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'Boston Legal's' Kelley delivers parting shotsNo other current scripted TV series is as political, topical or self-referential as ABC's 'Boston Legal.' After tomorrow night, the show will disappear, ending its five-year run. Created and largely written by David E. Kelley, 'Boston Legal,' which began as a spin-off of Kelley's 'The Practice,' probably won't go gently in its two-hour finale Monday (9 p.m., WTAE). Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Dec 7, 2008Legal Group May Become Very InfluentialThe American Constitution Society for Law and Policy was founded seven years ago to counter a growing right-leaning legal philosophy that has reshaped the American legal landscape on issues from the reach of federal regulation to the separation of church and state. Now, as President-elect Barack Obama assembles his administration, the little-known legal organization stands on the brink of ... Washington Post - Dec 7, 2008Victim impact videos stir unease in criminal casesWriting for a 6-to-3 majority, then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist said prosecutors could balance the unlimited defense mitigation evidence by offering 'a quick glimpse of the life' of the victim. But the court laid out little specific guidance beyond saying that victim impact evidence must not be 'unduly prejudicial' WASHINGTON The images are those of any childhood: a toddler wearing a ... Houston Chronicle - Dec 7, 2008Election was no sweeping mandateChief Justice William Rehnquist liked to take small groups of Supreme Court law clerks to lunch at the Monocle, an old Capitol Hill watering hole near the Senate. He ordered the same meal every time, a hamburger and a beer. Just as predictably, one of the young clerks would ask the chief justice of the United States for career advice. 'Go home,' he would say. Philadelphia Inquirer - Dec 7, 2008O.J. Simpson faces prison during appealLAS VEGAS -- In the harsh light of the morning after his sentencing, O.J. Simpson s future was clear Saturday. His new home will be a prison cell in the Nevada desert with his door to freedom hinging on an appeal of a trial that his lawyers say was filled with errors. This is not a frivolous appeal, Yale Galanter, Simpson s lawyer, said. There were some grave errors made by Judge ... China Post - Dec 7, 2008O.J. lawyer cites trial errorsPHOTO GALLERY O.J. Simpson sentencing LAS VEGAS - In the harsh light of the morning after his sentencing, O.J. Simpson's future was clear Saturday. His new home will be a prison cell in the Nevada desert with his door to freedom hinging on an appeal of a trial that his lawyers say was filled with errors. 'This is not a frivolous appeal,' Yale Galanter, Simpson's lawyer, said. Los Angeles Daily News - Dec 7, 2008Proposed cow, hog fee causes stinkMONTGOMERY, Ala. - For farmers, this stinks: Belching and gaseous cows and hogs could start costing them money if a federal proposal to charge fees for air-polluting animals becomes law. Feeders speak out The Texas Cattle Feeders Association said in a Nov. 25 letter to the EPA that it strongly opposes any effort to regulate greenhouse cases under the Clean Air Act. Amarillo Globe News - Dec 7, 2008Term limits still a bad ideaSen. Mary Easley, D-Tulsa, hopes Oklahoma voters will abolish the 12-year limitation on legislative service that they approved overwhelmingly in 1990. She tried and failed last session to get the issue on the state ballot but undeterred, she will try again when the Legislature convenes Feb. 2. Senate Joint Resolution 3, which Easley has pre-filed, calls for a vote of the people to repeal the ... Tulsa World - Dec 7, 2008Indian Democracy: Time to be 'Of the People, By the People and For the People'Jawahir Mulraj There is, justifiably, a palpable anger at the political leaders for failing miserably in governance. Democracy, as practised in India, is more about survival of politicians, guarded by a bevy of commandos whom they dont pay for, and not about the people. The terrorist attacks in Mumbai have revealed the disdain and insensitivity of our political class for the people who have put ... Seeking Alpha - Dec 7, 2008For sale: Fake futuresPRICIEST FAKE: 'DIPLOMA' FROM U OF T Here is the price list Peng Sun quoted in emails and brought with him to meetings with a Star undercover operative: $3,000 Most university degrees (York, University of Toronto, etc.) $6,000 University of Toronto-post 2006 (with anti-counterfeit hologram) $1,000 Two copies of sealed transcripts, on watermarked paper $1,000 Letter from the Chinese Ministry of ... Toronto Star Online - Dec 7, 2008Fishermen begin to get payments from Valdez oil spillCORDOVA, Alaska A little less than 20 years ago, Mike Webber was king of his own watery world. He was 28, with three herring fishing boats. He leased another boat for halibut, and gill-netted the fat salmon that made Prince William Sound one of the most legendary fisheries in the world. Then came the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. Overnight, it was all gone: Fish prices plummeted. Star-Telegram - Dec 7, 2008Guns and butterUnder the UN umbrella, there are at least 12 conventions and protocols on terrorism and, ad nauseam, UN documents tell us lack of consensus on defining terrorism inhibits adoption of an international comprehensive convention. In 1937, League of Nations did attempt a definition, but nothing much came of that proposed convention. 'All criminal acts directed against a State and intended or ... Yahoo! India - Dec 7, 2008Extremism breeds extremismFollowing the expulsion of families from Beit Hashalom in Hebron, during a radio interview with the BBC, I was asked about our future plans. When I responded that the community would continue to purchase property in Hebron, the interviewer asked, 'But won't that just cause more violence?' I answered, 'If I bought a home in London and was told that a Jew purchasing on 'that side of the city' ... Jerusalem Post - Dec 7, 2008For Some Elderly, Mentally Ill Patients, There's Nowhere to GoBREMERTON The old man is getting worse. He spent his life as an educator active in the community. Now, he is losing his mental capacity. He is becoming combative and confused. He frightens his wife and hits her. Eventually, he ends up in a Harrison Medical Center emergency room. A rush of doctors, bright lights and loud voices whirl around him. He is bewildered. Kitsap Sun - Dec 7, 2008CIBC faces $600M class-action lawsuit hearing MondayTORONTO - The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce squares off in a Toronto courtroom Monday with bank teller Dara Fresco, in a $600-million class-action fight about overtime. It's the first major national class-action lawsuit to be contested at the certification stage and the case could spill over into workrooms across the nation if Justice Joan Lax accepts arguments from Ms. National Post - Dec 7, 2008Columnist: Local judge's Ten Commandments poster ensures religious libertyIn a nation that espouses the motto, 'Liberty and justice for all,' are we really ready for the consequences should the Ten Commandments suddenly become unprotected speech? Fortunately, the Federal Court of Northern Ohio last summer ruled in favor of the display of a form of the Ten Commandments in a courtroom in Richland County. The American Civil Liberties Union challenged Judge James DeWeese ... Mansfield News Journal - Dec 7, 2008How 'visionary' raised - and lost - a fortuneIn Minnesota, his chiropractic clinics collapsed in a flurry of lawsuits and unpaid bills. Two girlfriends had him arrested, one for allegedly abusing her, the other for assertedly trashing her house, according to court records. After a traffic stop, police booked him on suspicion of using cocaine. There was little about John P. Rogers' turbulent, erratic life as a Midwestern businessman to ... San Francisco Chronicle - Dec 7, 2008Martha Crawford von Bulow, famed heiress dies at 76The notorious aristocrat at the center of the von Bulow Trial of the Century greeted the news of his ex-wifes death with sadness, his famous lawyer said yesterday. Its a tragic ending to a tragic story, said s former attorney, Harvard law professor . Claus was falsely accused of something that he didnt do and I was privileged to represent him. This is not a day for celebration. Boston Herald - Dec 7, 2008Will Obama's recession become a 1930s depression?Gordon Bishop Posted:12/08/08 With all of these bailouts and bankruptcies throwing millions of people out of work, is America about to plunge into another Great Depression like the 1930s? General Motors, CitiGroup, AIG and thousands of small, medium and big size businesses are begging the federal government to bail them out. The bailouts could cost taxpayers 2 or 3 trillion dollars, or ... Bayshore Courier - Dec 7, 2008Ex-beau's rant leads to criminal charges (12/05/2008)FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- Locked in a visitation dispute with his ex-girlfriend over their young daughter, J.P. Weichel wanted to vent, court records show. Mr. Weichel, 40, allegedly posted comments about the woman on the Craigslist 'Rants and Raves' forum, accusing her of child abuse and welfare fraud and making crude comments about her sex life. The woman said the postings were defamatory. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Dec 7, 2008What does a Collection Company do?What is a collection company? There are two possibilities. Some creditors will try to deceive a debtor by using a DBA'ed company name, address, and telephone number for their internal collection department. They want to give the impression of an 'outside' agency hoping the debtor will take it more seriously. This strategy is generally only used when the debt is not older than six months old. ... Article Motron - Dec 7, 2008NC death row inmate dies in a hospitalWINSTON-SALEM, N.C. George Franklin Page, a death row inmate convicted of killing a police officer in 1995, has died at a hospital, more than four years after state and federal judges postponed his scheduled execution. He was 68. Page died Friday at WakeMed hospital in Raleigh, where he's been for the last month. He had a chronic heart condition and other health problems, said Ken Rose and ... Asheville Citizen-Times - Dec 7, 2008LA Weight Loss Settles Nationwide Sex Discrimination Lawsuit With EEOCCompany Refused to Hire Men into Weight Loss Counselor and Other Jobs, Agency Alleged BALTIMORE The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced today that it has resolved its pattern or practice sex discrimination lawsuit against LA Weight Loss Centers, Inc., (renamed Pure Weight Loss, Inc., in early 2007), for $20 million and other significant relief. Equal Employment Opportunity - Dec 7, 2008Proving a disability is about to get much easierEffective Jan. 1, the Americans With Disabilities Act will be amended to make important changes in the definition of the word 'disability.' The amendments retain the basic definition of disability as: (1) an impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; (2) a record of such an impairment; or (3) being regarded as having such an impairment. Tennessean - Dec 3, 2008Colorado man faces criminal charge in libel caseReporting from Fort Collins, Colo. Locked in a visitation dispute with his former girlfriend over their young daughter, J.P. Weichel wanted to vent, court records say. Weichel, 40, allegedly posted comments about the woman on the Craigslist 'rants and raves' forum, accusing her of child abuse and welfare fraud and making crude comments about her sex life. The woman said the postings were ... Los Angeles Times - Dec 3, 2008High court hears clean water case involving R.I.By John E. Mulligan Journal Washington bureau WASHINGTON -- Several members of the Supreme Court agreed with environmentalists today that it's difficult, and perhaps impermissible, to weigh the value of an environmental rule directly against its economic cost -- ''a few baby clam larvae'' versus the dollars it would cost to save them, as Justice David H. Souter put it. Providence Journal - Dec 3, 2008Give bankruptcy judges power to alter mortgagesI watched a middle-aged widow lose her home recently. Her story was familiar. She owned her simple brick residence outright until four years ago, when a mortgage broker stopped by and offered her a loan too good to be true. In exchange for taking on a modest monthly payment, she could make some needed repairs and consolidate other debts. More sophisticated than many borrowers, she realized she ... Press of Atlantic City - Dec 3, 2008White House fights for nuke plants over towersThe Bush administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to let the nation's older power plants, including the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in Lacey, avoid installing costly cooling towers that would best protect fish and other aquatic organisms. Lawyers for the government and electricity producers urged the justices to overturn a lower court ruling that says the Clean Water Act does not ... Asbury Park Press - Dec 3, 2008Justices object to Oregon court's actions in tobacco caseTobacco giant Philip Morris USA might be partially freed from a $145 million punitive judgment, from the sounds of some Supreme Court justices Wednesday. In an epic legal dispute pitting the will of one court against another, conservative justices made clear their sympathies with Philip Morris and their dismay over seemingly being ignored by the Oregon Supreme Court. San Luis Obispo.com - Dec 3, 2008An Important Case the Supreme Court Heard This Week Shows Why Constitutional and Statutory Remedies for Gender Discrimination are Not RedundantThe Supreme Court argument this week in Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Committee was less than helpful to the petitioner's constitutional cause. The Justices were given little help by counsel in working through the complex interrelationships between constitutional and statutory remedies for gender discrimination. Normally, when the correct interpretation of a major federal statute outlawing ... Find Law - Dec 3, 2008Pa. High Court Hears Arguments Over Taxpayers' StandingThe Pennsylvania Supreme Court has heard arguments over the issue of whether Philadelphia taxpayers have standing to appeal rulings of the Zoning Board of Adjustments and other panels. In a case linked to the battle over billboard proliferation in Philadelphia, the state Supreme Court heard arguments over a state law enacted several years ago. An attorney for the city argued that the law is ... KYW News radio - Dec 3, 2008Gas-station dispute may draw Supreme Court's scrutinyThe U.S. Supreme Court signaled interest in a case that could affect how much leverage oil companies have to change their leases with tens of thousands of independent service station owners. The justices asked the Justice Department for advice on a bid by Massachusetts gas station owners to sue Shell Oil Co. and Motiva Enterprises LLC. A group of station owners say Shell and Motiva used rent ... Salt Lake Tribune - Dec 3, 2008Judge Hears Arguments Over Telco ImmunityConstitutional-questions dept We were quite disappointed with Congress earlier this year, selling out the country and granting retroactive immunity to telcos for any involvement they might have had in any warrantless wiretapping program. The immunity basically gave the White House a get out of jail free card that it could hand to any telco -- even if that telco clearly violated constitutional ... Techdirt - Dec 3, 2008RPM International loses bid to get insurers to cover asbestos-related liabilitiesMedina firm fighting to get insurers to cover liabilities from lawsuits Frank Bentayou Plain Dealer Reporter A federal court in Ohio has handed RPM International Inc. a loss in its efforts to get insurance companies to cover the Medina-based corporation's asbestos-related liabilities resulting from lawsuits. But the company said Tuesday that it will seek to overturn that ruling with a filing in ... Cleveland Live - Dec 3, 2008Septic system proposal tweakedCounty Council continues debate The proposal to require homeowners near the waterfront to put in pollution-reducing septic systems was scaled back last night as county councilmen tried to quell concerns that state money for the project would run out. The plan would mandate that homeowners with failing systems near the waterfront replace them with more expensive pollution-reducing systems. HometownAnnapolis.com - Dec 3, 2008Family of man trampled at Wal-Mart sues retailerNEW YORK (Reuters) The family of a man killed in a stampede of frenzied holiday shoppers filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on Wednesday, seeking unspecified damages. Shoppers on New York's Long Island broke down doors and surged into the Valley Stream Wal-Mart at 5 a.m. Nov. 28, the day after Thanksgiving, known as 'Black Friday' and traditionally the busiest retail ... Business Insurance - Dec 4, 2008Ex-WorldCom chief Ebbers seeks clemency from BushNEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Imprisoned former WorldCom Inc chief Bernard Ebbers has joined the list of high-profile corporate defendants petitioning for clemency in the final days of President George W. Bush's term in office. Ebbers, convicted of orchestrating an $11 billion accounting fraud, joins former publishing mogul Conrad Black and 1980s-era financier Michael Milken in seeking ... Portland Tribune - Dec 4, 2008Tobacco trial: Philip Morris disputes addiction claims(The Miami Herald - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- MO | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Philip Morris, defending a lawsuit brought by the Cooper City widow of a chain smoker who died of lung cancer, disputed allegations that he was addicted to cigarettes and therefore couldn't stop smoking. In opening arguments of a closely watched trial, the first to be heard of ... TradingMarkets - Dec 3, 2008Half of civil servants are unqualified, says ministerAbdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta Responding to the discouraging results of recent public service surveys, State Minister for Administrative Reforms Taufiq Effendi revealed half of the country's 4 million civil servants are unqualified. He said his office was preparing to reassign 2 million unqualified officials to other government jobs in an effort to tackle bureaucratic inefficiencies ... Jakarta Post - Dec 4, 2008Change: The Election's Effect on Securities RegulationThe SEC's Chairman, Christopher Cox, typically describes the SEC as a 'law enforcement agency.' The election of Barack Obama and a House and Senate dominated by the Democratic Party will likely change this job description. Under the US Constitution, law enforcement is the duty of our executive branch of government. Chairman Cox's statement shows that he thinks the SEC is part of the executive ... Traders Magazine - Dec 4, 2008Stopping WMD; Plan for Economy; Mortgage Crisis; Selective Enforcement; College Loan CrisisTHIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. LOU DOBBS, CNN ANCHOR: Thank you, Wolf. Tonight, startling evidence that one in five young American adults now suffers from serious psychological problems. Many are abusing alcohol and drugs. We're going to tell you what's causing this crisis and what can be done about it. CNN - Dec 3, 2008MedQuist Announces Resolution of the DOJ Investigation and Dismissal of Shareholder LawsuitsMedQuist Inc. (Nasdaq: MEDQ), the largest Medical Transcription Service Organization (MTSO) in the world, is pleased to announce the positive resolution of several material legal matters As previously announced, the Company received an administrative HIPAA subpoena for documents from the United States Department of Justice ('DOJ') on December 17, 2004. The subpoena sought information primarily ... PR Newswire - Dec 3, 2008Department of Justice Announces Improvements and Name Change for Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public WebsiteFeature News Text hiding to spacing of Justice Announces Improvements and Name Change for Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website Changes Announced Near the 5-year Anniversary of Dru Sjodin Disappearance WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The U.S. Department of Justice today announced improvements to the Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Web site (NSOPW) and a new ... PR Newswire - Dec 3, 2008Patent Office Stifles InnovationInformation Age innovators need not apply. At least that's the implied message being stretched like police tape across the door of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office [USPTO]. The agency seems fixated on eliminating the last, true, sustainable American advantage: our capacity to innovate. Recent moves by the USPTO have resulted in a precedent-setting legal victory that now threatens software ... MSNBC - Nov 11, 2008U.S.: FIRST, CLOSE GUANTANAMO, RIGHTS GROUPS BESEECH OBAMAWASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2008 (IPS/GIN) -- President-elect Barack Obama should make the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility a top priority when he takes office Jan. 20, U.S. and international human rights groups said Monday. They are also calling for the abolition of the military commissions that have begun trying suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo, and for them to be transferred to ... Macro World Investor - Nov 11, 2008COLUMN: Workplace Law: Court to clarify meal requirementsRecently, the authors of this column have followed case law regarding meal periods with interest. You may remember that the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth District concluded in the Brinker decision, which was the topic of an earlier article, that employers are not required to force their employees to take their meal periods but, rather, need only 'authorize and permit' them to take ... The Californian - Nov 11, 2008Covalence SA: Innovation Fuels Techs' Reputation Despite Corruption Scandals(M2 PRESSWIRE via COMTEX) -- Innovative green and social products greatly contribute to the ethical reputation of technology hardware companies, while labour, legal, institutional and production-related challenges are rising, states a report published today by -based research firm Covalence - Covalence Technology Hardware Industry Report 2008. In Covalence cross-sectors EthicalQuote ranking ... TMC Net - Nov 11, 2008The Lanier Law Firm Announces Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Nintendo Over Wii Video Game TechnologyAttorney W. Mark Lanier of The Lanier Law Firm is announcing a patent infringement lawsuit filed against Kyoto, Japan-based video game giant Nintendo Co. Ltd. and its U.S. subsidiary on behalf of a small Ohio technology company based on claims that Nintendo infringed the company's patented technology to produce the popular Wii video game. The lawsuit, Motiva, LLC v. PR Newswire - Nov 11, 2008Ex-S.F. firefighter's workers' comp problemChristina Hijjawi, 37, surrendered at the Hall of Justice last week, after a warrant was issued for her arrest on multiple felony counts of workers' compensation and disability insurance fraud, and attempted perjury, authorities said. Hijjawi is free on $30,000 bail and is scheduled to be arraigned Dec. 3. 'Many of these (endurance) events were completed while Hijjawi reportedly was too injured ... San Francisco Chronicle - Nov 11, 2008A Quiet Windfall For U.S. Banks: With Attention on Bailout Debate, Treasury Made Change to Tax PolicyThe financial world was fixated on Capitol Hill as Congress battled over the Bush administration's request for a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry. In the midst of this late-September drama, the Treasury Department issued a five-sentence notice that attracted almost no public attention. But corporate tax lawyers quickly realized the enormous implications of the document: ... Washington Post - Nov 10, 2008ABA President Calls Expensive Judicial Races ObsceneMONTGOMERY, Ala. - The president of the American Bar Association says enormously expensive judicial races, like this year's $5 million slugfest for a Supreme Court seat in his home state of Alabama, threaten the public's confidence in the judicial system. 'More was spent on that race than was spent on providing access to the courts for people of limited means. New York Lawyer - Nov 10, 20084th Circuit could be reshaped: Obama's picks could swing the court to one with a majority named by Democratic presidentsNov. 10--As president, Barack Obama and a new U.S. Senate could transform the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, long one of the most conservative in the country. President Bush failed to fill four vacancies on the 15-judge court, which decides cases on issues such as abortion, the death penalty and terrorism. The Bush administration steered terrorism cases to the court, where it ... Calibre Macro World - Nov 10, 2008US labor looks to Obama to help advance its agendaThe labor unions that helped Barack Obama win the White House are looking for some return on their investment. Labors wish list for the incoming president and the expanded Democratic majority in Congress includes an easier path toward forming unions, expanding the pool of workers who can join them, prohibiting employers from permanently replacing striking workers and expanding health care. Japan Today - Nov 10, 2008In California, What Happens After Prop 8?Well perhaps this sill put an end to the absurd @ssunption that African American support can be taken for granted by those on the left. Cookie Puss Says: Monday, November 10, 2008 at 9:46 am Roberta McCain was right -- Mormons are trouble! textee Says: Monday, November 10, 2008 at 9:49 am Yawn. Ana Marie Cox, pimping for the unwatched freakshow hostessed by Kief Olbermoronn, announces that ... Time - Nov 10, 2008California Enacts New Disability Access LegislationA landmark disability access bill aimed at decreasing unwarranted disability-access litigation that does not advance disability access and increasing equal access for individuals with disabilities has been approved by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The legislation, S.B. 1608, adds new provisions to the states existing disability access laws which are likely to benefit employers and ... Jackson Lewis - Nov 10, 2008Family under the foreclosure gun (3)Family under the foreclosure gun The Sylvester family stands to lose their Mendham home in foreclosure. Above: Valerie Sylvester in front of the home. Family says they re subprime victims and will lose home without last-minute help MENDHAM Valerie and Gary Sylvester and their five children don t want to become another casualty in the subprime mortgage scandal that has been the focus of ... Madison Eagle - Nov 10, 2008Health Care Workers Get Help Fighting Unprecedented Attacks from Service Employee International Union LeadershipFundraising has begun to help United Healthcare Workers-West members fight unprecedented attacks by Andy Stern and Anna Burger, Service Employees International Union President and Secretary-Treasurer. 'A Salute to Union Democracy' honoring the 150,000 members of SEIU United Health Care Workers-West and their President, Sal Rosselli, takes place Tuesday, November 18, 2008, 5:30 to 7:30 at the ... San Antonio Business Journal - Nov 10, 2008Proper medicine for sound' economyCST The truest thing that Sen. John McCain said during this election campaign is what got him into the most trouble: The economy is sound.Sound does not mean bullet-proof. Nor does it mean that everything is going wonderfully at the moment or that nothing needs to be done. You may be as sick as a dog from having eaten the wrong thing. But that does not mean that you need to have your arm ... Mohave Valley News - Nov 10, 2008Property Law Overview Through ConversionTakeaways Overview, Ownership, Conquest, Conversion, PROPERTY OVERVIEWProperty law gives owners rights over non-ownersa. Right to exclude non-owners from propertyb. Imposes duty on others not to enter without consentc. Power to transfer titled. Immunity from having property taken or damaged without consente. Privilege to use = power over peoplei. pros: creates jobsii. Associated Content - Nov 10, 2008Protests Continue in ParaguayAsuncion, Nov 10 (Prensa Latina) Paraguayan doctors, teachers, indigenous people and farmers began on Monday a day of protests in front of the Congress building, simultaneously to the beginning of the 2009 budget analysis. In their demands, they highlighted salary rises, funds for cotton crops and land buys, mother-infant health, social security, snacks, and school materials. Prensa Latina - Nov 10, 2008PRESS DIGEST - Philippine newspapers - Nov 11MANILA, Nov 11 (Reuters) - These are the leading stories in Manila newspapers on Tuesday. Reuters has not verified these stories. - Former agriculture secretary Jocelyn Bolante, suspected of diverting fertiliser money to finance the candidacy of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in 2004, promised to attend the Senate inquiry on the multi-million pesos fertiliser fund scam. Reuters - Nov 10, 2008B.C. health workers get $68 million in compensation after jobs privatizedVANCOUVER, B.C. - Thousands of British Columbia health-care workers who lost their jobs through contracting out will be getting payouts from a total of $68 million in compensation. The Hospital Employees' Union, which represented about 92 per cent of the affected employees, said Monday that the average amount will be $9,500, and the cheques will be in the mail before Christmas. 