Lead Story

Dubai is set to introduce a dedicated rental index for shared housing units as part of new regulations aimed at improving transparency and bringing greater structure to the emirate’s growing shared accommodation sector.

Under Dubai Law No. 4 of 2026 regulating shared housing, the Dubai Land Department (DLD) will establish and periodically update the index, according to practical guidance published by LexisNexis Middle East on the new legislation.

The index will consider the technical and service specifications of individual shared housing units. However, details on its launch date, rental calculation methodology and whether rates will be determined based on individual units, rooms, bed spaces or allocated residential areas have not yet been announced.

Dubai currently operates a rental index that serves as an official benchmark for calculating permitted rent increases during tenancy renewals. The new index will specifically apply to properties licensed for shared housing, creating a separate framework for this segment of the market.

A note published by Mitchell’s Commercial Real Estate said the initiative could help standardise pricing practices, reduce informal rent-setting arrangements and improve transparency across the shared housing sector.

For landlords, the new system may limit excessive pricing practices in unregulated arrangements while providing greater predictability in rental returns and ensuring closer alignment with market conditions.

The DLD will also develop standard tenancy and management contract templates for shared housing and make them available on its website.

These contracts must include essential details such as the landlord’s information, the number of occupants, property details and the specific space allocated for shared accommodation.

The law also requires the creation of an electronic Shared Housing Register, which will maintain records of approved units, tenancy contracts and residents. The register will be connected to a unified digital permit platform operated by Dubai Municipality.

Permits Required for Shared Housing Operations

Under the new regulations, individuals and companies will not be permitted to convert properties into shared housing units without obtaining an official permit.

Permits will generally remain valid for one year and may be renewed for additional periods. Property owners can apply for two-year permits, while renewal requests must be submitted at least 30 days before the expiry date.

Dubai Municipality has stated that permit applications will be processed through its digital platforms once the relevant procedures and requirements are announced.

Authorities will issue permits only after confirming that properties comply with planning, construction, health, fire safety, sanitation, security and electrical safety standards.

The approval process will also consider factors including maximum occupancy limits, minimum space requirements per resident and the availability of shared facilities.

Existing owners and operators of shared housing facilities will have one year from the implementation of the law to ensure their properties and operations comply with the new requirements. The Director-General of Dubai Municipality may grant a one-time extension where necessary.

Non-compliance with the law may lead to fines ranging from Dh500 to Dh500,000. Repeat violations committed within one year may result in double penalties, subject to a maximum fine of Dh1 million.

The introduction of a dedicated rental index and mandatory licensing framework marks a significant step towards formalising Dubai’s shared housing market, ensuring better oversight while creating clearer rights and obligations for landlords and residents.

As artificial intelligence becomes an increasingly common source of emotional support and mental health advice, US lawmakers are moving to tighten oversight of AI-powered therapy chatbots amid growing concerns about patient safety, misleading claims and the lack of a unified federal regulatory framework.

The latest wave of state legislation follows a series of lawsuits and mounting evidence that millions of people, particularly young adults and adolescents, are turning to AI chatbots for mental health guidance despite concerns that such tools may not be equipped to respond safely to vulnerable users.

According to a report by Bloomberg Law, states including Tennessee, Colorado and Maine have enacted new measures this year to restrict how AI can be marketed or used in mental health settings. Their actions build on legislation introduced in Illinois, Nevada and Utah in 2025, reflecting a broader trend of state governments attempting to regulate an area where federal standards remain limited.

Lawsuits Highlight Safety Concerns

The regulatory push gained momentum following legal action against Character Technologies Inc., the company behind the Character.ai platform.

In May, Pennsylvania sued the company, alleging that one of its AI chatbots, named "Emilie", falsely presented itself as a licensed therapist with seven years of professional experience and qualifications from Imperial College London. According to the lawsuit, those credentials were entirely fictional, despite the chatbot reportedly engaging in more than 45,000 conversations with users seeking psychological support.

