A U.S. Air Force MQ-1 Predator, unmanned aerial vehicle, armed with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, performs a low altitude pass during the Aviation Nation 2005 air show at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada in this November 13, 2005 USAF handout photo obtained by Reuters February 6, 2013.

WASHINGTON | Fri Mar 15, 2013 4:36pm EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge twice considered by President Barack Obama for the Supreme Court has rebuked the administration over the secrecy surrounding aerial drone strikes abroad, adding to pressure Obama already faces from fellow Democrats.

A ruling on Friday from Judge Merrick Garland in Washington capped a week of mounting calls for the release of more information and follows a drawn-out confirmation process for the new director of the Central Intelligence agency, John Brennan.

The Obama administration defends the attacks as essential to the fight against al Qaeda and other militants in countries such as Pakistan and Yemen. The strikes have at times killed civilians who were not targets, ignited local anger and frayed diplomatic ties.

A Democratic senator confronted Obama about the drone program at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, the Politico newspaper reported, and on Wednesday a lawyer who led Obama's 2008 presidential transition, John Podesta, wrote an opinion piece accusing the administration of wrongly withholding drone-related legal opinions.

Garland, writing for himself and two other judges on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, criticized the Central Intelligence Agency for refusing in a lawsuit even to acknowledge the existence of its drone program. He called the CIA's legal reasoning indefensible and a fiction.

"'There comes a point where... courts should not be ignorant as judges of what (they) know as men' and women," Garland wrote, quoting a 1949 Supreme Court opinion.

"We are at that point with respect to the question of whether the CIA has any documents regarding the subject of drone strikes," he wrote.

The ruling effectively revives a lawsuit in which the American Civil Liberties Union is asking for records from the CIA. Obama administration lawyers have opposed the suit.

TRANSPARENCY DEBATE

In response to the ruling, a National Security Council spokeswoman said the administration had been more transparent than any of its predecessors on the conduct of sensitive counterterrorism operations but would not discuss details of specific operations.

Caitlin Hayden, the spokeswoman, said in a statement: "We will continue to disclose as much as we can - as soon as we can - regarding the framework, the standards, and the process through which we approve such operations."

Justice Department spokeswoman Nanda Chitre said the department was reviewing the decision, while CIA spokesman Todd Ebitz said: "The CIA does not, as a rule, comment on matters before the courts."

Attorney General Eric Holder said in congressional testimony on March 6 that Obama would soon reveal more about the legal rationale for drone strikes.

"We have talked about a need for greater transparency," said Holder, the chief U.S. law enforcement official.

Democrats outside the administration have shown growing impatience with the secrecy. West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller, a former Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, urged Obama to be more open during the president's meeting with Senate Democrats on Tuesday, Politico reported.

Podesta, a Democratic insider who oversaw Obama's 2008 transition, wrote in The Washington Post on Wednesday that Obama "is ignoring the system of checks and balances that has governed our country from its earliest days."

Last week, two Democratic senators voiced similar ideas in voting against confirming John Brennan as Obama's CIA director. Brennan was confirmed to the post on March 7, but the confirmation process was delayed for weeks by concerns about the administration's use of drones.

HIGH COURT CANDIDATE

Garland, 60, was a high-level Justice Department official when President Bill Clinton appointed him a judge.

He was on Obama's list of candidates for the Supreme Court when vacancies arose in 2009 and 2010. Obama chose others, but Garland remains a frequently cited judge on the influential appeals court in Washington.

In its efforts to quash the ACLU's records suit, the CIA said it could neither confirm nor deny whether it had drone records because of security concerns.

The ACLU, which sued under the 1966 Freedom of Information Act, countered that government officials had already acknowledged the drone program in public statements from 2009 to 2012.

The question became whether the statements by Obama, former CIA Director Leon Panetta and former counterterrorism adviser Brennan amounted to an official acknowledgment.

Garland ruled that they did, writing, "The president of the United States has himself publicly acknowledged that the United States uses drone strikes against al Qaeda."

However, if the case follows the pattern of similar suits, the ACLU is likely a long way from getting any records. Its suit now heads back to a trial court, where the CIA could invoke other defenses against the records request.

Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the ACLU, said the ruling would make it more difficult for the government to deflect questions about drones.

