New York-based bond trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald Securities, which lost two-thirds of its workers in the World Trade Center attack of September 11, 2001, has sued Saudi Arabia and dozens of other defendants — including numerous banks and Islamic charities — in U.S. District Court in New York for a mere $7 billion for allegedly supporting al Qaeda before the attack through financing, safe houses, weapons and money laundering.
Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers.
The lawsuit involves many of the same defendants, transactions, events and questions of law as an earlier $300 billion lawsuit that various insurance companies have brought against Saudi Arabia, terrorist groups, companies and other countries supporting terrorism. That lawsuit is still pending.
The Cantor Fitzgerald lawsuit takes dead aim at Saudi Arabia, saying the kingdom “knew and intended that these Saudi-based charity and relief organization defendants would provide financial and material support and substantial assistance to al Qaeda.” The lawsuit alleges that Saudi Arabia engaged in a pattern of racketeering as it participated directly and indirectly in al Qaeda’s work through funding and controllings its “alter-ego” charities and relief organizations. In addition, Cantor Fitzgerald alleges that Saudi Arabia materially supported al Qaeda by helping to raise money for it, by intentionally employing al Qaeda operatives, by laundering its money and by providing al Qaeda with safe houses, false documents and ways to obtain weapons and military equipment.
Interestingly, the U.S. federal government has generally opposed this type of lawsuit on the grounds that it interferes with the government’s exclusive power to conduct foreign policy. No word yet on the government’s stance toward the Cantor Fitzgerald lawsuit.

Ian Ayres of Yale Law School and Katherine K. Baker of the Illinois Institute of Technology have posted this rather interesting article on SSRN, which is described in the following abstract:

This article attempts to make progress on both the problems of sexually transmitted disease and acquaintance rape by proposing a new crime of reckless sexual conduct. A defendant would be guilty of reckless sexual conduct if, in a first sexual encounter with another particular person, the defendant had sexual intercourse without using a condom. Consent to unprotected intercourse would be an affirmative defense, to be established by the defendant with a preponderance of the evidence. As an empirical matter, first-encounter unprotected sex greatly increases the epidemiological force of sexually transmitted disease and a substantial proportion of acquaintance rape occurs in unprotected first encounters.
The new law, by increasing condom use and the quality of communication in first sexual encounters, can reduce the spread of sexually transmitted disease and decrease the incidence of acquaintance rape.