1057 EZRrock - Nov 10, 2008Construction: When is a development project a project?LATEST CEQA RULING CLOUDS PROCESS FOR PUBLIC-PRIVATE EFFORTS BUSINESS JOURNAL STAFF REPORTER Instead of clarifying a long-running legal question about when a development plan becomes a project, triggering environmental-impact analysis, a new state Supreme Court ruling will prompt a review of commonly used public-private agreements, according to Phillip Kalsched, a construction and land-use ... Press Democrat - Nov 10, 2008InterTAN Canada to File for Creditor ProtectionInterTAN Canada Ltd. ("InterTAN"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of US-based Circuit City Stores Inc. (NYSE: CC), today announced that it intends to file for creditor protection under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act. InterTAN expects that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice will hear the application today. InterTAN Canada Ltd. ("InterTAN"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of US-based Circuit ... MarketWire - Nov 10, 2008Federman & Sherwood Announces That a Securities Class Action Lawsuit Has Been Filed Against Daktronics Inc. (NASDAQ: DAKT)On November 7, 2008, a class action On November 7, 2008, a class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of South Dakota against Daktronics Inc. (NASDAQ: DAKT). The complaint alleges violations of federal securities laws, Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5, including allegations of issuing a series of material ... MarketWire - Nov 10, 2008Judge tells White House to release wiretapping docsWASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration must give to a federal court documents related to government wiretapping of domestic communications without a warrant after the September 11 attacks, according to a recent court order. U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy signed the order on Friday requiring the U.S. Justice Department to provide the court for private review certain documents that were ... Reuters - Nov 2, 2008Whatever the Outcome, the World Wont EndYou would think from the way some political partisans on both sides of the ideological divide are talking, the sky will fall Tuesday night if the presidential candidate they oppose is elected to the White House. You just want to look them square in the eyes and slowly and calmly say Breathe & take deeeeep breaths. The true believers on the both the right and the left are hyperventilating and ... Lynchburg News and Advance - Nov 2, 2008Gay marriage votes may show changing U.SBy Peter Henderson LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Gay couples are not hiding any more and that has made all the difference, said health care administrator Linda Merkens before Tuesday's vote in California that will decide the legality of same-sex marriage there. It's one of several important ballot measures voters will face in states across the country on Election Day. Reuters - Nov 2, 2008Dirty politics: Election of 1898 among nastiest in historyTheres no telling how many votes were dumped into the Cape Fear River. No telling how many would-be voters were dumped along with them. But people who balk at the name-calling, the mean-spirited bickering, even the sporadic property damage that has flavored this years campaigns in North Carolina can take a look at history to see just how nasty elections around here can get. Fayetteville Online - Nov 2, 2008Terrorism financing blacklists at riskBRUSSELS - The global blacklisting system for financiers of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups is at risk of collapse, undermined by legal challenges and waning political support in many countries, according to counterterrorism officials in Europe and the United States. In September, the European Court of Justice threw the future of the United Nations' sanctions program against al-Qaeda and the ... MSNBC - Nov 2, 2008How the Supreme Court Fractured Online PricingA June 2007 ruling gave manufacturers greater leeway to set retail prices. That s set off a free-for-all as online retailers seek creative ways to compete including on price. Just as millions of consumers are turning to the web to find the lowest prices, online retailers in many categories find they no longer can compete on price. That s because a growing number of manufacturers are ... InternetRetailer.com - Nov 2, 2008U.S. Senate " MinnesotaParty: DFL. Family: Wife Franni; 2 children. Age: 57. Home: Minneapolis. Education: B.A., Harvard University. Professional experience: Political commentator; satirist. Political experience: See above. - On the economy: Franken proposes to increase support for working families, including assistance with child care and tax credits for employers with family-friendly policies. Grand Forks Herald - Nov 2, 2008Direction of high court hangs on electionWASHINGTON As Election Day nears, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama are sparring over the economy, taxes, health care and each other. But the next president of the United States may make his most lasting imprint on the U.S. Supreme Court. With four of the nine justices in their 70s and one in his 80s, the next president likely will have the privilege of appointing at least one new justice to ... St. Petersburg Times - Nov 2, 2008EPA passes wastewater authority to stateDischarger user fees will rise to handle agency's new workload The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday said it would hand off wastewater discharge permitting authority and enforcement in Alaska to the state Department of Environmental Conservation. Alaska joins 45 other states that will oversee their own National Pollutant Discharge Elimination Systems, and they all have to follow ... Juneau Empire - Nov 2, 2008US electoral system flaws come to foreMoved by the powerful speech of Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, one of his supporters cries during a rally at JFK Stadium in Springfield, Missouri Saturday. Photo: AFPAs Republicans and Democrats are expecting record turnout in the November 4 US presidential election, experts fear loopholes in the electoral system may bring into question the fairness of the historic ... Bangladesh Daily Star - Nov 2, 200840,000 Jewish Conversions Annulled by Israel High CourtJERUSALEM In a rigorous conversion process, she studied religious law for a year, took a Hebrew name and changed her wardrobe to long skirts and sleeves as dictated by Orthodox Jewish custom. Finally, a panel of rabbis pronounced her Jewish. But five years later, she and some 40,000 like her have suddenly had their conversions annulled by Israel's Rabbinical High Court. FOXNews.com - Nov 2, 2008Argentina Impoverishes Itself Again'It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.' -- Frederic Bastiat, 'The Law,' 1850 Our subject today is not Barack Obama's 'change' plan to 'share the wealth.' But readers who want to know what happens to a nation that legalizes plunder -- as the 19th century French economist termed the taking ... Wall Street Journal Online - Nov 2, 2008Surrey homes with high power usage can still be inspected -but cops stay outsideVANCOUVER, B.C. - Local municipalities and B.C. police forces have to rewrite part of their battle plan in the war against marijuana grow operations after a B.C. Supreme Court drew the line at police entering homes without a search warrant. The provincial government widened the powers of cities two years ago under the Safety Standards Act, in the effort to rid communities of the power-hungry and ... Yahoo! Canada - Nov 2, 2008Jump-starting climate actionThis is a guest essay by Michael Northup and David Sassoon. It was originally published at . ----- The urgency of the current situation cannot be overemphasized: The latest scientific research tells us that global warming is accelerating at a rate beyond previous expectations, and that the window for a timely response is closing quickly. Despite some political efforts to muddy the waters, there ... Grist Magazine - Nov 2, 2008Drug makers seek new limits on lawsuitsChildren's musician Diana Levine watched her right hand gradually turn black in the six weeks after she was injected with a Wyeth anti-nausea drug. The pain, so powerful even morphine couldn't mask it, subsided only when doctors amputated the arm just below the elbow. 'It was totally shocking to wake up to this,' said Levine, motioning toward her sleeve-covered stump as she sat in the kitchen of ... Delaware Online - Nov 2, 2008Obviousness: On carbon nanotubesHome> Nanotechnology Columns > Magda Carvalho PhD, JD > Abstract: Carbon nanotube inventions have succeeded as innovative and hundreds of patents have been awarded. But as claimed inventions accumulate, issues of patentability relating to obviousness inevitably arise. Specifically, methods that produced end-derivatized single-wall carbon nanotubes could not successfully stand up to 35 ... Nanotechnology News - Nov 2, 2008Economic woes mean boom time for lawyersLOS ANGELES - The loose-leaf binders on Beverly Hills attorney Paul Kiesel's shelves contain hundreds of stories alleging deception, loss, and heartache. Kiesel is representing struggling homeowners who say they were misled about the terms of their mortgages. He is far from the only lawyer finding himself busy these days as a result of the hard economic times. Boston Globe - Oct 31, 2008Nevada Cap on Medical Damage Awards Draws CriticismAs 59-year-old Richard Krikalo lumbers through the office of a junkyard he helps manage, he bumps into a desk and clips a wastebasket with his right leg. Krikalo is almost blind in his right eye and has trouble with depth perception and peripheral vision. 'I go to the buffet and bump into people carrying food,' he growls, shaking his head, his static right eye unable to follow his blinking left ... Insurance Journal - Oct 31, 2008Neighbours left rich spinster 'in squalor'Squalor ... rich spinster Betty Dyke gave neighbours $1.2m to look after her, but was found in filthy conditions, a court has been told. Rich spinster died in squalor Gave neighbours money to care for her Court hears they did nothing MILLIONAIRE spinster Betty Dyke was so desperate to end her days in her own home with her beloved animals that she gave neighbours $1.2 million to look after her. NEWS.com.au - Oct 31, 2008Campaign ad watch: Dueling ads in attorney general race misleadThis week's most popular (2198) Regional News By JENNIFER McKEE Missoulian State Bureau HELENA - The Montana Democratic and Republican parties both released fresh attack ads this week in the withering air war of the attorney general race.The Missoulian State Bureau analyzed both ads for accuracy.Republican ad vs. Bullock The ad attacks Democratic candidate Steve Bullock and neither mentions ... Missoulian - Oct 30, 2008Rabbis' ruling puts thousands of converts in limboLAURIE COPANS JERUSALEM, Raised without religion in Maryland, Shannon sought to make a new life for herself as a Jew in Israel. In a rigorous conversion process, she studied religious law for a year, took a Hebrew name and changed her wardrobe to long skirts and sleeves as dictated by Orthodox Jewish custom. Finally, a panel of rabbis pronounced her Jewish. Calibre Macro World - Oct 30, 2008Mee wins patent case against corporate giantMee Industries has announced the successful conclusion of a patent infringement suit brought against it by Dow Chemical Company. The Federal Court suit, tried in December of last year in Orlando, Florida, USA, was ended by a decision of the court in late September of this year. In the suit, Dow accused Mee Industries of infringement of patents dealing with the use of fogging technology for ... Power Engineering - Oct 30, 2008Military Members to Face General Court Martial in Database Corruption CasePetty Officer Second Class (PO2) Silvya Reid and PO2 Janet Sinclair will face a General Court Martial in relation to the alleged corruption of a Government database in July 2007. Petty Officer Second Class (PO2) Silvya Reid and PO2 Janet Sinclair will face a General Court Martial in relation to the alleged corruption of a Government database in July 2007. PO2 Reid and PO2 Sinclair were charged ... MarketWire - Oct 30, 2008Baseball and the reserve clauseThese election days have seen political terms bandied about such as socialism and the Bradley Effect. Essentially socialism is the distribution of money and goods by the government. It s not something new, we have been going down that path for many years beginning with social security, which has allowed our aging a better life. Socialism flies in the face of the free market, but maybe it s ... Albert Lea Tribune - Oct 30, 2008Nursing home cameras will help reduce abuseGod bless Attorney General Andrew Cuomo for placing hidden cameras in nursing home rooms. Much elder abuse is assault, pure and simple, and those in any way involved, including staff who avert their eyes, should be prosecuted to the fullest extent. Residents in nursing homes are often thought of as other, not normal adults. But they are your mother and father, sister and brother; they are you if ... Buffalo News - Oct 30, 2008ExxonMobil profit surges to record $14.8blnUS oil giant ExxonMobil shook off economic troubles and hurricanes to post a record third-quarter profit of 14.83 billion US dollars, up 58 percent from a year ago, the company said Thursday. The latest report pushed up profits for the first nine months of 2008 to 37.4 billion US dollars, putting the biggest oil and gas company toward another record year for earnings. Sydney Morning Herald - Oct 30, 2008Persons With Psychosocial Disability [opinion](Ghanaian Chronicle/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX News Network) -- Everybody has the right to rights; fundamental human rights are meant for everyone, no matter the circumstance one might find him or herself. Most times societies tend to disassociate with people who are psychologically screwed up. Little attention is given to them when it comes to the issue of rights. Calibre Macro World - Oct 30, 2008Lost-gun ordinances usually fire blanksLose a gun in Cleveland and fail to report it to police and you could face a $250 fine and 30 days in jail. But in the 12 years that ordinance has been on Cleveland's books, only two people have been taken to court for failing to report a lost or stolen gun. That experience, and those of other cities, suggests that Pittsburgh's proposed ordinance on reporting lost or stolen guns and others ... Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Oct 30, 2008India's Vanishing TigersEdited by Claire George It is a well known fact that the tiger in the Indian wild is critically endangered. At the beginning of the 20th century 40,000 of these striped animals roamed the country's jungles. Wanton killing, rising human populations and economic development leading to shrinking habitats brought their numbers to a perilous low of around 2,000 by the end of the ...
OhmyNews - Oct 31, 2008
Races to Watch: Pennsylvania 11
Previous Races to Watch: Ohio 15 Minnesota 3 Once upon a time, when the Republican presidential hopefuls were all attempting to 'out-Tancredo Tancredo,' immigration looked to be shaping up as a major issue in the 2008 election. Of course, that was before the selection of immigration moderate John McCain as the GOP nominee. Before Palin-mania. Before the financial crisis.
American Prospect - Oct 30, 2008
Am Law Litigation Daily -- Oct. 30, 2008
Years ago, the Litigation Daily remembers, we were sitting in Steven Schulman's office at One Penn Plaza as he boasted about the big, big returns he was expecting from the 300 class actions that were later consolidated to become the multidistrict IPO securities litigation. It was way back in 2001, and Schulman's firm, today just known as Milberg, was leading the plaintiffs bar's charge against ...
The American Lawyer - Oct 30, 2008
Growing National Demand For Marijuana Expert Eric Nash
GROWING NATIONAL DEMAND FOR MARIJUANA EXPERT ERIC NASH Eric Nash sits quietly in a small room at the Duncan court offices. He's impeccably dressed in a black suit and burgundy tie, and with his glasses and closely cropped hair, he looks every bit the qualified court expert. What's not immediately apparent is that this man's area of expertise is marijuana. 'We're beginning to become known by ...
Media Awareness Project - Oct 30, 2008
The Senior Citizens League's Comments on U.S. Supreme Court Case Wyeth v. Levine
The Senior Citizens League (TSCL) filed an amicus brief in support of a courageous Vermont woman's fight to preserve her common law right to damages for the amputation of her gangrenous arm caused by the tortious conduct of a large pharmaceutical company. Wyeth, with the wholehearted backing of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), argued that the administration of its drug in a manner not ...
Pharma Live - Oct 30, 2008
COALITION PROTECTS LEGAL AID FROM HULLS' RAID ATTEMPT
The Victorian Liberal Nationals Coalition has stopped the government from raiding the Public Purpose Fund, through an amendment passed by the Legislative Council, Shadow Attorney-General Robert Clark said today. The Brumby Government attempted to give itself the power to take money from this fund, which provides money for legal aid, education and research, and use it to pay running costs for its ...
Liberal Party Victoria - Oct 30, 2008
Many states' ballot measures concern social issues
WASHINGTON California voters on Tuesday will consider the care of pregnant pigs, and Massachusetts voters will have a chance to abolish the state's income tax, but most ballot issues this year again target a variety of social issues. State ballots contain 153 propositions, including 59 initiatives from citizen petitions. Some are on the ballot because of a constitutional mandate Illinois' ...
Chicago Tribune - Oct 31, 2008
Emptoris Comments on Initial Verdict of Patent Infringement Lawsuit Case
Emptoris, Inc., a leading provider of Emptoris, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise supply and contract management software, commented today on the patent infringement lawsuit filed against the company by Ariba, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARBA) of Sunnyvale, CA. The suit, filed in April 2007, was heard over the past two weeks in Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Case Number ...
MarketWire - Oct 30, 2008
New Report Shows How Drug Industry Immunity Would Endanger Women
A new report released today by the national consumer rights group Center for Justice & Democracy finds that many of this country's dangerous government-approved drugs and devices have been marketed specifically for women. Many of these products were removed or made safer only after women filed lawsuits. The release of the report, THE BITTEREST PILL -- How Drug Companies Fail To Protect Women ...
PR Newswire - Oct 29, 2008
Lawsuit over Obama's citizenship dismissed
I believe that only McCain has the standing to sue. JakeD Says: October 27th, 2008 at 11:43 am Although, I guess the other Presidential candidates could technically argue they have standing to sue as well (but what is the harm to them? McCain would simply win). Flyboy Will Says: October 27th, 2008 at 12:04 pm I m going to go sue Berg for molesting puppies in 1973, I heard some guy in ...
Orange County Register - Oct 29, 2008
DWP OKs payouts for overcharges to L.A. County, schools, MTA
After almost a decade of what state prosecutors called 'ripping off state agencies,' the Department of Water and Power on Monday agreed to pay out a $160 million settlement to the county, local schools, community colleges and the MTA. Coming after years of legal wrangling, the settlement is the largest ever against a utility for overcharging customers, according to attorneys for the plaintiffs.
Los Angeles Daily News - Oct 29, 2008
Court weighs state ban on violent video games
SACRAMENTO - A federal appeals panel on Wednesday considered whether California can ban the sale of violent video games to minors. The three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held a rare hearing in Sacramento to take arguments over a 2005 state law. It prohibits the sale or rental of violent video games to anyone under the age of 18 and requires that such games be clearly ...
Los Angeles Daily News - Oct 29, 2008
Wealthy interests alter Calif's initiative process
SACRAMENTO, Calif. When Hiram Johnson championed an initiative system for California nearly a century ago, he sold it as a grassroots way to 'arm the people to protect themselves.'California's 23rd governor foresaw citizen campaigns putting propositions on the ballot when the Legislature failed to address a pressing need.But 97 years after Californians voted to allow themselves to put measures on ...
Vida en el Valle - Oct 29, 2008
The George W. Bush factor looms large
The campaign for the election of the 44th president of the United States has been dominated by the administration of George W. Bush, as Sen. Barack Obama speaks as if hes running against him and Sen. John McCain spares no effort to distinguish himself from Bush. This is not surprising, considering that most public opinion polls report President Bushs popularity at about 35 percent (although more ...
Desert Dispatch - Oct 29, 2008
The Supreme Court matters
Marian Wright Edelman Carolina Peacemaker Originally posted 10/29/2008 On the way to the voting booth on November 4, in addition to thinking about who should occupy the White House, we should also be concerned about who will appoint to federal courts. The next president will likely name one to three Justices to the Supreme Court and hundreds to lower federal courts.
Carolina Peacemaker - Oct 29, 2008
Life Insurance Is Big Business in the USLoading...
Life - Life in America.; Life insurance is big business in the US, with changes brought about by the credit crunch creating new opportunities reports Stephen Gray. UK The integration of the financial services sector is a worldwide phenomenon, and the US life industry with its $4tn of assets has not been immune. The surge tide of regulatory rulings and law changes began in the 1980s, when rulings ...
Insurance News Net - Oct 29, 2008
B.C. judge's ruling could change way suspected grow-op inspections are done
VANCOUVER, B.C. - Provincial legislation that allows electrical inspections of homes identified as having high electricity usage - and therefore suspected of being marijuana grow-ops - is sound but police cannot accompany those safety teams without a warrant, a B.C. Supreme Court judge has ruled.The decision came after two Surrey residents went to court against the City of Surrey, BC Hydro and ...
Metronews - Oct 29, 2008
Group challenges Nativity scenes at state parks: Letter to attorney general alleges church/state violation
Oct. 29--An organization that advocates separation of church and state has asked the Ohio attorney general for her position on having a Nativity scene in a state park, while warning of a possible legal challenge. The Freedom from Religion Foundation wrote to Nancy H. Rogers on Oct. 6 to complain that a stand-alone Nativity scene at Malabar Farm State Park in north-central Ohio was 'a recurring ...
Calibre Macro World - Oct 29, 2008
The Other Half of Standard Oil
John D. Rockefeller could not have built his empire without one of America s greatest entrepreneurs, Henry Flagler. In all of American industrial history, perhaps only Henry Ford is more closely identified with the company he founded than is John D. Rockefeller. In the 1860s, Rockefeller was just one of many entrepreneurs seeking to exploit the possibilities opened up by the brand-new ...
American.com - Oct 29, 2008
IR tribunal faces firing squad
THE NSW Labor Government has delivered an ultimatum to Australia's oldest industrial relations tribunal: sack yourselves or we'll do it for you. The tribunal's commissioners have been told that NSW Attorney-General John Hatzistergos wants half of them to take redundancy under the threat that all their positions will be abolished if they refuse. The Attorney-General's move has been prompted by ...
The Australian - Oct 29, 2008
Chickens and the egg
But thanks to Olivera Egg Farm and its 700,000 chickens, country life is not all sunshine and butterflies. With a quick turn of the wind, the pleasant breeze suddenly sours to the sickening, fetid stench of ammonia from the nearby 'lagoon' a 16.5-acre cesspool of chicken manure that lies 370 feet from the nearest house. 'It takes your breath away,' said Janice Magaoay, who has lived in a ...
San Francisco Bay Guardian - Oct 29, 2008
Algeria president to abolish term limits
ALGIERS, Algeria-Algeria's president is giving himself the constitutional right to stay in power, announcing plans Wednesday to abolish term limits that would have prevented him from seeking a third term next spring. Abdelaziz Bouteflika said in a speech broadcast from Algeria's supreme court that he wants to bring 'stability, efficiency and continuity' to the oil- and gas-rich nation, which is ...
Macro World Investor - Oct 29, 2008
CO2Emission Cuts: The Economic Costs of the EPA's ANPR Regulations
The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) foreshadows new regulations of unprecedented scope, magnitude, and detail. This notice is not just bureaucratic rumination, but could very well become the law of the land. Jason Grumet, a senior environmental advisor to Barack Obama, has promised that a President Obama would 'initiate those rulings.' These ...
Heritage Foundation - Oct 29, 2008
Republican Loyalists Jumping Ship
BOSTON -- The Republican Party was the model of unity leaving its national convention barely two months ago. But no more.Displaying a fracture that stands to become a clean break if John McCain loses the election next week, Republicans of all stripes and stature have broken with their party's nominee and are not only supporting Democrat Barack Obama, but trashing the GOP in the process.Former ...
WSMV - Oct 29, 2008
'Eli Stone' Recap: Lead Paint and a Magic Book
With the resolution of Eli's crisis of faith having already come (his reluctance to become a prophet was so last season), 'Eli Stone' was in need of a larger story arc to keep the momentum going and provide viewers with a reason to tune in each week. Posner (Tom Amandes) and Klein's (Katey Sagal) attempt to wrest the firm from Jordan's (Victor Garber) control has provided just that.
Starpulse - Oct 29, 2008
Security and Financial Risks of Data Breaches Grow as Some IT Departments Inadvertently Expose Data by Improperly Retiring Data Storage Products
OAKDALE, Minn., Oct. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Patient health records, social security numbers, bank account numbers and internal auditing procedures are examples of the kinds of information that is unknowingly 'leaking' out of data centers. This disturbing trend is the result of companies improperly disposing of used data storage products at end-of-life, including a growing practice of ...
Columbus Business First - Oct 29, 2008
Sri Lankan government tests all milk products for melamine
Oct 29, Colombo: Sri Lanka government today said that it is taking urgent steps to implement procedures recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) over the melamine found in some food products. The government has instructed the Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA) to test all milk products being sold in the market to test whether they are suitable for human consumption.
Colombo Page - Oct 29, 2008
Ex-Haitian strongman sentenced in NYC fraud scheme
Emmanuel Constant was sentenced in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn to 12 years to 37 years in prison, said state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's office, which prosecuted the case. Constant was found guilty of fraud and grand larceny in July. He has been jailed since 2006 for the fraud case. An investor who testified as part of a plea deal claimed Constant offered to broker deals to buy ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Oct 29, 2008
Aussie sues casino over gambling binge
CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian gambler who lost millions in a A$1.4 billion (548.5 million pounds) gaming spree is suing one of the country's largest casinos, claiming he was targeted by managers despite a known gambling addiction. In a case which lawyers say could have implications stretching to China, gambling addict Harry Kakavas is suing Crown Casino in Melbourne for A$50 million damages ...
Tiscali - Oct 30, 2008
Discover Financial Services Reaches $2.75 Billion Settlement Agreement in Antitrust Dispute with Visa and MasterCard
RIVERWOODS, Ill.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS) said today that it has reached an agreement with Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. in the settlement of a lawsuit seeking damages for practices that suppressed third-party issuing on the Discover Network and the acceptance of its cards. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, Discover is expected to receive up to $2.75 ...
Street Insider - Oct 27, 2008
CBS increasingly airing indecency
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--CBS and other broadcast television networks increasingly are pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable entertainment as the Federal Communications Commission, the government body charged with enforcing indecency laws, awaits an upcoming Supreme Court hearing in order to determine a response.The Parents Television Council, a nonpartisan watchdog group, filed an indecency ...