The Pennsylvania case followed an earlier lawsuit filed in Kentucky, which accused the company of exposing minors to harmful interactions through its chatbot platform.

Character.ai has rejected suggestions that its platform is intended to replace professional care. A company spokesperson said its platform contains clear disclaimers stating that users should not rely on its chatbots for professional advice. The company added that it remains committed to working with regulators, safety experts and other stakeholders to improve safeguards on what it describes as an entertainment-focused AI platform.

AI Becomes an Increasingly Common Source of Support

The popularity of AI for emotional wellbeing has risen sharply over the past year.

According to research cited by Bloomberg Law, a survey involving more than 42 million young people and adults in the United States found that almost one in five had used AI chatbots for mental health advice. Of those users, approximately 43 per cent reported consulting the technology every month.

The rapid adoption has raised concerns among clinicians, particularly because many users may disclose deeply personal information or seek help during mental health crises without understanding the limitations of AI-generated responses.

Mental health professionals say the distinction between general-purpose AI chatbots and clinically validated digital therapeutic tools remains poorly understood by the public.

States Restrictions

Several US states have begun drawing clearer legal boundaries around AI's role in mental healthcare.

Tennessee recently passed legislation prohibiting companies from advertising AI systems as licensed mental health professionals. Senator Page Walley, a clinical psychologist who sponsored the measure, said lawmakers wanted to establish a clear legal boundary before AI systems became widely accepted as substitutes for qualified therapists.

Speaking to Bloomberg Law, Walley said digital therapeutic technologies are expanding rapidly and many have genuine clinical value. However, he said lawmakers considered it necessary to prevent businesses from presenting general-purpose AI chatbots as professional therapists without appropriate regulation.

Other states have adopted broader measures.

Colorado, for example, strengthened protections following reports linked to a federal lawsuit alleging that a 13-year-old died by suicide after prolonged interactions with a Character.ai chatbot in 2023.

Vermont and Rhode Island have also recently approved restrictions relating to AI-assisted therapy, while Illinois introduced legislation in 2025 limiting how licensed healthcare professionals may use AI tools when interacting directly with patients.

Illinois Representative Bob Morgan, who sponsored that legislation, told Bloomberg Law that the law was designed to address the growing number of companies marketing AI chatbots as therapists. However, he acknowledged that state legislation cannot realistically regulate how every general-purpose AI model responds to individual users.

Debate Over General-purpose AI

Experts say one of the biggest regulatory challenges is distinguishing between specialised therapeutic AI applications and general-purpose conversational AI systems such as ChatGPT or Claude.

Unlike purpose-built digital therapeutic platforms, which are developed using clinical data and operate within tightly controlled safety frameworks, general AI chatbots are designed primarily for broad conversational tasks and may not reliably identify or respond appropriately to users experiencing severe mental health crises.

Ankur Varma, a psychotherapist and co-founder of Brown Man Therapy, told Bloomberg Law that while he does not actively encourage patients to seek therapy from AI, he is willing to discuss their chatbot interactions during treatment.

His greatest concern, he said, is for individuals who lack access to professional care and may depend entirely on AI systems while dealing with serious emotional distress or suicidal thoughts.

Professional Bodies Call for Federal Standards

Mental health experts increasingly argue that state-by-state regulation may create inconsistent standards that fail to address the complexity of AI-assisted healthcare.

1. Vaile Wright, Senior Director of Health Care Innovation at the American Psychological Association, told Bloomberg Law that some state laws unintentionally restrict legitimate digital wellness applications while leaving general-purpose AI largely unaffected.
   
   

She argued that comprehensive federal regulation would provide more consistent safeguards and better reflect the complexities of mental healthcare.

According to Wright, regulations that overlook important clinical nuances may ultimately fail to achieve their intended purpose, leaving both patients and healthcare providers uncertain about appropriate AI use.

FDA Yet to Approve AI Mental Health Chatbots

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already authorised approximately 1,200 AI-enabled medical devices across various healthcare fields. However, none currently involve generative AI systems designed specifically for mental health therapy.

