court

Lakers guard Marcus Smart has been fined $35,000 for making an obscene gesture toward a game official during halftime of the game Thursday against the Utah Jazz, the NBA announced Saturday.

Smart was assessed a technical foul for his action as walked off the court for intermission after exchanging words with an official.

The Lakers pulled out a 143-135 victory in Salt Lake City when the 31-year-old defensive specialist scored nine of his 17 points by making three of four three-point shots in the fourth quarter.

Smart, who is averaging 10.6 points, 2.9 assists, 2.5 rebounds and 1.6 steals in 17 games this season, will again be in the starting lineup Saturday night in place of injured Austin Reaves when the Lakers take on the Clippers at Intuit Dome.

Dec. 19 (UPI) — A Paris court denied an effort by the French government to suspend the fashion website Shein from operating in the country after it was found to be selling “childlike” sex dolls.

The court called the three-month suspension “disproportionate,” but said the site must implement strong age-verification protocols to sell any “sexual products that could constitute pornographic content.” It said the fine for each breach would be $11,700.

The action was taken after the sex dolls and weapons were discovered by France’s consumer watchdog in November, causing an uproar in France.

Shein, based in Singapore, issued a statement on Nov. 4 saying it had removed the dolls and permanently banned “all seller accounts linked to illegal or non-compliant sex-doll products.”

The court noted that the company removed the items and that the issue was only for a small number of the hundreds of thousands of items on the site.

A Shein spokesperson told Euro News that the platform will not reopen in France right away. It’s doing an internal audit to find weaknesses in its marketplace operations.

Paris senator Marie-Claire Carrère-Gée of the conservative Les Républicains party told Euro News that “the issue with Shein or Temu goes far beyond these specific products. It is an entire business model that violates consumer rights, destroys our companies and jobs, and tramples on human rights, including environmental protection.”

The Paris prosecutor’s office has begun a criminal investigation and assigned it to France’s Office for the Protection of Minors. It includes other online retailers, including AliExpress, Temu, Wish and eBay.

The company opened its first-ever brick-and-mortar store in Paris on Nov. 5, soon after the controversy began. The store opened to chaos, as shoppers lined up to get in and protesters shouted at them, “Shame!”

The European Commission has requested information from Shein but hasn’t launched an investigation. It has begun investigating AliExpress and Temu.

BUCHAREST, Romania — American rapper Wiz Khalifa was sentenced by a court in Romania on Thursday to nine months in jail for drug possession, more than a year after he took part in a music festival in the Eastern European country.

Khalifa was stopped by Romanian police in July 2024 after allegedly smoking cannabis on stage at the Beach, Please! Festival in Costinesti, a coastal resort in Constanta County. Prosecutors said the rapper, whose real name is Cameron Jibril Thomaz, was found in possession of more than 18 grams of cannabis, and that he consumed some on stage.

The Constanta Court of Appeal handed down the sentence after Khalifa was convicted of “possession of dangerous drugs, without right, for personal consumption,” according to Romania’s national news agency, Agerpres. The decision is final.

The decision came after a lower court in Constanta County in April issued Khalifa a criminal fine of 3,600 lei ($830) for “illegal possession of dangerous drugs,” but prosecutors appealed the court’s decision and sought a higher sentence.

Romania has some of the harsher drugs laws in Europe. Possession of cannabis for personal use is criminalized and can result in a prison sentence of between three months and two years, or a fine.

It isn’t clear whether Romanian authorities will seek to file an extradition request, since Khalifa is a U.S. citizen and doesn’t reside in Romania.

The 38-year-old Pittsburgh rapper rose to prominence with his breakout mixtape “Kush + Orange Juice.” On stage in Romania last summer, the popular rapper smoked a large, hand-rolled cigarette while singing his hit “Young, Wild & Free.”

Dec. 18 (UPI) — Closing arguments began Thursday in the trial for Judge Hannah Dugan after the court heard testimony from fellow Milwaukee County judicial officials about a lack of court policy on immigration arrests in public areas.

The testimony came on Day 4 of Dugan’s trial. She pleaded not guilty earlier this year to federal charges including one count of obstructing an official proceeding and concealing a person from arrest, and another of concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest.

The case stems from an incident on April 18, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials came to her courtroom and notified her they planned to arrest undocumented immigrant Eduardo Flores-Ruiz. They said she sent the agents to the chief judge’s office before going back to her courtroom, pushing Flores-Ruiz’s case to the front of her docket, then helped him and his lawyer leave from a private jury door.

The ICE agents ultimately found and arrested Flores-Ruiz outside the courthouse.

The defense called two fellow circuit court judges — Katie Kegel and Laura Gramling Perez — to the stand on Thursday to ask them about an email chain also involving Dugan. The email was about the courthouse and county policy on federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests on courthouse grounds.

Kegel said she sent the email after people were “snatched up out of my gallery while waiting for their hearing” and wanted to know about any policies on “detentions of any sort from inside the courtroom.” She said she saw someone who wasn’t in law enforcement clothing — whom she was later told belonged to a federal task force unrelated to immigration — carrying out activity in the gallery of her courtroom.

Grayling Perez said Chief Judge Carl Ashley had scheduled online training via Zoom about ICE activity in the courthouse and that Dugan had had trouble registering for the training session. Gramling Perez said the training indicated that ICE can conduct enforcement actions in public areas of the courthouse with certain “statutory and policy limitations.” She suggested the court develop a policy for such incidents, including a requirement that federal agents consult with the chief judge beforehand.

Gramling Perez said she had concerns about ICE operating in the courthouse, as did Dugan, USA Today reported.

“We are in some uncharted waters with some very serious and even potentially tragic community interests at risk in the balance,” Dugan wrote in an email as testified by Gramling Perez.

