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Conservative Supreme Court justices on Wednesday voiced support for weakening the power of federal regulators, but it was not clear whether a majority would overturn a precedent that has guided American law for four decades over everything from the safety of food and drugs to environmental protection.

Billions of dollars are potentially at stake in front of a court that, like the rest of the federal judiciary, was remade during Donald Trump’s presidency by conservative interests that were motivated as much by weakening the regulatory state as social issues including abortion.

The court heard three and a half hours of arguments in two challenges brought by commercial fishermen to a fee requirement, though the facts of their cases were barely discussed in the courtroom. Instead, the focus was on whether the court should overturn the 1984 case colloquially known as Chevron, a decision that has been the basis for upholding a wide range of regulations public health, workplace safety and consumer protections.

Lower courts used the Chevron decision to uphold a 2020 National Marine Fisheries Service rule that herring fishermen pay for government-mandated observers who track their fish intake.

Two of Trump’s appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh led the attack on the Chevron decision, which says that when laws aren’t crystal clear, federal agencies, and the experts that serve in them, should be allowed to fill in the details as long as they come up with a reasonable interpretation.

Gorsuch noted that some judges invoke the Chevron doctrine frequently and others, not at all. “Shouldn’t that be a clue that something needs to be fixed here?” Gorsuch asked Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, defending the decision on behalf of the Biden administration.

When Prelogar talked about the shock to the legal system that would result from overturning such a longstanding and far-reaching precedent, Kavanaugh suggested that Chevron is to blame for the regulatory flip-flops that happen when a president of one party replaces a president of the other.


Apple is now requiring that U.S. law enforcement agencies obtain a court order for information on its customers’ push notifications, the alerts that iPhone apps send users that can reveal a lot about their online activity.

Push notifications alert smartphone users to breaking news alerts, incoming messages, weather bulletins and other content.

The policy shift was not formally announced but rather appeared in an updated version of Apple’s law enforcement guidelines posted online. Apple’s main competitor in mobile operating systems, Google, already had such a policy in place for its Android system.

The Cupertino, California, company did not immediately respond to questions about it.

The privacy-enhancing policy was added following last week’s disclosure by Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden that his office had received a tip last year that government agencies in foreign countries were demanding smartphone push notification data from both Google and Apple.

“Apple and Google are in a unique position to facilitate government surveillance of how users are using particular apps,” Wyden wrote Attorney General Merrick Garland on Dec. 6. Because servers at both companies process app data, they receive metadata associated with individual phones that could betray information potentially prejudicial to users.

Wyden did not identify the governments involved. Google spokesman Matt Bryant said the company has always “required a court order” to compel disclosure of data associated with push notifications.


A Moscow court on Tuesday fined Google for failing to store personal data on its Russian users, the latest in a series of fines on the U.S. tech giant amid tensions between the Kremlin and the West over the fighting in Ukraine.

A magistrate at Moscow’s Tagansky district court fined Google 15 million rubles (about $164,200) after the company repeatedly refused to store personal data on Russian citizens inside the country. Google was previously fined over the same charges in August 2021 and June 2022. The company declined to comment.

Google also was ordered to pay a 3 million ruble (about $32,800) fine in August for failing to delete allegedly false information about the conflict in Ukraine.

Russia can do little to collect the fine, however, as Google’s Russia business was effectively shut down last year after Moscow sent troops into Ukraine. The company has said it filed for bankruptcy in Russia after its bank account was seized by the authorities, leaving it unable to pay staff and suppliers.

Russian courts also have fined Apple and the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts Wikipedia.

Since sending troops into Ukraine in February 2022, Russian authorities have taken measures to stifle any criticism of the military campaign.

Some critics have received severe punishments. Opposition figure Vladimir Kara-Murza was sentenced this year to 25 years in prison for treason stemming from speeches he made against Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Sasha Skochilenko, an artist and musician from St. Petersburg, is on trial on charges of spreading false information about the military for replacing supermarket price tags with protest slogans. Prosecutors have asked for an eight-year prison sentence for her.


FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried began testifying at his fraud trial on Friday, saying the innovative business he hoped would move the cryptocurrency ecosystem forward ended up doing the opposite and hurting customers.

The onetime cryptocurrency golden boy lost his businesses and his reputation as a pioneering entrepreneur in an emerging facet of finance when a rush of customers withdrew their money last year, exposing that billions of dollars were missing.

Bankman-Fried, 31, acknowledged some of his failures early in his testimony, saying he made mistakes, large and small.

“We thought we might be able to build the best product on the market,” he said.

The goal was to move the cryptocurrency ecosystem forward, he added.

“It turned out basically the opposite of that,” and a lot of customers and others got hurt, Bankman-Fried said.

Asked by his lawyer, Mark Cohen, if he defrauded anyone or took customers’ funds, Bankman-Fried answered, “No I did not.”

The California entrepreneur has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges accusing him of diverting billions of dollars from his clients and investors to make risky investments, buy luxury housing, engage in a star-studded publicity campaign, and make large political and charitable donations.

His much-anticipated testimony in Manhattan federal court instantly became the centerpiece of a defense that has tried to convey that Bankman-Fried had no criminal intent as he took actions that prosecutors say were directly to blame for the collapse last November of businesses Bankman-Fried ran from the Bahamas since 2017.

He was extradited from the Bahamas to New York in December to face fraud charges. Though he was initially granted a $250 million personal recognizance bond and allowed to live with his parents in Palo Alto, California, the bond was revoked in August and he was jailed when Judge Lewis A. Kaplan concluded that he had tried to influence potential witnesses at his upcoming trial.

Prosecutors built their case against Bankman-Fried for three weeks, relying largely on his former top executives, an inner circle of individuals who shared a penthouse apartment in the Bahamas with Bankman-Fried.