"The public surely has a right to know who the government is killing, and why, and in which countries, and on whose orders," Jaffer said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Mark Felsenthal and Tabassum Zakaria; Editing by Howard Goller and David Brunnstrom)

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Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi chant pro-Mursi slogans, during a rally in front of the Sultan Hassan and Refaie mosques in the old town of Cairo November 30, 2012.

CAIRO | Mon Feb 18, 2013 6:30am EST

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's constitutional court rejected five articles of a draft election law on Monday and sent the text back to the country's temporary legislature for redrafting in a ruling that may delay a parliamentary poll due in April.

"The court has returned the draft parliamentary electoral law to the Shura Council after making five observations on five articles which it found unconstitutional," a court statement said.

It did not immediately disclose which parts of the law had been censured, but the court said it would issue a fuller statement later in the day.

A source in President Mohamed Mursi's office said before the decision that if the court found fault with the law, it could delay passage of the law, and hence the election, by a couple of weeks, but probably not months.

Mursi had been expected to promulgate the electoral law by February 25 and set a date two months later for voting, probably in more than one stage for different regions because of a shortage of judicial poll supervisors.

The constitutional court, made up partly of judges from ousted former President Hosni Mubarak's era, has intervened repeatedly in the transition, dissolving the Islamist-dominated parliament elected after the 2011 pro-democracy uprising.

Its composition was changed by the new constitution passed by a referendum in December.

Mursi was criticized in October for issuing a decree giving himself powers to override the judiciary. He backed down and dropped the decree weeks later following widespread protests.

(Reporting by Marwa Awad; Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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Samsung Electronics chairman Lee Kun-Hee arrives at Gimpo airport in Seoul after he visited several European countries and Japan, May 24, 2012.

SEOUL | Fri Feb 1, 2013 2:17am EST

SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd Chairman Lee Kun-hee fended off a lawsuit by estranged family members demanding he hand over billions of dollars of shares in Samsung companies as a South Korean court ruled in his favor on Friday.

Lee, 71, and Samsung Everland, a de facto holding company for the country's largest conglomerate, were defending against three lawsuits by Lee's relatives seeking nearly $4 billion in assets in Samsung Life Insurance Co Ltd, which sits at the heart of the web of Samsung group shareholdings, and Samsung Electronics, the group's crown jewel.

The lawsuit was unlikely to have deprived Lee of his control over Samsung Electronics, the world's biggest maker of smartphones, TVs and memory chips.

But a ruling against him would have diluted his holdings and could have forced a reshuffling of the intricate shareholdings across the Samsung group if he were to retain his grip.

It also came at a key juncture for the electronics giant's successions plans, just months after Lee's son Jay Y. Lee, 44, was promoted to vice chairman.

Samsung has come to symbolize the success of South Korea's "chaebol" conglomerates on the global stage, where it is battling Apple Inc and its Galaxy smartphone is outselling the iPhone.

A judge at the Seoul Central District Court ruled that Lee could retain more than $1 billion in Samsung Electronics shares and another $1 billion in shares of Samsung Life.

Samsung Everland, a small zoo operator, was also allowed to keep its $1 billion stake in Samsung Life. Lee will remain Samsung Life's biggest shareholder with a 20.76 percent stake.

The lawsuits accused Lee of hiding from his siblings billions of dollars in shareholdings inherited from his father, Samsung's founder, while Lee countered that as his father's chosen successor, he had free rein to transfer group company shares.

HAPPY TOGETHER?

"This is a totally unexpected ruling and we'll decide whether to appeal after discussing with our clients," Cha Dong-eon, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, told reporters.

Lawyers for Lee, who has been travelling abroad since early January, said the ruling was reasonable.

Shares in Samsung Life closed nearly 3 percent higher after the ruling, while Samsung Electronics sagged 0.5 percent. Seoul's benchmark Kospi fell 0.2 percent.

The trial, which exposed family intrigues behind South Korea's powerful chaebol, coincides with rising public resentment towards the conglomerates, stirred by their dominance in the economy and widening wealth gaps in society.

The ruling comes only a day after Chey Tae-won, chairman of South Korean chaebol company SK Holdings Co Ltd, was sent to prison on embezzlement charges, as the country seeks to level out the playing field between big business groups and the "economically weak".

Lee, South Korea's richest man, was worth an estimated $8.3 billion as of March 2012, according to Forbes Magazine.