Defense attorneys also called former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett to testify to Dugan’s character, describing her as “extremely honest” and someone who “will tell you how she feels. Barrett said he’s known Dugan for more than 50 years and that they went to high school together.

The defense rested its cause after hearing from Barrett and closing arguments were underway.

The Prime Minister has said Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich must “pay up now” to victims of the war in Ukraine or face court action.

Mr Abramovich, the former owner of Chelsea Football Club, pledged in 2022 that the £2.5bn he made from the sale of the club would be used to benefit victims of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But there has been a delay in releasing the funds, which are currently frozen in a British bank account, due to a standoff over how exactly they should be used.

The government wants the money to be used for humanitarian aid, but Mr Abramovich insisted it should be used for “all victims of the war” – meaning that Russians could also benefit.

The oligarch cannot access the money under UK sanctions but the proceeds from the Chelsea sale still legally belong to him.

“If Mr Abramovich fails to act quickly, this government is fully committed and prepared to going to court to enforce that commitment if necessary,” a government spokesperson said.

They said the funds “would strengthen frontline capacity, enhance protection for the most vulnerable and support sustainable solutions that help Ukraine move from crisis response to long-term resilience”.

“It would be hard to overstate the impact that an additional two and a half billion pounds could have for the people of Ukraine.”

Mr Abramovich’s representatives declined to comment.

Speaking in the Commons, Sir Keir Starmer said the UK had issued a licence “to transfer £2.5bn from the sale of Chelsea Football Club that’s been frozen since 2022.”

Sir Keir said: “My message to Abramovich is clear: the clock is ticking.

“Honour the commitment that you made and pay up now, and if you don’t we’re prepared to go to court and ensure that every penny reaches those whose lives have been torn apart by Putin’s illegal war.”

The Treasury said that under the terms of the licence, the money must go to “humanitarian causes” in Ukraine and cannot benefit Mr Abramovich or any other sanctioned individual.

The government first threatened to sue Mr Abramovich in June.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “It is unacceptable that more than £2.5bn of money owed to the Ukrainian people can be allowed to remain frozen in a UK bank account.”

Mr Abramovich – a Russian billionaire who made his fortune in oil and gas – was granted a special licence to sell Chelsea following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, providing he could prove he would not benefit from the sale.

He is alleged to have strong ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, something he has denied.

It is understood that Mr Abramovich has 90 days to act before the UK considers taking legal action.

On Thursday, EU leaders are set to review proposals to use proceeds from frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine’s huge budget and defence needs. Russia has fiercely opposed the proposals.

With a dominant performance on both sides of the court, including 46 rebounds and 19 steals, the UCLA women’s basketball team beat Cal Poly 115-28 on Tuesday at Pauley Pavilion.

The UCLA (10-1) defense held the Mustangs (2-8) to three points in the second quarter and forced 31 turnovers and single digit scoring in the last three quarters. The Bruins scored 59 points off turnovers. Senior Lauren Betts earned her third double-double of the season with 20 points and 10 rebounds.

Freshman Sienna Betts, the No. 2 recruit from the 2025 class, played her first minutes with the Bruins, sharing the court with her sister for the first time for UCLA. She scored her first field goal in the fourth to give the Bruins their first 100-point game since December 2024 against Long Beach State, which they will face on Sunday.

Sienna earned her first assist in the first quarter with a pass to, who else but, Lauren as she was driving to the basket. Sienna grabbed her first points in her collegiate career off the free-throw line and finished the game with five points and two assists while playing under restricted minutes after missing the first part of the season with a leg injury.

The No. 4 Bruins closed the second quarter with 27 unanswered points, punctuated by a three-pointer by Angela Dugalić at the buzzer.

The Bruins finished the game with five players scoring in double digits. By the end of the third quarter, UCLA held a 70-point lead.

It was déjà vu for the Mustangs, who lost to the Bruins, 69-37, exactly a year ago. Cal Poly was without leading scorer Vanessa McManus.

Exiled punk band says its members are proud to be branded ‘extremists’ and hits back at Putin as an ‘aging sociopath’.

A Moscow district court has designated Russian punk protest band Pussy Riot as an extremist organisation, according to the state TASS news agency.

The exiled group’s lawyer, Leonid Solovyov, told TASS that Monday’s court ruling was made in response to claims brought by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office and that the band plans to appeal. According to TASS, the case was heard in a closed session at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office.

The court said that it had upheld prosecution submissions “to recognise the punk band Pussy Riot as an extremist organisation and ban its activities on the territory of the Russian Federation”, the AFP news agency reports.

An official Pussy Riot social media account shared a statement, responding defiantly to the ruling, saying the band’s members, who have lived in exile for years, were “freer than those who try to silence us”.

“We can say what I think about putin — that he is an aging sociopath spreading his venom around the world like cancer,” the statement said.

“In today’s Russia, telling the truth is extremism. So be it – we’re proud extremists, then.”

The group’s designation will make it easier for the authorities to go after the band’s supporters in Russia or people who have worked with them in the past.

“This court order is designed to erase the very existence of Pussy Riot from the minds of Russians,” the band said. “Owning a balaclava, having our song on your computer, or liking one of our posts could lead to prison time.”

According to TASS, earlier reports said that the Prosecutor General’s Office had brought the case over Pussy Riot’s previous actions, including at Christ the Saviour Cathedral in February 2012, and the World Cup Final in Moscow in 2018.

Today Russian court designated Pussy Riot as an extremist organization.

And yet, we’re freer than those who try to silence us. We can say what I think about putin — that he is an aging sociopath spreading his venom around the world like cancer. In today’s Russia, telling the… pic.twitter.com/ymz3BbApTo

— 𝖕𝖚𝖘𝖘𝖞 𝖗𝖎𝖔𝖙💦 (@pussyrrriot) December 15, 2025

The band’s members have already served sentences for the 2012 protest at the cathedral in Moscow, where they played what they called a punk prayer, “Mother of God, Cast Putin Out!”

