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Egypt refers 28 to criminal court for forming illegal group
Attorney Career |
2018/06/09 03:58
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Egypt's chief prosecutor has referred 28 people to a criminal court on charges including forming an illegal group aiming to topple the government.
Sunday's statement by prosecutor Nabil Sadek says the suspects face an array of additional charges, including inciting violence and disseminating false news.
The statement says the suspects formed an illegal group, "The Egyptian Council for Change," to incite against the state and its institutions.
It says only nine of the 28 suspects are in custody. No date has been set for the trial. Egypt has intensified a long-running crackdown on dissent since President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi's re-election in March.
The arrests are part of a wider crackdown on dissent since the 2013 military ouster of an elected Islamist president following mass protests against his one-year divisive rule.
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Detroit-area couple in court over control of frozen embryos
Attorney Career |
2018/06/03 10:49
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A Detroit-area woman seeking custody of as many as 10 frozen embryos is asking a judge to appoint a guardian over them while she clashes with her former partner for control.
Gloria Karungi and Ronaldlee Ejalu have a daughter who has sickle cell disease. Karungi believes if she can bear another child with one of the embryos, bone marrow cells from that sibling could potentially cure the girl's blood illness.
But Ejalu must give his consent, according to a contract with an in vitro fertilization clinic, and he's not interested. Karungi and Ejalu never married and are no longer together.
Oakland County Judge Lisa Langton last year said she didn't have the authority to wade into the embryo dispute; she was simply determining financial support and parenting time for the couple's daughter. But the Michigan appeals court sent the case back to Langton for more work, including an evidentiary hearing if necessary.
Karungi "wants to cure her daughter and is seeking the embryos to that end. ... Without the embryos coming to term, that child has no ability to be cured," the woman's attorney, Dan Marsh, said in a court filing.
Ejalu's lawyer, Dan Weberman, said he'll argue again that a Family Division judge has no role in what's basically a contract quarrel. He also said it's misleading for Karungi to claim that cells from a sibling are the only cure for the 7-year-old girl.
"They want to paint a picture like she's on her death bed," Weberman told The Associated Press. "She's in school. She's a happy girl. She gets treatment once a month."
Ejalu no longer believes that using frozen embryos is a good idea.
"He doesn't feel ethically that a life should be created for human tissue harvesting. That's somewhat mind-boggling," Weberman said.
Under orders from the appeals court, Langton on June 20 again will hear arguments on whether she has jurisdiction over contested property held by unmarried parties. But in the meantime, the judge has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday on Karungi's request to have a lawyer appointed as guardian over the embryos. |
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Spanish court nixes terrorism accusation in Basque incident
Attorney Career |
2018/06/02 10:50
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Spain's National Court has sentenced seven men and a woman to between two and 13 years in prison for beating up two police officers and their girlfriends, but rejected the prosecutors' argument that the defendants should face terror charges.
The call for terror charges caused outrage at the trial because the incident took place two years ago in an area of northern Spain with a strong Basque identity.
The Basque region is trying to put behind it decades of violence at the hands of armed separatist group ETA, which killed more than 800 people, including police, before giving up its armed campaign in 2011.
The court said in sentencing Friday that terrorist intent was not proven and that the accused did not belong to a terrorist organization. |
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Suspect in vandalism to Jewish boundary heads to court
Attorney Career |
2018/06/01 10:50
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A Massachusetts man charged with vandalizing the boundaries of a symbolic Jewish household known as an eruv is heading to court.
Police say 28-year-old Yerachmiel Taube, of Sharon, is scheduled to be arraigned Monday on charges including malicious destruction of property and destruction to a religious organization.
Taube was arrested Saturday in connection with the vandalism in Sharon that has been going on for several weeks.
The eruv is a series of poles and string that mark the boundaries of the Orthodox Jewish community's "household" in which they can carry certain items on the Sabbath.
Taube was held in custody over the weekend. It was not clear if he has a lawyer.
The Sharon eruv has been in the community since 1990 and is maintained by 40 volunteers. |
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Court program in Dona Ana County focuses on veterans
Attorney Career |
2018/05/11 10:55
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A new court program has opened in Dona Ana County that focuses on the substance abuse and mental health issues facing military veterans who have been charged with non-violent crimes.
Las Cruces Sun-News reports that the first hearing in the 3rd Judicial District Court's Veterans Treatment Court program was held on Wednesday.
It's the first veterans court program in southern New Mexico
The judicial district already has other "problem-solving courts," such as a drug court for juveniles and adults that tries to help rehabilitate repeat offenders whose offenses are driven by substance abuse.
Veterans participating in the new program will be given individualized treatment and counseling programs that run an average of 14 months or longer.
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High court worries about abandoning online sales tax rule
Attorney Career |
2018/04/17 16:45
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The Supreme Court sounded concerned Tuesday about doing away with a rule that has meant shoppers don't always get charged sales tax when they hit "checkout" online.
The justices were hearing arguments in a case that deals with how businesses collect sales tax on online purchases at sites from Amazon.com to Zappos. Right now, under a decades-old Supreme Court rule, if a business is shipping a product to a state where it doesn't have an office, warehouse or other physical presence, it doesn't have to collect the state's sales tax. Customers are generally supposed to pay the tax to the state themselves if they don't get charged it, but the vast majority don't.
More than 40 states have asked the Supreme Court to abandon its current sales tax collection rule , saying that as a result of it and the growth of internet shopping, they're losing billions of dollars in tax revenue every year.
But several Supreme Court justices suggested during arguments Tuesday that they had concerns about reversing course.
"I'm concerned about the many unanswered questions that overturning precedents will create a massive amount of lawsuits about," Justice Sonia Sotomayor told South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley, who was arguing for the court to do away with its current rule.
Chief Justice John Roberts pointed to briefs suggesting the problem of sales tax collection "has peaked" and may be "diminishing rather than expanding." ''Why doesn't that suggest that there are greater significance to the arguments" that the court should leave its current rule in place, he asked.
The fact that Congress could have addressed the issue and has so far hasn't, Justice Elena Kagan said, "gives us reason to pause." Congress can deal with the issue in a more nuanced way than the court, she said, saying Congress is "capable of crafting compromises and trying to figure out how to balance the wide range of interests involved here."
Large retailers such as Apple, Macy's, Target and Walmart, which have brick-and-mortar stores nationwide, generally collect sales tax from their customers who buy online. But other online sellers that only have a physical presence in a few states can sidestep charging customers sales tax when they're shipping to addresses outside those states. |
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