ACLU, representing the migrants, said the English-only notices—often given less than 24 hours before deportation—violate a recent Supreme Court ruling requiring enough time for individuals to seek habeas review.

The Education Department announced it will start collecting student loan payments from over 5 million borrowers who are in default. This means it will begin taking money from federal wages, Social Security checks, and tax refunds. This move comes as pandemic-era protections for student loan borrowers continue to wind down.

Tensions are rising within the Arizona Democratic Party as the state party chair is at odds with the governor and U.S. senators. In response, officials are considering shifting 2026 campaign funds to local county Democrats.

​The U.S. Department of Commerce has announced substantial tariffs on solar panel imports from four Southeast Asian countries—Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia—following a year-long investigation into alleged trade violations by Chinese-owned manufacturers operating in these nations. The tariffs, which vary by country and company, are as follows:​

Cambodia: Facing the steepest duties, with tariffs reaching up to 3,521%, due to non-cooperation with the investigation.

Vietnam: Companies may face duties up to 395.9%.​

Thailand: Tariffs could be as high as 375.2%.​

Malaysia: Duties are set at 34.4%.​

Senator Adam Schiff is urging the National Archives to investigate the Trump administration's use of Signal and similar messaging apps. He emphasized the need for NARA to reach out to every federal agency involved to make sure all relevant records are preserved. This comes amid growing concerns over transparency and potential violations of federal recordkeeping laws.

[novella-november]

I have no idea why this needs to be said, but you can hate generative AI, love the Public Domain, love media preservation, hate the overbearing US Copyright system, and... still believe that Copyright Laws exist in the first place for a reason, (even if, thanks to Big Corporation Monopolies, it's been twisted into its current behemoth monstrosity.)

You can hate Large Language Models and still believe in Copyright Reform over Copyright Abolishment.

You can believe in Media Preservation and still believe that Plagiarism is wrong.

You can hate the current restrictive Copyright Laws without wanting to abolish them entirely.

You can love the Public Domain and still loath predatory corporations stealing everything they can get their hands on, to literally *feed the machine.*

These things are not mutually exclusive, and if you think that

"you can't hate AI if you hate the current copyright laws"

or that

"Hating on Generative AI will only give us more restrictive copyright and IP laws, therefore you need to normalize and accept generative AI stealing all of your creations and every single thing you've ever said on the internet!"

I just genuinely don't understand how you can say this kind of crap if you've ever interacted with any creative person in your life.

I'm a wanna-be-author.

I want as many people to be able to afford my written works as possible without restrictions, and I fully plan on having free ebooks of my works available for those who can't afford to buy them.

*That does *not* mean I, in any way shape or form, would ever consent to people stealing my work and uploading it into a Large Language Model and telling it to spit out fifty unauthorized sequels that are then sold for cash profit!*

You cannot support generative AI and turn around and try to claim you're actually just defending small time artists, and *also* you think no one should have any legal protections at all protecting their work from plagiarism at all.

Supporting unethical generative AI (which is literally all of them currently), protecting artists, and *completely abolishing* copyright and intellectual property laws instead of reforming them *are* mutually exclusive concepts.

You *cannot* worship the plagiarism machine, claim to care about small artists, and then say that those same small artists should have absolutely *zero* legal protections to stop their work being plagiarized.

The only way AI could even begin to approach being ethical would be if using it to begin with wasn't a huge hazard to the enviornment, and if it was trained *exclusively * on Public Domain works that had to be checked and confirmed by multiple real human beings before it was put into the training data.

And oh, would you look at that?

Every single AI model is currently just sucking up the entire fucking goddamn internet and everything ever posted on it and everything ever downloaded from it with no way to really truly opt out of it or even just to know if your work has been fed to the machine until an entire page of text from your book pops out when it generates text from someone's writing prompt.

And no, it's not just "privileged Western authors" who are being exploited by AI.

For an updating list of global legal cases again AI tech giants, see this link here to stay up to date as cases develop:

[dostoyevsky-official]

Trump administration disbands taskforce targeting Russian oligarchs

A memo from the attorney general, Pam Bondi, issued during a wave of orders on her first day in office but not previously reported, said the effort, known as Task Force KleptoCapture, will end as part of a shift in focus and funding to combating drug cartels and international gangs. The taskforce brought indictments against the aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska and TV tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev for alleged sanctions busting, and seized yachts belonging to the sanctioned oligarchs Suleiman Kerimov and Viktor Vekselberg. It also secured a guilty plea against a US lawyer who made $3.8m in payments to maintain properties owned by Vekselberg.

Trump Green-Lights Bribery and Corruption With New Executive Order

President Donald Trump has instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to pause prosecutions of companies that bribe foreign government officials to win business. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been “stretched beyond proper bounds and abused in a manner that harms the interests of the United States,” hurting American competitiveness, Trump wrote in an executive order signed Monday. [...] The order’s legality was not immediately clear. Generally, the Constitution requires the president to “take care that the laws” passed by Congress “be faithfully executed.” Presidents do have some enforcement discretion, but they cannot override laws, according to the ACLU. Major companies such as Goldman Sachs, Glencore and Walmart have all come under FCPA scrutiny, according to Reuters.