During an FDA advisory committee meeting last year, experts urged the agency to modernise its regulatory framework for AI-based mental health technologies and establish a publicly accessible database of approved AI therapeutic tools.

Bethany Russell, a licensed therapist specialising in youth mental healthcare, warned the committee that unregulated AI systems could misdiagnose patients or provide unsafe advice to individuals experiencing suicidal thoughts. She argued that AI should complement, rather than replace, qualified mental health professionals.

Perplexity AI must continue defending a lawsuit brought by Reddit after a Manhattan federal judge rejected most of its attempt to dismiss claims that it unlawfully scraped data from the online discussion platform to train its AI-powered search engine.

US District Judge Paul Engelmayer ruled that Reddit could proceed with allegations that Perplexity and three data-scraping companies bypassed protective measures to obtain content for artificial intelligence training.

The judge also held that Reddit had legal standing to pursue claims over the alleged misuse of content posted by its users.

A divided panel of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected President Donald Trump’s interpretation of mandatory detention for non-citizens arrested inside the United States, becoming the sixth federal appeals court to reject a legal argument central to the administration’s mass deportation agenda.

The government argued that non-citizens already living in the US should nevertheless be treated as individuals "seeking admission" to the country, in the same way as those arriving at the border. That interpretation "doesn't hold water", Judge Joshua Kolar wrote in Thursday’s opinion, saying the government's position "rests upon the illogical use of both legal fiction and ordinary meaning for the same term".

For around three decades, including during Trump’s first term, successive presidential administrations recognised that non-citizens arrested within the US were generally entitled to a bond hearing, where they could argue for release from immigration detention. Such hearings are not available to individuals apprehended while "seeking admission" to the country.

Last year, however, the administration adopted a new interpretation of the law, arguing that even undocumented immigrants who had lived in the US for years were still "seeking admission" and were therefore subject to mandatory detention.

Jaciel Cirrus Rojas, the petitioner in the underlying district court case, "has never applied for anything that counts as 'admission' to the United States. Nor can he successfully 'seek' admission, as his unlawful entry renders him inadmissible," Kolar wrote in the majority opinion, which was joined by Judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi. Both judges were appointed by former President Joe Biden.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Diane Sykes, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, argued that relying on the ordinary meaning of words such as "seeking" was of limited value when interpreting a statute as complex as the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).

The law clearly provides that both newly arriving non-citizens and those already living in the country are deemed "applicants for admission", Sykes wrote. Consequently, they are all "subject to the same mandatory detention requirement".

"At this point, only the Supreme Court can bring uniformity and settle this question once and for all. I anticipate that it will do so soon," Sykes wrote, adding that, in her view, the Seventh Circuit had "joined the wrong side" of an increasingly deep circuit split.

The Seventh Circuit’s ruling was issued only hours after the Ninth Circuit also rejected the Trump administration’s claim of broad mandatory detention authority under the INA. The Second, Sixth, Tenth and Eleventh Circuits have reached similar conclusions in recent months, while the Fifth and Eighth Circuits have sided with the administration.

The Fifth Circuit has agreed to rehear the issue before its full bench later this year, examining the mandatory detention policy from the perspective of constitutional due process rather than statutory interpretation.

Both the government and immigrant rights advocates have separately petitioned the US Supreme Court to resolve the dispute over mandatory detention.

Despite repeated setbacks in the lower courts, the administration has continued to defend its interpretation of the law. Immigrant rights advocates argue that the policy advances the administration’s mass deportation objectives because people held in detention are less likely to successfully challenge their removal and more likely to agree to leave the country voluntarily.

Cirrus Rojas is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation and Layde & Parra SC.

The case is Cirrus Rojas v. Olson, Seventh Circuit, No. 25-03127, opinion issued on 30 July 2026.

The US Justice Department has proposed granting immigration judges the power to impose civil contempt fines on immigration lawyers, migrants and other individuals appearing before them — a move that would significantly expand their authority within immigration court proceedings.

