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Court seems likely to block Secret Service case
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2014/03/28 09:32
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The Supreme Court appeared likely Wednesday to block a group of protesters from bringing free-speech claims against two Secret Service agents who were guarding President George W. Bush during a 2004 visit to Oregon.
The court's liberal justices seemed just as reluctant as the conservatives to find that the agents violated the protesters' First Amendment rights by moving them farther away from the president while allowing a separate group of pro-Bush demonstrators to stay a bit closer.
The protesters claim they were moved for loudly expressing their opinions while Bush was having dinner at an outdoor patio and not for any genuine security reasons.
Deputy Solicitor General Ian Gershengorn argued that agents who make on-the-spot judgments about the president's security should be shielded from liability.
"There are times when we don't want a reasonable official to hesitate before he acts and nowhere is that more important than when the specter of presidential assassination is in order," Gershengorn told the justices. |
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Egypt court sentences 528 Morsi supporters to death
Headline Topics |
2014/03/24 12:23
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A court in southern Egyptian has convicted 529 supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, sentencing them to death on charges of murdering a policeman and attacking police.
The court in Minya issued its ruling on Monday after only two sessions in which the defendants' lawyers complained they had no chance to present their case.
Those convicted are part of a group of 545 defendants on trial for the killing of a police officer, attempted killing of two others, attacking a police station and other acts of violence.
More than 150 suspects stood trial, the others were tried in absentia. Sixteen were acquitted.
The defendants were arrested after violent demonstrations that were a backlash for the police crackdown in August on pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo that killed hundreds of people. |
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French court blocks secret recordings of Sarkozy
Headline Topics |
2014/03/14 14:13
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A French court has ordered an ex-aide of Nicolas Sarkozy to pay 10,000 euros ($14,000) in damages and costs to the former French president over secret recordings that were published in an online journal, and instructed the publication to pull down the links.
Sarkozy and his pop-star-supermodel wife, Carla Bruni, had demanded an emergency injunction blocking publication of their conversation, which surfaced in the online publication Atlantico. The court Friday ordered Atlantico to take down the audio files.
Once-trusted aide Patrick Buisson was ordered to pay 10,000 euros in damages to Sarkozy for making the recordings, and Atlantico and Buisson were each ordered to pay 1,000 euros in court costs.
Atlantico has already pulled the playful exchange between Sarkozy and Bruni. |
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3 California men plead guilty in alleged pot grow
Headline Topics |
2014/03/10 13:40
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Three Northern California men are each facing up to ten years in prison after pleading guilty to charges that they damaged federal conservation land while allegedly growing marijuana.
Prosecutors say Chou Vang, Vang Pao Yang and Pao Vang, all of Eureka, each entered their pleas in federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday to one count of willful injury to federal property.
The men were accused of clearing away trees and vegetation, using fertilizers, and failing to properly dispose of trash while growing pot in the summer of 2012 in the King Range National Conservation Area along California's Lost Coast. The area provides habitat for four federally-listed threatened species, including Chinook and Coho salmon.
As part of a plea deal, prosecutors say they dropped marijuana cultivation charges. The men are scheduled to be sentenced in July. |
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Fla. high court: Immigrant can't get law license
Headline Topics |
2014/03/07 14:56
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The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that immigrants in the country illegally can't be given a license to practice law.
The question was raised when a man who moved here from Mexico when he was 9 years old sought a license in Florida. The court said Thursday that federal law prohibits people who are unlawfully in the country from obtaining professional licenses. The justices said state law can override the federal ban, but Florida has taken no action to do so.
Earlier this year, the California Supreme Court granted a law license to Sergio Garcia, who arrived in the U.S. from Mexico as a teenager with his father. But that ruling was only after the state approved a law that allows immigrants in the country illegally to obtain the license. |
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Two men found guilty for selling U.S. company’s technology
Headline Topics |
2014/03/07 14:56
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A federal jury found two men guilty Wednesday of economic espionage involving the theft and sale of a U.S. company’s technology to a competitor controlled by the Chinese government.
The jury returned the verdicts against Robert Maegerle and Walter Liew.
They were accused of stealing Delaware-based DuPont Co.’s method for making titanium oxide, a chemical that fetches $17 billion a year in sales worldwide and is used to whiten everything from cars to the middle of Oreo cookies.
A federal jury found two men guilty Wednesday of economic espionage involving the theft and sale of a U.S. company’s technology to a competitor controlled by the Chinese government.
Prosecutors said DuPont was unwilling to sell its method to China, so it was stolen and sent to a company called Pangang Group Co. Ltd., according to testimony during the diplomatically dicey proceedings. The jury heard six weeks of testimony.
Prosecutors alleged that Pangang’s factory is the only facility inside China known to be producing titanium oxide the DuPont way, which uses chlorination. |
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Supreme Court allows Stanford Ponzi scheme suits
Headline Topics |
2014/02/28 14:11
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The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that victims of former Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford's massive Ponzi scheme can go forward with class-action lawsuits against the law firms, accountants and investment companies that allegedly aided the $7.2 billion fraud.
The decision is a loss for firms that claimed federal securities law insulated them from state class-action lawsuits and sought to have the cases thrown out. But it offers another avenue for more than 21,000 of Stanford's bilked investors to try to recover their lost savings.
Federal law says class-action lawsuits related to securities fraud cannot be filed under state law, as these cases were. But a federal appeals court said the cases could move forward because the main part of the fraud involved certificates of deposit, not stocks and other securities.
The high court agreed in a 7-2 decision, with the two dissenting justices warning that the ruling would lead to an explosion of state class-action lawsuits.
Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in prison after being convicted of bilking investors in a $7.2 billion scheme that involved the sale of fraudulent certificates of deposits from the Stanford International Bank. They supposedly were backed by safe investments in securities issued by governments, multinational companies and international banks, but those investments did not exist. |
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