Town Hall - Oct 27, 2008
Supreme Smackdown Over Speech
While America will be busy at the polls on Nov. 4, Fox has a different, pressing Election Day appointment at the Supreme Court. That?s where the network?s reps will battle the FCC over fleeting profanities that drew an indecency finding from the commission. Fox has elected to take aim at the FCC?s powers to regulate any broadcast speech whatsoever. News Corp.
WaveForm - Oct 27, 2008
Galvanizing the gun vote
NRA hopes to seal election by painting Obama as no friend of the firearm Tiffany Brown Canadian tourists Colin Grosh, left, and David Mitchnick check out the wares Wednesday at the Las Vegas Gun Range & Firearms Center. The NRA says that in the past year it has registered more than 1 million gun owners to vote, and at the center NObama T-shirts are hot items, with most of the 300 ...
Las Vegas Sun - Oct 27, 2008
The Dangerous Reasoning of the Connecticut Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of Connecticut recently embraced legal reasoning that opens a Pandora's Box. The Court recently handed down the latest in a series of bizarre rulings from state courts on 'gay marriage.' Using the court's logic any and all sexual conduct could be deemed constitutional -- and any and all sexual partners allowed to 'marry.' The Connecticut court's ruling brings America another ...
American Thinker - Oct 27, 2008
George F. Will: A healthy proposition (Yesterday)
WASHINGTON -- On Election Day, Arizonans can give the nation the gift of a good example. They can enact a measure that could shape the health-care debate that will arrest or accelerate the nation's slide into statism. Proposition 101, 'The Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act,' would put the following language into Arizona's Constitution: 'Because all people should have the right to make ...
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Oct 28, 2008
In This Election The Supreme Court Matters
Court will rule on whether cigarette manufacturers can be sued for deceptively labeling their products as "light" and "lowered tar and nicotine." This case will have a major impact on the health of children and teenagers who are influenced to start smoking because they are deceived by these ads. Many of them will grow up to be among the 438,000 who die of smoking related causes each year.
Huffington Post - Oct 27, 2008
2 skinheads accused of plot to kill Obama
Nazi skinheads accused of plot to kill Barack Obama Comments WASHINGTON - Two white supremacists allegedly plotted to go on a national killing spree, shooting and decapitating black people and ultimately targeting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, federal authorities said Monday. In all, the two men whom officials describe as neo-Nazi skinheads planned to kill 88 people - 14 by ...
Chicago Sun-Times - Oct 27, 2008
Shame, Cubed
The Drudge Report this morning led off with a link to audio of Barack Obama on WBEZ, a Chicago public radio station. And this time, Barack Obama was not eight years old when the bomb went off. York: Dunphy: Whittle: Bayefsky: McCarthy: Coulson: Busch: Miller: Neighborly WisdomGratzer: Lopez: Reality ElectionBenard: Pitney: Whittle: Biden's HintSteyn: Barone: Sowell: Obama, Con Speaking on a ...
National Review - Oct 27, 2008
Credit Suisse Repurchases Auction Rate Securities (ARS) From Rosetta Genomics
REHOVOT, Israel and JERSEY CITY, New Jersey, October 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Rosetta Genomics Ltd. (Nasdaq:ROSG), a leader in the development of microRNA-based diagnostics and therapeutics, today announced that Credit Suisse, as part of a settlement agreement it has reached with the Attorney General of the State of New York and the North American Securities Administrators Association Task ...
PR Newswire - Oct 27, 2008
Banks lose in Bell litigation saga
A group of 20 financiers, including three of Australias four biggest banks, face having to pay back more than $280 million they snatched out of Alan Bonds failed Bell Group after it collapsed in April 1991. Bringing an end to the first chapter of a 13-year legal battle, WA Supreme Court judge Neville Owen today upheld parts of claims by Bell liquidators over the actions of the Westpac-led banking ...
The West Online - Oct 27, 2008
Parental notification measure on ballot again
For the third time in four years, California voters will be asked to require doctors to notify an unmarried minor girl's family before performing an abortion on her. Thirty-four states have laws requiring parental involvement in abortion decisions, but the issue has proved to be a hard sell in California. AT ISSUE:PROPOSITION 4 The measure would amend the state constitution to require a doctor ...
SignOn San Diego - Oct 27, 2008
Parenting abused children
DOUBLE TAKE THE Philippines is a country filled with hurt and angry children. Some of these children have been burned with flatirons, cigarette butts, bathed in alcohol or gasoline, beaten up with wood or iron rods, chained to staircases, caged like dogs, or their heads bashed against the wall. There are some who were born alcoholic or addicted to drugs simply because their expectant mothers had ...
Manila Times - Oct 27, 2008
Mokbel loses bid to have charges stayed
Accused underworld killer Tony Mokbel has lost his bid to have drugs and murder charges against him stopped. Mokbel's lawyers argued in the Victorian Supreme Court that the charges against him should be stayed on the basis his extradition to Australia was unlawful because his appeal to the European Court of Human Rights was pending. Mokbel fled Australia in 2006, but was extradited from Greece ...
Sunshine Coast Daily - Oct 27, 2008
ACLU to new president: End rights slide
The American Civil Liberties Union has recommendations Here's an excerpt from the ACLU issued to alert media about its new report: 'This past administration has left us with a disastrous legacy of bad policy, abuse of power, and civil liberties violations,' said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington Legislative Office of the ACLU. 'The next president, whoever he is, must immediately ...
Baltimore Sun - Oct 27, 2008
Labor Unions Prolonged the Depression
Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com By the mid-1930s, the U.S. economy appeared to be climbing out of the Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), which had ...
Wall Street Journal Online - Oct 27, 2008
Senator Stevens Guilty; McCain Slams Obama; San Francisco Policy Rejected; Election Fraud Risk
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. LOU DOBBS, HOST: Thank you, Wolf. Tonight a bombshell verdict in the Senator Ted Stevens trial. Stevens found guilty of seven charges of corruption. We'll have a live report and we'll examine the political impact. Also tonight Senator McCain and Obama presenting their so-called closing arguments in this ...
CNN - Oct 27, 2008
Hedge Lawsuit Threat Has Hill Seeing Red
When Braddock Financial heard about out a plan to fix the mortgage dilemma, it threatened a lawsuit. The Denver hedge fund had a mortgaged-back portfolio, so a renegotiation could hurt its performance. That threat of legal action did not sit well with Capitol Hill. Now, Braddock Financial along with another hedge fund, Greenwich Financial, is being summoned to Washington, D.C., to explain its ...
HedgeFund.net - Oct 27, 2008
From Vogue to MTV, Palin drew press to Alaska
GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is keeping reporters at arms' length in her campaign, but she had a very different approach as Alaska's new governor: She couldn't get enough of them. Palin cultivated interviews with local and national journalists and welcomed them from as far away as London, earning time in the spotlight even before Republican presidential candidate John McCain selected ...
Fresno Bee - Oct 27, 2008
McCain warns of dangers of Dem control
This election comes down to how you want your hard-earned money spent, McCain said to a small audience at the Renaissance hotel in downtown Cleveland. Do you want to keep it and invest it in your future, or have it taken by the most liberal person to ever run for the Presidency, and the Democratic leaders who have been running Congress for the past two years -- Nancy Pelosi and Harry ...
The Politico - Oct 27, 2008
SC frowns upon unnecessary use of Contempt of Court Act
New Delhi, Oct 27 (UNI) The Supreme Court has strongly disapproved the use of Contempt of the Court Act for purpose other than to secure the compliance of the order of the court. A bench comprising Justices S P Sinha and Cyriac Joseph while dropping the contempt of court proceedings against a TV programme producer company 'Three Cheers Entertainment Pvt Ltd' also imposed a cost of Rs one lakh on ...
United News of India - Oct 27, 2008
Obama vs. McCain: Iraq, Afghanistan and the Treatment of Veterans -- Voter Guide
The current financial crisis, which experts are roundly describing as a calamity of unprecedented proportions, has convinced most voters that the economy is the most urgent priority of the incoming administration. The war on Iraq -- and the broader existential conflict known for years now as the Global War on Terror -- has taken a backseat in many voters' minds.
AlterNet.org - Oct 27, 2008
McCain tackles Obama on plan to 'spread the wealth'
Reporting from Pottsville, Pa., and Canton, Ohio - Addressing a boisterous crowd in eastern Pennsylvania, John McCain said Monday that Barack Obama wanted to be 'Redistributionist in Chief,' putting a new twist on his warning that the Democrat intends to 'spread the wealth around,' as he told Joe the Plumber. McCain's new turn-of-phrase came after his campaign unearthed an obscure, 7-year-old ...
Chicago Tribune - Oct 28, 2008
Happy Is as Happy Does: Mortgage Interest Deductibility & the GAAR
Happy and Snitty are soon-to-be neighbours. Snitty shops around for a mortgage, haggles over half a percentage point, and ultimately accepts the financing offered by the institution he's banked with for years. He purchases a home with the funds and makes the first of many mortgage payments, knowing a large portion of each payment will go toward the interest, and not the principal amount, of his ...
Ottawa Business Journal - Oct 27, 2008
Secure Computing Reports Q3 2008 Results
Secure Computing Corporation (NASDAQ: SCUR), a Secure Computing Corporation (NASDAQ: SCUR), a leading enterprise security company, today announced third quarter GAAP revenue of $63.0 million. This represents a 5% increase in revenue compared to $60.0 million in the same quarter last year. Third quarter non-GAAP revenue was $64.7 million. This represents a 1% decrease compared to the same ...
MarketWire - Oct 27, 2008
Stull, Stull & Brody Announces Class Action Lawsuit on Behalf of AIG International Group, Inc. 7.70% Series A5 Junior Subordinated Debentures (NYSE: AVF) Investors
Notice is hereby given that Stull, Stull & Notice is hereby given that Stull, Stull & Brody filed a lawsuit on October 27, 2008 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York seeking class action status on behalf of purchasers of 7.70% Series A5 Junior Subordinated Debentures (NYSE: AVF) of American International Group, Inc.
MarketWire - Oct 27, 2008
Holzer Holzer & Fistel, LLC Announces That a Shareholder Class Action Lawsuit Has Been Filed Against The Spectranetics Corporation (NASDAQ: SPNC)
Shareholder class action lawsuits have been Shareholder class action lawsuits have been filed in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado against The Spectranetics Corporation ("Spectranetics" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: SPNC) and certain of its officers and directors on behalf of purchasers of Spectranetics common stock, who purchased shares between April 19, 2007 and ...
MarketWire - Oct 27, 2008
Bankruptcy not the best choice for borrowers
WASHINGTON -- Can filing for bankruptcy help homeowners facing foreclosure? For most people, trying to negotiate changes in their loan with help from a housing counselor or lawyer is a far better option. While bankruptcy judges can reduce or eliminate certain kinds of debt, they aren't allowed to alter the total amount owed or interest rate of primary mortgages.
The Sun News - Oct 26, 2008
Knowledge is the best defense for renters
By E-E Business Editor Many people choose to rent a place to live as an alternative to buying a home. While rental options are many and varied, it is always wise to protect oneself when entering into a lease or rental agreement, which is, after all, a legal and binding contract between a landlord and a tenant.Glenna Dorris, managing attorney for Legal Aid Services of Bartlesville and Jay, said ...
Examiner Enterprise - Oct 26, 2008
European politics: Why don't we care?
The decisions taken by our representatives in Brussels have a direct impact on nearly every area of our lives. Yet British voters remain stubbornly apathetic toward EU affairs John Edward What is it about the United States that makes its politics so exciting to us? Is it the shared language? Is it the vast amounts of money and influence at play? Or is it just the sheen of 'West Wing'-esque ...
Edinburgh Journal - Oct 26, 2008
PRO BONO WORK: Not a self-serving activity
As a law professor (and now dean of a new law school), I work hard to encourage my students to use their legal training to make society a better place and to help those who cannot afford legal services. Whatever their field of practice, they should spend some time doing legal work without charging for their time and services. There are so many pressures on lawyers, especially economic ones, that ...
National Law Journal - Oct 26, 2008
Freedom of Choice in Health Care
WASHINGTON -- On Election Day, Arizonans can give the nation the gift of a good example. They can enact a measure that could shape the health care debate that will arrest or accelerate the nation's slide into statism. Proposition 101, 'The Act,' would put the following language into Arizona's Constitution: 'Because all people should have the right to make decisions about their health care, no ...
Town Hall - Oct 26, 2008
Dems predicting earthquake election
Carville likened the Washington political environment to pre-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, saying that there will be nothing left standing after the election. He added that Republicans stand to lose not just an election but a generation of voters. [John] McCain and [Sarah] Palin are losing the argument, Greenberg said, pointing to favorable numbers for Obama on the campaign s ...
The Politico - Oct 26, 2008
Credit card lawsuits on the rise
More Wisconsinites sued for defaulting on debts A growing number of Wisconsinites are being sued for defaulting on credit card and other debts, another sign of stress in a weakening economy. Large-claim money judgment lawsuits - debt collections exceeding $5,000 on credit cards as well as business, car and college loans, and medical and other bills - jumped 49% statewide in 2007, a review of ...
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Oct 26, 2008
McCain: Obamas Judges Would Coddle Criminals
The National Law Journal invited John McCain, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin and Joe Biden to write op-eds about their views on the rule of law, the federal court system, judicial appointees and priorities for the U.S. Department of Justice. So far, only McCain accepted the offer. Tomorrows NLJ will feature this article. Frankly, were a little disappointed. McCain begins the article with a call for a ...
Wall Street Journal Online - Oct 26, 2008
How candidates stand on the issues
A recap of where Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., stand on issues that have helped to define their campaigns for the presidency: TAXING AND SPENDING McCain would extend the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and add new breaks: He would cut the corporate income tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent, repeal the alternative minimum tax and double the deduction for dependents.
Akron Beacon Journal - Oct 26, 2008
Missing from Prop. 8 ads: gays
These days, it's pretty hard to walk the streets of a California city without seeing same-sex couples -- shopping, strolling, holding hands, sometimes accompanied by children. What used to be called, self-consciously, 'public displays of affection' are now merely public displays of ordinary family life. For gay folks, then, it is all the more stinging an irony that the one place where same-sex ...
Los Angeles Times - Oct 26, 2008
IndyMac, FDIC are models for mortgage relief
Los Angeles earlier this year. With her family's construction business sputtering, she and her husband soon fell behind on their home loan on their four-bedroom ranch home in Los Angeles. After missing three payments, the Carrillos were $9,800 behind on their mortgage with IndyMac Bank. But after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. seized IndyMac, the bank agreed to modify Carrillo's loan, ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Oct 26, 2008
Activist files suit to halt bailoutFORT ANN -- Activist Robert Schulz won't let the $700 billion bailout of American International Group and other Wall Street giants slide by.
FORT ANN -- Activist Robert Schulz won't let the $700 billion bailout of American International Group and other Wall Street giants slide by.When he heard the news that the insurance giant would receive taxpayer money in order to stay afloat, the Fort Ann resident and nationally known constitutional rights scholar filed two lawsuits in federal court.He contends the bailout package goes against the ...
Post Star - Oct 26, 2008
Ariz. health plan debated
WASHINGTON - On Election Day, Arizonans can give the nation the gift of a good example. They can enact a measure that could shape the health care debate that will arrest or accelerate the nation's slide into statism. Proposition 101, 'The Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act,' would put the following language into Arizona's Constitution: 'Because all people should have the right to make ...
The Leaf Chronicle - Oct 26, 2008
Ethiopia: the authoritarian executive, rubber-stamp parliament, and delegation of power
The Nondelegation Principle The doctrine of nondelegation is explicit or implicit in all written constitutions that impose a structural separation of powers. It is usually applied in questions of constitutionally improper delegations of legislative powers to the executive. In 1690, John Locke (1632-1704), one of the most influential political philosophers of the modern period, wrote that ...
American Chronicle - Oct 26, 2008
Ambani brothers feud over natural gas sharing reaches SC
NEW DELHI: A petition has been moved in Supreme Court seeking vacation of stay granted by Bombay High Court, which restrained Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Industries from selling gas to any company other than Anil Ambani group and NTPC. The petition filed in public interest by one B A Aloor, a practising advocate from Pune, alleged that the feud between two brothers is affecting people at large ...
Economictimes - Oct 26, 2008
Lawyers movement gaining lost momentum
By Sohail Khan ISLAMABAD: The upcoming election of the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), scheduled to be held on October 28, and the recent pace of the lawyers movement for the independence of judiciary is likely to gain momentum which the legal fraternity had lost during the last few months for the restoration of deposed chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.The recent visits of deposed ...
The News International - Oct 26, 2008
Indonesia fights terrorism with power of persuasion
By WARREN P. STROBEL - McClatchy papers (0) Text Size: tool name tool goes here Sitting in a Papa Ron's pizza outlet in the Indonesian capital, Nasir Abbas looks more like a would-be business entrepreneur than a former Islamic militant. He's dressed in a gray polo shirt and blue jeans, ordering a takeout pizza for his children. He munches on an appetizer in between calls on his cell ...
San Luis Obispo.com - Oct 26, 2008
Monopoly On Pot Fought
MONOPOLY ON POT FOUGHT It's a marijuana 'monopoly' that deserves to go up in smoke, activists say. Lawyers representing a group of 30 medicinal marijuana users will be in court Monday to fight the federal government's bid to keep control of large-scale medicinal pot distribution in Canada. Activists say the government-issued pot is weak. They say Health Canada's regulation that forbids licensed ...
Media Awareness Project - Oct 26, 2008
AIG settles North Carolina disability case: $18 million payout is 'huge'
(The News & Observer - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- AIG | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- American International Group, the major insurance company that received an $85 billion federal bailout for risky financial practices, has agreed to pay $18 million to a former North Raleigh man who was completely disabled when a pickup truck hit him in the parking lot of ...
TradingMarkets - Oct 26, 2008
DOL puts socially conscious funds on tighter leash
All 'non-economic' factors should be rare, managers advised By Sara Hansard October 26, 2008, 6:01 AM EST Socially conscious fund managers participating in qualified plans have been put on notice that investment returns must always be a higher priority than any other consideration. An interpretive bulletin issued Oct. 17 by the Labor Department's Employee Benefits Security Administration ...
Investment News - Oct 26, 2008
Roe vs. Wade? Bush vs. Gore? What are the worst Supreme Court decisions?
Gov. Sarah Palin appeared to draw a blank recently when asked by CBS' Katie Couric to name a Supreme Court decision she disagreed with other than Roe vs. Wade. Recalling high school history, she might have cited widely condemned 19th century decisions such as Dred Scott (1857), which upheld slavery even in the 'free states,' and Plessy vs. Ferguson (1896), which upheld segregation as 'separate ...
Los Angeles Times - Oct 22, 2008
In Hawaii, Whether or Not to Con Con is a Contentious Debate
This November 4 election, Hawaii voters must decide whether to support a Constitutional Convention or a 'Con Con.' Even if they leave their ballot blank, they will have a say in the issue, because a Supreme Court ruling determined blank votes are no votes (a whole other issue that could be taken up in a Con Con). Hawaiis has not had a Con Con for 30 years since 1978, but powerful forces are ...
Hawaiian Reporter - Oct 22, 2008
Campaign 2008: Where the candidates stand
With Election Day fast approaching, we want to help you cut through the campaign blather. Here s a quick comparison of where Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain stand on 10 key issues. EDUCATION Obama: Opposes private school vouchers as a drain on public education funds. Proposes $18 billion a year in new spending on early childhood classes, teacher recruitment, performance pay ...
DothanEagle.com - Oct 23, 2008
Putting the brakes on foreclosures
A week into the big bailout, banks are beginning to charge each other less for loans and companies are finding it easier to borrow short term. The Dow has been up and down, but so far this week, it is back above 9,000. So has the worst passed? Probably not. The unfortunate reality is that as long as millions of Americans continue to default on their mortgages and housing prices continue to ...
International Herald Tribune - Oct 22, 2008
Next US President Could Set Direction Of Supreme Court
WASHINGTON (AFP)--Abortion, torture, gay marriage, war-on-terror detentions - whoever the next president appoints to the U.S. Supreme Court could play a major role in shaping constitutional rights for a generation. Appointments to the country's highest court have always been a political battleground as the nine judges, who hold life terms, rule on some of the weightiest issues in U.S.
Nasdaq - Oct 23, 2008
OPINION: Judicial candidates should gear campaigns to rule by the law
(Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- DJCO | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Electing judges and writing about judicial elections are both difficult tasks. We can demand to know how John McCain and Barack Obama or senatorial candidates Ronnie Musgrove and Roger Wicker stand on every issue. We can quiz congressional candidates Greg ...
TradingMarkets - Oct 22, 2008
Hidden cameras to monitor nursing homes
Calling it a deterrent against nursing home abuse, State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday that his office will use hidden camera technology in Western New York to expose and prosecute mistreatment of residents. Hidden cameras have been used by the attorney generals office in four cases already, resulting in 26 convictions of nurses, nurses aides and a nursing home owner.
Buffalo News - Oct 22, 2008
Many Obstacles to Drilling Remain
Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com Sen. Lisa Murkowski raises critical points about the challenges facing the U.S. with respect to energy production on the Outer Continental ...
Wall Street Journal Online - Oct 22, 2008
Florida turns into tossup after financial meltdown
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Democrat Barack Obama poured millions of dollars into Florida over the summer but couldn't close in on John McCain's comfortable lead. The Republican didn't flinch, confident the state was trending toward the GOP eight years after it gave George W. Bush the White House. Then the mortgage crisis hit, jolting the high-foreclosure state - and its presidential politics.
The Sun News - Oct 22, 2008
Obama lawyers aim to stop repeat of Florida fiasco
Just before Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton walk on stage in front of a roaring Florida crowd of 40,000 - arm-in-arm and beaming - Richard Siwica, a harassed looking lawyer, takes the podium to invoke the ghosts of hanging chads past. We'll have lawyers in every significant precinct, Mr Siwica told this Orlando crowd. Many Democrats here still speak of the 2000 Florida recount that gave the ...
The Times - Oct 22, 2008
How the U.S.A. elects its President
Every four years, the world looks with bafflement at the United States as the country goes through its curious process of electing its President. Truth be told, the system is far from obvious, and remains misunderstood and controversial even within the U.S.A. A brief primer on how it all works. Foto: AFP With early voting opening in some states such as Florida, voting season has begun. ...
Time - Oct 22, 2008
Do you qualify for severance pay?
Losing your job is tough enough but you'll get some severance pay, won't you? Not necessarily. There are many situations where you won't get any severance pay. I divide these no severance situations into two categories. The first category covers people hired for a specific task or for a fixed period of time. Let's say you've been hired to fill in for one year while Debbie is on a maternity ...
Toronto Sun - Oct 22, 2008
Seminole explains constitutional amendments
SEMINOLE - Vice Mayor Thomas Barnhorn has been busy hitting the speaker's circuit over the last couple of months. After attending an educational seminar provided by the Florida League of Cities, Barnhorn has be heading out to present free seminars on the ramifications of six Florida constitutional amendments that will be on the ballot Nov. 4. "I hope to speak to civic clubs and other groups as ...
Tampa Bay Newspapers - Oct 22, 2008
Justice Roberts delays U of L visit
Business First of Louisville Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts Jr. has postponed indefinitely a talk he originally planned to give on Monday at the University of Louisville. He had an unavoidable schedule conflict, but plans to speak at the university sometime in the future, McConnell Center director Gary Gregg said Wednesday in a news release.
Biz Journals - Oct 22, 2008
An irresistible force meets an immovable Mass v. EPA
Kate says: The Wall Street Journal spazzes out about Obama adviser Jason Grumet's assertion that a President Obama would fight climate change under the Clean Air Act if Congress doesn't move to address the issue within 18 months. In what may be a historical first, I actually think the WSJ editorial board is right about this. Not that it's bad, but that it's a Very Big Deal.
Grist Magazine - Oct 22, 2008
Justice, Texas Supreme Court
What does the term activist judge mean to you? Does this term affect the public s perception of the judiciary? Please explain (75 words) Question 3: What method of selection of judges is most likely to result in a qualified, diverse, and independent judiciary? (75 words) Question 4: Should a judge or justice recuse himself or herself from cases in which the participating lawyers, their ...
Fort Bend Sun - Oct 22, 2008
EDITORIAL: Initiative power: Supreme Court strikes down unconstitutional law
Oct. 22--Earlier this year, the Legislature gutted the people's power to make land-use laws through initiatives and to refer the implementation of land-use laws to the voters. Last week, the Utah Supreme Court reversed that action by declaring unconstitutional the law that stole the people's rights. Thank goodness for the balance of powers. In its opinion, the court offered the Legislature a ...