Under the proposed rule unveiled by the Trump administration, immigration judges would, for the first time, be permitted to “sanction contemptuous action or inaction” by attorneys appearing before them through monetary civil penalties under an authority enacted by Congress three decades ago.

The proposed contempt powers would apply not only to lawyers but also to migrants involved in immigration proceedings and witnesses appearing before immigration judges. Individuals could face financial penalties for conduct deemed disruptive or damaging to court proceedings.

However, lawyers representing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would be exempt from such penalties under the proposal. The regulation states that immigration judges would not be allowed to exercise contempt authority against federal government lawyers acting in their official capacity. Witnesses testifying as federal government employees in their official roles would also be excluded.

The draft regulation, scheduled for publication in the Federal Register, represents the first formal attempt to fulfil a requirement under a 1996 law requiring the attorney general to establish rules defining immigration judges’ statutory authority to impose civil monetary sanctions.

According to the proposal, contempt powers would allow immigration judges to “control the proceedings before them” and discourage conduct that could interfere with the administration of justice.

The idea of expanding such powers dates back decades. Alberto Gonzales, who served as attorney general during President George W. Bush’s administration, had previously supported regulations allowing immigration judges to have stronger tools to manage courtrooms and safeguard the immigration adjudication system from fraud and abuse.

Immigration judges, who are employees of the Justice Department rather than part of an independent judicial system, have become a key element of President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda. The administration has focused on increasing the number of judges, speeding up deportation proceedings and reducing delays in asylum cases.

The Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees the immigration courts, has appointed more than 300 military lawyers, former ICE attorneys and other legal professionals as immigration judges while dismissing more than 100 judges, according to a Bloomberg Law analysis. The appointments include 41 new permanent and temporary judges who were sworn in on Wednesday.

During Trump’s first term, the Justice Department had also considered introducing regulations on immigration judges’ authority to impose civil monetary penalties, with such plans included in the administration’s Spring 2020 unified agenda.

The latest proposal has drawn criticism from immigration judges and legal advocates. Jeremiah Johnson, executive vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said treating immigration lawyers differently from ICE attorneys raised concerns about equal treatment and due process.

“Proceedings are not fundamentally fair when one party is subject to penalties and the other is not,” Johnson said. He was among the immigration judges removed by the Trump administration last year.

The proposed rule now opens a broader debate over the balance between giving immigration judges greater control over courtrooms and ensuring fairness in a system where judges operate within the executive branch rather than an independent judiciary.

US President Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn an $83.3 million jury award granted to writer E. Jean Carroll in her defamation lawsuit, according to a petition reviewed by Bloomberg News.

The petition, filed on Tuesday, marks Trump's latest legal battle with the former Elle magazine advice columnist, who accused him of sexually assaulting her in the mid-1990s. The filing comes just a month after the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal against a separate $5 million verdict in Carroll's related sexual abuse case.

Trump's appeal centres on the argument that his statements denying Carroll's allegations, made while he was serving as President during his first term, were official acts protected by presidential immunity.

In the petition, Trump's lawyers argued that allegations concerning a President's fitness for office are matters of public concern and that responses to such accusations made in an official capacity should be immune from civil liability.

A spokesperson for Carroll's lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, declined to comment.

Trump is also awaiting the Supreme Court's decision on his request to reconsider its refusal to hear his appeal in the separate $5 million case. He has denied any wrongdoing in both lawsuits.

Carroll alleged that Trump defamed her in 2019 by calling her a liar after she publicly claimed he had sexually assaulted her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in New York in 1996. She argued that Trump falsely accused her of fabricating the allegation for political motives and to promote her book.

A New York jury awarded Carroll $83.3 million in January 2024 after finding that Trump's statements had defamed her. The verdict was later upheld by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Unlike Carroll's other successful lawsuit, this case concerns statements Trump made while serving as President. He contends that the Supreme Court's landmark ruling on presidential immunity should shield him from liability because his comments were made in the course of his official duties.

