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Jan 30 (Reuters) - The case involving former President Donald Trump's role in hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign will go before a grand jury on Monday, the New York Times reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The Manhattan district attorney's office will start presenting its evidence in the case, the newspaper reported, which would lay out the groundwork for any criminal charges against Trump. A witness in the case, former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker, was seen entering the lower Manhattan building where the grand jury is empaneled, the Times reported. The publisher had offered to help Trump by buying rights to unflattering stories and never publishing them. The moves are an indication that the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, is closer to a decision on whether to charge Trump.

Bankman-Fried, 30, has been free on $250 million bond since pleading not guilty to charges of fraud in the looting of billions of dollars from the now-bankrupt FTX. But in a letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan in Manhattan, Bankman-Fried's lawyers said prosecutors sprung the "overbroad" bail conditions without revealing that both sides had been discussing bail over the last week. "Rather than wait for any response from the defense, the government sandbagged the process, filing this letter at 6:00 p.m. on Friday evening," Bankman-Fried's lawyers wrote. They said a Signal ban isn't necessary because Bankman-Fried is not using the auto-delete feature, and concern he might is "unfounded." The lawyers also asked to remove a bail condition preventing Bankman-Fried from accessing FTX, Alameda or cryptocurrency assets, saying there was "no evidence" he was responsible for earlier alleged unauthorized transactions.

LONDON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - The High Court in London ruled on Friday that a prominent Russian businessman could not pause an $850 million fraud lawsuit brought by two Russian banks because of British sanctions. Boris Mints and his sons Dmitry, Alexander and Igor are being sued by National Bank Trust, which is 99% owned by the Central Bank of Russia, on behalf of Bank Otkritie, once Russia’s largest private lender before it collapsed in 2017. The judge said her written ruling containing her reasons for refusing to pause the case would be published on Friday afternoon. She also granted permission to appeal against her decision to both the Mints family and the banks, saying: "It is plainly a case with far wider implications." Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Elizabeth Piper and Mark PotterOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Jan 27 (Reuters) - Rick Astley has sued the rapper Yung Gravy over a song that borrowed heavily from the British singer's signature "Never Gonna Give You Up," claiming that the new song illegally used an impersonator who imitated Astley's distinctive baritone. "In an effort to capitalize off of the immense popularity and goodwill of Mr. Astley, defendants ... conspired to include a deliberate and nearly indistinguishable imitation of Mr. Astley's voice," the complaint said. Among the defendants are Yung Gravy, whose real name is Matthew Hauri, and his record label, Universal Music Group's (UMG.AS) Republic Records. Universal and a representative for Yung Gravy did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The song saw resurgent popularity about two decades later through the "Rickroll" internet meme, where it unexpectedly interrupts unrelated content.

The five officers have been charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping and official misconduct, Mulroy said. Other Memphis officers remain under investigation for policy infractions, Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn Davis said on Wednesday. "I expect you to feel what the Nichols family feels. The Nichols family viewed the police footage on Monday with their attorney, Ben Crump. The last words heard on the video were Nichols calling for his mother three times, Crump said.

NEW YORK, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Soccer's world governing body FIFA prevailed in a U.S. appeals court over a former Nigeria national team coach seeking to overturn his lifetime ban, later reduced to five years, for fixing matches. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said Samson Siasia did not show why a trial court in New York had jurisdiction over his case. FIFA had in 2019 imposed the lifetime ban, saying Siasia violated its code of ethics over a bribery scheme for Australian matches. Siasia, an Atlanta resident and former Nigeria striker, sued FIFA in August 2021, saying the evidence was "grossly insufficient" and that the ban violated his due process rights under the U.S. Constitution. In June 2021, the Court of Arbitration for Sport shortened the ban, calling it too severe for a first offense.