Calibre Macro World - Oct 22, 2008
Big-time Waffle House guy in trouble
Local entrepreneur James L. Shaub II's job running SouthEast Waffles, a 113-restaurant Waffle House franchise based in Nashville, remains under the scrutiny of creditors amid whispers of missing millions and the shadow of a pending Chapter 11 bankruptcy hearing. Next week, Shaub could lose his job at what is now the second-largest franchise under the umbrella of Norcross, Ga.-based Waffle House, ...
Tennessean - Oct 22, 2008
Trial of Economic Saboteurs Postponed
(The New Times/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX News Network) -- The first hearing on economic sabotage that had been scheduled for October 16, 2008, at Kacyiru Lower Instance Court was postponed to November 13 by Claudine Nyirabikenye, the Court President has said. Economic sabotage is any act or crime that impedes economic growth of the country. According to the Prosecutor General's office, ...
Calibre Macro World - Oct 22, 2008
U.S. Intervenes in False Claims Act Suit Against McKesson Corp. and Golden Horizons Nursing Homes
WASHINGTON - The United States has intervened in a lawsuit against several companies alleging that they submitted false claims to Medicare arising from illegal kickbacks and the establishment of sham durable medical equipment (DME) suppliers, the Justice Department announced today. The companies are McKesson Corporation, McKesson Medical-Surgical MediNet Inc.
United States Department of Justice - Oct 22, 2008
Congress' report card
With 36 days left for the assembly elections in Delhi, HT does a reality check on what the ruling Congress promised in its election manifesto before the 2003 polls and what it actually delivered during the last five years. Statehood for Delhi The Congress in its 2003 election manifesto had promised that it would demand full statehood for the National Capital from the Central government.
Yahoo! India - Oct 22, 2008
Anti-JPEPA groups fail to get temporary respite
THE Supreme Court did not give due course to the petition of civil and environmental groups for the issuance of a temporary restraining order to stop the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) from becoming final and binding. Instead, the High Court asked the Senate and Malacaang to comment on the petition filed by the anti-JPEPA groups within 10 days.
Yehey - Oct 22, 2008
SC dismisses Excise Dept plea against Tata Motors
(Asia Pulse Data Source via COMTEX) -- TTM | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- The Supreme Court has dismissed the Excise Department's appeal which alleged that Tata Motors had changed the classification of motor vehicle chassis supplied to its distributors just to evade duty to the tune of around Rs 2.9 crore including penalty. A bench headed by Justice S H Kapadia dismissed the petition ...
TradingMarkets - Oct 22, 2008
Thaksin convicted of corruption
Outgoing Manchester City owner Thaksin Shinawatra has been found guilty of corruption and sentenced to two years in jail by Thailand's Supreme Court. The former PM was not present for the ruling, having fled to exile in England two months ago. The ruling was the first against him since he was removed in a 2006 military coup after being accused of corruption and abuse of power.
Bromsgrove Advertiser - Oct 22, 2008
Nigerian Court Seen Ruling On 2007 Presidential Election Thursday
LAGOS (AFP)--Nigeria's Supreme Court is expected to decide Thursday whether to declare invalid the results of the April, 2007, election that brought President Umaru Yar'Adua to power. Two opposition candidates - former vice-president Atiku Abubakar and ex- president Mohammadu Buhari - have petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that upheld Yar'Adua's victory in the ...
Morningstar.com - Oct 22, 2008
Palin to give deposition later this week (AAP)
Sarah Palin, already found by one investigation to have abused her power as Alaska governor, will take time from her campaign for vice president later this week to give a deposition in a second inquiry into her firing of the state's top public safety official. It will be the first deposition in the affair by the Republican vice presidential candidate. She wasn't subpoenaed to answer questions in ...
Yahoo! News Australia - Oct 21, 2008
How green is the high court?
WASHINGTON Is the U.S. Supreme Court hostile to environmental regulation? Does it shy away from the tougher environmental questions of today? Or are its decisions a 'mixed bag,' giving comfort and angst to environmentalists and industry depending on the issue? The justices this term have taken five environmental cases for decision thus far a significant number for a relatively small docket.
National Law Journal - Oct 21, 2008
Hollywood money boosts opponents of Calif. amend.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (BP)--After sounding the alarm two weeks ago, opponents of a proposed California constitutional marriage amendment have outraised supporters by a wide margin, and fundraising in the coming days could determine which side gets more ads on television between now and Nov. 4 -- and wins. Proposition 8 opponents have raised $6.8 million since Oct.
Town Hall - Oct 21, 2008
World events now steer election
WASHINGTON Republican presidential nominee, U.S. Sen. John McCain's answer to the first question in last week's debate was an acknowledgment that 'Americans are hurting right now, and they're angry.' He said it twice, so there could be no missing the message. Democratic presidential nominee, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., quickly agreed. 'Everybody understands at this point that we are ...
CourierPostOnline.com - Oct 21, 2008
U.S. -- Lawsuit Claims Mapmaking Firm Owns Your Neighborhood
A mathematician who pioneered a fractal-based urban-mapping technique is embroiled in a copyright battle that raises legal questions about whether a company can claim ownership of the definition of neighborhoods: their specific locations and boundaries. The dispute highlights a growing movement to quantify the amorphous tendrils connecting communities. Bernt Wahl had the idea in 2004 to use a ...
Wired News - Oct 22, 2008
Accused knew of status, HIV murder trial told
Johnson Aziga, who has HIV, is alleged to have had sex with 13 women without disclosing his medical condition. He is believed to be the first person in Canada to be charged with murder in an HIV transmission case. (Hamilton Spectator/Canadian Press)An HIV-positive man charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of two sexual partners knew of his status for seven years before he was arrested, ...
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - Oct 21, 2008
Thailand to demand Britain hand over Thaksin
Britain will be asked to extradite former Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra after he was convicted of corruption charges today. Thaksin was found guilty of abusing his office by the Thai Supreme Court and sentenced to two years jail in his absence. The former Manchester City football club owner and his wife fled to Britain in August where they remain in exile but the Thai attorney-general s ...
Breaking News.ie - Oct 21, 2008
Canada doesn't have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: apex court
Toronto, Oct 22 (IANS) Canada, the world's fourth worst polluter, has been let off the hook, with the country's top court dismissing a lawsuit to force the government to implement the Kyoto Protocol to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, though it has signed and ratified the protocol. Of the 38 industrialised nations with binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Canada is the only ...
Yahoo! India - Oct 22, 2008
Bush Decides to Keep Guant namo Open
WASHINGTON Despite his stated desire to close the American prison at Guant namo Bay, Cuba, President Bush has decided not to do so, and never considered proposals drafted in the State Department and the Pentagon that outlined options for transferring the detainees elsewhere, according to senior administration officials. Mr. Bush s top advisers held a series of meetings at the White House ...
RINF.com - Oct 21, 2008
Comment on What presidential team is more likely to support fathers? by Roger Knight
Punish Biden for VAWA and deprive the NOW and VAWA feminists of the reward that they will ask and obtain when Biden is elected? Is the Peter Principle operating among some MRAs?: What happens if social workers cure poverty? Most of us do not want to continue to pay fees to lawyers to feel good and lose. If Biden loses, VAWA and NOW feminists will not be rewarded.
Men's News Daily - Oct 21, 2008
New Zealand's chief justice to speak
New Mexico Business Weekly Related News The first female chief justice of New Zealand s Supreme Court will present a lecture this week on indigenous rights. The Right Honorable Dame Sian Elias will give the Ramo Lecture on International Law and Justice on Oct. 23 at 5 p.m., at the University of New Mexico School of Law. Elias address First Peoples and Human Rights: A South Seas ...
Biz Journals - Oct 21, 2008
Both campaigns have lawyers at the ready
Barack Obama and John McCain have a litigation game plan to accompany their election strategy. Both candidates have armies of volunteers to ring doorbells and get voters to the polls. They are also forming squadrons of lawyers who are filing challenges and preparing in case Election Day doesn't settle the contest for the White House. Legal battles unfolding in Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin provide ...
Philadelphia Inquirer - Oct 21, 2008
Groups Go to Court to Force Cleanup of Air Pollution in National Parks
As autumn foliage season reaches its peak, clean air advocates are going to court to make sure visitors to national parks can enjoy scenic vistas free of the yellowish haze caused by industrial pollution. The nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice filed a lawsuit today on behalf of Environmental Defense Fund and National Parks Conservation Association over the failure by the U.S.
Calibre Macro World - Oct 21, 2008
Libby judge on leave for conduct
LIBBY - A small-town judge is off the bench, with a recommendation that he be removed permanently from office, after investigators ruled he did, in fact, offer leniency to female defendants in return for sexual favors. The fate of Gary Hicks, a two-term justice of the peace from Libby, now is in the hands of the Montana Supreme Court. I didn't see any surprises here, said Stephen Berg, ...
Missoulian - Oct 21, 2008
Initiative power: Supreme Court strikes down unconstitutional law
In its opinion, the court offered the Legislature a short course in the legislative power that the Utah Constitution reserves to the people independently of their Legislature. We hope that an arrogant Legislature gets the message that, when it comes to making laws, the people have co-equal constitutional power with their elected lawmakers. The subject of the lawsuit is an initiative in Sevier ...
Salt Lake Tribune - Oct 21, 2008
Lawsuit: Atlanta Cops Violated HIV-Related Privacy
A man who applied to become a police officer in 2006 sued the Atlanta police department, claiming they tested him for HIV without his consent and then wouldnt hire him after learning his HIV-positive status, reports. According to court documents, the defendantwho filed the lawsuit under pseudonym Richard Roeaccused the department of discrimination and violation of privacy and claimed the ...
POZ.com - Oct 21, 2008
Billions of fish and roe die in nuclear power plants intake systems
For a newly hatched striped bass in the Hudson River, a clutch of trout eggs in Lake Michigan or a baby salmon in San Francisco Bay, drifting a little too close to a power plant can mean a quick and turbulent death. Sucked in with enormous volumes of water, battered against the sides of pipes and heated by steam, the small fry of the aquatic world are being sacrificed in large numbers each year ...
Taipei Times Online - Oct 21, 2008
Trying Times, Complex Solutions
During a July conference call introducing former Treasury Under Secretary Robert Steel as Wachovia Corp.'s new chief executive, Lanty Smith, the company's chairman, made a somewhat humbling admission. Just two years after paying $25.5 billion to acquire Golden West Financial Corp., the big Oakland, California-based thrift, Wachovia's board was conceding that the deal was a mistake. A bust.
Bank Director - Oct 21, 2008
U.S. Labor Department's Office of Labor-Management Standards obtains 900th criminal conviction for the decade
The U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) today announced its criminal enforcement data for September 2008. During the month, OLMS obtained three convictions, seven indictments and court orders of restitution totaling more than $80,000. The office's totals for fiscal year 2008 (which ended on Sept. 30, 2008) are 102 convictions and 130 indictments, with ...
PR Newswire - Oct 21, 2008
Cybersecurity 'needs to move beyond IT'
Businesses need to expand in-house departments that focus on cybersecurity beyond IT, and the chief financial officer should be dedicated to assessing and reducing cyberrisk, according to a new report. Although the IT department should remain a major player in cybersecurity efforts, the CFO and the legal, risk management, human resources, public relations and other departments need to be involved ...
Computerworld UK - Oct 21, 2008
Murder Who Claimed He Was Too Fat To Die Is Executed
A convicted murder who claimed he was too overweight to be executed was put to death Tuesday morning by lethal injection. Warden Phillip Kearns of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility said Richard Cooey, 41, was pronounced dead at 10:28 a.m. Cooey's execution happened an hour after the U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal to stop it. Cooey was 75-pounds overweight and argued his weight would ...
WMFD - Oct 14, 2008
How Sarah Palin lived down Troopergate.
Perhaps it was the overblown coverage of her every move and misstep or perhaps I too have come down with a case of Palin fever. But last Friday, as I read the details of the report confirming that Palin abused her power as governor to get her brother-in-law fired, I was nonplussed. Troopergate is a significantly more severe infraction than anything she's been accused of since we first met Palin ...
Slate - Oct 14, 2008
$700 Billion Worth of Vagueness
Despite what you read in the press, the $700 billion 'Wall Street bailout' program granting the Treasury and the Fed almost unlimited and only slightly defined authority to implement the bailout bill is hardly unprecedented. Most new regulatory programs are approved in broad principle by the public and by Congress. Legislative implementing language typically is along the lines of, 'An act to ...
American Daily - Oct 14, 2008
National Lampoon Asks ... Are Americans Too Dumb to Vote?
Statistics from the new book How Dumb Are You? point to a lack of basic knowledge in Americans LOS ANGELES, Oct. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- In recent political discourse, much has been made of whether Barack Obama is too inexperienced to lead, or whether John McCain is too old to be elected. But in all the discussion, one question has been overlooked: Are Americans too dumb to make that ...
KVIA.com - Oct 15, 2008
Patent Law: Juicy Enough for the Silver Screen
The new film 'Flash of Genius' may be based on a 1960s case of patent infringement, but its David-vs.-Goliath story involving independent inventors going up against monolithic corporations continues to spin off sequels well into the 21st Century, says a Minneapolis-based patent attorney. And while the movie uses the automotive industry to tell its tale of innovation, obsession and redemption, the ...
E-Commerce Times - Oct 14, 2008
Wells Fargo asks judge to void Citi-Wachovia pact
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co , which has agreed to buy Wachovia Corp , asked a federal court to void Citigroup Inc's earlier agreement to buy parts of the big North Carolina lender. In a complaint filed Tuesday with the U.S. district court in Manhattan, Wells Fargo said the earlier agreement is unenforceable under the government's $700 billion banking industry bailout because it is ...
Reuters via MSN Money - Oct 14, 2008
Chinese Lawyers Help Tainted Milk Victims Despite Suppression
A shopper carries Chinese-produced milk powder in a supermarket in Beijing on Sept. 12, 2008. (China Photos/) A Beijing Lawyer Mr. Xu Zhiyong, told Radio Free Asia (RFA) on Oct. 13 that at least 10 lawyers have decided to take the tainted-milk cases to court, which goes against the Chinese regimes decision to discourage lawyers from doing so. It is unclear whether the regime will have any new ...
Epoch Times - Oct 14, 2008
Vioxx heart risks confirmed in long-term study
A long-term study has confirmed the risks associated with the arthritis drug Vioxx. The study, an analysis of people who took the arthritis drug carried out by Dr. Robert Bresalier of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas, has found Vioxx doubles the risk of strokes and heart attacks. Dr. Bresalier says other drugs in the same class of painkillers known as Cox-2 inhibitors ...
News-Medical.Net - Oct 14, 2008
Judicial Watch Announces: California Court of Appeals Rules That Extra Compensation for Los Angeles County Judges Violates California Constitution
Judicial Watch, the public interest group Judicial Watch, the public interest group that fights government corruption and judicial abuse, announced today that a California Court of Appeals ruled on October 10th that a scheme by Los Angeles County to pay superior court judges in the county approximately $21 million annually in perks and supplemental benefits on top of what they already receive ...
MarketWire - Oct 14, 2008
Defense Opens In Mob Murder Trial
MIAMI - Former FBI agent John Connolly opened his defense to murder and conspiracy charges today by calling a senior federal judge from Boston as his first witness - a judge who six years ago was publicly reprimanded for using his position to praise Connolly. Judge Edward Harrington was again effusive in his description of Connolly as one of the nation's top mob busters.
Hartford Courant - Oct 14, 2008
Uncle Sam, Inc.
Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com Yesterday's latest installment of bailout money has the government virtually annexing the financial sector.
Wall Street Journal Online - Oct 14, 2008
Direct US stake in banks has many precedents
President Bush's announcement on Tuesday that the government would directly invest up to $250 billion in the nation's top financial institutions was the latest step in increasingly bold efforts here and abroad to prop up a financial system near collapse. It was presented as a last-resort intervention. But already this year, the Federal Reserve had taken a $85 billion stake in failing insurer ...
TheDay.com - Oct 14, 2008
POLITICS-US: Judge Sides with Voting Rights Groups
By Bankole Thompson DETROIT, Michigan, Oct 14 (IPS) - A federal judge ruled Monday that the current practices to purge the voter rolls in Michigan are illegal and ordered Republican Secretary of State Terry Lynn Land to immediately stop the cancellation of registered voters whose voter identification cards are returned as undeliverable in the mail.The purging of registered voters, many of whom ...
Inter Press Service - Oct 14, 2008
LegalView Reintroduces Its Medical Malpractice Information Portal with Updated Links to Finding Immediate Legal Assistance
(PR.com)-- LegalView.com, the number one legal resource on the Internet, announced the re-launch of its medical malpractice information portal to provide victims of medical malpractice injuries with the most up-to-date news, the latest on medical malpractice as well as how to obtain a medical malpractice attorney, should the need arise for a medical malpractice lawsuit to be developed.Medical ...
PR.com - Oct 14, 2008
Options narrow
Gloria Arroyo's options to extend her stay in Malacaang have gotten narrower, what with the Supreme Court (SC) dismissing the petition of a pro-administration congressman for the alleged unconstitutionality of the House rules on Congress constituting itself as a constituent assembly. As things stand, it will be very difficult to effect changes in the Constitution without the cooperation of the ...
Philippines Daily Tribune - Oct 14, 2008
Accused therapist killer headed to mental hospital
NEW YORK -- Prosecutors in the case of a mentally ill patient accused of hacking a psychotherapist to death with a meat cleaver decided Tuesday not to challenge a psychiatrist's finding that the killer is not mentally fit to stand trial. David Tarloff, 40, will be turned over to the state and sent to a mental institution, where he will be held indefinitely, said Manhattan state Supreme Court ...
Seattle Post Intelligencer - Oct 15, 2008
Muslim rumor exposed
So now we know the genesis of the false Obama-is-a-Muslim rumor. According to the New York Times, Patient Zero in this particular epidemic which has virally spread around the nation thanks to the Internet is a fellow named Andy Martin, known for filing copious lawsuits that on occasion have contained very anti-Semitic language. After reading the NYT story that places Martin at the starting point ...
Chicago Tribune - Oct 13, 2008
Tainted milk, a baby's death and lawsuit in China
Yi Yongsheng holds his daughter Yi Xuan, right, as he speaks about the death of his infant son, at their Xinxing home in China's northern Gansu province, Sunday, Oct. 12, 2008. The death of Yi's son from kidney failure was one of four China's government has reported so far in a tainted milk scandal. Thousands of children were sickened after eating milk powder laced with the industrial chemical ...
Buffalo News - Oct 13, 2008
Patent trolls responsible for dramatic increase in state suits
Florida nearly doubled from 72 in 2004 to 131 in 2007. As many as half of last year's cases were filed by companies that might be termed patent trolls, which have no commercial products but own patents and aggressively file patent infringement suits against companies that may be reluctant to get involved in lengthy and costly court battles over complex issues.
Daily Business Review - Oct 13, 2008
Citigroup Drops Bid to Block Wachovia Sale, Presses Ahead With $60 Billion Suit for Damages
Citigroup Inc. may have abandoned its attempt to purchase the assets of Wachovia Corp. but continues to pursue its claim for $60 billion in damages. The focus in the latest maneuvering was whether those claims belonged in federal or state court. Citigroup no longer is seeking to block the acquisition of Wachovia by Wells Fargo for $15 billion but insisted in a statement Thursday that 'it has ...
Yahoo! Canada - Oct 13, 2008
Law cracks down on attorneys
Gov. David Paterson signed legislation into laws that crack down on attorneys in the state pension system. The legislation, first introduced in late June, represents the states response to separate investigations by the state comptroller and state attorney general into alleged abuses of the states $153.9 billion pension fund. Albany law firm Girvin & Ferlazzo PC was one of the early targets of ...
Business Review Albany - Oct 13, 2008
Political advocacy in the workplace: What are the limits?
As the race for the White House reaches the home stretch, the nonstop campaign rhetoric has reached a fever pitch. Political candidates are promising change to bring about needed reforms in how we deal with immigration, health care, the economy, education, the tax system and other hot-button issues. It s a process fundamental to our democracy, right? But what happens when that political ...
Fort Worth Business Press - Oct 13, 2008
New Evidence of Systemic Bias in Guant namo Trials
Andy Worthington, author of The Guant namo Files, continues his analysis of the corrupt command structure of the Military Commissions at Guant namo, with new information from Maj. David Frakt, one of the Commissions military defense lawyers. In the last three weeks, two events have occurred that have dealt what should have been a knockout blow to the Military Commissions at Guant namo, the ...
RINF.com - Oct 13, 2008
Nationalization Has Happened Before in U.S.
The government s plan to take ownership stakes in American banks is an exceptional step, but not an unprecedented one. The United States has a culture that celebrates laissez-faire capitalism as the economic ideal, yet the practice strays at times. Over the last century, the federal government has occasionally nationalized railways, coal mines and steel mills, and has even taken a controlling ...
New York Times - Oct 13, 2008
Comcast Bucks the Plan
Washington- Comcast, the country's largest cable operator, is challenging a plan by Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin that could allow hundreds of TV stations to demand cable carriage for the first time. An attempt to force cable operators to distribute so-called low-power Class-A stations would both violate the law and needlessly embroil cable operators, the stations and ...
Macro World Investor - Oct 13, 2008
Justices to consider whether man entitled to damages from company's 'alter ego'
Justices this morning are expected to consider whether a northeastern Ohio ironworker is entitled to damages from not only his employer, but a sister corporation, after he was rendered paraplegic in a workplace accident in 2003. The case is one of eight the Supreme Court of Ohio is scheduled to hear during sessions at the Ohio Judicial Center, downtown, today and Wednesday.
The Daily Reporter - Oct 13, 2008
Anti-same-sex marriage groups hope for victory this time around
Those same opponents are hoping for redemption Nov. 4, when Arizona voters again will have to decide whether they want the state's constitution to be amended to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. 'It actually helped us out having it fail the first time because it allowed us to raise more money,' said state Sen. Ron Gould, a Lake Havasu City Republican and prime sponsor of ...
Casa Grande Valley Newspaper - Oct 13, 2008
States Ask Baby Product Companies To Avoid BPA
Connecticut's attorney general on Monday said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was 'asleep at the switch' by failing to take action against companies that use the chemical bisphenol A in making baby bottles and baby formula containers. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said he and attorneys general from New Jersey and Delaware sent letters Friday to 11 companies that make baby bottles and ...
Hartford Courant - Oct 13, 2008
Economic downturn expected to fuel litigation, study predicts
San Antonio Business Journal - by Tricia Lynn Silva Stephen C. Dillard chairs Fulbright & Jaworski's global litigation practice. Related News The current economic slump will likely lead to an increase in lawsuits, according to a new litigation trends survey released Tuesday by law firm Fulbright & Jaworski LLP. The blame game will prompt many of these suits.
Philadelphia Business Journal - Oct 13, 2008
Lawsuit filed against UW police alleges bias
A lawsuit filed by six current and former members of the University of Washington Police Department contends discrimination is pervasive within the agency, and that their complaints about the harassment have been ignored by department brass. The suit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court, alleges the department violated the civil rights of the plaintiffs, who are a records clerk, three ...
Seattle Post Intelligencer - Oct 13, 2008
Apple's Psystar Case Is Explained
Apple's filing to dismiss with prejudice Psystar's countersuit revealed the tenants of Apples' strategy to win. The basis of Apple's argument is that and Macs do not, in themselves, create a legally plausible market, antitrust does not apply, and Apple has no obligation to share its sources of advantage. An attorney who has been following the case, and wishes to remain anonymous, explained ...
NewsFactor Network - Oct 13, 2008
Asbestos Witch Trials
Hercules Chemical Co. has been a reputable manufacturer of plumbing-heating specialty chemicals for almost 100 years. Many years ago, ending in 1983, they produced a rather innocuous sealant that contained a tiny amount of fully encapsulated asbestos. For that they have been put to the stake and tortured ever since. As we reported last month, Hercules decided to pursue a voluntary bankruptcy ...
Supply House Times Magazine - Oct 13, 2008
For Ousted Candidate, Fight Goes On: Venezuelan Disqualified Along With Other Chvez Foes Campaigns for Those Remaining
CARACAS, Venezuela -- Young and photogenic, Leopoldo Lpez has been running the campaign of his political life, rummaging for votes here amid a warren of crowded slums and as far away as Venezuela's lawless western frontier. Polls show that the politician has won a strong following by promising a sharp change from the populist government of President Hugo Chvez, who after nearly a decade in office ...
Washington Post - Oct 13, 2008
Broadcom renews patent battle with Qualcomm
(Datamonitor via COMTEX) -- QCOM | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Communications chip maker Broadcom has renewed its patent battle with wireless telecommunications products and services company Qualcomm with a new lawsuit accusing Qualcomm of patent misuse. In the suit filed with the US District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego, Broadcom is seeking to stop ...