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, who were jailed for two years on hooliganism charges over the cathedral protest, were released as part of a 2013 amnesty, which extended to some 26,000 people facing prosecution from Russian authorities, including 30 Greenpeace crew members.

In September, a Russian court handed jail terms to five people linked with Pussy Riot – Maria Alyokhina, Taso Pletner, Olga Borisova, Diana Burkot and Alina Petrova – after finding them guilty of spreading “false information” about the Russian military, news outlet Mediazona reported. All have said the charges against them are politically motivated.

Mediazona was founded by Alyokhina alongside fellow band member Tolokonnikova.

The news outlet says that it is continuing to maintain a verified list of Russian military deaths in Moscow’s war on Ukraine.

“We have confirmed 153,000 names, each supported by evidence, context, and documentation,” Mediazona said on Monday.

Dozens of California National Guard troops under President Trump’s command apparently slipped out of Los Angeles under cover of darkness early Sunday morning, ahead of an appellate court’s order to be gone by noon Monday.

Administration officials would not immediately confirm whether the troops had decamped. But video taken outside the Roybal Federal Building downtown just after midnight on Sunday and reviewed by The Times shows a large tactical truck and four white passenger vans leaving the facility, which has been patrolled by armed soldiers since June.

About 300 California troops remain under federal control, some 100 of whom were still active in Los Angeles as of last week, court records show.

“There were more than usual, and all of them left — there was not a single one that stayed,” said protester Rosa Martinez, who has demonstrated outside the federal building for months and was there Sunday.

Troops were spotted briefly later that day, but had not been seen again as of Monday afternoon, Martinez said.

The development that forced the troops to leave was part of a sprawling legal fight for control of federalized soldiers nationwide that remains ongoing.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued the order late Friday but softened an even more stringent edict from a lower court judge last week that would have forced the president to relinquish command of the state’s forces. Trump federalized thousands of California National Guard troops in June troops to quell unrest over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles.

“For the first time in six months, there will be no military deployed on the streets of Los Angeles,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said in a statement. “While this decision is not final, it is a gratifying and hard-fought step in the right direction.”

The ruling Friday came from the same three-judge panel that handed the president one of his most sweeping second-term victories this summer, after it found that the California deployment could go forward under an obscure and virtually untested subsection of the law.

That precedent set a “great level of deference” as the standard of review for deployments that have since mushroomed across the country, circumscribing debate even in courts where it is not legally binding.

But the so-called Newsom standard — California Gov. Gavin Newsom was the lead plaintiff on the lawsuit — has drawn intense scrutiny and increasingly public rebuke in recent weeks, even as the Trump administration argues it affords the administration new and greater powers.

In October, the 7th Circuit — the appellate court that covers Illinois — found the president’s claims had “insufficient evidence,” upholding a block on a troop deployment in and around Chicago.

“Even applying great deference to the administration’s view of the facts … there is insufficient evidence that protest activity in Illinois has significantly impeded the ability of federal officers to execute federal immigration laws,” the panel wrote.

That ruling is now under review at the Supreme Court.

In November, the 9th Circuit vacated its earlier decision allowing Trump’s Oregon federalization to go forward amid claims the Justice Department misrepresented important facts in its filings. That case is under review by a larger panel of the appellate division, with a decision expected early next year.

Despite mounting pressure, Justice Department lawyers have doubled down on their claims of near-total power, arguing that federalized troops remain under the president’s command in perpetuity, and that courts have no role in reviewing their deployment.

When Judge Mark J. Bennett asked the Department of Justice whether federalized troops could “stay called up forever” under the government’s reading of the statute at a hearing in October, the answer was an unequivocal yes.

“There’s not a word in the statute that talks about how long they can remain in federal service,” Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Eric McArthur said.

For now, the fate of 300 federalized California soldiers remains in limbo, though troops are currently barred by court orders from deployment in California and Oregon.

Times staff writers David Zahniser and Kevin Rector contributed to this report.

Republicans and Democrats squared off in court Monday in a high-stakes battle over the fate of California’s Proposition 50, which reconfigures the state’s congressional districts and could ultimately help determine which party controls the U.S. House in the 2026 midterms.

Dozens of California politicians and Sacramento insiders — from GOP Assembly members to Democratic redistricting expert Paul Mitchell — have been called to testify in a Los Angeles federal courtroom over the next few days.

The GOP wants the three-judge panel to temporarily block California’s new district map, claiming it is unconstitutional and illegally favors Latino voters.

An overwhelming majority of California voters approved Prop. 50 on Nov. 4 after Gov. Gavin Newsom pitched the redistricting plan as a way to counter partisan gerrymandering in Texas and other GOP-led states. Democrats admitted the new map would weaken Republicans’ voting power in California, but argued it would just be a temporary measure to try to restore national political balance.

Attorneys for the GOP cannot challenge the new redistricting map on the grounds that it disenfranchises swaths of California Republicans. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that complaints of partisan gerrymandering have no path in federal court.

But the GOP can bring claims of racial discrimination. They argue California legislators drew the new congressional maps based on race, in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the 15th Amendment, which prohibits governments from denying citizens the right to vote based on race or color.

On Monday, attorneys for the GOP began by homing in on the new map’s Congressional District 13, which currently encompasses Merced, Stanislaus, and parts of San Joaquin and Fresno counties, along with parts of Stockton.

When Mitchell drew up the map, they argued, he over-represented Latino voters as a “predominant consideration” over political leanings.

They called to the stand RealClearPolitics elections analyst Sean Trende, who said he observed an “appendage” in the new District 13, which extended partially into the San Joaquin Valley and put a crack in the new rendition of District 9.

“From my experience [appendages] are usually indicative of racial gerrymandering,” Trende said. “When the choice came between politics and race, it was race that won out.”