NEW YORK, Jan 26 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Morgan Stanley (MS.N) is embracing the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you pay for it. The original breach was one revelation in what makes Wall Street tick; Morgan Stanley’s response, or the idea that it’s an outlier, is another. What’s good for the pottery store sounds good for Wall Street too. Morgan Stanley was one of 11 banks fined by the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in September 2022. At the time, the SEC noted that Morgan Stanley had financially penalized and terminated some staff for violating its policies.

The investigation focuses in part on a phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, on Jan. 2, 2021. Trump asked Raffensperger to "find" enough votes needed to overturn Trump's election loss in Georgia. Legal experts said Trump may have violated at least three Georgia criminal election laws: conspiracy to commit election fraud, criminal solicitation to commit election fraud and intentional interference with performance of election duties. Both investigations involving Trump are being overseen by Jack Smith, a war crimes prosecutor and political independent. NEW YORK CRIMINAL PROBEAlthough Trump was not charged with wrongdoing, his real estate company was found guilty on Dec. 6 of tax fraud in New York state.

Companies Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co FollowJan 25 (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is investigating Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co (GT.O) for its handling of a recalled tire that has been linked to eight deaths and dozens of injuries, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter and documents reviewed by the newspaper. "We cooperated fully with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) review of the G159 275/70R22.5 tire, which concluded in June, 2022," the company said in an emailed statement to Reuters. In June last year, Goodyear said it would recall 173,000 G159 tires used on recreational vehicles because of the potential of catastrophic tread separations. However, the company said in October that it did not believe its tires were defective. Reporting by Aishwarya Nair in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Priyamvada C; Editing by Shailesh KuberOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Bryant objected to North Carolina requirements that patients obtain abortion pills only in person from physicians in specially certified facilities, and undergo as state-mandated counseling at least 72 hours before having abortions. The offices of West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The West Virginia lawsuit was reported earlier by The New York Times, and the North Carolina lawsuit by ABC News. The cases are GenBioPro Inc v Sorsaia et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of West Virginia, No. 23-00058; and Bryant v Stein et al, U.S. District Court, Middle District of North Carolina, No.

Jan 25 (Reuters) - Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google said on Wednesday it believes the complaint from the U.S. Department of Justice accusing the company of abusing its dominance in digital advertising is "without merit". The company also added it will "defend itself vigorously". Google, which depends on its advertising business for about 80% of its revenue, said the government was "doubling down on a flawed argument that would slow innovation, raise advertising fees and make it harder for thousands of small businesses and publishers to grow." "In contrast with prior cases/investigations against Google's ad tech biz, we view the DOJ complaint as fairly substantive and preempting some potential Google lines of defense," said Wells Fargo analyst Brian Fitzgerald. Reporting by Tiyashi Datta and Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra EluriOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

[1/2] A Google LLC logo is seen at the Google offices in the Chelsea section of New York City, U.S., January 20, 2023. REUTERS/Shannon StapletonCompanies Google Inc FollowAlphabet Inc FollowWASHINGTON, Jan 25 (Reuters) - U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, one of the judges who stayed then-President Donald Trump's executive order restricting immigration into the United States, has been named to oversee the Justice Department's antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google over its alleged abuse of dominance in online advertising technology. read moreAccording to a filing to the docket late Tuesday, Brinkema, 78 and whose court is in Alexandria, Virginia, near Washington, was assigned to oversee the case. It is the second antitrust lawsuit filed by the department, with the first coming near the end of the Trump administration in 2020. In addition to putting a stay on Trump's executive order, Brinkema, who was nominated by President Bill Clinton, also oversaw the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, who is now in a maximum security prison in Colorado.

It is not clear whether the special grand jury's findings will lead to criminal charges against Trump or anyone else for election interference. Members of the special grand jury voted to recommend the public release of their findings. In a statement on Monday, his Georgia-based legal team said the grand jury never subpoenaed Trump or asked him to appear voluntarily. The special grand jury had subpoena power to gather evidence and compel witness testimony but did not have the authority to issue indictments. If Willis determines that charges are warranted based on the findings, she could seek indictments from a regular grand jury.