TradingMarkets - Oct 13, 2008
Anti-JPEPA groups petition SC
CIVIL rights and environmental groups on Monday sought a last minute intervention from the Supreme Court to stop the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) from becoming final and binding. The petitioners include groups like the Initiatives for Dialogue and Empowerment through Alternative Legal Services Inc., Alliance of Progressive Labor, Ecological Coalition of the Philippines ...
Manila Times - Oct 13, 2008
Hypocrisy at its Heights
Why did Rawlings sack Tsatsu Tsikata as CEO of GNPC? This is a question which the adherents of the NDC have refused to answer in spite of numerous challenges thrown to them. I wont relent on it. Ghanaians deserve to be told the answer. Now judging by the criteria with which the NDC as a party has set that any official who losses his position in the government is guilty, it follows that Tsatsu ...
GhanaHomePage - Oct 14, 2008
India: Tribe Vows To Fight Mine With Axes & Arrows
India: Tribe Vows To Fight Mine With Axes And Arrows One of Indias most isolated tribes, the Dongria Kondh, is preparing to stop British FTSE 100 company Vedanta from mining aluminium ore on their sacred mountain, after police and hired thugs forced protestors to dismantle a barricade over the weekend. About 150 people had blocked the road in Orissa state on Wednesday after hearing that Vedanta ...
Scoop - Oct 14, 2008
Law Bulletin Publishing Company's DM2000(R) Expands into Will County, Illinois; Law Firms With Cases in Will County Courts Gain Powerful Case Calendaring Tool
Law Bulletin Publishing Company announced today the expansion of its Court Docket Management Program, DM2000(R) into Will County, Illinois effective today. The Will County Circuit court calls and information will also be published each day in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin(R) and available online via name and case number search at http://www.ChicagoLawBulletin.com.
PR Newswire - Oct 13, 2008
FindLaw's New Case Summaries Through RSS Feeds
Time was you had to go to FindLaw (www.findlaw.com) to find out about the law. Now FindLaw comes to you! Last week FindLaw announced 'up-to-the-minute' court opinions and case summaries available through RSS feeds. The summaries are written by attorney-editors at the Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters of FindLaw, tagged by jurisdiction and law topic, and then fed into an RSS (really simple ...
Information Today - Oct 13, 2008
Age Discrimination Laws Have Unintended Consequences
They make companies less competitive and reward the underperformer who feels entitled to a job. October 12, 2008 - by Melissa Clouthier Support Pajamas Media; Visit Our Advertisers Too often, laws have unintended consequences. McCain-Feingold comes immediately to mind. A lot of good that law did about getting money out of politics. Other laws are just confusing.
Pajamas Media - Oct 13, 2008
Financial chaos good for lawyers
NEW YORK As the corporate victims continue to pile up in Wall Streets great financial collapse, that flapping noise coming from the skies over Manhattan isnt the pigeons circling, its the vultures. With personal fortunes, retirement savings and institutional assets evaporating each day, swarms of attorneys from some of the nations most prestigious firms are positioning themselves to cash in on ...
Times Leader - Oct 13, 2008
Guest Column: Bill looks to undermine democracy at work
The Employee Free Choice Act's proposed elimination of secret ballot elections flies in the face of pronouncements by the Supreme Court. Can you imagine the United States denying to its citizens the right to vote for whomever they want to be their president? Or their senators or congressmen? Of course you can't. The foundation of our democracy is the secret ballot.
Commercial Appeal - Oct 14, 2008
From Vogue to MTV, Palin drew press to Alaska
GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is keeping reporters at arms' length in her campaign, but she had a very different approach as Alaska's new governor: She couldn't get enough of them. Palin cultivated interviews with local and national journalists and welcomed them from as far away as London, earning time in the spotlight even before Republican presidential candidate John McCain selected ...
Ledger-Enquirer - Oct 13, 2008
DNA exoneree fell victim to 'drive-by' identification
Billy Wayne Miller was asleep in a back bedroom of his father's modest Oak Cliff home when three Dallas police officers burst through the front door around 3 a.m., guns in hand, yelling another man's name. Still groggy and clad only in his underwear, Mr. Miller was taken to the front porch. There he spotted a woman in a squad car glance at him and nod to an officer seated beside her before the ...
Dallas Morning News - Oct 12, 2008
Litigating Patent Obviousness
To be patentable, an invention must be completely novel and be the result of inventive activity, that is, it would not have been obvious to a skilled person at the time it was made. But when is this the case? In spring 2007, the Supreme Court ruled on KSR International v. Teleflex, commenting for the first time in decades on the meaning of obviousness under patent law.
Bio-IT World - Oct 12, 2008
State and federal election laws can be confusing
Text Size: tool name tool goes here For all of our bluster and promotion of democracy, one would think that by now we would have a fairly foolproof voting system, but we still have problems. Some are technical and unintended and others are more sinister.While people look to America for guidance, we are really a hodgepodge of states with 50 different sets of election rules.
Macon Telegraph - Oct 12, 2008
Wachovia fate may get court hearing
NEW YORK - A court hearing may be held on Monday over the rival bids of Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. for Wachovia Corp. even though Citigroup dropped out of negotiations, a U. S. judge said yesterday. Citigroup has said it would seek damages from Wachovia and Wells Fargo because it had an agreement with Wachovia to acquire the North Carolina bank before San Franciscobased Wells Fargo ...
National Post - Oct 12, 2008
Meltdown 101: Bankruptcy won't help borrowers much
WASHINGTON -- Can filing for bankruptcy help homeowners facing foreclosure?For most people, trying to negotiate changes in their loan with help from a housing counselor or lawyer is a far better option. While bankruptcy judges can reduce or eliminate certain kinds of debt, they aren't allowed to alter the total amount owed or interest rate of primary mortgages.Whether to change this law to help ...
Arizona Daily Sun - Oct 12, 2008
Palin book smack dab in middle of legal fight
Tiny Epicenter Press Inc. struck gold in late August when little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was named Sen. John McCains vice presidential running mate, just three months after the Kenmore, Wash., company published a book about Palins rise to power. Today, the company and its bestseller, Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaskas Political Establishment Upside Down, are smack dab in the middle of ...
Portland Tribune - Oct 12, 2008
Are America's easy credit days gone?
But sitting across from a salesman in a quiet back room, Adrian Clark could see it would not be nearly that easy. This was the ninth or tenth dealership for Clark, a steamfitter looking for a car to commute to a new job. Every one offered a variation on the discouragement he was getting here: Without $1,000 for a down payment, no loan. 'It's just rough times right now,' Clark said.
Record Publishing Online - Oct 13, 2008
School nurses' roles expand as medical technology grows
Oct. 12--There's the story Teresa Martin likes to tell about the time a young boy at Oakdale Elementary School entered her office and announced to Martin, the school nurse -- 'Mrs. Martin, I have a song stuck in my head, and I can't get rid of it.' 'He came to the nurse to fix that,' Martin said, smiling. Gently, she counseled the young student to think of another song.
Calibre Macro World - Oct 12, 2008
Navy Sonar v. Whales Argued in U.S. Supreme Court
The closely watched case touches on controversial issues of presidential power and the military's obligation to follow key environmental laws that require federal agencies to consider and mitigate the environmental impacts of their activities. The dispute emerged from the Navy's plan to conduct a series of 14 submarine hunting exercises using its mid-frequency active sonar off the coast of ...
Environment News Service - Oct 12, 2008
Draft signup rules unfair to men?
If Henry Tucker were a woman, he'd still have a job with the federal government. In February, he resigned from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., ending a 17-year career that started in the mailroom and took him to the post of 'financial institution specialist.' The end came because of an oversight dating to his teenage years: Mr. Tucker, now 38, never registered with the Selective Service, ...
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Oct 12, 2008
Intel Says AMD Split Violates License Agreement
AMD says the split into two companies doesn't interfere with the agreement AMD and Intel are rivals in the marketplace when it comes to x86 compatible CPUs and graphics processors. AMD and Intel have a cross-license agreement in place that allow AMD to use Intel IP to build x86 compatible processors. On October 7, AMD announced that it was splitting its holdings into two separate companies.
DailyTech - Oct 12, 2008
Lotteries elsewhere raking in millions as high court set to hear arguments on Arkansas proposal
Political Blog From the Stephens Media team in Arkansas and Washington D.C. By Rob MoritzArkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - It seems state lotteries can be just the ticket in tough economic times.As the U.S. economy slows under the burden of a widening financial crisis, lotteries are raking in millions of dollars for many states, some reporting record revenues from the games.
Arkansas News Bureau - Oct 12, 2008
Vermont consumer rights case goes to Supreme Court
(Host) A Vermont woman is at the center of a U.S. Supreme Court case that could determine the rights of consumers to sue over dangerous products. The woman is Diana Levine, a musician who lost her right arm because of a medical disaster. VPR's John Dillon has the story that leads from the back roads of Marshfield to the marble halls of the Supreme Court. (Dillon) Eight years ago, Diana Levine ...
Vermont Public Radio - Oct 12, 2008
How high will hybrid mortgage go?
Article: :/c/a/2008/10/11/REKL1388NM.DTL Home of the San Francisco Chronicle Home Delivery| Today's Paper | Ads SFGate Web Search by YAHOO! | Advanced Search Quick links to the best of SFGate | Still can't find it? see Site Index News Today Sections Sports More Features Food Travel Living Entertainment Classifieds How high will hybrid mortgage go? Benny L.
San Francisco Chronicle - Oct 12, 2008
Presidential Poll: Buhari Alleges Plots to Influence Judges
As the Supreme Court prepares to hear the petition of both the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and Action Congress (AC) presidential candidates, the Director General of the Presidential Campaign Organisa-tion of the ANPP, Alhaji Sule Hamma, has raised an alarm over alleged moves to influence the outcome of the case at the apex court. Hamma however said Buhari's faith in the ability of the ...
This Day Online - Oct 12, 2008
The quadrennial plea to consider the court
BOSTON - I really hate to bring it up. We already have two branches of our national government in full-scale meltdown. The president looks like a guy pleading before the parole board for early release. The Congress makes 'dysfunctional' sound like a compliment. But there is the third branch also in dire need of a rescue operation. Oyez, oyez, or should I say oy vey.
Hutchinson News - Oct 12, 2008
The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama
The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obamas background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that arguably set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion. That statement was contained in a press release and it spun a complex tale about the alleged ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian.
New York Times - Oct 12, 2008
Landlords hit hard by foreclosure
Filings are up by 136 percent since 2000. Tom Wolf says he could not stop the spiral that ended with foreclosures on his rental homes and a wrecked credit history. In the early 2000s, the former electrical engineer lost half of his savings in the high-tech bust and wanted to change pace. He started acquiring Tulsa houses. 'Ultimately, I did not want to be a landlord for more than five or 10 ...
Tulsa World - Oct 12, 2008
Declare SAP first before reserving cane area, say growers
Any move to reserve area before SAP would go against the law. UP Govt has already formed a committee to recommend SAP for 2008-09. Growers in a better bargaining position due to lower crop. Harish Damodaran New Delhi, Oct 12 In what could well create a precedent, sugarcane growers in Uttar Pradesh (UP) are demanding that the State Government declare the price payable by mills for their crop ...
Hindu Business Line - Oct 12, 2008
Church, Constitution and the RH bill
Philippine Daily Inquirer Other Most Read Stories x Opinion Opinion Most Read RSS MANILA, Philippines - The debate on the reproductive health bill in Congress is by no means over. It should surprise no one that this is happening; after all, religion and the Constitution, both of which are involved in any evaluation of the bill, are very much at the heart of the life of our people.
Philippine Daily Inquirer - Oct 12, 2008
Govt, farmers fight aerial spraying
DAVAO CITY: Once a week, the drone of airplanes shatters the early morning calm in Calinan, a cluster of small farmlands in the hilly terrain around Mount Apo. It is the signal for farmers to rush indoors or take cover and stop feeding livestock, for women to pull down clothes hanging out to dry, and for everyone to stay indoors, windows shut. The small fixed-wing planes, known as crop dusters, ...
Manila Times - Oct 12, 2008
Post-Cold War era over, but not US primacy
The end of the Cold War had a triple significance for world affairs: the defeat of one power by another, the triumph of one political ideology over another, and the discrediting of one economic model in favour of another. All three have now been attenuated. The Cold War was a global and transcendental struggle centred on and led by the Soviet Union and the United States.
Frontier Post - Oct 12, 2008
UN WORKING GROUP ON ARBITRARY DETENTION CONCLUDES VISIT TO COLOMBIA
The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concludes today its visit to Colombia, which took place from 1 to 10 October 2008, at the invitation of the Government. During its visit, the Group visited Arauca, Bogota and Cali. The delegation was headed by Mrs. Manuela Carmena (Spain), Chairperson-Rapporteur and included Mr. Roberto Garretn (Chile), member of the Group.
UNHCHR - Oct 12, 2008
No beating around the Bush
Racy Tales of a Fictional First Lady cause Red Faces in the White House was one headline, says Curtis Sittenfeld, laughing. Then there was Book to Smear First Lady's Sex Life. NBC said my bedroom scenes were too graphic to print. In one poll 60 per cent of Americans said that the book shouldn't be published. Sittenfeld refused to be deterred. The 33-year-old, who only half-jokingly compares ...
The Times - Oct 12, 2008
Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Explains How Intellectual Property Damages Innovation
Over the last year or so, there have been a bunch of excellent books that have come out highlighting many of the issues we talk about here on a regular basis. The latest may be The Crime of Reason and the Closing of the Scientific Mind, written by Nobel Prize winning physicist, Robert B. Laughlin. I became aware of the book thanks to the fact that he'll be speaking at the Cato Institute this ...
Techdirt - Oct 9, 2008
Wells Fargo, Citigroup said to share Wachovia
LOS ANGELES, Oct. 8 (Xinhua) -- As their two-day litigation timeout was drawing to an end, Wells Fargo & Co. and Citigroup Inc. might ultimately be forced to share Wachovia Corp., the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Wednesday. Among the possible scenarios reported, the San Francisco-based Wells Fargo could agree to take 75 percent to 80 percent of Wachovia's 488 billion U.S.
Xinhua News Agency - Oct 8, 2008
Supreme Court justices indicated Wednesday they would side with a longtime government worker who claims she was fired in retaliation after she cooperated with a sexual harassment investigation.CONTINUE
WASHINGTON Supreme Court justices indicated Wednesday they would side with a longtime government worker who claims she was fired in retaliation after she cooperated with a sexual harassment investigation.The court wrestled with whether the anti-retaliation provisions of a landmark civil rights law apply to people who havent themselves complained about workplace discrimination.
Maryland Daily Record - Oct 9, 2008
Supreme Court takes up timber dispute
WASHINGTON -- A well-seasoned Sequoia National Forest logging dispute comes to a boil today as the U.S. Supreme Court considers when activists can challenge the management of federal lands. In one of the year's most anticipated environmental cases, the court could either narrow or expand the public's power over the Forest Service. Everyone from homebuilders to California Attorney General Jerry ...
Fresno Bee - Oct 8, 2008
Georgia's dysfunctional death penalty
Troy Davis' execution was the fifth scheduled this year. Each raises hard questions about the death penalty. All photos provided by Georgia Department of Corrections DEATH CHAMBER: The lethal injection gurney at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison in Butts County, where the state executes convicted offenders Defense attorney Steve Bright, who arguably knows more about the death ...
Creative Loafing - Oct 8, 2008
Spotlight: Supreme Court 'Light' fight as judges gear up
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court picked up Monday where it left off last term, signaling support for efforts to block lawsuits against tobacco companies over deceptive marketing of 'light' cigarettes. Hundreds of appeal denials O'Connor visits: The first day of the court's new term, which is set in law as the first Monday in October, included denials of hundreds of appeals.
Commercial Appeal - Oct 8, 2008
Blame on every level for finance meltdown
Finally, some relief for the little guy. Under terms of a court settlement reached this week, as many as 400,000 homeowners in 11 states -- including 11,000 homeowners in Illinois -- can expect help soon to avoid foreclosure. Do the little guys deserve help? Not always. Many took out mortgages that they fully knew were risky, but they just had to have that house in the suburbs.
Chicago Sun-Times - Oct 8, 2008
China tries to halt lawsuits, anger in tainted milk scandal
BEIJING -- Lawyers advising the families of children sickened in China's tainted milk scandal said Tuesday they are facing growing official pressure to withdraw from the cases. A loose grouping of more than 100 lawyers across China has been offering free legal advice to the families of children who became ill after drinking milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine, said Chang Boyang, one ...
The Detroit Free Press - Oct 8, 2008
Next Up After Countrywide: Everyone Else (1579)
Monday that the settlement struck between 11 states and Countrywide Financial Corp. catapults his office forward in an effort to stop foreclosures for San Diego borrowers who were victims of predatory lending practices. Aguirre said he will announce by Friday a list of other subprime lenders he will be targeting with similar legal action, in line with his efforts to create a 'foreclosure ...
Voice of San Diego - Oct 8, 2008
Eli Lilly settles Zyprexa inquiries
INDIANAPOLIS -- Drugmaker Eli Lilly & Co. cleared another legal cloud hanging over its top-selling drug Zyprexa when it announced a $62 million settlement Tuesday, but several other storms are still brewing for the antipsychotic medication. Lilly agreed to pay 32 states and Washington, D.C., to resolve an investigation into the company's marketing practices.
Anchorage Daily News - Oct 8, 2008
Vince Warren Addresses the Need to Restore Constitutional Rights
Vince Warrren, Executive Director, Center Vince Warrren, Executive Director, Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), will deliver the address "100 Days to Constitutional Restoration: What the Next President Must Do," on Thursday, October 23, 2008 at The Jonathan Club. Warren's "100 Days" talk is part of a larger CCR campaign designed to communicate the concerns of Americans through a series of ...
MarketWire - Oct 8, 2008
Frugality can look good on you, for less
This lousy economy has given rise to something called “the new frugality,” a story on Tuesday’s front page reported.I don’t know about you, but most of the folks I know might have something to say to this new class of bargain-conscious Americans, if they got a chance. “Welcome to our world,” perhaps. Or “Gee, where have you guys ...
Kansas City Star - Oct 8, 2008
Federman & Sherwood Announces That a Securities Class Action Lawsuit Has Been Filed Against Medicis Pharmaceutical Corp. (NYSE: MRX)
On October 3, 2008, a class action On October 3, 2008, a class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona against Medicis Pharmaceutical Corp. (NYSE: MRX). The complaint alleges violations of federal securities laws, Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5, including allegations of issuing a series of material ...
MarketWire - Oct 8, 2008
Lehman CEO Grilled Over Millions Paid Executives
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KPIX-TV5 - Oct 7, 2008
Bear Stearns probe expands to other banks, lenders
McClatchy-Tribune Service via COMTEX) -- -- A federal probe of the $1.8 billion collapse of Bear Stearns hedge funds has spread to include the activities of a number of banks and other lenders, according to court records and legal sources. Investigators are also reviewing various private financial memorandums prepared by Bear Stearns officials for possible fraud against wealthy investors, ...
TradingMarkets - Oct 7, 2008
Simpson to be isolated pending sentence, appeal
LAS VEGAS -- O.J. Simpson is being isolated from other prisoners for his own safety, and is focusing on a motion for a new trial and a strong bid for appellate reversal of his conviction for kidnapping and robbery, his attorney said yesterday. Attorney Yale Galanter, an attorney for Simpson, said that he will continue to pursue a request for Simpson to be released on bond pending appeal. ...
Winston-Salem Journal - Oct 7, 2008
Tycoon Pickens sues Lehman over collateral
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Texas billionaire and energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens has sued Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (LEHMQ.PK) for $59.9 million, claiming the bankrupt investment bank breached its contract by failing to repay collateral posted by Pickens. Lehman Brothers Commodity Services Inc. failed to return $18,157 to Pickens and approximately $42 million posted by four of his BP Capital LLC ...
Washington Post - Oct 7, 2008
Judicial discipline system needs dose of independence
JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE is what differentiates free societies from repressive regimes and banana republics. Illegitimate rulers cannot have their way with a people when the judiciary can make sure that the rule of law is obeyed by the powerful and the powerless alike, that criminal charges and legal disputes are decided on the basis of the facts and the law, without regard to politics and power.
The State - Oct 7, 2008
Never have so few ripped off so many
Charlie Reese is a former columnist for the Orlando Sentinel. Reese makes a frightening point with an article that was forwarded via the Internet. The article points out that there are 545 human beings, out of the total population of approximately 300 million, who are directly, legally, morally and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.
Durant Daily Democrat - Oct 7, 2008
Wachovia, Citigroup and Wells Fargo agree to litigation standstill
NEW YORK, Wachovia, Citigroup and Wells Fargo on Monday agreed to a standstill of all formal litigation activity, a sign that the banks and the U.S. Federal Reserve are working feverishly to reach an agreement over the fate of Wachovia. The standstill agreement will end at noon on Wednesday, unless extended. ''We are pleased to participate with the Federal Reserve Board in a fair-minded, good ...
Macro World Investor - Oct 7, 2008
Citi wins court order in battle for Wachovia
NEW YORK: Citigroup said it had won a court order late blocking Wells Fargo from buying hobbled US bank Wachovia Corp until the court rules otherwise. Citigroup, which planned to buy Wachovia s banking assets for $2.2bn, said New York State Supreme Court Justice Charles Ramos granted an injunction late Satruday night extending Wachovia s agreement to negotiate exclusively with ...
Gulf Times - Oct 7, 2008
NBA's Code of Ethics & Broadcasting Standards goes live
Aghast at the manner in which many news channels promote programmes encouraging superstition thorough stories on ghosts, haunted houses and what not? Or angered by instances such as the recent Aarushi murder case where again most news channels happily went along with the police version that labeled the teen's father guilty?News Broadcasters Association's (NBA) News Broadcasting Standards ...
Televisionpoint - Oct 7, 2008
Jewish 'modesty patrols' sow fear in Israel
Jewish 'modesty patrols' sow fear in Israel Israel's ultra-Orthodox zealots hurl stones at women for 'sins' such as wearing red blouse, using internet. By Amy Teibel - JERUSALEM In Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, where the rule of law sometimes takes a back seat to the rule of God, zealots are on a campaign to stamp out behavior they consider unchaste.
Middle East Online - Oct 7, 2008
Million-dollar donors flood Calif. ballot props
'A million dollars seems to be almost a new threshold,' said Robert Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies, a Los Angeles think tank that focuses on campaign finance issues. Spending on California ballot measures has been climbing in recent years, with the median amount spent on an initiative jumping from $4.3 million in 2000 to $15.7 million in 2006, according to a study the ...
San Jose Mercury News - Oct 7, 2008
Carbon Dioxide, Climate Change, and the Boston Region MPO: A Discussion Paper
Carbon Dioxide, Climate Change, and the Boston Region MPOA Discussion Paper Boston Region MPO Staff Prepared by Ben Rasmussen May 2008 Reviewers: Cathy Lewis Anne McGahan Scott Peterson Karl Quackenbush Pam Wolfe Introduction Climate change will likely have significant impacts on the Boston region. If climate trends continue as projected, the climate and weather patterns in Boston at the end of ...
Federal Highway Administration - Oct 7, 2008
Chinese lawyers face pressure to drop milk cases
A pedestrian walks past a billboard advertising White Rabbit candies Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2008 in Shanghai, China. China's iconic White Rabbit candy is back in production after being pulled out of stores around the world last month in the wake of the country's tainted milk scandal, a state-run newspaper reports. Story highlightsLawyers advising the families of children sickened in China's tainted ...
Beaufort Gazette - Oct 7, 2008
Next Up After Countrywide: Everyone Else (1308)
Monday that the settlement struck between 11 states and Countrywide Financial Corp. catapults his office forward in an effort to stop foreclosures for San Diego borrowers who were victims of predatory lending practices. Aguirre said he will announce by Friday a list of other subprime lenders he will be targeting with similar legal action, in line with his efforts to create a 'foreclosure ...
Voice of San Diego - Oct 7, 2008
Reduce litigation risks and costs with eDiscovery approach
By Ursula TalleyCompanies of all sizes are facing increased litigation risks and costs today. A great way to reduce those risks and costs is by adopting a proactive eDiscovery approach. If you're not sure what proactive eDiscovery means, this article not only offers a good definition, but also explains the trends that make proactive eDiscovery inevitable, how to implement a proactive solution ...