Republicans face an uphill struggle in blocking the new map before the 2026 midterms. The hearing comes just a few weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Texas to temporarily keep its new congressional map — a move that Newsom’s office says bodes poorly for Republicans trying to block California’s map.

“In letting Texas use its gerrymandered maps, the Supreme Court noted that California’s maps, like Texas’s, were drawn for lawful reasons,” Brandon Richards, a spokesperson for Newsom, said in a statement. “That should be the beginning and the end of this Republican effort to silence the voters of California.”

In Texas, GOP leaders drew up new congressional district lines after President Trump openly pressed them to give Republicans five more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. A federal court blocked the map, finding racial considerations likely made the Texas map unconstitutional. But a few days later the Supreme Court granted Texas’ request to pause that ruling, signaling they view the Texas case, and this one in California, as part of a national politically-motivated redistricting battle.

“The impetus for the adoption of the Texas map (like the map subsequently adopted in California),” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. argued, “was partisan advantage pure and simple.”

The fact that the Supreme Court order and Alito’s concurrence in the Texas case went out of their way to mention California is not a good sign for California Republicans, said Richard L. Hasen, professor of law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA School of Law.

“It’s hard to prove racial predominance in drawing a map — that race predominated over partisanship or other traditional districting principles,” Hasen said. “Trying to get a preliminary injunction, there’s a higher burden now, because it would be changing things closer to the election, and the Supreme Court signaled in that Texas ruling that courts should be wary of making changes.”

Many legal scholars argue that the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Texas case means California will likely keep its new map.

“It was really hard before the Texas case to make a racial gerrymandering claim like the plaintiffs were stating, and it’s only gotten harder in the last two weeks,” said Justin Levitt, a professor of law at Loyola Marymount University.

Hours after Californians voted in favor of Prop. 50 on Nov. 4, Assemblymember David J. Tangipa (R-Fresno) and the California Republican Party filed a lawsuit alleging that the map enacted in Prop. 50 for California’s congressional districts is designed to favor Latino voters over others.

The Department of Justice also filed a complaint in the case, arguing the new congressional map uses race as a proxy for politics and manipulated district lines “in the name of bolstering the voting power of Hispanic Californians because of their race.”

Mitchell, the redistricting expert who drew up the maps, is likely to be a key figure in this week’s battle. In the days leading up to the hearing, attorneys sparred over whether Mitchell would testify and whether he should turn over his email correspondence with legislators. Mitchell’s attorneys argued he had legislative privilege.

Attorneys for the GOP have seized on public comments made by Mitchell that the “number one thing” he started thinking about” was “drawing a replacement Latino majority/minority district in the middle of Los Angeles” and the “first thing” he and his team did was “reverse” the California Citizens Redistricting Commission’s earlier decision to eliminate a Latino district from L.A.

Some legal experts, however, say that is not, in itself, a problem.

“What [Mitchell] said was, essentially, ‘I paid attention to race,’” Levitt said. “But there’s nothing under existing law that’s wrong with that. The problem comes when you pay too much attention to race at the exclusion of all of the other redistricting factors.”

Other legal experts argue that what matters is not the intent of Mitchell or California legislators, but the California voters who passed Prop. 50.

“Regardless of what Paul Mitchell or legislative leaders thought, they were just making a proposal to the voters,” said Hasen, who filed an amicus brief in support of the state. “So it’s really the voters’ intent that matters. And if you look at what was actually presented to the voters in the ballot pamphlet, there was virtually nothing about race there.”

Hong Kong’s highest court has found former media mogul Jimmy Lai guilty of sedition and conspiring to collude with foreign powers. The 78-year-old is known as the territory’s most outspoken critic of Beijing and could face life in prison.

The High Court of Hong Kong has convicted pro-democracy activist and newspaper founder Jimmy Lai on three charges related to accusations that he undermined China’s national security, as part of a widely scrutinised trial.

Lai now faces the possibility of a life sentence in prison.

On Monday morning, a panel of three judges found Lai, 78, guilty of two counts of conspiring with foreign forces to threaten national security and one count of conspiracy to publish seditious material.

Lai had pleaded not guilty to all the charges. He has been in detention since December 2020, when he was arrested in the midst of a series of antigovernment protests that gripped Hong Kong.

The case has been seen as a test of Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” principle, which was established after the former British colony was returned to China in 1997.

The principle affirmed that Hong Kong was part of China, but in theory, it allowed the territory to retain its own governance and administrative structure, separate from Beijing.

But activists say that autonomy has been threatened in recent years, as China seeks to assert greater control over Hong Kong. The territory, once seen as a beacon of free speech in Southeast Asia, has seen its protesters, journalists and publishers targeted for arrest and prosecution in recent years.

On Monday, Judge Esther Toh accused Lai of making “constant invitations” to the United States to take action against the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its ruling Communist Party.

She and her fellow judges, Alex Lee and Susana D’Almada Remedios, issued an 855-page verdict in the case, which described Lai as the “mastermind” of a criminal conspiracy.

“There is no doubt that the first defendant had harboured his resentment and hatred of the PRC for many of his adult years,” Toh told Monday’s packed courtroom.

Human rights groups and media advocacy organisations quickly slammed the verdict as a miscarriage of justice.

“We are outraged that Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong’s symbol of press freedom, has been found guilty on trumped-up national security charges,” Thibaut Bruttin, the general director of Reporters Without Borders, said in a statement.

“This unlawful conviction only demonstrates the alarming deterioration of media freedom in the territory,” he added.

“Make no mistake: it is not an individual who has been on trial – it is press freedom itself, and with this verdict, that has been shattered.”

Another free-speech organisation, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), also denounced Lai’s conviction, calling it an act of “persecution”.