Trump further argues that the appeals court wrongly concluded he had forfeited his immunity defence by failing to raise it earlier in the litigation.

In the Supreme Court petition, his lawyers described the judgment as unprecedented, arguing that it was the first time a US court had imposed civil damages on a President for conduct undertaken while in office.

The legal team also criticised the appeals court for upholding what it called an "exorbitant" $83.3 million award without first determining whether presidential immunity applied to Trump's statements, which were made from the White House in response to media questions.

Trump is represented by Robert J. Giuffra Jr., co-chair of Sullivan & Cromwell, and Michael Martinich-Sauter of the James Otis Law Group.

The US Department of Justice is expected to ask the Supreme Court to allow it to intervene on Trump's behalf. It has previously indicated that it will seek to substitute the US government as the defendant under the Westfall Act of 1988, which grants federal employees immunity from personal liability for actions taken within the scope of their official duties.

If the substitution is permitted, the lawsuit would be dismissed because the US government cannot be sued for defamation. Similar requests were previously rejected by both the trial court and the appeals court.

The central issue is whether Trump, as President, was acting within the scope of his official duties when he denied Carroll's allegations.

Carroll's separate civil action was brought under a temporary New York law that allowed survivors of historic sexual assaults to pursue civil claims. That case also included a defamation claim based on statements Trump made in 2022 after leaving office, when he was a private citizen.

Johnson & Johnson has agreed to commit $5.5 billion to resolve years of litigation over claims that its talc-based products caused ovarian cancer.

The healthcare giant said the proposed settlement would provide “an efficient conclusion” to the lawsuits. The agreement requires participation from lead plaintiff law firms handling ovarian talc litigation in state and federal courts, representing at least 95% of claims, according to J&J.

If approved, the settlement could bring closure to a legal battle that has challenged the company for more than 15 years. Plaintiffs allege that J&J’s iconic baby powder and other talc-based products were contaminated with asbestos, a substance linked to cancer. The company has consistently denied the allegations, maintaining that its products are safe and that its baby powder never contained asbestos.

J&J discontinued sales of talc-based baby powder in the US in 2020 and globally in 2023, replacing it with a cornstarch-based version.

The company had previously attempted to resolve the litigation through bankruptcy proceedings, a move criticised by opponents who argued that J&J, one of the world’s most profitable companies, was attempting to use bankruptcy protections to limit liability.

J&J has faced around 76,000 lawsuits related to talc products, with analysts warning last year that the number could exceed 90,000. The company said the settlement would allow it to move beyond the litigation and focus on developing medicines and medical devices.

“It provides finality to a saga,” Mizuho healthcare analyst Jared Holz said, commenting on the proposed resolution.

In June, J&J disclosed that it had set aside $11 billion to address legal matters linked to the talc claims. Analysts estimated that resolving the litigation could cost the company between $10 billion and $12 billion if the number of claims reached about 93,000.

The company also faced a major setback last October when a California jury ordered J&J to pay $966 million to the family of a woman who alleged that decades of using the company’s baby powder contributed to her cancer. It was the largest single-user verdict in the long-running litigation.

“While we are confident the company would have ultimately prevailed with further litigation, as it has in the vast majority of cases tried to date, this resolution allows the company to put this matter behind it and remain focused on its mission to develop medicines and devices that save lives,” J&J Vice President of Litigation Erik Haas said in a statement published on the company’s website.

A teenager’s last-minute decision to withdraw his social media addiction lawsuit against Meta Platforms Inc. before trial has delayed one of the most closely watched cases in the growing legal battle over alleged harm caused by social media platforms.

The withdrawal comes after an early success for plaintiffs in the sprawling litigation in Los Angeles, where a jury awarded $6 million to a 20-year-old woman in the first bellwether trial against Meta.

However, the dismissal of the second bellwether case does not significantly change the broader landscape of the mass tort. Seven more trials remain scheduled in the initial group of cases, while social media companies continue to face more than 3,000 individual lawsuits, including those filed before the California Superior Court in Los Angeles County.