Companies Walmart Inc FollowJan 24 (Reuters) - The man accused of killing 23 people and injuring dozens more in a 2019 massacre targeting people of Mexican descent at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, will plead guilty to federal hate crimes charges, his attorneys said in a court filing. It comes days after federal prosecutors said they will not seek the death penalty for the shooter, Patrick Crusius. "Defendant notifies the Court of his intention to enter a plea of guilty to the pending Indictment," the motion filed in court read. He pleaded not guilty in 2020 to 90 federal hate crime charges in the case. A Texas judge last year put off a state trial in the case as federal prosecutors determined whether they would seek capital punishment.

BERLIN, Jan 23 (Reuters) - Germany's cartel office regulator said on Monday it had initiated proceedings against payment company PayPal Europe (PYPL.O) over the possibility that it hindered competition. The subject of the proceedings was PayPal's rules for extra charges and the presentation of PayPal in the terms of use for Germany, the watchdog said. "These clauses could restrict competition and constitute a violation of the prohibition of abuse," said cartel office chief Andreas Mundt in a statement. "We will now examine what market power PayPal has and to what extent online merchants are dependent on offering PayPal as a payment method." Changes to Germany's antitrust laws for digital corporations, which came into effect in 2021, give the cartel office more power in identifying and prohibiting some companies' dominant positions.

Jan 23 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit by three former Whole Foods employees who said they were illegally fired for opposing the upscale grocery chain's alleged discriminatory discipline of workers who wore "Black Lives Matter" masks. "The evidence demonstrates only that Whole Foods did not strenuously enforce the dress code policy until mid-2020, and that when it increased enforcement, it did so uniformly," she added. Last June, the federal appeals court in Boston upheld Burroughs' February 2021 dismissal of a proposed class action over the dress code, on somewhat different legal grounds than hers. The Black Lives Matter movement started after police killed several Black people in the United States. The case is Kinzer et al v Whole Foods Market Inc, U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts, No.

[1/2] Alec Baldwin arrives at the 2nd Annual NFL Honors in New Orleans, Louisiana, February 2, 2013. REUTERS/Lucy NicholsonJan 23 (Reuters) - Western movie "Rust" will continue filming with Alec Baldwin in the lead role, a lawyer for the production said Monday, days after prosecutors said they would charge the actor in the fatal shooting of the movie's cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Baldwin will continue to play grandfather Harland Rust while Joel Souza will return as "Rust" director following his wounding in the October 2021 shooting, said Melina Spadone, an attorney for Rust Movie Productions. Baldwin in October reached a settlement of a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the Hutchins family under which Hutchins would take a production role in "Rust" and filming would resume this month. Baldwin has denied responsibility for the shooting, saying live ammunition should never have been allowed on set and weapons handlers were responsible for firearm safety.

WASHINGTON, Jan 23 (Reuters) - An Arkansas man who famously was photographed putting his feet up on a desk inside then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office during the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol was convicted on eight counts by a Washington jury on Monday, the Justice Department said. A photo of him with his feet propped up on a desk in Pelosi's office went viral in the days following the attack. He also took an envelope from the desk that was addressed to another member of Congress and digitally signed by Pelosi. The jury convicted Barnett of eight crimes, including theft of government property and obstructing an official proceeding. In explaining the famous photograph, he told the jury: “That’s how I sit at my desk at home,” the newspaper reported.

Jan 23 - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday asked President Joe Biden's administration to weigh in on whether it should review Republican-backed laws in Texas and Florida that would undercut efforts by major social media companies to curb content deemed objectionable on their platforms, actions the states call impermissible censorship. Supporters of the laws have argued that social media platforms have silenced conservative voices while advocates for the judicious use of curbing content have argued for the need to stop misinformation and advocacy for extremist causes. Florida is seeking to revive its law after a lower court ruled largely against it, while the industry groups are appealing a separate lower court decision upholding the Texas law, which the Supreme Court had blocked at an earlier stage of the case. The Texas law forbids social media companies with at least 50 million monthly active users from acting to "censor" users based on "viewpoint." Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022 upheld the Texas law, concluding that it "chills no speech whatsoever.

