A Stunning New Verdict Rewrites the Rules of Corporate Morality; The New York Times, April 17, 2026

M. GESSEN, The New York Times; A Stunning New Verdict Rewrites the Rules of Corporate Morality 

"At the conference I met Rebecca Hamilton, a cheerful war-crimes lawyer who is now a law professor at American University in Washington. Corporate complicity is her area of study. In a 2022 law review article titled “Platform-Enabled Crimes,” she wrote that Facebook (now Meta) could have acted to help prevent the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar in 2017 but that it had chosen not to. The decision not to act, Hamilton wrote, had been driven by both the profit motive and a lack of interest in local context. Now Hamilton is working on a book on corporate enablers of atrocity crime. “Securing profit isn’t some abstraction achieved in pristine boardrooms in capital cities,” she wrote in an email to me on Monday after the Lafarge verdict, which had made her, too, very happy. “It is a process that plays out in real locations, with real people, including those living through conflict.”"

Trump threatens "whole civilization will die tonight" amid 11th hour Iran negotiations; Axios, April 7, 2026

 Barak Ravid, Axios ; Trump threatens "whole civilization will die tonight" amid 11th hour Iran negotiations

"President Trump threatened on Tuesday to wipe out the entire Iranian "civilization" if the regime doesn't meet his 8pm ET deadline for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

The big picture: Trump's new threat, which was the most harrowing in a series of public warnings to Iran, seems to be part of an effort to convince Tehran the risks of not making a swift deal are too dire to countenance.

Iran has accused Trump of planning to commit war crimes. The regime has not shown much flexibility around a deal in public comments, though sources tell Axios there has been some progress behind the scenes in the past 48 hours.

Vice President Vance, who is involved in the Iran diplomacy, said at a press conference in Budapest on Tuesday that intense negotiations would take place right up to Trump's deadline. "I am hopeful it will get to a good resolution," he said. 

What he's saying: "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don't want that to happen, but it probably will," Trump wrote on Truth Social."

‘It’s not going to be some miraculous recovery’: film charts healing of Ukrainian children rescued from Russia; The Guardian, December 11, 2025

Jennifer Rankin , The Guardian ; ‘It’s not going to be some miraculous recovery’: film charts healing of Ukrainian children rescued from Russia

"Between therapy sessions, the children walk golden retrievers, ride ponies in the verdant forest and swim in the Baltic Sea. Therapists hope the natural respite will soothe their souls and help undo some of the trauma of their separation in Russian custody.

The families in this film are unusual: only a minority of Ukraine’s stolen children have been reunited with their parents.

Ukraine’s government has identified 19,546 children who have been unlawfully deported or forcibly transferred to Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022. The government-backed Bring Kids Back initiative estimates 1,898 have returned from deportation, forced transfers and occupied Ukraine.

But researchers say the true scale of the removals is unclear as Russian authorities erase records and falsify identities. The international criminal court has issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin and Russia’s commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, over the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

In September, Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of a double crime against Ukraine’s children: “Russia first abducted them and deported them, and now it tries to steal everything they have inside – their culture, their character, their bond with family and their identity,” he said.

The documentary, After the Rain, does not tell this political story. The British director Sarah McCarthy, who has Ukrainian heritage, said she wanted to “introduce as many people as I could to these children as children, not as a statistic, not as a political story, just as kids with all their mischief and fun and longing”."

Lawmakers warn Hegseth may have committed war crimes following second-strike report; Politico, November 30, 2025

JACOB WENDLER, Politico; Lawmakers warn Hegseth may have committed war crimes following second-strike report

"Lawmakers from both parties raised alarms Sunday that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth may have committed a war crime following a report that he ordered a follow-on attack to kill survivors of a boat strike in September.

The Washington Post reported last week that Hegseth authorized a highly unusual strike to kill all survivors of one of the Trump administration’s attacks in recent months on boats allegedly carrying drugs in international waters. POLITICO has not independently verified the Post’s reporting."

Judge Bars Trump Administration From Punishing 2 Law Professors for I.C.C. Work; The New York Times, July 30, 2025

 Zach Montague, The New York Times; Judge Bars Trump Administration From Punishing 2 Law Professors for I.C.C. Work

"A federal judge on Wednesday permanently barred the Trump administration from imposing penalties on two law professors over their involvement with the International Criminal Court, finding that the threat violated their First Amendment rights...

Judge Furman’s ruling mirrored the conclusions of another judge during President Trump’s first term, who found in January 2021 that a similar executive order Mr. Trump had signed likely forced Mr. Rona and three other professors to abandon or reconsider speech and legal advocacy out of fear that the order could be enforced against them."