“There are other trials that have been chosen as bellwether trials. We’re not dealing with a blank slate,” said Ari Waldman, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine.

The case withdrawn on last Wednesday was filed by a boy identified in court documents as R.K.C., a 15-year-old from Panama City, Florida. According to court records, he began using social media at the age of eight and spent as many as 10 hours a day on various platforms. He alleged that excessive use led to insomnia caused by continuous scrolling.

His claimed injuries included social media addiction, severe depression, suicidal thoughts, binge eating disorder, panic disorder and anxiety.

Lawyers representing R.K.C. said he chose to withdraw the claims against Meta “in light of the overall successful result of the litigation and his concerns about enduring a grueling weekslong trial.”

A Meta spokesperson said the plaintiff had dropped the lawsuit without receiving any payment and reiterated that the company would continue defending what it described as “baseless” claims.

US prosecutors have withdrawn subpoenas issued to journalists at The New York Times (NYT) who reported on security concerns surrounding President Donald Trump’s travel on a new Air Force One aircraft donated by Qatar.

A prosecutor from Manhattan US Attorney Jay Clayton’s office informed a federal judge on Thursday that the government would withdraw the subpoenas, which were issued on July 10 as part of an investigation into the alleged leak of sensitive national security information.

The subpoenas were the latest move by the Trump administration to compel journalists to disclose confidential sources in leak investigations — a practice that press freedom advocates have warned could discourage investigative reporting.

US District Judge Arun Subramanian questioned government lawyers for around 90 minutes about procedural issues in the investigation, including the handling of subpoenas seeking reporters’ phone records.

Following the hearing, prosecutor Sean Buckley told the court that the government was “prepared unilaterally to withdraw the subpoenas”, while adding that the investigation remained ongoing and that officials could seek new subpoenas against the journalists in the future.

Clayton, who was nominated by Trump to become the next US Director of National Intelligence, issued the subpoenas after The New York Times reported that Trump had continued using the existing Air Force One aircraft after concerns were raised that the new plane donated by Qatar lacked anti-missile and other defensive systems.

The government argued that the newspaper’s reporting raised a “substantial national security concern” because it involved the alleged disclosure of classified national defence information while the President was travelling during a period of heightened tensions with a foreign adversary, an apparent reference to Iran.

The reports were based on anonymous sources and emerged around the time a ceasefire in the US-Israeli conflict with Iran collapsed.

The New York Times had asked Judge Subramanian to dismiss the subpoenas, arguing that they were improperly issued and violated constitutional protections for a free press under the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

In court filings, the newspaper alleged that the subpoenas were intended to intimidate and harass journalists. It also accused prosecutors of failing to follow internal Justice Department rules governing the use of subpoenas against members of the media, which require such measures to be used only in exceptional circumstances and with senior-level approval.

A Justice Department spokesperson said the investigation was continuing and that the government would prosecute individuals responsible for leaking classified information that threatened national security.

Buckley denied that the subpoenas were improperly issued but acknowledged that the Department of Justice had failed to notify reporters that their phone records had separately been obtained through subpoenas, as required under applicable rules.

Following the hearing, however, The New York Times said the government had effectively acknowledged that the subpoenas violated legal requirements and “should never have been issued”.

In a court filing earlier in the week, prosecutors argued that the First Amendment does not provide journalists with absolute protection from being required to disclose information during criminal investigations.

Growing Battle Over Press Freedom

Both Republican and Democratic administrations have previously sought to compel journalists to reveal confidential sources during leak investigations. However, press freedom organisations have accused the Trump administration of using subpoenas and search warrants against media organisations too aggressively, including actions involving The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

Critics have also alleged that Trump has used government authority and private lawsuits to pressure and intimidate news organisations.

The administration has rejected those accusations, saying its actions are aimed at prosecuting individuals who leak classified information rather than targeting journalists. Trump’s private legal team has separately argued that it is seeking accountability for what it describes as inaccurate media coverage.