AccountingWEB - Oct 7, 2008
If Big Storm Hits
Countrywide May Pay Back $1-Billion to Florida Homeowners In a deal meant to stave off home foreclosures, as many as 57,000 Florida homeowners could get $1-billion in relief from Countrywide Financial. The nation's largest mortgage lender, recently bought by Bank of America, settled 'predatory lending' lawsuits with 11 states and will give back nearly $9-billion to Countrywide customers.
Florida Trend - Oct 7, 2008
Chinese lawyers face pressure to drop milk cases
A pedestrian walks past a billboard advertising White Rabbit candies Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2008 in Shanghai, China. China's iconic White Rabbit candy is back in production after being pulled out of stores around the world last month in the wake of the country's tainted milk scandal, a state-run newspaper reports. Most-read stories Most e-mailed stories BEIJING -- Lawyers advising the families of ...
Star-Telegram - Oct 7, 2008
Dow Falls 750 Points - BusinessWeek
Investors appeared to be in panic mode Monday afternoon, one week to the day after a vicious market sell-off. U.S. stocks were plunging, with the Dow Jones industrial average falling 750 points to trade well below 10,000, reaching its lowest level in four years. The pace of selling accelerated in late afternoon trading. Indexes in Europe and Asia also dropped sharply Monday as investors fled ...
BusinessWeek - Oct 6, 2008
Court ruling removes obstacles for pro-life license plates
PM The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday wiped out the last legal hurdle for anti-abortion groups to get their own special state license plates. Without comment, the high court upheld a unanimous decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which concluded that the state License Plate Commission illegally denied the request by Arizona Life Coalition to issue a plate with the message 'Choose ...
Yuma Sun - Oct 7, 2008
US court divided on tobacco case
AM The US Supreme Court seemed closely divided as it heard arguments over whether tobacco firms can be sued under state law for deceptive advertising of light cigarettes, a case that could affect some 40 suits around the country seeking billions of dollars. A lawyer for Altria Group Inc and its Philip Morris USA unit argued that the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act bars such ...
ONE News - Oct 6, 2008
Smokers' deception claims met with skepticism at Supreme Court
(McClatchy Newspapers - McClatchy-Tribune News Service via COMTEX) -- MO | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- The Supreme Court returned to the stage Monday as justices weighed whether state laws can be used to challenge deceptive cigarette advertising. Against the backdrop of a presidential campaign, the high court opened its 2008-2009 term with a case crucial to business and consumer ...
TradingMarkets - Oct 6, 2008
Merrill and Bank of America deal sparks lawsuits
Losses & Lawsuits NEW YORK - Within minutes of the September 15 announcement of the demise of Lehman Brothers, rival Merrill Lynch revealed its sale to fellow investment giant Bank of America in a $50 billion deal.The deal, which will be worked out in the early part of 2009, will see Bank of America pay around $29 for each Merrill share - up on September prices of under $5 but down from more than ...
Op Risk and Compliance - Oct 6, 2008
Citigroup sues Wachovia, Wells Fargo for $60 billion
San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. for tortious interference. Citigroup also seeks relief from Wachovia for what it called its bad-faith breach of the banks' contract. Meanwhile, Federal Reserve officials have been in talks with Wells Fargo and Citigroup in the hope of getting the parties to come to some sort of agreement, according to a person with knowledge of the talks.
Fort Pierce Tribune - Oct 6, 2008
Bank of America settles suits over bad mortgages
Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America said Monday it will modify troubled mortgages with up to $8.4 billion in interest rate and principal reductions for nearly 400,000 customers of Countrywide Financial Corp., the troubled mortgage lender it acquired last summer. The announcement arrived after the Illinois attorney general's office said Sunday that the bank was modifying loans for customers in ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Oct 6, 2008
Bank of America settles suits over bad mortgages
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Facing a lawsuit over deceptive mortgage practices, Bank of America Corp. is agreeing to pay more than $8 billion to modify hundreds of thousands of loans to keep people from losing their homes. Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America said Monday it will modify troubled mortgages with up to $8.4 billion in interest rate and principal reductions for nearly 400,000 customers of ...
Carlisle Sentinel - Oct 6, 2008
The Fed: The fox in America's henhouse
The Fed: The fox in America's henhouse Looking for the source of the current financial crisis? It came from Jekyll Island "Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task ...
Columbus Free Press - Oct 6, 2008
Fed steps into Wachovia fight between Citigroup, Wells Fargo
By Binyamin Appelbaum and Neil Irwin WASHINGTON A high-stakes battle over who will gain control of the nation's fourth-largest bank intensified over the weekend, with the Federal Reserve acting as a go-between in the pursuit of Wachovia by both Citigroup and Wells Fargo. Wachovia agreed Friday to be bought by Wells Fargo, spurning Citigroup, which had agreed to buy most of the troubled bank a few ...
Virginian Pilot - Oct 6, 2008
Paid plaintiff gets 3 months for kickback scheme
LOS ANGELES-A man who was paid $2.5 million to be a plaintiff in a major lawsuit kickback scheme was sentenced Monday to three months in prison. Retired real estate mortgage broker Harold J. Vogel was sentenced by U.S. District Judge John Walter for his role in a scheme that targeted some of the nation's biggest corporations with class-action lawsuits. Vogel, 64, pleaded guilty in 2006 to making ...
Macro World Investor - Oct 6, 2008
TiVo Statement on United States Supreme Court Decision to Deny EchoStar's Appeal
ALVISO, Calif., Oct. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO), the creator of and leader in television products and services for digital video recorders (DVR), offered the following statement today on the ruling by the United States Supreme Court to deny an appeal by EchoStar Communications Corporation: 'We are extremely pleased that the United States Supreme Court has denied ...
Atlanta Business Chronicle - Oct 6, 2008
Environmental impact of power plant disputed
Florida wildlife conservation officials ignored concerns of two state scientists who predicted a new power plant would harm animals in an environmentally sensitive area, the scientists testified Monday in federal court. The testimony came during a court hearing in which U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks denied an environmental group's emergency request to suspend temporarily, construction ...
Palm Beach Interactive - Oct 6, 2008
Ask the Expert: Will Araujo stick in Minnesota?
Posted: 9:02 AM- Question: Rafael Araujo is in training camp with the Minnesota Timberwolves? Any chance he makes the squad? -Joseph Horner Answer: I don't think so. I checked the Timberwolves' training camp roster and it includes 20 players. Ten of them are either centers or power forwards, including Calvin Booth, Brian Cardenal, Jason Collins, Al Jefferson, Kevin Love, Mark Madsen, Nikola ...
Salt Lake Tribune - Oct 6, 2008
Slain man's mom must pay legal fees
A Milwaukee County judge is requiring that Mayor Tom Barrett and Common Council President Willie Hines sign off on a $35,000 judgment that city lawyers obtained against a woman whose son was shot to death in 2004 by a police officer who was later convicted in the beating of Frank Jude Jr. The judgment against Debra Jenkins was the result of an unsuccessful federal lawsuit she brought against the ...
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Oct 6, 2008
Ralph 'Bucky' Phillips seeks new trial in shootings of troopers
Oct. 1--As promised, Ralph "Bucky" Phillips is going through with his plans to try and overturn his convictions of killing a state trooper and wounding two others. Lawyers for Phillips, 46, are scheduled to appear Oct. 20th in the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court in Rochester, officials at the Chautauqua County District Attorney's office confirmed today.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Oct 1, 2008
Parents file lawsuit in China against dairy firm
BEIJING The parents of a 1-year-old boy who developed kidney stones after drinking infant formula tainted with an industrial chemical are suing the dairy at the heart of the scandal, state media reported, as tests implicated 15 more companies Wednesday.The case is believed to be the first civil lawsuit filed in response to the contamination of milk, yogurt and other dairy products with melamine, ...
Merced Sun-Star - Oct 1, 2008
When do kids belong in adult court?: The case of Trevor Reizenstein, who was 12 when he was arrested, puts the spotlight on a juvenile justice quandary.
Oct. 1--The practice of charging a juvenile in adult court is not a deterrent or a punishment, but a way to protect the public from what officials believe is a dangerous child. It is an imperfect system but seems to work reasonably well, juvenile justice experts say. Now, the Idaho State Supreme Court is being asked to decide whether Trevor Reizenstein, 14, should be tried as an adult or a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Oct 1, 2008
Brookings Event Announcement: Preview of the 2008-2009 U.S. Supreme Court Term
On October 6, when the U.S. Supreme Court's 2008-2009 term begins, the Brookings Judicial Issues Forum will host a panel discussion with leading legal scholars and practitioners who will offer their insights on the upcoming Court term and discuss some of the biggest cases on the docket. Issues include the constitutionality of a key provision of the Voting Rights Act; the FCC's ban on ...
San Antonio Business Journal - Oct 1, 2008
Governor vetoes job security for medical marijuana users
In its 5-2 ruling, the Supreme Court said the initiative, Proposition 215, exempted medical marijuana patients and their caregivers from state prosecution, but wasn't intended to limit an employer's authority to fire workers for violating federal drug laws. Schwarzenegger used the same rationale in his veto message Tuesday. 'I am concerned with interference in employment decisions as they relate ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Oct 1, 2008
Reports show medical malpractice reforms working
Oct. 1--CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Recent reports show laws passed five years ago to deal with a medical malpractice crisis have had a dramatically beneficial effect. But a legislator who's also executive director of the West Virginia Medical Association said the state is "one Supreme Court decision away" from being thrust back into the crisis. In 2003, there were 315 malpractice lawsuits filed in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Oct 1, 2008
Florida sues Merck to recover money spent on Vioxx
TRENTON, N.J. Florida has joined eight other states in suing drugmaker Merck & Co. over what the state alleges was deceptive marketing of its former prescription painkiller Vioxx. In a lawsuit brought by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, the state is seeking restitution for all money spent by state health programs on Vioxx, plus interest. Florida's Medicaid program alone spent more than ...
St. Petersburg Times - Oct 1, 2008
Workplace Bully Worries
By Margery Weinstein You thought you were rid of them at the end of middle school, but no such luck. Bullies, as you've probably noticed by now, thrive in offices, too. They usually aren't after your lunch, but are just as, if not more, threatening. It's so bad, 13 states have considered 'healthy workplace legislation,' which would prohibit bullying in the workplace.
Manage Smarter - Oct 1, 2008
Ohio Supreme Court upholds sex offender rules
Oct. 1--The Ohio Supreme Court today upheld as constitutional the retroactive application of a 2003 law that tightened reporting and community notification rules on registered sex offenders. Applying the law to sex offenders whose crimes predate it doesn't violate federal and state constitutional prohibitions against "ex post facto," or retroactive, laws, wrote Justice Maureen O'Connor, who ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Oct 1, 2008
Obama's Assault on the First Amendment
In London last week, a frightful warning was sounded about encroaching tyranny. At an important conference, speaker after impassioned speaker warned of the peril to Western values posed by freedom-devouring sharia - the Islamic legal code. Like all tyrannies, sharias first target is speech: Suppress all examination of Muslim radicalism by threats of prosecution and libel actions, and smugly call ...
National Review - Oct 1, 2008
US Supreme Court Takes Up Shell, Burlington Superfund Appeal
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will hear a challenge by Shell Oil Co. and Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. (BNI) to a federal appeals court ruling that would leave them saddled with financial liability for a Superfund contamination cleanup. The high court, in accepting the appeals, said it will decide whether the Ninth U.S.
Morningstar.com - Oct 1, 2008
Pre-emption Looms Large in Supreme Court's Upcoming Business Cases
The Roberts Court's will continue into the October 2008 U.S. Supreme Court term as the justices take on major questions concerning federal pre-emption of state tort suits, environmental regulation, workplace discrimination, arbitration, pensions and antitrust. The Court has agreed to decide 15 business-related cases thus far, noted Mark I. Levy, chairman of the Supreme Court and appellate ...
Yahoo! Canada - Oct 1, 2008
GOP calls for abortion ban: Legislators unveil bills, vow to take fight to high court
Oct. 1--Conservative Utah legislators said Tuesday they plan to sponsor legislation banning abortions in Utah in nearly all cases, sparking a legal fight they vowed to fight to the Supreme Court. "We're tired of it. This group of legislators has had enough of the slaughter of innocents and we're going to step up and we're going to do something about it," said Rep. Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Oct 1, 2008
New Fuels Alliance Blasts Ethanol Lawsuit Filed Today by Tesoro Corporation; Calls Lawsuit Frivolous
The New Fuels Alliance released the following statement regarding the Tesoro lawsuit filed in California today against the California Air Resource Board. 'This a blatant attempt by Tesoro to try to use the regulatory and legal process to gain competitive advantage in the market place. Other oil companies are moving toward increased ethanol use to extend gasoline supply, lower cost, and even ...
WKYT - Oct 1, 2008
EDITORIAL: Should profanity be protected as free speech?
Oct. 1--Should profanity be protected as free speech? The South Dakota Supreme Court is currently tackling that question -- and it's a tough one. The high court is meeting this week at South Dakota State University and one of the cases it will hear is that of Marcus Suhn, a 23-year-old Brookings man who used the "f" word, among others, in an exchange with a police officer back in September 2007. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Oct 1, 2008
Independent Group Raises McCain Health Issue
The ad went up in six battleground states -- Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, and Missouri -- this morning, and will run for two days with a low six-figure buy behind it, according to sources familiar with the spot. That relatively meager amount of spending means that the ad is meant to be more provocative than persuasive, aimed at driving a discussion -- publicly and privately -- ...
Washington Post - Oct 1, 2008
US judge orders release of IndyMac records
LOS ANGELES-Lawyers pursuing a class action lawsuit against failed IndyMac Federal Savings Bank won a legal round when a federal judge ordered the release of borrowers records. U.S. District Judge Alicemarie H. Stoller ruled Tuesday that officials with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which now operates the bank, must turn over paperwork identifying possible plaintiffs in the suit claiming ...
Calibre Macro World - Oct 1, 2008
International news briefs: Georgia recovers fallen Russian spy drone
TBILISI, Georgia _ A senior Georgian Interior Ministry official said on Wednesday that a Russian unmanned plane fell into Georgian territory on Tuesday while conducting a reconnaissance flight. Shota Utiashvili, head of the ministry's analytical department, said the reconnaissance drone was equipped with a camera and that specialists have already decoded the footage.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Oct 1, 2008
Cleaning up Wall Street's mess
Party's over? No kidding. The problem is the food's gone, the liquor cabinet is empty and the house has been trashed. Now the question is, who's going to clean up the mess? How about the neighbors and their kids and their kids' kids and their kids' kids' kids? After all, they made the mistake of living on the same block. Editor - Most Americans are against the bailout because they rightly see a ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Oct 2, 2008
Conservative Polston Picked For Florida's High Court
Oct. 2--TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Charlie Crist has chosen conservative appellate Judge Ricky L. Polston to sit on the Florida Supreme Court. Polston, of the 1st District Court of Appeal, takes the place of retiring Justice Kenneth Bell. He is Crist's second appointment to the state's highest bench this year, following Charles Canady, who was sworn in last month.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Oct 2, 2008
The Wall Street bailout and the threat of dictatorship
Recriminations have continued to reverberate internationally over the vote in the US House of Representatives Monday to reject a $700 billion bailout package for the Wall Street banks. Much of the opposition in the 228-to-205 vote to defeat the bailout was attributed to representatives-Democratic and Republican alike-who face tight races for their seats in November and fear being tarred by their ...
World Socialist Web Site - Oct 1, 2008
The Palin Payoff: How Sarah Brings in the Christian Cash
Research for this story was supported by the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute. Until John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate, Obama attack ops -- whether political action committees or their 501(c)4 partners -- were struggling mightily to raise the kind of cash that fueled the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear machine in 2004. More than $45 million poured into that effort ...
AlterNet.org - Oct 1, 2008
Iowa appeals court reverses conviction of off-duty Chicago police officer
CHICAGO _ An Iowa appeals court on Wednesday reversed the conviction of an off-duty Chicago police officer who says he hit a man in self-defense three years ago while visiting his brother in Dubuque, Iowa. Last year, a district court judge convicted Michael A. Mette for failing to avoid the 2005 scuffle. Mette served 11 months of a 5-year sentence while family members, police officers and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Oct 1, 2008
Outside groups find small markets to air provocative ads against Obama, McCain
Their messages run the gamut, but an explosion of outside advertising targeting the presidential candidates has the same goal: to provoke voters on issues from abortion and judges to killing wolves and John McCain's age. One group plans to spend up to $1 million on ads attacking Democrat Barack Obama's economic policies and blaming the financial crisis on Democrats' lack of oversight.
Fargo Forum - Oct 1, 2008
Will SF's healthcare ordinance go to Supreme Co...
Supreme Court. GGRAs executive director Kevin Westly told me they might, or they might ask the Ninth Circuit to do an en banque review, instead, which involves all eleven Ninth Circuit judges. Healthy San Francisco is a good program and employer spending mandates are a separate issue," Westly said, repeating a position that Mayor Gavin Newsom used to share, back when Sup.
San Francisco Bay Guardian - Oct 1, 2008
California air quality regulators sued over ethanol rule
An affiliate of oil refiner Tesoro Corp. has filed a lawsuit against the California Air Resources Board seeking to block the implementation of a new regulation that would require refiners to increase the amount corn-based ethanol in gasoline in California. The lawsuit was filed by the companys operating subsidiary, Tesoro Refining & Marketing Co. It seeks a temporary injunction against the state ...
Sacramento Business Journal - Oct 1, 2008
Stub it out
NEW DELHI, Oct. 1: Some call it a 'draconian measure' while others consider it a godsend that may help them in bringing down the intake of nicotine and health problems, not to mention making their wallet fatter, but either way smokers beware! Hotels, restaurants, pubs, offices and even the international airport would be out of bounds to light up the rolled tobacco from tomorrow with the ban on ...
The Statesman - Oct 2, 2008
Business bill wrap up: Governor signs disability bill, vetoes secret-ballot measure
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a disability access bill that seeks to increase voluntary compliance with disability laws and curb lawsuits. It was a top legislative priority of business leaders. Senate Bill 1608 seeks to improve access to businesses and other public places for people with disabilities and promote compliance with access laws through use of state-certified specialists and a ...
Biz Journals - Oct 1, 2008
Apple aims to dismiss Psystar countersuit
Apple asked a U.S. District Court judge to dismiss Psystars counterclaims against the company. As background, Apple launched a suit against Psystar alleging that the Mac clone maker harmed its brand. Psystar (all resources) fired back arguing that Apple was abusing monopoly power and launched its own lawsuit. On Sept. 30, Apple fired back at Psystar in a strongly worded 23-page court filing (PDF ...
ZDNet - Oct 1, 2008
EDITORIAL: Attorney general: Rob McKenna
Oct. 1--The state attorney general contest is a fiery one. Incumbent Rob McKenna and his opponent, John Ladenburg, are spending too much of their time firing barbs at each other rather than talking about what they hope to accomplish if elected. Ladenburg's biggest criticism of McKenna is his lack of courtroom experience. McKenna worked for Perkins Coie for a few years, then served three terms on ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Oct 1, 2008
The Oakland Tribune, Calif., Tammerlin Drummond column
Oct. 1--For the past month, John McCain has gone to great lengths to keep Sarah Palin under wraps. The apparent theory: The less American voters know about the Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential nominee, the better. At least for the McCain ticket. Palin has only given three interviews since accepting the nomination at the Republican National Convention. Now, we know why.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Oct 1, 2008
Marathon Environmental Suit Finally Ends After 18 Years
A ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has brought an 18-year lawsuit to its conclusion. On September 26, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed a jury verdict in favor of White and Williams' client, Monsanto Company, in Pennsylvania Department of General Services v. U.S. Mineral Products Group, No. 75 MAP 2007 (Sept. 26, 2008). It is the second Supreme Court victory for Monsanto in the ...
PR Newswire - Sep 30, 2008
Suit: Firm preys on homeowners facing foreclosure
Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan claimed in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that a Pennsylvania company has been operating a mortgage rescue fraud scheme preying on homeowners on the verge of foreclosure. Madigan filed suit in Sangamon County Circuit Court against Aeroworks LLC, doing business as Augustus Rae and Reed, and its president John F. Reed. The suit alleges the defendants violated the Mortgage Rescue ...
Chicago Sun-Times - Sep 30, 2008
Brooke Capital Shareholder Requests Board Investigation
Robert Orr is the largest shareholder and a Robert Orr is the largest shareholder and a director of Brooke Capital Corporation (AMEX: BCP). Beginning in August 2008, Orr spearheaded the implementation of Brooke Capital's collection strategy to recover past due servicing fees and expenses owed to Brooke Capital by securitization investors. The legality and advisability of this collection ...
MarketWire - Sep 30, 2008
Fraud case begins in federal court
Or was the one-time Giles County Circuit Court clerk and commissioner of the revenue in effect conned himself -- drawn into desperate financial straits by the lure of poorly understood investments similar to those causing havoc on Wall Street? As what is scheduled to be a three-week jury trial began Monday in Roanoke's federal court, Johnson's attorney Tony Anderson drew parallels to recent ...
Roanoke Times - Sep 30, 2008
J&J: Court rules rivals pay $1.2B in patent fight
Health care products maker Johnson & Johnson says a federal court has entered a final judgment of about $1.2 billion in favor of Cordis Corp., its heart device unit, in a patent dispute. The dispute involves Boston Scientific Corp. and Medtronic Inc., two rival makers of stents, tiny metal-mesh scaffolds that prop open heart arteries after they have been cleared.
Grand Forks Herald - Sep 30, 2008
Fannie, Freddie disclose investigations
WASHINGTON -- A federal grand jury is investigating accounting and disclosure issues at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage finance companies said Monday. Fannie and Freddie said they received subpoenas Friday from the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan as well as requests from the Securities and Exchange Commission that they preserve documents. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over ...
Chicago Daily Herald - Sep 30, 2008
Candidates talk budget
Candidates for the Petaluma City Council are: top, left to right: Spence F. Burton, Samantha Freitas, David Glass; bottom, left to right: Mike Healy, Karen Nau, Tiffany Ren e. CITY COUNCIL CANDIDATES SPENCE F. BURTON Age: 60 Occupation: Petaluma planning commissioner; retired from postal service Goal(s) for your term: In less than four years, I want to see the new East Washington playing fields ...
Press Democrat - Sep 30, 2008
Breast-implant lawsuit dismissed
TORONTO - Ontario's top court has dismissed a class-action lawsuit by thousands of women who claim their health suffered after their silicone breasts ruptured and leaked into their bodies. The suit, against Health Canada, was launched by Joyce Attis and Alexandra Tesluk on behalf of 29,500 individuals and claimed the government was negligent in regulating the product.
Canada.com - Sep 30, 2008
Securities class actions problems rest with system, not lawyers
This settlement followed the guilty pleas of two of the firm's former partners, Bill Lerach and Melvyn Weiss, for their parts in the scheme. The convictions of these deans of the plaintiffs' bar have brought the predictable calls to crack down on class action lawyers. The truth, however, is that lawyers are simply responding to the perverse incentives created by our system of securities fraud ...
Daily Business Review - Sep 30, 2008
Courts OK Ohio's same-day voting, registration: Republicans win right to have election observers watching
Sep. 30--COLUMBUS -- Beginning today, Ohio voters may register to vote and immediately cast absentee ballots thanks to federal and state court decisions upholding the process. In separate lawsuits filed from opposite sides of the feud, a U.S. District Court judge in Cleveland and the Ohio Supreme Court agreed with Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner that overlapping state laws created a one-week ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 30, 2008
Blumner: Plenty of U.S. homeowners could use a bailout, too
If Congress can get it done, we are about to spend astronomical sums to shore up a financial sector that has done its utmost to trip up the financial footing of average people. Millions of Americans are in danger of losing their homes because they succumbed to the allure of borrowing too much money against their homes or buying one they couldn't afford. Those who sold these mortgages knew these ...
Salt Lake Tribune - Sep 30, 2008
Bloomberg backs halt of tax-free cigarette sales
Sep. 30--ALBANY -- An effort to end tax-free cigarette sales by Indian merchants received its biggest political boost Monday when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called on Gov. David A. Paterson to begin collecting what he said could be more than $1 billion in lost tax revenues. Railing against what he said has been a reluctance by officials in Albany to collect the taxes because "they ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 30, 2008
A web site is scheduled to be launched that will offer fans a chance to buy shares in athletes like LeBron James and Tiger Woods.
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Michael Sroka dreamed up a day-trading website for sports fans while still in high school, and the concept will finally come to fruition with the launch of OneSeason.com. The website, scheduled to debut on Wednesday, offers U.S. fans the chance to buy shares in such athletes as basketball star LeBron James and golfer Tiger Woods. The aim is to make a profit from trades, much ...