He owns less than 4 percent of Samsung Electronics, but through family stakes in Samsung Everland and Samsung Life he exercises substantial control over the electronics firm and the other 80 or so Samsung companies, which operate in industries from construction to hotels to fashion.

The ownership of hidden assets came into focus in 2011, after a tax probe into Lee that followed the transfer of shares from nominee accounts to his own name. He was later indicted on tax evasion charges but pardoned by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

South Korea is no stranger to the family feuds that have engulfed other Asia dynasties such as India's Ambani family. Hyundai Group, once the biggest of the chaebol, split into two after a row between two brothers, one side becoming Hyundai Motor Co and the other Hyundai Group.

Before delivering his verdict, the judge said he wished for a happy ending to the family dispute.

"Regardless of the truth of what happened or the final outcome of this case, I think it may also have been one of the late founder's wishes that both parties have a happy life together with no quarrels," the judge said.

($1 = 1085.4750 Korean won)

(Writing by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

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PHNOM PENH | Thu Dec 27, 2012 2:41am EST

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - A Cambodian court ordered the return to prison on Thursday of two men seen by rights groups as scapegoats for the 2005 murder of a top unionist, the latest controversial ruling in a country chided for its low judicial standards.

The Appeals Court upheld a lower court's handing down of 20-year jail terms for Born Samnang and Sok Sam Oeun for killing Free Trade Union (FTU) leader Chea Vichea, despite weak evidence.

Following a public outcry, the Supreme Court released the two on bail in 2008 after three years in jail to allow further investigation. The Appeals Court on Thursday made no mention of any new evidence against them.

"Please help me, this is very unjust," Born Samnang shouted as he was taken away by police. He wept and said he would seek help from King Norodom Sihamoni to clear his name.

Cambodia's positive image among investors as one of Asia's most promising emerging economies and a cheaper alternative to China is being dented by allegations of rampant rights abuses and political interference in the judiciary to silence dissent or allow well-connected figures to walk free.

Violence against union leaders is not uncommon in Cambodia and activists say scapegoats have been found to ensure those instigating the attacks go unpunished.

As Cambodia's $4.2 billion garment manufacturing sector grows, unions and workers are becoming increasingly emboldened, holding protests and strikes over pay and working conditions.

Rights groups were incensed last week when a local politician connected with the ruling party was cleared by a court of firing bullets into a crowd of striking factory workers earlier this year, wounding three women.

Chea Mony, the current FTU president and brother of the late Chea Vichea, said he was shocked by Thursday's ruling and criticized the authorities for failing to bring the real culprits to justice.

"We have not seen any light of justice at all in this case," Chea Mony told Reuters. "The court is well aware of what's going on and that it lacks its independence."

(Editing by Martin Petty)

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A generic picture of the number keypad on a computer keyboard. OFFPO

NEW YORK | Wed Dec 26, 2012 2:53pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - In a decision that could make it easier for businesses to police cybertheft in the workplace, a U.S. appeals court revived a chemical company's lawsuit accusing a former Toronto-area employee of using her home computer to steal trade secrets from its Connecticut server.

Reversing a lower court ruling, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said U.S.-based MacDermid Inc may pursue civil damages claims against a former account manager under Connecticut state law, even though she conducted her alleged improper activity from her home in Fort Erie, Ontario.

Wednesday's decision may make it easier for U.S. companies to crack down on alleged computer theft that occurs in remote locations, including outside the country. In recent years, U.S. courts increasingly have dealt with cases involving downloads of corporate information by employees, both in criminal cases brought by prosecutors and civil cases filed by companies.

Jackie Deiter, the MacDermid account manager, had worked for the Waterbury, Connecticut-based company's MacDermid Chemicals unit in Mississauga, Ontario, from May 2008 until her termination in April 2011 for reasons unrelated to the lawsuit.

The company accused her of violating Connecticut laws on unauthorized computer access and misappropriating trade secrets by emailing customer data, laboratory reports, and pricing lists drawn from its Waterbury server. It said this occurred soon after Deiter had learned she was about to be fired.

Deiter admitted to emailing materials, but said in court papers that she did so for her job, and because she could not print at home from her employer-issued laptop.

U.S. District Judge Warren Eginton in New Haven, Connecticut said in November 2011 that he had no jurisdiction over MacDermid's lawsuit because Deiter had merely emailed information "from one computer in Canada to another computer in Canada."