Companies Deutsche Bank AG FollowJan 23 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away appeals by two former Deutsche Bank AG (DBKGn.DE) commodities traders convicted of manipulating precious metals prices by placing "spoof" orders. The pair were convicted in 2020 for carrying out what prosecutors said was a yearslong spoofing scheme between 2008 and 2013. Their trades created a false sense of supply and demand, and induced other traders to make trades they would otherwise not have made, prosecutors said. On appeal, Vorley and Chanu argued they had not made the kind of explicit false statements targeted by wire-fraud law. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago upheld the convictions last July, saying that "spoofing of this kind falls under the wire fraud prohibition."

The 12-member jury found Oath Keeper members David Moerschel, Joseph Hackett, Roberto Minuta and Edward Vallejo guilty of seditious conspiracy. Seditious conspiracy is a rarely prosecuted Civil War-era law that prohibits plotting to overthrow or destroy the government and carries up to 20 years in prison. A jury found Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and another Florida-based leader of the group guilty of seditious conspiracy in a separate trial in November. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta split the Oath Keepers seditious conspiracy case into two separate trials due to space limitations and the risks of COVID-19 contagion. Jurors heard testimony and evidence in the second Oath Keepers case for several weeks.

Intended for a political purpose, noneof the counts of the amended complaint stated a cognizable legal claim," Middlebrooks wrote in the 45-page written ruling. Representatives for Trump and his lead attorney in the case, Alina Habba, could not be reached for comment by Reuters on Thursday evening. Trump sued Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, claiming that she and other Democrats sought to rig that election by falsely accusing his campaign of links to Russia. read moreMiddlebrooks, who was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1997, dismissed the case in September, calling the lawsuit "a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him." He has launched a run for the 2024 presidential election, setting up a potential rematch against Biden.

Bangladesh Bank has accused RCBC and several others, including top executives, of conspiring to steal its money. The New York Supreme Court ruled on Jan. 13 that, contrary to Rizal bank's argument, it does have jurisdiction over the case, and dismissed Rizal bank's motion against Bangladesh Bank. In the same ruling, the court ordered the Bangladesh central bank and RCRC to initiate mediation. In response to the ruling, Rizal bank said it would continue to fight the case. Bangladesh Bank has welcomed the court ruling, saying in a statement this week that it clears the way for the matter to progress in court in New York as needed.

Companies Tesla Inc FollowJan 20 (Reuters) - Elon Musk, Tesla Inc's (TSLA.O) chief executive, is likely to be called to testify on Friday in a jury trial over his 2018 tweet that he had "funding secured" to take the electric carmaker private, which shareholders allege cost them millions in trading losses. The billionaire entrepreneur is listed as the third possible witness on Friday, after a securities expert and a Tesla investor, in the class action trial in San Francisco federal court. Fearing leaks to the media, Musk tried to protect the "everyday shareholder" by sending the tweet, which contained "technical inaccuracies," Spiro said. The defendants include current and former Tesla directors, whom Spiro said had "pure" motives in their response to Musk's plan. The trial resumes after a day off on Thursday.

Companies Costco Wholesale Corp FollowJan 17 (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Tuesday said Costco Wholesale Corp (COST.O) must face a lawsuit claiming it falsely advertises and labels its canned tuna as "dolphin safe" despite using fishing methods that harm and kill dolphins. The Issaquah, Washington-based retailer said Wright only speculated about the risk to dolphins in tuna she bought, and that it made no promises about dolphin safety beyond using a "dolphin safe" logo on labels. He said this was particularly important because consumers "overwhelmingly" prefer tuna labeled dolphin-safe when given a choice. The case is Wright v Costco Wholesale Corp, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Mehr Bedi in Bengaluru; Editing by Rosalba O'BrienOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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