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False Claims Act litigation is more hotly contested than ever before. One such controversial issue plaguing federal courts is the proper application of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 9(b) to actions arising under the False Claims Act. The explosion of litigation under the FCA caused a circuit split to emerge on the correct standard to use when applying Rule 9(b)'s heightened pleading requirement for more particularity. Specifically, courts are split on the level of specificity required to prove that a false claim was submitted to the government. Some apply a "strict" interpretation and require pleadings to include representative samples of the actual false claims that were submitted to the government, while others utilize a more "nuanced" standard and simply demand that complaints include details of a fraudulent scheme paired with reliable indicia to support an inference that claims were submitted. The effect of this uncertainty among the federal circuits means the difference between the dismissal of an action before reaching discovery or the continuation to a potentially multi-million-dollar judgment. As this circuit split implicates vast financial consequences, the Rule 9(b) question in FCA actions is of the utmost importance. This article focuses on how the Eleventh Circuit interprets the requirements of Rule 9(b), in order to contribute to the widespread commentary on how the circuit split may be resolved. Ultimately, if the Supreme Court does decide to grant cert on this issue, this Comment urges that the Eleventh Circuit should serve as a model for the properly balanced application of Rule 9(b) for actions arising under the False Claims Act.

For gay, queer and bisexual men, and men who have sex with men (MSM), the presence of apps such as Grindr, Scruff, Tinder, Recon, and others have long represented a complex online ecosystem in which identities are formed and constructed in a space intensely governed by social, contractual, and – increasingly – criminal law backed regulation and norms. The publication of the UK Government's Online Safety Bill in late 2020 and revised Bill in March 2022 marked a further legal and policy intervention in regulating online harms to improve safety. It follows other interventions, notably the Criminal Justice and Court Act 2015, which criminalises intimate image sharing in cases where it is done without consent and intends to cause distress. This article draws on original focus group data to examine the navigation of these "Dating" Apps and Networks by their users from a novel perspective arguing that the current legal approach risks both over and under-legislating what is a complex and subtle online ecosystem. It focuses on the construction of identities – the characteristic proxies deployed, management of location-aware features, visuality, and images (re)shared. We seek to provide an essential counterpoint to existing and dominant narratives relating to online safety and identity regulation.

Acknowledgments in research publications, like citations, indicate influential contributions to scientific work. However, acknowledgments are different from citations; whereas citations are formal expressions of debt, acknowledgments are arguably more personal, singular, or private expressions of appreciation and contribution. Furthermore, many sources of research funding expect researchers to acknowledge any support that contributed to the published work. Just as citation indexing proved to be an important tool for evaluating research contributions, we argue that acknowledgments can be considered as a metric parallel to citations in the academic audit process. We have developed automated methods for acknowledgment extraction and analysis and show that combining acknowledgment analysis with citation indexing yields a measurable impact of the efficacy of various individuals as well as government, corporate, and university sponsors of scientific work.

The European Union is legally entitled to the revenue from (1) agricultural and sugar levies, (2) customs duties, (3) a 1 percent rate on each Member States' value added tax base, and (4) a resource on the basis of GNP. Currently, the Union is actively involved in the search for a fifth own revenue source. Therefore, the European Commission (DG XIX) has invited the authors to trace who pays the taxes. As requested, our report gives a general account of methods to investigate impacts of taxation. More specifically, we have estimated the incidence of national tax systems (Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom), and the incidence of present own resources and prospective new (tax) resources of the European Union. Up till now, such information was not (readily) available. ; Der Europäischen Union werden gesetzlich folgende Einnahmearten zugeschrieben: (1) aus Agrarabschöpfungen, (2) aus Zöllen, (3) Mehrwertsteuer-Eigenmittel und (4) BSPEigenmittel. Gegenwärtig sucht die Europäische Union nach einer fünften Eigenmittelquelle. Daher hat die Europäische Kommission (DG XIX) die Autoren des vorliegenden Beitrags aufgefordert, zu der Frage 'Wer bezahlt die Steuern?' Stellung zu nehmen. Unser Bericht stellt zunächst einmal die Methoden zur Erforschung der Steuerwirkungen dar. Insbesondere haben wir das Aufkommen und die Verteilung nationaler Steuersysteme (Deutschland, Niederlande, Spanien und Großbritannien), der jetzigen EU-Eigenmittel und der zukünftigen Quellen der EU geschätzt. Bis jetzt waren Informationen dieser Art nicht direkt zugänglich.

National policymakers are increasingly aware that their tax policy options are constrained by international tax competition. Important features of national tax systems - notably the tax mix, tax rates and rules which define the tax base - will influence decisions of firms and individuals regarding the location and (re)structuring of economic activities. The aim of the present paper is twofold: Firstly, we detail the tax mix of four member states of the European Union (Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and United Kingdom). Secondly, the paper aims to trace the distribution of the tax burden over rich and poor households in these four countries. Although tax mix and tax rates differ considerably among the four countries included in the study, the distribution of tax burdens proves to be amazingly similar. ; Die Regierenden eines Landes sind sich zunehmend bewußt, daß ihre steuerpolitischen Entscheidungsmöglichkeiten durch internationale Steuerkonkurrenz eingeschränkt werden. Wichtige Eigenschaften der nationalen Steuersysteme - insbesondere zu nennen sind hierbei die Steuerstruktur, die Steuersätze und die Steuervorschriften, die die Besteuerungsbasis definieren - beeinflussen die Entscheidungen der Firmen und der Individuen hinsichtlich der Standorte und (Re)strukturierung der ökonomischen Aktivitäten.Mit dieser Studie verfolgen wir zwei Ziele: Zuerst gehen wir detailliert auf die Steuerzusammensetzung der vier EU-Mitgliedsländer (Deutschland, Niederlande, Spanien und Großbritannien) ein. Zweitens wird die Verteilung der Steuerlast über reiche und arme Haushalte jeweils für die vier Länder aufgezeigt. Obwohl die Steuerstruktur und die Steuersätze zwischen den vier Ländern, die in der Studie betrachtet werden, sehr unterschiedlich ausfallen, ist die Steuerlastverteilung der betrachteten Länder erstaunlich ähnlich