But a unanimous three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit said MacDermid's server was a computer under Connecticut law, and that it did not matter that Deiter had accessed it from outside the state, which she had never visited.

"Most Internet users, perhaps, have no idea of the location of the servers through which they send their emails," Circuit Judge Barrington Parker wrote for the panel.

"Here, however, MacDermid has alleged that Deiter knew that the email servers she used and the confidential files she misappropriated were both located in Connecticut," he added.

Parker also said "efficiency and social policies against computer-based theft are generally best served" by handling lawsuits in the states where computer files are misappropriated.

William Charamut, a lawyer for Deiter, declined to comment. Lawyers for MacDermid did not immediately respond to requests for comment. No criminal charges have been filed against Deiter.

In February, the 2nd Circuit threw out a federal criminal case against a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc computer programmer, saying his alleged theft of high-frequency trading code was not a crime under federal law.

Six months later, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance brought New York state criminal charges against the programmer, Sergey Aleynikov, over the same activity. Aleynikov has pleaded not guilty.

The 2nd Circuit has jurisdiction in Connecticut, New York and Vermont. It is among the more influential federal appeals courts, and other circuits often follow its reasoning.

The case is MacDermid Inc v. Deiter, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 11-5388.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Martha Graybow and Leslie Gevirtz)

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A gallery worker walks past Seagram murals by Russian-born American painter Mark Rothko during a media view of the first major exhibition dedicated to his late works at the Tate Modern in London September 24, 2008.

LONDON | Wed Oct 10, 2012 11:50am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - A Polish man accused of scrawling his signature on a painting by Mark Rothko worth tens of millions of dollars in a British museum pleaded not guilty to criminal damage on Wednesday.

Wlodzimierz Umaniec listened expressionlessly via video-link to the allegation that he stepped over a wire in front of Rothko's "Black on Maroon" in London's Tate Modern gallery on Sunday and wrote "Vladimir Umanets '12 A potential piece of yellowism" on the canvas.

The 26 year-old Polish national, who has lived in Britain for the last three years but has no fixed address in the country, was refused bail and will appear in court again on October 16.

His lawyer told the local London area Camberwell Green magistrates court that Umaniec would be denying the charge and was willing to stand trial.

"This may be cynical but he might welcome it, so he can have the discussion he wishes to have about the art," said defence solicitor David Clark.

The Tate Modern closed briefly on Sunday after witnesses reported the damage.

No precise value has been put on the damaged painting, but earlier this year Rothko's "Orange, Red, Yellow" sold for 53.8 million pounds ($86 million)in New York - the highest price paid for a piece of post-war art at auction.

(Reporting By Isla Binnie, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress in the ''Innocence of Muslims'', an anti-Islam movie that has spawned violent protests across the Muslim world, attends a news conference outside her attorney's office after a court hearing in Los Angeles, California September 20, 2012.

LOS ANGELES | Thu Sep 27, 2012 3:58pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - An actress who said she was duped into appearing in an anti-Islam film that stoked violent protests across the Muslim world took her legal bid to federal court on Wednesday in a renewed effort to force it off YouTube.

The lawsuit filed by Cindy Lee Garcia names the popular online video site YouTube and its parent company Google Inc. as defendants, along with the Egyptian-American Coptic Christian from California believed to be behind the making of the film.

Last week, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge denied Garcia's request for a temporary restraining order that would have required YouTube to stop posting the crudely made 13-minute video, finding the actress was unlikely to prevail on the merits of her case in state court.

As in her previous lawsuit, Garcia accused the purported filmmaker of fraud, libel and unfair business practices. But her federal lawsuit also asserts a copyright claim to her performance in the video, titled "The Innocence of Muslims."

Garcia's case was the first known civil litigation stemming from the video, billed as a film trailer, which depicts the Prophet Mohammad as a fool and a sexual deviant. The clip sparked a torrent of anti-American unrest in Egypt, Libya and dozens of other Muslim countries over the past two weeks.

The outbreak of violence coincided with an attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

U.S. and other foreign embassies were also stormed in various cities across the Middle East, Asia and Africa. For many Muslims, any depiction of the prophet is considered blasphemous.

Google has refused to remove the film from YouTube, despite pressure from the White House and others to take it down, though the company has blocked the trailer in Egypt, Libya and other Muslim countries.