“The ruling underscores Hong Kong’s utter contempt for press freedom, which is supposed to be protected under the city’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law,” Beh Lih Yi, the group’s Asia-Pacific director, said.

“Jimmy Lai’s only crime is running a newspaper and defending democracy.”

Lai is set to reappear in court on January 12 for a pre-sentencing hearing. It is not yet clear whether he will seek to appeal Monday’s verdict.

The trial against him stretched for 156 days. Lai himself testified for 52 days, arguing that he had not called on the US to impose sanctions or other economic penalties on China, as the prosecution alleged.

The charges he faced came under the 2020 Hong Kong National Security Law, a far-reaching piece of legislation enacted in the midst of the pro-democracy protests of 2019 and 2020.

The law imposed steep penalties for actions deemed to be “subversion” or “secession”, effectively criminalising Hong Kong’s pro-independence movement, as well as any criticisms of the Chinese Communist Party.

As an outspoken critic of the government in Beijing, Lai was quickly charged under the newly imposed law.

His publication, the Apple Daily, published its first edition in 1995, and it became known as Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy newspaper.

During Lai’s trial, prosecutors presented 161 articles from the newspaper as evidence.

In August 2020, less than two months after the national security law came into effect, Lai was arrested for the first time, then released. He was arrested again in December, only to be released and re-arrested a third time. He has remained in custody ever since.

By May 2021, authorities had frozen Apple Daily’s assets. And in June of that year, five Apple Daily executives, including its editor-in-chief, were taken into custody amid a police raid on the newspaper’s headquarters.

The newspaper printed its final edition that month.

Lai’s defence team and family have repeatedly petitioned Hong Kong’s High Court for leniency, citing Lai’s age and health conditions, including diabetes and high blood pressure.

World leaders like US President Donald Trump have previously called for Lai’s release.

Dec. 14 (UPI) — A Hong Kong court is scheduled to deliver its verdict Monday in the national security case against media founder and former publisher Jimmy Lai, one of the city’s most prominent pro-democracy figures and the founder of the now-defunct newspaper Apple Daily.

Lai, 78, whose Chinese name is Lai Chee-ying, is charged alongside several companies linked to Apple Daily, including Apple Daily Limited, Apple Daily Printing Limited and AD Internet Limited, according to the court’s docket.

Prosecutors allege that Lai conspired to collude with foreign forces, an offense punishable by as much as a life sentence in prison under Hong Kong’s national security law.

Court records show the case is listed for verdict at 10 a.m. local time in the Court of First Instance at the West Kowloon Law Courts Building.

The Hong Kong Judiciary issued special public seating and ticketing arrangements for the hearing, citing high demand. According to court notices, admission tickets will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis beginning 45 minutes before the hearing, with overflow seating and live broadcasts provided in multiple courtrooms.

The case has also drawn international attention, with governments and press freedom groups warning that the prosecution reflects a broader erosion of civil liberties and press freedom in Hong Kong since the national security law was imposed in 2020.

Lai has pleaded not guilty to two counts of “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces” and a separate count of conspiracy to publish seditious material in Apple Daily, The New York Times reported. He has been jailed since his arrest five years ago.

Media mogul Lai was arrested in 2020 under a national security law imposed by China.

Supporters of Hong Kong democracy activist and media mogul Jimmy Lai have begun queuing overnight outside a Hong Kong court ahead of a verdict in his lengthy trial.

The verdict will be delivered by a three-judge panel in a hearing that begins at 10am local time (02:00 GMT) on Monday and comes amid international calls to release Lai, who has already spent five years in jail.

On Sunday night, Lai’s supporters formed a queue more than a block long outside the courthouse. Some even had camping gear as they tried to secure a spot among the 507 tickets to the courthouse — 58 tickets are for Lai’s courtroom and the rest are for viewing in a separate overflow room by video link.

Dozens of police officers have been deployed around the area in preparation for Monday’s verdict.

Lai, 78, the multi-millionaire founder of the now-shuttered Apple Daily newspaper, was arrested in 2020 under a national security law imposed by Chinese authorities to quell anti-government protests that rocked Hong Kong in 2019.

Lai’s family says his health has worsened after more than 1,800 days in solitary confinement, and that he suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure and heart palpitations.

Earlier this month, his daughter Claire Lai told the AFP news agency in Washington, DC that her father has lost “a very significant amount of weight” and noted that he has become “a lot weaker than he was before.”

“His nails turn almost purple, grey and greenish before they fall off, and his teeth are getting rotten,” she added.

Countries including the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as rights groups, have said Lai’s 156-day trial is politically motivated and have called for his immediate release.

US President Donald Trump also raised Lai’s case with Chinese President Xi Jinping in a meeting in South Korea in October and has said he would do his utmost to “save” Lai.

But Beijing has called Lai “an agent and pawn of anti-China foreign forces”, describing him as the main planner behind disruptive activities in the city.

The Chinese and Hong Kong governments have also said the tycoon is receiving a fair trial and that the national security law treats all equally. They say no freedoms are absolute when it comes to safeguarding national security.

“Jimmy Lai has endured five years in prison under appalling conditions simply for doing his job as a founder of one of the most renowned and independent media outlets in Hong Kong,” the media advocacy group Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.

“The trial can only be described as a sham and has nothing to do with the rule of law.”

After Monday’s verdict, if Lai is convicted, he could be sentenced in the near future. He can, however, appeal the outcome.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Friday asked an appeals court to block a contempt investigation of the Trump administration for failing to turn around planes carrying Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador in March.

The department also is seeking Chief Judge James Boasberg’s removal from the case, which has become a flashpoint in an escalating fight between the judiciary and the White House over court orders blocking parts of President Trump’s sweeping agenda.

The department wants the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to rule on its requests before Monday, when Boasberg is scheduled to hear testimony from a former government attorney who filed a whistleblower complaint.