Online gig work is growing globally, particularly in the developing world, creating an important source of employment for women and young people in poorer countries where jobs are scarce, according to a World Bank report released Thursday.

The report estimates the number of global online gig workers at as many as 435 million people and says demand for gig work increased 41% between 2016 and the first quarter of 2023. That boost is generating concern, though, among worker rights advocates about the lack of strong job protections in the gig economy, where people work job to job with little security and few employment rights.

While location-based gig services such as Uber, Lyft and TaskRabbit require labor like moving and delivery, online gig assignments can be largely done at home. Tasks include image tagging, data entry, website design and software development.

For women in the developing world, “there aren’t enough opportunities and they really struggle to get good quality jobs because of constraints and household responsibilities,” said Namita Datta, lead author of the World Bank report.

She said online gig work provides women and underprivileged youth “a very interesting opportunity to participate in the labor market.” Roughly 90% of low-income countries’ workforce is in the informal sector, according to the report.

Worker advocates stress the precariousness of gig work and the lack of job security, accountability from management and other social protections to workers’ health and retirement.

“The economic conditions in developing countries are different from the U.S., but one thing that is universal is the importance of developing and prioritizing good jobs — with a basic minimum wage and basic labor standards,” said Sharon Block, executive director of Harvard Law School’s Center for Labor and a Just Economy. ”There might be different pathways and timelines of getting there, but that’s a universal value.”

The report outlines how social insurance coverage is low among gig workers globally. Roughly half of the surveyed gig workers did not have a retirement plan and as much as 73% of Venezuelan gig workers and 75% of Nigerians did not have any savings for retirement.

Lindsey Cameron, a management professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, said “because there are so few options available to workers in these developing nations,” online gigs — with or without social protections — were better than no job options for many workers.


Chemical and consumer product manufacturer 3M has agreed to pay $6 billion to settle numerous lawsuits from U.S. service members who say they experienced hearing loss or other serious injuries after using faulty earplugs made by the company.

The settlement, consisting of $5 billion in cash and $1 billion in 3M stock, will be made in payments that will run through 2029. The agreement announced by the Minnesota company on Tuesday marks a resolution to one of the largest mass torts in U.S. history.

Hundreds of thousands of veterans and current service members have reportedly sued 3M and Aearo Technologies, a company that 3M acquired in 2008, over their Combat Arms Earplug products. The service members alleged that a defective design allowed the products — which were intended to protect ears from close range firearms and other loud noises — to loosen slightly and allow hearing damage, according to Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis, & Overholtz PLLC, one of the law firms representing plaintiffs.

In an online summary about the Combat Arms Earlplug litigation, the Florida-based law firm notes that 3M previously agreed to pay $9.1 million to settle a lawsuit on behalf of the government alleging the company knowingly supplied defective earplugs to the U.S. military. And since 2019, the firm added, 3M has lost 10 of 16 cases that have gone to trial — awarding millions of dollars to plaintiffs to date.

In Tuesday’s announcement, 3M maintained that the agreement — which includes all claims in Florida’s multi-district litigation, coordinated state court action in Minnesota, and potential future claims — was not an admission of liability.

“The products at issue in this litigation are safe and effective when used properly,” the company wrote. “3M is prepared to continue to defend itself in the litigation if certain agreed terms of the settlement agreement are not fulfilled.”

3M has previously tried to reduce exposure to the earplug litigation through bankruptcy court, the Wall Street Journal reported. In 2022, Aearo filed for bankruptcy as a separate company, accepting responsibility for claims, but the filing was later dismissed in U.S. bankruptcy court.

Beyond the earplug litigation, 3M in June agreed to pay at least $10.3 billion to settle lawsuits over contamination of many U.S. public drinking water systems with potentially harmful compounds. The deal would compensate water providers for pollution with per- and polyfluorinated substances, also known as “forever chemicals.”

The agreement hasn’t been finalized yet. Last month, 22 attorneys general urged a federal court to reject the proposed settlement, saying it lets manufacturer 3M off too easily.


An Austrian court said Friday that it has ruled in favor of Ukrainian businessman Dymitro Firtash in a years-long legal saga over a U.S. bid to have him extradited to face corruption charges, sending the extradition case back to square one.

Firtash faces a U.S. indictment accusing him of a conspiracy to pay bribes in India to mine titanium, which is used in jet engines. He denies any wrongdoing.

He was arrested in Austria in 2014 and then freed on 125 million euros ($136 million) bail, kicking off a still-unresolved legal saga. A Vienna court initially ruled against extradition on the grounds that the indictment was politically motivated.

A higher court in February 2017 rejected that reasoning as “insufficiently substantiated” and ruled that Firtash could be extradited. Austria’s Supreme Court of Justice upheld that ruling in 2019.

The country’s justice minister at the time approved the extradition, but a Vienna court judge ruled it could only take place after a decision on a defense call to reopen the case. Firtash backed that June 2019 motion with “numerous documents, including written witness statements,” Vienna’s upper state court said.

In March 2022, a Vienna court ruled against reopening the case. But the upper state court said Friday that it has now ruled in favor of Firtash and decided to allow reopening extradition proceedings, overturning the 2017 ruling. It pointed to new evidence.

Judges in Vienna will now have to consider anew whether Firtash can be sent to the United States.

In June 2019, a Chicago federal judge rejected a motion to dismiss the indictment against Firtash, who has argued that the U.S. has no jurisdiction over crimes in India. However, the judge ruled that it does, because any scheme would have impacted a Chicago-based company.

American aviation company Boeing, based in Chicago, has said it considered business with Firtash but never followed through. It is not accused of any wrongdoing.

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