COPYRIGHT ISSUE

Garcia's lawyer argued in court last week that her client, who is from Bakersfield, California, has suffered harm similar to a person whose privacy is violated by the unauthorized release of a sex tape.

But Google's attorneys said that the rights of an actor do not protect that person from how a film is perceived.

In her latest lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Santa Clara, California, Garcia says that Google is infringing on the copyright she holds to her performance in the film by distributing the video without her approval via YouTube.

Garcia's lawsuit identifies Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, a Los Angeles-area Coptic man who has served time in federal prison for bank fraud, as the film's producer.

On Saturday, a Pakistani cleric offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who killed the film's maker. Garcia said in her lawsuit that an Egyptian cleric had issued a fatwa, or religious edict, against anyone who served as a director, producer or actor in the video.

According to Garcia, Nakoula operated under the assumed name of Sam Bacile, misleading her and other actors into appearing in a film they believed was an adventure drama called "Desert Warrior."

After the fact, however, she learned that some of her lines spoken in the production had been dubbed over.

The alteration made it look like Garcia "voluntarily performed in a hateful, anti-Islamic production," the lawsuit says, adding that she has "been subjected to credible death threats and is in fear for her life and the life and safety of anyone associated with her."

Nakoula has been in hiding for much of the past two weeks after being questioned by federal authorities looking into whether he may have violated terms of his probation in the making or promotion of the video.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman)

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1 of 9. Dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei (C) buys fruit from a local vendor on the street outside the Chaoyang District Court before trying to attend his appeal verdict hearing in Beijing September 27, 2012.

BEIJING | Thu Sep 27, 2012 10:21am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court upheld a $2.4 million tax evasion fine against China's most famous dissident Ai Weiwei on Thursday, ending his long legal battle with the authorities but paving the way for him to be jailed if he does not pay.

The loss of Ai's second appeal in a higher court means that the world-renowned artist could risk arrest if he does not pay a remaining fine of around 6.6 million yuan ($1.05 million), in a case that has further tarnished China's poor human rights reputation.

He has paid a bond of 8.45 million yuan already lodged with the tax authorities to contest the tax charge.

Ai, whose 81-day detention last year sparked an international outcry, told Reuters he will not pay the remaining fine as that would be tacit acknowledgement of the case's legality, which he has always maintained is trumped up.

Ai said he is uncertain whether he faces arrest if he doesn't do so.

"If I need to go to jail, there's nothing I can do about it," Ai said. "This country has no fairness and justice, even if I've paid the 6 million yuan, I still could possibly go to jail. They don't need an excuse to arrest me - they can always find another excuse at any time."

The case is widely seen by activists as an attempt to muzzle the outspoken artist, who has repeatedly criticized the Chinese government for flouting the rule of law and the rights of citizens.

Ai, 55, had asked the Chaoyang District Court to overturn the city tax office's rejection of his appeal against the 15 million yuan ($2.38 million) tax evasion penalty imposed on the company he works for, Beijing Fake Cultural Development Ltd, which produces his art and designs.

Ai, who has waged a near five-month long legal battle with a Beijing tax agency, said he could not appeal further and has not enough cash to pay the remaining 6.6 million yuan, adding that the tax agency has not given him a deadline to pay.

Government efforts to silence Ai have frequently backfired, as demonstrated by an outpouring of public sympathy - and cash - in response to the tax penalty.

Ai had collected more than 9 million yuan, he says he will start to return, from about 30,000 donors, to pay the bond. Many of Ai's supporters folded money into paper planes that were flown over the walls of his home.

Earlier, an angry Ai, who was allowed to attend court in person for the first time and without an obvious police presence, said he scolded the judge for being a "shame and a disgrace".

"It (the court) didn't respect the facts or give us a chance to defend ourselves; it has no regard for taxpayers' rights," he told reporters.

He said the court had flouted Chinese law by not providing a written notification of the appeal verdict three days in advance, and only notifying his wife, Lu Qing, by telephone earlier this week. One of his lawyers, Pu Zhiqiang, is in France and could not make it back in time.

Ai's loss of his appeal is a predictable outcome in a country where the courts, controlled by the ruling Communist Party, toe the government line. It also underscores Beijing's increasing intolerance of dissent ahead of a tricky transition of power later this year.

"I never imagined the court would disregard the facts this much, be so unreasonable and so insulting," Ai said.

($1 = 6.3066 Chinese yuan)

(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard and Maxim Duncan; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)

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