Department officials claim Boasberg is biased and creating “a circus that threatens the separation of powers and the attorney-client privilege alike.”

“The forthcoming hearing has every appearance of an endless fishing expedition aimed at an ever-widening list of witnesses and prolonged testimony. That spectacle is not a genuine effort to uncover any relevant facts,” they wrote.

Boasberg, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Obama, has said that a recent ruling by the appeals court gave him the authority to proceed with the contempt inquiry. The judge is trying to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to refer the matter for prosecution.

Boasberg, who has been chief judge of the district court in Washington since March 2023, has said the Trump administration may have “acted in bad faith” by trying to rush Venezuelan migrants out of the country in defiance of his order blocking their deportations to El Salvador.

The Trump administration has denied any violation, saying the judge’s March 15 directive to return the planes was made verbally in court but not included in his written order.

Boasberg has scheduled a hearing on Monday for testimony by former Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni, whose whistleblower complaint claims a top department official suggested the Trump administration might have to ignore court orders as it prepared to deport Venezuelan migrants.

The judge also scheduled a hearing on Tuesday for testimony by Deputy Assistant Atty. Gen. Drew Ensign. The Justice Department has said Ensign conveyed Boasberg’s March 15 oral order and a subsequent written order to the Department of Homeland Security.

“This long-running saga never should have begun; should not have continued at all after this Court’s last intervention; and certainly should not be allowed to escalate into the unseemly and unnecessary interbranch conflict that it now imminently portends,” department officials said in Friday’s court filing.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia walked out of a US courthouse without being arrested by immigration authorities, relieving fears ICE may attempt to take him back into custody the day after he was released.

A court in Germany has ruled in favour of Ryanair and issued a series of rulings against claims company Flightright, prohibiting the firm from claiming customers encounter “hurdles” when contacting the airline’s customer service

Ryanair has won a won a key court battle against a claims company that passengers turn to get compensation for delayed and cancelled flights.

The firm called Flightright encouraged flyers to use their services when taking any sort of action against the low cost airline. But now a court in Germany has ruled in favour of Ryanair and issued a series of rulings against Flightright. The court has legally prohibited Flightright from claiming that customers encounter “hurdles” when contacting the airline’s customer service.

Experts said this ruling marks a significant point in the dispute between the Irish low-cost carrier and companies specialising in enforcing compensation claims under EU Regulation 261.

READ MORE: Ryanair plane smashes into Stansted Airport fence with 181 passengers onboardREAD MORE: ‘Best’ EasyJet and Ryanair rows of seats to book if you want extra free legroom

Earlier this week the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in the German city if Hamburg banned Flightright from telling passengers to ignore Ryanair entirely. Judges also ordered the company to admit it always puts a 14 percent “lawyer surcharge” on top of its advertised fee.

A huge £210,000 fine will hit every future breach of the ruling. Ryanair accused Flightright of misleading advertising and profiting from the misery of delayed travellers.

The airline says platforms like Flightright routinely take up to a whopping 40 percent of a €250 EU compensation payout meant for passengers. Ryanair’s marketing chief Dara Brady welcomed the verdict and told passengers to cut out greedy middlemen.

He said customers who go direct will receive 100 percent of their payout under EU Regulation 261.

He claimed Ryanair offered “a simple, transparent system that avoids rip-off fees”. EU rules promise €250 for delays on flights up to 1,500 kilometres and a tasty €600 for longer flights delayed more than three hours.

The verdict piled onto a list of previous legal defeats suffered by Flightright. Claims companies are controversial because they cherry-pick “easy wins” they can cash in on. They collect hefty commissions for filing paperwork while posing as consumer champions.

Industry insiders say Ryanair is less complicated than many rivals when it comes to issuing refunds. Ryanair is using this to humiliate companies that portray it as hostile to customers.

Travellers who refuse to deal with airlines directly can use Germany’s free arbitration service, which claims 80 to 90 percent success without fees. The ruling exposes the claims-industry model as a profit hunt fuelled by delay payouts, not public service.

On Flightright’s website, it claimed: “No one enjoys flight delays, but it’s important to know that you have rights! If your flight began in the EU, or landed in the EU with a European airline, you could be eligible to claim up to £520, depending on flight distance and delay length, no matter the ticket cost.

“The only conditions are that the airline must be responsible for the cause of the delay, and you must have reached the final airport in your trip with a delay of at least three hours.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court’s conservatives signaled Tuesday they are likely to rule for Republicans and President Trump by throwing out a Watergate-era limit on campaign funding by political parties.

The court has repeatedly said campaign money is protected as free speech, and the new ruling could allow parties to support their candidate’s campaigns with help from wealthy donors.

For the second day in a row, Trump administration lawyers urged the justices to strike down a law passed by Congress.
And they appeared to have the support of most of the conservatives.

The only doubt arose over the question of whether the case was flawed because no current candidate was challenging the limits.

“The parties are very much weakened,” said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. “This court’s decisions over the years have together reduced the power of political parties, as compared to outside groups, with negative effects on our constitutional democracy.”

He was referring to rulings that upheld unlimited campaign spending by wealthy donors and so-called SuperPACs.

In the Citizens United case of 2010, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and four other conservatives struck down the long-standing limits on campaign spending, including by corporations and unions. They did so on the theory that such spending was “independent” of candidates and was protected as free speech under the 1st Amendment.

They said the limits on contributions to candidates were not affected. Those limits could be justified because the danger of corruption where money bought political favors. This triggered a new era of ever-larger political spending but most of it was separate from the candidates and the parties.

Last year, Elon Musk spent more than $250 million to support Donald Trump’s campaign for reelection. He did so with money spent through political action committees, not directly to Trump or his campaign.

Meanwhile the campaign funding laws limit contributions to candidates to $3,500.

Lawyers for the National Republican Senatorial Committee pointed out this trend and told the Supreme Court its decisions had “eroded” the basis for some of the remaining the 1970s limits on campaign funding.