Fox Sports Radio 970 - Oct 1, 2008
Why A Federal District Court's Decision Is a Victory for Transsexuals' Right Not to Face Employment Discrimination
In a thoughtful, well-reasoned opinion, a federal district judge handed transsexuals a significant victory against employment discrimination. The case was , and the court was the federal district court for the District of Columbia. The Case Against the Library of Congress The facts of the case are these: Diane Schroer applied for a position as a terrorism specialist with the Congressional ...
Find Law - Oct 1, 2008
Wife who made glass lunches avoids jail
A vengeful wife who tried to harm her cheating husband by sprinkling crushed glass on his lunches has avoided imprisonment in Tasmania. Hobart Centrelink manager Lynette Quessy, 50, who is back living with her husband, was sentenced in the state's Supreme Court to a suspended nine-month jail term by Justice Shan Tennent. Quessy pleaded guilty just before going to trial last month to one count of ...
OptusNet - Oct 1, 2008
RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: REPORTING RAPE OFTEN MAKES VICTIM'S LIFE WORSE
KARACHI, Pakistan, Sep. 30, 2008 (IPS/GIN) -- Rape and sexual violence are widespread in Pakistan, but cases are rarely reported. Few survivors and their families can withstand the pressure to compromise with the assailants over the years the cases drag on. The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan recorded 755 cases of sexual harassment in 2007, including 377 cases of rape (166 ...
Macro World Investor - Sep 30, 2008
Accused killer said he falsely confessed to setting fatal B.C. blaze
VANCOUVER - An accused killer testified Tuesday that he falsely confessed to setting a fire that killed five people two years ago because he thought he would be killed. 'I was terrified, stressed out,' Nathan Richard Fry told a B.C. Supreme Court jury. Fry, 20, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder in relation to the arson attack on May ...
Canada.com - Sep 30, 2008
Voting for president begins in pivotal Ohio
CLEVELAND Ohio voters started casting early ballots Tuesday as Barack Obama struggles to thwart a John McCain victory in Ohio four years after the state tipped the election to President George W Bush. Both candidates visit often while spending millions of dollars flooding TV and radio with advertisements, mailboxes with literature and even voicemail with automated phone calls to get supporters to ...
Japan Today - Sep 30, 2008
Ohio Supreme Court upholds decision to remove children from Lucas County couple
Sep. 30--COLUMBUS --The Ohio Supreme Court Tuesday upheld the decision of Lucas County child protection officials to remove two young children from their home because their father had been convicted of molesting boys 17 years ago. In the 6-1 decision, the majority stressed that the decision was not about the mother's refusal to divorce the father so that she could maintain custody of her ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 30, 2008
Marathon Environmental Suit Finally Ends After 18 Years
It is the second Supreme Court victory for Monsanto in the case. In the first appeal, the Supreme Court reversed a $60 million The case originated in 1990 as a claim by the Commonwealth ofPennsylvania against United States Mineral Corp., the manufacturer of sprayed asbestos insulation found throughout the Transportation & Safety Building (T&S Building) inHarrisburg, former home of the ...
NewsBlaze - Sep 30, 2008
Groups eye Chief Justice Puno for president
Oct. 1--But Puno said he turned down the propositions even as he admitted that the top position of the land is "providential." According to the chief justice, he has no plans to enter politics. Puno said he would rather stay with the High Court and spend quality time with his grandchildren. "My grandchildren were better lobbyists," Puno said in Filipino. "I would rather choose to be president of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Oct 1, 2008
McMahon sued by Griffin's company
Former The Tonight Show star Ed McMahon has one more lawsuit to add to his already packed court calendar. He allegedly owes late TV host Merv Griffin's company $100,000. The Griffin Group Inc., founded by the late TV mogul, reportedly loaned the beloved star the sum in 2005 in a suit filed in Los Angeles on Thursday. The company is seeking the full amount to be repaid, plus interest and legal ...
Webcenter 11 - Sep 30, 2008
Diaz says false charges shaped him as a judge
Sep. 30--GULFPORT -- Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr. said the most important factors in his election race against challenger Randy "Bubba" Pierce are integrity, experience and special interests. Diaz, who discussed the race Monday with the Sun Herald, believes he and Pierce are men of integrity. Both also have chosen to run positive campaigns and have avoided attacking one ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 30, 2008
Good Question: Why Do False Political Ads Air?
US/Central ReportingJason DeRusha (WCCO) You can't turn on the television without seeing a campaign commercial for one candidate or another. While each ad is serving up one version of truth, to be generous, some include falsehoods that seem hard to defend. So what are they doing on television? 'When political ads are patently false,' wondered Marguerite Cavett of St. Peter.
WCCO - Sep 30, 2008
Lienholders' battle over deed could affect future cases
With equity in property quickly evaporating, legal fights are beginning to surface about which creditor has dibs when it comes to trust deed claims. The case of one failed Las Vegas condo project may cast doubt on the priority order of liens placed on Nevada titles. A battle is going on between lienholders of the bankrupt Onyx Condominiums, but the outcome of the fight between the chief lender ...
Las Vegas Business Press - Sep 29, 2008
Court upholds charges against supervisor in 'Angel of Death' case
A judge today upheld the full indictment against a former supervisor at a McHenry County nursing home accused of allowing, and even encouraging, a nurse to serve as an 'Angel of Death' for dying residents. Rejecting claims that three of the seven charges against Penny Whitlock did not follow state law, Judge Joseph Condon ruled Monday morning that prosecutors could charge her with neglecting ...
Chicago Daily Herald - Sep 29, 2008
Despite critics, consumers laud states trial lawyers
None of us have legal or political backgrounds, so it was really helpful to have the Oregon Trial Lawyers Association to help guide us through the system and make the political connections we needed, La Follette said. La Follette credits the organization for help suing the New Jersey-based manufacturer of the halide bulbs. However, Oregon puts an eight-year time limit on product defect claims. ...
Biz Journals - Sep 29, 2008
Microsoft targets spammers in legal blitz
Microsoft is expected to launch a legal campaign today against spammers who use its products in their advertising. According to reports sweeping the net, lawyers from Microsoft's Internet Safety Enforcement Team have been working with the Washington State Attorney General's Office and are set to announce a number of lawsuits against high-profile offenders. The spammers in question are likely to ...
VNUNet.com - Sep 29, 2008
Fannie, Freddie disclose subpoenas, investigations
Fannie and Freddie said they received subpoenas Friday from the U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan as well as requests from the Securities and Exchange Commission that they preserve documents. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government earlier this month as their mounting defaults and foreclosures threatened the entire mortgage market.
San Francisco Chronicle - Sep 29, 2008
Judge: City sign ordinance doesn't violate free speech
In an order reversing a previous injunction, U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon dismissed a lawsuit filed by a company with signs in the city's 'extraterritorial jurisdiction,' rejecting claims the ordinance violated free-speech rights. City Attorney Arturo Michel said the order allows authorities to move forward with criminal and civil enforcement against the company RTM Media.
Houston Chronicle - Sep 30, 2008
High court reshaping the landscape for patents
As the nations highest court, the Supreme Courts increased attention to patents mirrors the rising public perception that the patent system needs repair. Since the mid-1980s, patent cases were left to the domain of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, with the Supreme Court hearing on average only one patent case per year between 1982 and 1998. Since 2001, however, the Supreme Court has ...
East Bay Business Journal - Sep 29, 2008
Ecuador's Correa to extend state grip after vote
By Frank Jack Daniel Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has a clear mandate to extend the state's grip over the economy, install leftist reforms and seek re-election after his easy win in Sunday's referendum on a new constitution. Correa hailed it as a 'historic victory' but the new rules will unnerve investors because they increase state control over monetary and oil policy in the OPEC nation in ...
International Herald Tribune - Sep 29, 2008
Give 'Em a Break ... or Get Sued
Employers are being slapped with lawsuits costing them millions of dollars in some cases by workers who say they are being compelled to work through meal breaks. Antiquated labor laws are to blame, some corporations say. But plaintiff attorneys blame in part deteriorating corporate ethics. t the Tyson Foods meatpacking plant in Logansport, Indiana, workers wear helmets, protective pads on ...
Workforce - Sep 29, 2008
Legal challenge takes on salmon farming industry
Alexandra Morton heads to B.C. Supreme Court in Vancouver today for a four-day challenge of the provincial government's constitutional right to regulate and approve fish farm locations. Until recently, fighting the salmon-farming industry was a solo upstream battle for her. Not anymore. She is being joined by the Wilderness Tourism Association, Area E Gillnetters Association, Fishing Vessel ...
Times Colonist - Sep 29, 2008
Washington Mutual Class Action Members Have Legal Options to Explore, Announces Tramont Guerra & Núñez, PA
The Securities Arbitration Law Firm of The Securities Arbitration Law Firm of Tramont Guerra & Núñez, PA (TGN) makes an announcement to prospective class members of class action lawsuit (Case No. 07 CV 09801) against Washington Mutual (NYSE: WM). Prospective class members need to determine which legal process is more suitable for them to recover losses, either a class action or ...
MarketWire - Sep 29, 2008
Strategy - There's kosher, and then there's kosher
To succeed, the responsible business movement will need to redefine the terms of management thinking, argues Andy Savitz For many Jews, the word "kosher" conveys deep meaning, associated with ideas of goodness, purity and quality. For me, it evokes memories of both of my grandmothers, for whom preparing and serving kosher food was a way of saying: "I love you, so eat." In the US, the ...
Ethical Corporation Online - Sep 29, 2008
Suspended term for woman who tried to kill spouse
ANASTASIA Nestorowycz felt she had failed when her husband went into a nursing home. He begged her to take him home, and she became paranoid that he was being mistreated. On one of her daily visits she decided to end his suffering, and her own, and stabbed him once through the stomach before turning the knife on herself. Nestorowycz, 76, was yesterday sentenced to two years and nine months' ...
The Age - Sep 29, 2008
Delphi Announces Effectiveness of Key Agreements and Further Advances Its Transformation Activities
Delphi Corp. (PINKSHEETS: DPHIQ) today announced Delphi Corp. (PINKSHEETS: DPHIQ) today announced the effectiveness of several agreements with GM and Delphi's U.S. unions. These agreements further the significant progress Delphi has achieved in its Chapter 11 cases and, together with other actions Delphi has taken, keep Delphi on track to complete the five key tenets of its transformation by ...
MarketWire - Sep 29, 2008
Securities class actions problems rest with system, not lawyers
This settlement followed the guilty pleas of two of the firm's former partners, Bill Lerach and Melvyn Weiss, for their parts in the scheme. The convictions of these deans of the plaintiffs' bar have brought the predictable calls to crack down on class action lawyers. The truth, however, is that lawyers are simply responding to the perverse incentives created by our system of securities fraud ...
Daily Business Review - Sep 30, 2008
Attorneys Who Threaten Homeowners With Deficiency Judgments
One of the reasons homeowners have such a fear of being sued by their bank for a deficiency judgment after facing foreclosure is that nearly any lawyer they contact will bring up this possibility. Some attorneys may even use the threat of further litigation after foreclosure as a reason to file bankruptcy prematurely or otherwise pressure borrowers into retaining legal counsel throughout the ...
MyContentBuilder - Sep 29, 2008
America pays the piper, big time
Reality began to reassert itself with the bloody insurgency that resulted from Bushs conquest of Iraq The hyping of an 'Islamic threat' fit with the neocon exaggerated depiction of the Soviet menace in the 1980s and again the propaganda strategy worked. By Robert Parry After a 28-year binge of drunken optimism and blind nationalism often punctuated by chants of USA, USA! and Were No.
Aljazeera.com - Sep 29, 2008
Feds: Judge should ax Pa. Muslim scientist's suit
PITTSBURGH A federal judge does not have the jurisdiction to second-guess security clearance decisions and should throw out a lawsuit by a Muslim scientist who claims he wrongly lost his clearance and his job at a nuclear warship plant, U.S. Justice Department attorneys said in court documents. Lawyers for the Department of Energy contend the lawsuit filed by Egyptian-born scientist ...
Augusta Chronicle - Sep 28, 2008
U.S. bailout unlikely to stem emerging market economy fears
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Emerging market investors braced for another roller-coaster week on Sunday as U.S. lawmakers appeared set to pass a $700 billion (381.4 billion pound) financial rescue package in the coming days but analysts said the world economy could still face a deep economic downturn. Even if the Washington bailout succeeds in calming down financial markets, investors should remain ...
Yahoo! UK and Ireland - Sep 28, 2008
High court returns to work
WASHINGTON - Against the backdrop of a tight presidential election that likely will shape its future, the Supreme Court goes back to work this week. The justices will face cases on whether the government can forbid foul language on television and whether drug makers can be sued by injured patients. The court also will decide whether officials can be held liable for violations of rights that took ...
South Florida Sun-Sentinel - Sep 28, 2008
U.S. Supreme Court to tackle drug liability, censorship and whales
Justices have hands full with hot issues Font size: Letter to editor Against the backdrop of a tight presidential election that likely will shape its future, the Supreme Court goes back to work this week, facing cases on whether the government can forbid foul language on television, whether drug makers can be sued by injured patients and whether environmentalists can protect whales off the ...
Concord Monitor - Sep 28, 2008
Palin treads carefully between fundamentalist beliefs and public policy
ANCHORAGE Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago -- about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct -- the teacher said. After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a ...
Los Angeles Times - Sep 28, 2008
Lange v Free Speech
The ironies of jurisprudence are terrible indeed. More than a decade ago the late David Lange launched his famous defamation action against Joe Atkinson and the publishers of North & South magazine believing that it would be an open and shut matter, another sure-fire success for one of the country's most-litigious politicians. Instead, the action would not only bring the curtain down on ...
National Business Review - Sep 28, 2008
Rice to visit India next week, N-deal expected to be signed
Organization: Mumbai Central The Mumbai Grapevine Connecting Mumbaikars with Mumbai Please feel free to forward this message to your friends and co-workers who might be interested in it. The instructions to join the Mumbai Grapevine are at the end of the message. (From various agencies) After two weeks, terror back in Delhi: Bomb blast kills boy New Delhi, Sep 27 (PTI) Terror returned to Delhi ...
Mumbai Central - Sep 28, 2008
'Flash of Genius' tells story of Detroiter who fought a corporation
Dr. Robert Kearns, inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper, is hardly a household name. But for guys like Ferndale's Tim McElgunn, he's something of a local legend. 'Here's this guy who came up with this innovation, convinced that it was his, and refused to give up on what he thought was his rightful ownership,' says McElgunn, who works in automotive quality engineering.
The Detroit Free Press - Sep 28, 2008
Shock therapy
The last time President Bush got a blank check from Congress, the United States invaded Iraq on bad intelligence with no game plan. No wonder the country is wary of handing his administration $700 billion in taxpayer-financed loan guarantees to fix the mess that its own love affair with deregulation helped create. Who ever thought that this election's September surprise would feature free-market ...
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Sep 28, 2008
MillerCoors Puts New Sparks on Hold
MillerCoors urging it to abandon plans for a new version of its Sparks alcoholic energy drink, the alcohol beverage maker put on hold plans to launch the drink Oct. 1, The Associated Press reported. Called Sparks Red, it comes from a line of canned alcoholic drinks that contain stimulants such as caffeine and taurine. Published reports stated the new version would have an 8 percent alcohol ...
Beverage Aisle - Sep 29, 2008
Zappa's wife puts up fight for music legacy
LOS ANGELES Whoever devised the slipknot contract clause 'into perpetuity' hadn't conceived a Gail Zappa. She has made it her job to parse the music industry's legalese, close contractual loopholes and, most significantly, end what she sees as its iron grip on an artist's past, present and future. 'Let me say it in the simplest way,' she lays it out, her full hand on the table, 'My job is to ...
Denver Post - Sep 28, 2008
Girl Talk: Good music, fun concerts, copyright controversy
Sep. 28--In the 1850s, a kid from Pittsburgh named Stephen Foster hammered out a template for popular song ("Oh! Susanna," "Camptown Races," etc.) that, in some respects, has lasted to this day. In 2008, a kid from Pittsburgh built up a pretty amazing career by prying the template for the modern pop song apart, seeing what makes it tick, and reassembling it into strange new forms.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 28, 2008
Ecuador's Correa to extend state grip after vote
By Frank Jack Daniel Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has a clear mandate to extend the state's grip over the economy, install leftist reforms and seek re-election after his easy win in Sunday's referendum on a new constitution. Correa hailed it as a 'historic victory' but the new rules will unnerve investors because they increase state control over monetary and oil policy in the OPEC nation in ...
International Herald Tribune - Sep 29, 2008
Land for Pantnagar plant has come from govt: Tata Motors
Organization: Mumbai Central The Mumbai Grapevine Connecting Mumbaikars with Mumbai Please feel free to forward this message to your friends and co-workers who might be interested in it. The instructions to join the Mumbai Grapevine are at the end of the message. (From various agencies) After two weeks, terror back in Delhi: Bomb blast kills boy New Delhi, Sep 27 (PTI) Terror returned to Delhi ...
Mumbai Central - Sep 28, 2008
Advocates push for equal rights for unmarried couples
Michael Imel wants to put his girlfriend on his health-insurance policy. But the Bermuda Dunes, Calif. man's employer declined his request because the couple is not married. To Thomas Coleman, Imel's case exemplifies how unmarried people face pervasive discrimination under federal, state and local laws. The group that Coleman heads, Glendale-Calif. based Unmarried America, sponsors Unmarried and ...
Scripps Howard News Service - Sep 29, 2008
Court: Philly can't enact tougher its own gun laws
HARRISBURG, Pa. - Philadelphia officials cannot enact gun laws tougher than Pennsylvania's law, a state appeals court ruled Friday in throwing out city ordinances that included limiting gun purchases to one a month and banning assault weapons. Commonwealth Court dismissed a lawsuit against the Legislature filed by two members of Philadelphia's City Council, Darrell L.
Anchorage Daily News - Sep 28, 2008
Judges to hear gay bias appeal
Judges from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia will be in Pittsburgh beginning today for a special session that will include oral arguments in an appeal by a Penn Hills man who claims his former employer retaliated and discriminated against him for being gay. Brian D. Prowel, 39, sued his former employer, Butler-based Wise Business Forms, claiming he was harassed for being an ...
Pittsburgh Tribune Review - Sep 29, 2008
State House Dome: Same-sex marriage bill returnsReader comments: 34
LAWMAKERS WILL BE will be debating whether to legalize same-sex marriage when they return to Concord in January. Rep. Jim Splaine, who sponsored the state's civil unions law, said winning enough votes to pass his same-sex marriage bill will be tough but he thinks the conversation needs to start. 'I think that what we really need is full marriage equality, with the word marriage, to make sure ...
Union Leader - Sep 28, 2008
Making a case for workers' comp
ST. PETERSBURG jamie Dolan arrives at a Starbucks clutching his wife's arm and the first thing you notice is he seems fragile, weighted, broken. His left eye is covered with a patch; his fingernails are long. Four years ago, a gunman walked into the Gateway Mall RadioShack where Dolan worked and started shooting. Three people died, including the shooter. One bullet traveled into Dolan's temple ...
St. Petersburg Times - Sep 28, 2008
Amish ways clash with technology
BLANCHARD, Mich. - It's not like Glen Mast to be confrontational or to draw attention to himself. He is Old Order Amish and is happy to tend his 35-acre farm, build furniture for his children and repair horse-drawn buggies for the Amish in his rural central Michigan community. 'I just want to be left alone,' Mast says. So it is extraordinary that Mast is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit filed ...
Saukvalley.com - Sep 28, 2008
Judges to hear gay bias appeal
Jason CatoThe Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Sep. 29--Judges from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia will be in Pittsburgh beginning today for a special session that will include oral arguments in an appeal by a Penn Hills man who claims his former employer retaliated and discriminated against him for being gay. Brian D. Prowel, 39, sued his former employer, Butler-based Wise ...
Calibre Macro World - Sep 29, 2008
Dems push bankruptcy proposal to help homeowners
Sep. 25--A proposal by congressional Democrats to help keep people in their homes by allowing bankruptcy court judges to rewrite troubled primary mortgage loans could overwhelm court caseloads, spark lawsuits by banks who might claim judges have too much power and further destabilize the housing market, lawyers and others involved in bankruptcy cases said yesterday.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 25, 2008
Place blame squarely on Congress
From the RoundTable blog Read the latest entries Arthur B. Nunn III Nunn, of Roanoke, is the president of The Air Compliance Group, LLC. Who is really to blame for the current financial crisis? The answer is clear: The U.S. Congress. In 1977, Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, which required banks to grant loans to low-income buyers. While the intent was admirable, it was a ...
Roanoke Times - Sep 25, 2008
'Judge selection process has failed'
Sep. 25--NEW DELHI -- The Government on Wednesday attacked the procedure for appointment of Supreme Court and High Court judges saying "quality of some of the judges selected over the years was questionable." A day after the Supreme Court asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe Ghaziabad Provident Fund scam case involving 35 judges, Law Minister H. R.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 25, 2008
Judge takes the 'gentleman' out of nonsolicitation agreements
New York trial court. In the Monroe County case, a judge ruled Nixon Peabody was well within its rights to recruit a dozen Taylor Wessing partners even though the two firms agreed in 2007 not to hire from each other for two years as a condition of merger talks that collapsed. Judge Kenneth Fisher's reasoning was simple: such agreements, though they may be common, are unenforceable because they ...
Daily Business Review - Sep 25, 2008
Online businesses scamming Wisconsin tax laws
I believe we should tax income, we should tax property and we should probably even tax the dead just as long as their relatives dont bury their riches away with them. So, it is only natural that I would support extending the money-grubbing hand of the state government to our Internet shopping, lest we keep 5 1/2 percent more money in our pockets that could be better spent by state legislators.
Badger Herald - Sep 25, 2008
Tower industry rulings ping pong in courts: Zoning, backup power, birds are only some of the issues facing tower owners
A Cellular South employee works on a temporary cell tower in Gulfport, Miss., following Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The wireless industry is still reeling from effects of the hurricane. Photo credit:Bloomberg News On the surface, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision to reverse a three-judge panel and hand San Diego County a surprise victory over Sprint Nextel Corp.
RCR Wireless News - Sep 25, 2008
Technology spurs growth of fantasy sports in U.S
Reuters CHICAGO (Reuters) - If Scott Troetel is out with friends when the Indianapolis Colts are playing, he often reaches for his Blackberry to check how running back Joseph Addai is doing. But Troetel, who is 32 and lives in Boulder, Colorado, is not particularly interested in the Colts. Addai's performance is crucial to 'Addai in the Life,' Troetel's fantasy football team.
Yahoo! Asia - Sep 25, 2008
AAPD Applauds President Bush for Signing ADA Amendments Act into Law
The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), the largest cross-disability membership organization in the U.S., commends the signing into law of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 Thursday by President George W. Bush. 'Today President Bush has followed in his father's footsteps and taken a stand for equal opportunity and full participation for all Americans.
KLFY - Sep 25, 2008
Carl Bernstein: The Palin Pick -- The Devolution of McCain
In one of our many conversations as we crisscrossed the country during his campaign for the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, John McCain said to me, 'I've always tried to act on what I thought was the best for the country. And that has guided me.... The only thing I can do is assure people that I would act on principle.' I traveled with McCain for weeks that political season, stayed in ...
Huffington Post - Sep 25, 2008
NRA group gets update
Sep. 25--The election year and concern by National Rifle Association members across the state that their rights could be impacted by new national leadership have increased not only membership but also donations to the foundation. Those and other comments about the condition of the NRA locally, statewide and nationally were made by NRA Senior Field Representative, Darren Delong Of Moore.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 25, 2008
SEC sues five men plus firms over securities
Sep. 26--The Securities and Exchange Commission filed two civil lawsuits Thursday alleging that five men -- four from North Texas -- and their related companies violated securities laws. In the first suit, the SEC alleges that Ryan M. Reynolds, Jason W. Brola and Desmond J. Milligan -- all living in Texas -- and Timothy T. Page of California conspired to sell millions of shares of penny stock ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 26, 2008
Pastor's Sunday endorsement of McCain may get him in IRS trouble
Sep. 25--It appears that a Warroad, Minn., pastor is going to be in the national spotlight this Sunday when he plans to endorse Sen. John McCain for president from his pulpit as part of his challenge to federal rules against churches engaging in political campaigns. The Rev. Gus Booth, pastor of Warroad Community Church, said he's heard from about 20 media organizations across the nation just ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 25, 2008
BRIEF: Tighter scrutiny for judges-to-be
Sep. 26--NEW DELHI -- A day after Law Minister HR Bhardwaj criticised the procedure for the appointment of Supreme Court and high court judges, Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan announced new steps for better scrutiny of credentials of lawyers aspiring to be judges. The CJI has issued a new proforma which requires lawyers to furnish all the details of their career as well as those of their ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 26, 2008
A commission of omissions
Sep. 26--AHMEDABAD -- The Nanavati Commission report describing the 2002 Sabarmati Express fire at Godhra as a conspiracy has not surprised anyone. The report has in fact confirmed the worst apprehensions of rights activists, Non-Governmental Organisations and lawyers that the commission would toe the BJP line that the fire was the result of a conspiracy. The composition of the commission itself ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 26, 2008
Call for survey based on caste
Sep. 26--NEW DELHI -- Finding disparity in Other Backward Classes (OBC) population figures in different government surveys, experts have called for a caste-based survey or census to ensure that affirmative action policy is based on realistic data. At a seminar on Thursday, a paper presented by Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, brought to light disparities of over five per cent in OBC ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 26, 2008
'This is why terrorists are made'
Sep. 26--AHMEDABAD -- Not too far from where a Gujarat government-appointed panel cleared the same government over the 2002 Godhra train burning, the elderly dentist leaned back in his clinic off the busy Ahmedabad street and paused for a moment of restless silence. He had told his life's story. He now announced the verdict. "This is why people take to terrorism, because there is no justice for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 26, 2008
Texas Supreme Court denies Libertarian request to remove McCain, Obama from ballot
Austin Business Journal Related News Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain will have their names on the ballot when election season rolls around in Texas. The Texas Supreme Court denied a petition filed by Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr and the Libertarian Party of Texas to remove the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees from the ballot because of their ...