///

"It's going to mean a lot more business for America," Trump told reporters while signing the order in the Oval Office on Monday. Trump wanted to strike down FCPA during his first term in office. He has called it a "horrible law" and said "the world is laughing at us" for enforcing it. Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International said FCPA made the United States a leader in addressing global corruption. (x)

///

“It sounds good on paper, but in practicality, it's a disaster,” Trump said. “It means that if an American goes over to a foreign country and starts doing business over there, legally, legitimately or otherwise, it's almost a guaranteed investigation indictment, and nobody wants to do business with the Americans because of it.” [...] Gary Kalman, executive director of Transparency International U.S., said Trump’s order “diminishes—and could pave the way for completely eliminating—the crown jewel in the U.S.’s fight against global corruption.” [...] In one of its most significant victories, the Justice Department announced Oct. 16, three weeks before Trump’s election victory, that mega-defense contractor Raytheon Company of Virginia would pay over $950 million to settle foreign bribery and related charges in a scheme to help foreign governments purchase PATRIOT missile systems and operate and maintain a radar system. In one of the schemes, Raytheon engaged in a campaign from 2012 and 2016 “to bribe a high-level official” within the Qatar government’s military “in order to assist Raytheon in obtaining and retaining business” from it, the DOJ said, citing admissions and court documents filed in the Eastern District of New York. [...] Raytheon’s “criminal schemes to defraud the U.S. government in connection with” the contracts “erodes public trust and harms the DOD, businesses that play by the rules, and American taxpayers,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kevin Driscoll of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division also said at the time. (x)

this is the most relentlessly pro-corruption administration in american history. the guiding animus seems to be how much corruption can we do, how can we help others get away with corruption, how can we halt justice, etc

[maaarine]

Russia bans 'child-free propaganda' to try to boost birth rate (Reuters, Nov 12 2024)

"Russia's lower house of parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday to ban what authorities cast as pernicious propaganda for a child-free way of life, hoping to boost a faltering birth rate.

Official data released in September put the birth rate at its lowest in a quarter of a century while mortality rates are up as Moscow's war in Ukraine rages on.

The Kremlin called the figures "catastrophic for the future of the nation".

President Vladimir Putin, who has cast Russia as a bastion of "traditional values" locked in an existential struggle with a decadent West, has encouraged women to have at least three children, saying that will help secure the future of Russians.

There are already financial and other incentives.

The law, expected to be swiftly approved by the upper house of parliament and Putin, joins other restrictions on free expression including a ban on content deemed to promote "non-traditional lifestyles" such as same-sex relationships or gender fluidity, as well as on dissenting accounts of the conflict in Ukraine.

Authors of "child-free propaganda" will be subject to fines of up to 400,000 roubles ($4,100) for individuals, twice that amount for officials, and up to 5 million roubles ($51,000) for legal entities. (…)

But some women were sceptical.

Alina Rzhanova, a 33-year-old who lives in Yaroslavl, 250 km northeast of Moscow, was once determined not to have children but now has an eight-month-old son.

"People want children, but there's no money," she said.

"That's why people are not having children. Not because someone somewhere wrote something.""

[salvia-plathitudes]

An immigration judge has given lawyers representing the Department of Homeland Security a little over 24 hours to provide Mahmoud Khalil's legal team with evidence that he is removable from the U.S. under the allegations lobbed against him.

Khalil, legal permanent resident with a green card, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at his Columbia University housing in New York last month.

Khalil's wife, who appeared via video feed at his hearing, is set to give birth within "a couple of weeks," according to Khalil's lawyer, Marc Van Der Hout.

The hearing grew tense at times, with the judge at one point saying there were nearly 600 people waiting to attend the virtual hearing that was reserved for legal parties only, saying this was highly unusual.

Noting the public interest in the case, Van Der Hout asked the judge to consider making future hearings accessible to the public, but she refused and said she was considering making all future hearings "in-person only" so all of his lawyers would need to attend in person.

Khalil was seated wearing a blue jumpsuit. He only said a handful of words throughout the hearing. At one point he asked the judge if his wife, Noor Abdalla, could also be allowed to have access to the video feed.

"Your honor, I would appreciate if you could let my wife in," he asked.

When she was let in, Abdalla was shown on the big screen. Khalil turned to look at her and then returned his gaze to the front of the room.

During the last hearing, Khalil's lawyers were granted continuance to give additional time to review the allegations raised against him in the Notice to Appear filed by DHS.

📸 Muslim protesters pray outside the main campus of Columbia University during a demonstration to denounce the immigration arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian activist who helped lead protests against Israel at the university, in New York City, March 14, 2025.

David Dee Delgado/Reuters, FILE

Comans again grew agitated when Van Der Hout asked for continuance a second time and claimed lawyers representing DHS had not provided evidence to back up the allegations against his client.

"We have not received a single document from them," he said.

He urged the judge to allow him more time, saying "we can not plead" until they knew the evidence they had against Khalil.

But Comans denied his request and ordered Van Der Hout to enter Khalil's plea for over 12 allegations on the spot.

The allegations ranged from procedural, such as "You are a native of Syria and a citizen of Algeria," to accusations that he withheld information from DHS about his alleged membership in the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group.

He was also asked to respond to the DHS claim that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had found Khalil's "presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States."

Van Der Hout responded "deny" for each allegation.

Comans conveyed a sense of urgency to get these issues resolved, noting Khalil had already spent several weeks in detention. She told both parties she was "not going to keep him detained" while they argued over his removability.

The court room was packed with reporters and a handful of supporters. One of them was told she needed to take off her keffiyeh before she walked into the courtroom.

As the hearing was adjourned, Khalil turned back to wave and smile at the group of supporters and press that were trickling out of room.

He smiled and waved a peace sign at one of his supporters.