At issue Tuesday were the limits on “coordinated party spending.” In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Congress added limits on campaign money that could be given to parties and used to fund their candidates. The current donation limit is $44,000, the lawyers said.

Washington attorney Noel Francisco, Trump’s solicitor general during his first term, urged the court strike down these limits on grounds they are outdated and violate the freedom of speech.

“The theory is that they’re needed to prevent an individual donor from laundering a $44,000 donation through the party to a particular candidate in exchange for official action,” he said.

If a big-money donor hopes for win a favor from a congressional candidate, the “would-be briber would be better off just giving a massive donation to the candidate’s favorite super PAC,” he said.

The suit heard Tuesday was launched by then Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and other Republican candidates, and it has continued in his role as vice president and possibly a presidential candidate in 2028.

Usually, the Justice Department defends federal laws, but in this instance, the Trump administration switched sides and joined the Republicans calling for the party spending limits to be struck down.

Precedents might have stood in the way.

In 2001, the Supreme Court had narrowly upheld these limits on the grounds that the party’s direct support was like a contribution, not independent spending. But the deputy solicitor general, Sarah Harris, told the justices Tuesday that the court’s recent decisions have “demolished” that precedent.

“Parties can’t corrupt candidates, and no evidence suggests donors launder bribes by co-opting parties’ coordinated spending with candidates,” she said.

Marc Elias, a Democratic attorney, joined the case in the support of the court limits. He said the outcome would have little to do with speech or campaign messages.

“I think we’re underselling the actual corruption” that could arise, he said. If an individual were to give $1 million to political party while that person has business matter before the House or Senate, he said, it’s plausible that could influence “a deciding or swing vote.”

The only apparent difficulty for the conservative justices arose over questions of procedure.

Washington attorney Roman Martinez was asked to defend the law, and he argued that neither Vance nor any other Republicans had legal standing to challenge the limits. Vance was not a current candidate, and he said the case should be dismissed for that reason.

Some legal observers noted that the limits on parties arose in response to evidence that huge campaign contributions to President Nixon’s reelection came from industry donors seeking government favors.

“Coordinated spending limits are one of the few remaining checks to curb the influence of wealthy special interests in our elections,” said Omar Noureldin, vice president for litigation at Common Cause. “If the Supreme Court dismantles them, party leaders and wealthy donors will be free to pour nearly unlimited money directly into federal campaigns, exactly the kind of corruption these rules were created to stop.”

Daniel I. Weiner, an elections law expert at the Brennan Center, said the justices were well aware of how striking down these limits could set the stage for further challenges.

“I was struck by how both sides had to acknowledge that this case has to be weighed not in isolation but as part of a decades-long push to strike down campaign finance rules,” he said. “Those other decisions have had many consequences the court itself failed to anticipate.”

Dec. 9 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Tuesday in a case questioning whether limits on how much political parties can spend in support of candidates violate the First Amendment of the Constitution.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee brought the case against the Federal Election Commission, saying the spending limits restrict the parties’ abilities to reach and influence voters, The New York Times reported.

The FEC has set limits on coordinated spending according to each state’s voting-age population and number of members in Congress.

Attorneys for Public Citizen, a voter advocacy group, filed a brief to the Supreme Court in support of maintaining the limits.

“If those contributions, which dwarf the base limits on [individual] contributions to candidates, are effectively placed at a candidate’s disposal through coordinated spending, they become potent sources of actual or apparent corruption,” the brief said.

The effort to free up coordinated spending is one of many in recent years by Republicans that have sought to loosen campaign purse strings across the board, including the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United vs. FEC.

The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, is expected to argue in favor of preserving coordinated spending limits, first enshrined in 1974 as a way to prevent bribery.

“This has been held constitutional at least twice before by the Supreme Court and more times by lower courts,” Democratic attorney Marc Elias said, according to ABC News.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservatives sounded ready on Monday to overrule Congress and give President Trump more power to fire officials at independent agencies and commissions.

The justices heard arguments on whether Trump could fire Rebecca Slaughter, one of two Democratic appointees on the five-member Federal Trade Commission.

The case poses a clash between Congress’ power to structure the government versus the president’s “executive power.”

A ruling for Trump portends a historic shift in the federal government — away from bipartisan experts and toward more partisan control by the president.

Trump’s Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the court should overturn a 1935 decision that upheld independent agencies. The decision “was grievously wrong when decided. It must be overruled,” he told the court.

The court’s three liberals strongly argued against what they called a “radical change” in American government.

If the president is free to fire the leaders of independent agencies, they said, the longstanding civil service laws could be struck down as well.

It would put “massive, uncontrolled and unchecked power in the hands of the president,” Justice Elena Kagan said.

But the six conservatives said they were concerned that these agencies were exercising “executive power” that is reserved to the president.

It was not clear, however, whether the court will rule broadly to cover all independent agencies or focus narrowly on the FTC and other similar commissions.

For most of American history, Congress has created independent boards and commissions to carry out specific missions, each led by a board of experts who were appointed with a fixed term.

But the court’s current conservative majority has contended these commissions and boards are unconstitutional if their officials cannot be fired at will by a new president.

Past presidents had signed those measures into law, and a unanimous Supreme Court upheld them 90 years ago in a case called Humphrey’s Executor vs. U.S.

In creating such bodies, Congress often was responding to the problems of a new era.

The Interstate Commerce Commission was created in 1887 to regulate railroad rates. The FTC, the focus of the court case, was created in 1914 to investigate corporate monopolies. The year before, the Federal Reserve Board was established to supervise banks, prevent panics and regulate the money supply.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, Congress created the Securities and Exchange Commission to regulate the stock market and the National Labor Relations Board to resolve labor disputes.

Decades later, Congress focused on safety. The National Transportation Safety Board was created to investigate aviation accidents, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission investigates products that may pose a danger. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission protects the public from nuclear hazards.

Typically, Congress gave the appointees, a mix of Republicans and Democrats, a fixed term and said they could be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

Slaughter was first appointed by Trump to a Democratic seat and was reappointed by President Biden in 2023 for a seven-year term.

But conservatives often long derided these agencies and commissions as an out-of-control “administrative state,” and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said he believes their independence from direct presidential control is unconstitutional.

“The President’s power to remove — and thus supervise — those who wield executive power on his behalf follows from the text” of the Constitution, he wrote last year in his opinion, which declared for the first time that a president has immunity from being prosecuted later for crimes while in office.

Roberts spoke for a 6-3 majority in setting out an extremely broad view of presidential power while limiting the authority of Congress.

The Constitution in Article I says Congress “shall have the power…to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution…all other powers vested” in the U.S. government. Article II says, “the executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States.”

The current court majority believes that the president’s executive power prevails over the power of Congress to set limits by law.

“Congress lacks authority to control the President’s ‘unrestricted power of removal’ with respect to executive officers of the United States,” Roberts wrote last year in Trump vs. United States.

Four months later, Trump won reelection and moved quickly to fire a series of Democratic appointees who had fixed terms set by Congress. Slaughter, along with several other fired appointees, sued, citing the law and her fixed term. They won before federal district judges and the U.S. Court of Appeals.

But Trump’s lawyers filed emergency appeals at the Supreme Court, and the justices, by 6-3 votes, sided with the president and against the fired officials.

In September, the court said it would hear arguments in the case of Trump vs. Slaughter to decide on whether to overturn the Humphrey’s Executor decision.

At the time, conservatives applauded the move. “For far too long, Humphrey’s Executor has allowed unaccountable agencies like the FTC to wield executive power without meaningful oversight,” said Cory Andrews, general counsel for the Washington Legal Foundation.

In defense of the 1935 decision, law professors noted the court said that these independent boards were not purely executive agencies, but also had legislative and judicial duties, like adopting regulations or resolving labor disputes.

During Monday’s argument, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the principle of “democratic accountability” called for deferring to Congress, not the president.

“Congress decided that some matters should be handled by nonpartisan experts. They said expertise matters with respect to the economy and transportation. So having the president come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the PhDs and replacing them with loyalists is actually is not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States,” she said.

But that argument gained no traction with Roberts and the conservatives. They said the president is elected and has the executive authority to control federal agencies.

The only apparent doubt involved the Federal Reserve Board, whose independence is prized by business. The Chamber of Commerce said the court should overrule the 1935 decision, but carve out an exception for the Federal Reserve.

Trump’s lawyer grudgingly agreed. If “an exception to the removal power exists,” he wrote in his brief in the Slaughter case, it should be “an agency-specific anomaly” limited to the Federal Reserve.

Dec. 8 (UPI) — The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments Monday about President Donald Trump‘s firing of Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter in a case that could upend 90 years of precedent.

The high court’s decision, which is expected in the summer, could allow presidents to remove independent regulators without just cause. If the Supreme Court sides with Trump, it would go directly against the court’s 1935 ruling in Humphrey’s Executor vs. United States, which upheld the FTC’s protections from removal as constitutional.

According to the 1935 Supreme Court decision, FTC commissioners may only be dismissed from their jobs “by the president for inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office.”

In March, Trump fired Democratic FTC commissioners Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, both of whom claimed the terminations were illegal.

The FTC is a bipartisan, independent federal agency that works to protect consumers from questionable business practices. Slaughter said preventing the president from being able to terminate commissioners without just cause allows the FTC to remain independent.

“Independence allows the decision-making that is done by these boards and commissions to be on the merits, about the facts and about protecting the interests of the American people,” she said, according to NPR. “That is what Americans deserve from their government.”

Trump, meanwhile, insisted his executive power gives him the ability to fire workers at independent agencies. In September, the Supreme Court agreed with Trump, allowing him to fire Slaughter through a brief administrative stay on a lower court’s order blocking the termination.

Trump appointed Slaughter, a Democrat, to the FTC in 2018. Former President Joe Biden then appointed her to be acting chair of the agency before nominating her for a new term. The Senate confirmed that nomination, giving her a second seven-year term starting in 2024.

The Hill reported that U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer will represent the U.S. government in Monday’s Supreme Court hearing.

“The court should repudiate anything that remains of Humphrey’s Executor and ensure that the president, not multimember agency heads, controls the executive power that Article II vests in him alone,” Sauer said in court filings.

There has been a dispute between Cardiff and Nantes stretching back to the immediate aftermath of the crash, with the Welsh club initially refusing to pay the first instalment of the transfer fee until investigations into accountability had taken place.

The row eventually led to football world governing body Fifa ordering Cardiff to pay – and the Bluebirds appealing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

With CAS upholding Fifa’s ruling, Cardiff paid the first instalment in January 2023 – ending an English Football League (EFL) transfer embargo in the process – and subsequently paying the remaining balance.

But the football club have always maintained they were prepared to take further action and in April 2024 lodged a complaint with Nantes commercial court, seeking damages of 120.2m euros (£104m).

The estimate for damages stems from the claimed financial and reputational losses represented by Cardiff’s relegation from the Premier League in 2019.

Cardiff’s team will present evidence from court-approved experts, including a statistical report compiled by football data company FC Analytics, that the club says shows Sala could have given them as much as a 62% greater chance of staying in the Premier League in that 2018-19 season.

In terms of the amount of damages, the sum Cardiff are seeking is based on independent analysis of the loss of income that followed relegation, the subsequent impact on the club’s overall value, as well as the original transfer fee.

Nantes did not respond to approaches for comment but have previously disputed Cardiff’s claim. Their position is said to be unchanged.