Los Angeles Business - Sep 25, 2008
Brooklyn Man Dies After Police Use a Taser
A naked and apparently emotionally disturbed man fell to his death from a building ledge in Brooklyn after , the police said. The police and witnesses said he had been yelling at passers-by and swinging a long light bulb tube at officers before he fell. The man, identified by the police as Inman Morales, 35, was taken to Kings County Hospital Center with serious head trauma after falling about ...
New York Times - Sep 25, 2008
U. Nebraska: Editorial: Proposal would pave way for doctors to make moral choices for patients
(C) 2008 Daily Nebraskan via UWIRE By , Daily Nebraskan (U. Nebraska) LINCOLN, Neb. -- In August, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services proposed a regulation that, if passed, will threaten the integrity of the medical system in this country. The regulation would allow doctors and other health workers 'to practice according to their conscience,' effectively letting them choose which ...
Calibre Macro World - Sep 25, 2008
Spouse's illness not an issue in job search
Question: Through my employer, I carry health insurance for myself and my husband, who is self-employed and has heart disease and diabetes. He was diagnosed in the past year. How would my husband's condition affect my ability to find another job and coverage for him? I am worried that a company might not want to cover his pre-existing condition. I am also concerned that his health problems and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 23, 2008
PETA seeks to refile MSU lawsuit
Group aims to gain access to animal experiments conducted for Iams Lawrence Simmons Issue date: 9/23/08 Section: News Page 1 of 1 People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals filed a lawsuit against Mississippi State University and Iams in January 2006 to gain access to documents related to animal experiments. Iams, a brand of Procter & Gamble produces pet food and health products.
Reflector Online - Sep 23, 2008
Lacrosse suits so far cost city $729,350
Sep. 23--DURHAM -- Lawyers defending the city government and police from three lawsuits stemming from the Duke lacrosse case have already submitted $1.2 million in bills for their time and expenses. Taxpayers have covered $729,350 of that, but the city is in line to get $229,350 of that back from the American International Group, the company that owns the insurer the city was using when the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 23, 2008
Explaining the need to plead
Sep. 23--Odds are, unless you're a regular courtroom spectator or spend a lot of time watching TV shows like "Law and Order," you don't know the difference between a no-contest plea and a guilty plea. You may also think an "Alford plea" is reserved only for people with the same name. Legalese can be difficult to understand -- especially if you're the one standing in front of a stern-faced judge, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 23, 2008
Judge rules in McMahon's favor in hospital lawsuit
LOS ANGELES Ed McMahon's lawsuit against a hospital and doctors he claims failed to properly diagnose and repair his broken neck has passed a key legal hurdle. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled last week that McMahon's lawsuit against Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and two physicians lays out adequate legal ground to pursue claims that include negligence, elder abuse, battery, fraud and ...
Augusta Chronicle - Sep 23, 2008
Jury pays night visit to The Gap
Against the stark black of a moonless night sky, 24 torch beams bobbed, retracing the final steps of Sydney model Caroline Byrne. Justice Graham Barr, his staff, and a team of lawyers on Tuesday night joined 15 jurors atop cliffs at The Gap, in Sydney's east, for a viewing of the rock platform where Ms Byrne's body was found. The 24-year-old model was wedged head-first between rocks at the foot ...
Yahoo! News Australia - Sep 23, 2008
Homeowner advocacy groups weigh in on bailout
WASHINGTON - Homeowner advocates weighed in Tuesday on the Wall Street bailout bill, pressing Congress to include bankruptcy court relief for people unable to keep up with their mortgage payments.The Bush administration opposes it, citing the need for simplicity and speedy action on the legislation to avert further financial meltdown. The administration and industry lobbyists oppose the provision ...
Philadelphia Inquirer - Sep 23, 2008
Fortifying the disabilities law
The Americans with Disabilities Act was supposed to make it easier for people with disabilities to function in the workplace and other public venues by requiring public facilities to be accessible to all. Unfortunately, a string of wrongheaded decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court has worked to undermine the 1990 law by narrowing the definition of who is disabled. Sen.
Star Ledger - Sep 23, 2008
Keeping count
Sep. 24--COLOMBO -- By definition, census is an official population count taken at set intervals. A count that that is taken of the entire population, and not of any community. But last Sunday, a census with an uneasy difference was carried out in Colombo and parts of the western province. It was to count the number of those Sri Lankans who had migrated to the western province from specifically ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 24, 2008
US election diary: Time to talk
Sep. 24--DOHA, Qatar -- "After last night's debate, the reputation of Messieurs Lincoln and Douglas is secure." Edward R Murrow, journalist, after listening to the Kennedy-Nixon debate, September 26, 1960. The first US presidential debates of the televison age proved how the new medium favoured image over substance. What John F Kennedy, then a Democrat senator and Richard Nixon, the Republican ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 24, 2008
School-funding formula on trial before N.J. court
TRENTON The state asserts the School Funding Reform Act of 2008 follows the state constitution, which mandates the Legislature maintain and support a 'thorough and efficient system of free public schools' for all New Jersey children. It wants the state's highest court to issue an order upholding the constitutionality of the new funding approach. 'The act is not a retreat.
CourierPostOnline.com - Sep 23, 2008
Supreme Court candidates oppose lengthy vacations
Sep. 23--CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Huntington lawyer Menis Ketchum says by his count, state Supreme Court justices are on what he calls "vacation" for three months and 22 days out of the year, not counting holidays. Ketchum, a Democrat running for one of two seats on the court, says the data shows the justices don't work hard enough. He vowed to change things if elected.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 23, 2008
Last Lake County inmate to be executed - in 1959 - didn't kill anyone: Richard Henyard could be next, if his execution for the killings of 2 Eustis girls in 1993 is carried out as scheduled today
Sep. 23--TAVARES The last inmate from Lake County to be executed by the state of Florida didn't kill anyone. Sam Wiley Odom was 20 on Aug. 28, 1959, when he was strapped into the state's electric chair for raping a 63-year-old woman and electrocuted in front of a small audience that included Lake County Sheriff Willis V. McCall. Richard Henyard, 34, of Eustis will join Odom on the state's list ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 23, 2008
Brad Pitt's just another big giver in gay marriage showdown
Sep. 23--Actor Brad Pitt's $100,000 donation last week to the campaign opposing a November ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriage in California was the largest thus far by an A-list celebrity. But it accounts for a small percentage of the roughly $30 million collected by supporters and opponents of Proposition 8, in donations ranging from $20 to seven-figure sums.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 23, 2008
Woman whose dogs mauled neighbor sentenced in SF
By Marjorie Knoller listens to closing arguments in the San Francisco dog mauling trial on March 18, 2002, at the Los Angeles County Courthouse in Los Angeles. Knoller whose dogs viciously attacked and killed her neighbor in the hallway of their apartment building seven years ago was sentenced on Monday, Sept 22, 2008, to 15 years to life in prison. Her previous conviction had been reduced, but ...
Hollister Freelance - Sep 23, 2008
The Oracle And The Intoxilyzer: DWI/DUI Source Code Defense Posted By : Maury D. Beaulier
The ?Oracle? And The Intoxilyzer: DWI/DUI Source Code Defense By: In the Kingdom of Nod, a villager?s fate hangs in the balance as wise men huddle around the oracle. The oracle will decide his fate. The penalties exacted may be severe: freedom or servitude; the forfeiture of his worldly possessions; the payment of punitive tariffs; or a prohibition against travel.
ArticleAddict - Sep 23, 2008
The Upcoming Supreme Court Case of Wyeth v. Levine and the Preemption Temptation: Part One in a Two-Part Series
In November, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Wyeth v. Levine, which concerns a healthy guitarist in Vermont who lost her arm to gangrene caused by Wyeth's anti-nausea drug Phenergan. Wyeth is challenging a plaintiff's verdict of over $6.7 million dollars on the ground that state failure-to-warn claims for FDA-approved warnings are preempted by the federal agency's action. ...
Find Law - Sep 23, 2008
Nigeria court set to hear presidential vote dispute
(Reuters) - Nigeria's top court begins preliminary hearings on Thursday in an election dispute whose outcome could either force President Umaru Yar'Adua from office or strengthen his grip on power in Africa's most populous nation. Yar'Adua took office in May last year, a month after polls which foreign observers said were so marred by vote-rigging and intimidation that they 'fell far short of ...
Reuters UK - Sep 23, 2008
Why don't churches pay taxes?
Today's question: Why should churches be tax exempt in the first place? Wouldn't it be a better approach to deny the tax exemption to all churches? Previously, Stanley and Lynn debated whether federal tax law chills free speech in churches. Hands off our churches, IRS Point: Erik Stanley There is said to be an old Arabian proverb: 'If the camel once gets his nose in the tent, his body will soon ...
Los Angeles Times - Sep 23, 2008
Ruling may be last in long-running mortgage lawsuit
Posted: 5:11 PM- After more than three decades, one of Utah's longest-running civil lawsuits appears to be at an end. On Tuesday, the state Supreme Court ruled that Richard and Nancy Madsen, who made advance payments to a mortgage company to cover taxes and insurance, are not entitled to interest on that money. The unanimous decision reverses a judgment of $134 in interest for the Madsens, who ...
Salt Lake Tribune - Sep 23, 2008
Drug profits case faces big setback: Defense argues charges violate Supreme Court decision on 'proceeds' definition
Sep. 23--Six years after arresting the owner of La Esperanza markets for allegedly selling drugs and laundering proceeds through the grocery chain, federal prosecutors may have to start their case over from scratch. Defense attorneys have filed a motion to dismiss charges against Javier Vasqez-Robles, his wife and daughter based on a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that criminal ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 23, 2008
Louisiana Politics: Supreme Court Election Huge Battle
After serial hurricanes and the global financial meltdown, for an election to capture any leftover public attention it had better be historic or crucial. The presidential contest rates, but after that and perhaps the U.S. Senate race, public attention quickly recedes moving on down the election ballot. Yet in two parts of the state, elections to the state Supreme Court will make history and a ...
Bayou Buzz - Sep 23, 2008
Candidates for Supreme Court debate lawyers' ads: Ketchum, Walker and Workman also give views on judicial selection
Sep. 23--CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Supreme Court candidates debated the propriety of running sensational ads in order to drum up business for law firms during a meeting with the Daily Mail editorial board. "I think it's awful," said Huntington lawyer Menis Ketchum. "I advertise because the Charleston lawyers are taking my business." Ketchum, a Democrat running for one of two seats coming open on the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 23, 2008
California Legislature Responds to Residential Foreclosure Crisis, According to Greenberg Glusker Attorney
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In an effort to help the thousands of Californians who are in default of their home mortgages, a new law now requires lenders to meet with defaulting borrowers and explore ways to avoid foreclosure, according to a legal expert. According to Foreclosures.com, California recorded 116,857 foreclosures in the first six months of 2008.
Business Wire - Sep 23, 2008
What China's tainted milk may not bring: lawsuits
The government is giving families free care but may ban legal action over contaminated formula, which has affected more than 50,000 babies. Beijing - Li Fangping, a prominent human rights lawyer, is busy organizing victims of the poisoned infant formula scandal rocking China and offering pro bono help. But he is not planning to sue Sanlu, the formula manufacturer not yet.
Christian Science Monitor - Sep 22, 2008
Execution is set, but questions linger: Pope, Carter, Tutu have made pleas on inmate's behalf
Sep. 23--ATLANTA -- Barring a last-minute stay, Troy Anthony Davis will be executed by lethal injection Tuesday for the murder of a Savannah, Ga., police officer. But nearly two decades after the killing, questions linger over whether Davis is guilty. A campaign spearheaded by Davis' relatives and Amnesty International has brought worldwide attention to the case, prompting well-known figures to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 23, 2008
Senate committee calls for revamp of domestic insolvency law
Sep. 23--The renewed call for an update to the country's insolvency law comes on the heels of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s bankruptcy filing in the US, which helped trigger wild swings in global financial markets. The collapse of the US' fourth-biggest investment bank hit the Philippines, with seven local lenders admitting exposure to the troubled American financial giant.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 23, 2008
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?
Congress gave land grants to the railroad barons a century and a half ago. If it goes through, it will shape the coming century by giving finance unprecedented power over debtors homebuyers, industry, state and local government, and the federal government as well. But what threatens to be even worse is the governments move to let the financial sector make even higher, unprecedented gains by ...
CounterPunch - Sep 22, 2008
Wall Street Bailout: Now, the Lawsuits
Consider the developments of the past 10 days: collapsing share prices, huge investor losses, allegations of financial obfuscation and mismanagement. It would seem a likely setup for a new wave of litigation and a boon for the plaintiffs' bar. The reality, however, is far more muted. Legal rulings have made it significantly harder to press shareholder claims.
BusinessWeek - Sep 22, 2008
Elderly woman stabs husband to end suffering
AN elderly woman who stabbed her ailing husband with a kitchen knife in a nursing home said she couldn't stand seeing him suffer. Anastasia Nestorowycz, 76, stabbed her 82-year-old husband in the stomach then stabbed herself in the bathroom of his nursing home unit in Thornbury, Victoria. The Supreme Court yesterday heard Mrs Nestorowycz, of Thornbury, stabbed her husband Paul Nestorowycz - who ...
The Australian - Sep 22, 2008
Symposium to Examine Federal Courts, Consumer Protections, Abuses of Executive Power
As the election approaches and the Bush presidency draws to a close, Alliance for Justice (AFJ) is hosting a symposium to examine the administration's legacy on the American legal system. The three-panel event -- Our Rights, Our Courts, Our Future -- will examine judicial selection and the future of the federal bench, current challenges to consumer protections, and recent abuses of presidential ...
NewsBlaze - Sep 22, 2008
EDITORIAL: Follow litigation with tax reform
Sep. 22--Over-reliance on property taxes to fund public education is one of Pennsylvania's most pressing problems, and its scope goes well beyond the vital matter of education itself. Pennsylvanians pay more than $14 billion in property taxes every year, most of it to local school districts, because the state government pays a lower share of education costs than most other state governments. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 22, 2008
Justice Department Reaches Voting Rights Settlement With The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
The Justice Department announced today that it has reached a settlement agreement with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts resolving allegations that the Commonwealth violated the rights of Puerto Rican voters under Section 4(e) of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Section 4(e) requires that election materials, including ballots, be provided in Spanish for Puerto Rican voters who are limited-English ...
PR Newswire - Sep 22, 2008
Ford has to pay in disability bias lawsuit
Workplace chatter about an employee's illness at the Ford Motor Credit Co. violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the company has to pay $75,000 to settle the disability discrimination lawsuit filed in Nashville federal court. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charged that Ford Motor had disclosed medical information that had to be kept confidential under the ADA.
Tennessean - Sep 22, 2008
Trial schedule on Farmers Branch rental law agreed
Sep. 23--Farmers Branch's latest ordinance to halt property rentals to illegal immigrants is on hold until a lawsuit seeking to have it struck down as unconstitutional is resolved. U.S. District Court Judge Jane Boyle on Monday agreed to a proposal from the city and the attorneys for one group of plaintiffs that will see the case come to trial, if necessary, by December.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 23, 2008
NAFTA needs to be changed in light of U.S. bailout: trade lawyer
OTTAWA, Sept. 22 /CNW Telbec/ - Today, party leader Jack Layton announced that the NDP is prepared to engage the U.S. government to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. In a statement, Layton said, 'As Prime Minister, I will enter those talks with one over-riding priority - saving and protecting Canadian jobs.' Responding to the NDP's announcement, international trade lawyer ...
Canadian Business Magazine - Sep 22, 2008
In libertarian Vegas, ACLU keeps finding battles to fight
Nevada ACLU s key cases and issues ACLU of Nevada President Richard Siegel, Executive Director Gary Peck and General Counsel Allen Lichtenstein named these issues and cases as some of the organization s most memorable: Free speech: Since the 1990s, the Nevada ACLU has been defending the right to free speech in two locations central to the psychic and physical maps of the Las Vegas Valley: ...
Las Vegas Sun - Sep 22, 2008
Wife: Diabetic man mistaken for drunken driver and beaten: Family's attorney say man has been in a coma since June 15
Sep. 22--A diabetic Detroit man was mistaken for a drunken driver by Allen Park and Dearborn police, and brutally beaten to the point that he had to have part of his brain surgically removed, the man's wife and their attorney allege. Ernest Griglen, 59, has been comatose and on a ventilator since the June 15 incident, said attorney Arnold Reed of Farmington Hills.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 22, 2008
S.C. sues LendingTree
The state of South Carolina has filed a civil lawsuit against LendingTree, alleging the Charlotte-based company didnt tell customers that it charges fees to lenders. The suit also contends LendingTree told customers it isnt a mortgage broker. The lawsuit was filed by 13th Circuit Solicitor Robert Ariail on behalf of the state for customers who lived in Greenville and Pickens counties when they ...
Charlotte Business Journal - Sep 22, 2008
US election diary: Time to talk
Sep. 24--DOHA, Qatar -- "After last night's debate, the reputation of Messieurs Lincoln and Douglas is secure." Edward R Murrow, journalist, after listening to the Kennedy-Nixon debate, September 26, 1960. The first US presidential debates of the televison age proved how the new medium favoured image over substance. What John F Kennedy, then a Democrat senator and Richard Nixon, the Republican ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 24, 2008
BRIEF: Ban on Anand, Khan to continue
Sep. 23--NEW DELHI -- The ban on senior advocates RK Anand and IU Khan from practicing will continue as the Supreme Court on Monday refused to suspend temporarily the Delhi High Court verdict restraining them from appearing in courts failing within its jurisdiction. Admitting notice to the High Court, a bench headed by Justice BN Agrawal declined to entertain their plea to grant interim relief, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 23, 2008
New Software Lowers Risk of Conducting Business on the Web
IBM (NYSE: IBM) IBM (NYSE: IBM) today is unveiling new software that helps companies reduce the cost of detecting security vulnerabilities and managing application compliance across their portfolio of Web applications. IBM Rational AppScan Developer Edition software can be used at the earliest stages of software development, allowing organizations to achieve significant cost savings and lower ...
MarketWire - Sep 22, 2008
Maxim Announces Proposed Settlement of Delaware Derivative Lawsuit
Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: MXIM) announced that the Company, certain of its current and former Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: MXIM) announced that the Company, certain of its current and former executive officers and directors, and plaintiffs have entered into an agreement to settle a stockholder derivative action that was filed in the Court of Chancery of the ...
MarketWire - Sep 22, 2008
Williams convicted of human trafficking
Sep. 23--A jury Monday convicted Marlin Williams in Sedgwick County's first case of human trafficking, but his lawyer said the real test may be whether the new law holds up at sentencing. Jurors deliberated little more than two hours before convicting Williams, 38, of taking a 15-year-old girl from Wichita to Dallas to work as a prostitute. But when Williams returns for sentencing Nov.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 23, 2008
'Master trial attorney' set to retire
Article Photos One of attorney Merle K. Evey's former associates thinks he has that ''Honest Abe effect.''Aside from the fact he has certain characteristics of America's greatest president - being tall and rangy -Evey also possesses a good sense of humor, is a ''people person,'' and ''breeds trust,'' Blair County President Judge Jolene Kopriva said.Kopriva, now in her third term as a judge, was ...
Altoona Mirror - Sep 22, 2008
SC notice to 3 condom manufacturers
Sep. 23--NEW DELHI -- Should condom-manufacturing companies exercise conservative approach while advertising and packaging their products? On Monday, the Supreme Court issued notice on petitions filed by three companies including a public sector undertaking (PSU) that have asserted their right to advertise condoms as per their own policy. The bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan also ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 23, 2008
Congress approves legislation that would expand Americans with Disabilities Act
The House on Wednesday gave final approval to Senate legislation (S 3406) expanding the definition of disability for people claiming discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the New York Times reports. The bill, approved by voice vote, states that the Supreme Court erred by 'eliminating protection for many individuals whom Congress intended to protect' under the original ADA, ...
News-Medical.Net - Sep 22, 2008
Forcing a Foreclosing Lender to Negotiate an Out of Court Settlement
In terms of saving a house from foreclosure, defending the lender's lawsuit in court may be one of the most effective ways of going about this. Banks can easily become frustrated at the slowing down of the legal process and are more open to settling the matter out of court. While banks and corrupt judges will try and railroad homeowners defending themselves, hiring a competent attorney may allow ...
Marketing Article Bank - Sep 21, 2008
Spouse's illness not an issue in job search
Sep. 21--DEAR CARRIE: Through my employer, I carry health insurance for myself and my husband, who is self-employed and has heart disease and diabetes. He was diagnosed in the past year. How would my husband's condition affect my ability to find another job and coverage for him? I am worried that a company might not want to cover his pre-existing condition.
Calibre Macro World - Sep 21, 2008
The Bush administration seeks ''dictatorial power unreviewa
Sept. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The Bush administration asked Congress for unchecked power to buy $700 billion in bad mortgage investments from U.S. financial companies in what would be an unprecedented government intrusion into the markets. The plan, designed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, is aimed at averting a credit freeze that would bring the financial system and economic growth to a ...
Free Dominion - Sep 21, 2008
Democrats, Republicans face off over US financial bailout plan
US President George W. Bush speaks during a press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC. Bush's administration has proposed a 700-billion-dollar bailout of the troubled financial sector over a two-year period, according to a draft proposal sent to Congress and released Saturday. (AFP) President George W. Bush's administration has proposed a 700-billion-dollar bailout ...
Turkish Press - Sep 21, 2008
Florida's Medicaid recipients file federal lawsuit
MATT SEDENSKY Charles Todd Lee spent a lifetime going backstage at concerts, following politicians on the campaign trail and capturing iconic shots of everyone from Martin Luther King Jr. to Mick Jagger to Mickey Mantle. Today, he enjoys such freedom only in his dreams. The 67-year-old photographer has been confined to a nursing home for five years, the victim of a stroke that paralyzed his left ...
The Olympian - Sep 21, 2008
Almond Growers File Federal Lawsuit To End "Adulteration" Of Raw Nuts
Lawsuit Would Halt Treatment Of Almonds With Toxic Fumigant Or Steam Heat WASHINGTON A group of fifteen American almond growers and wholesale nut handlers filed a lawsuit in the Washington, D.C. federal court on Tuesday, September 9 seeking to repeal a controversial USDA-mandated treatment program for California-grown raw almonds. The almond farmers and handlers contend that their businesses ...
Press and Dakotan - Sep 21, 2008
EDITORIAL: Settling the bill
Sep. 21--You can buy a pack of cigarettes at any convenience store for about $4. But what does it really cost, and who ultimately pays the price? Those questions are at the heart of a long-running lawsuit in St. Louis Circuit Court, where hospitals are suing tobacco companies for the costs of caring for uninsured smokers. The case was filed in 1998. If all goes well, it could go to trial in ...
Calibre Macro World - Sep 21, 2008
Timeline: WaMu's long history
ROBERT GIROUX / Bonanza gone bad and insurers Deregulation of the banking industry made it possible for insurers, investment houses and commercial banks to link arms. Now they're in a collective pile of trouble. Here's how the regulatory barriers eroded: 1916: National Bank Act limits insurance sales by banks, except in small towns. 1933: Glass-Steagall Act prohibits commercial banks and ...
Seattle Times - Sep 21, 2008
Investigation showed local union's tangled ties: But questions remain over handling of bombing case
Sep. 21--ALBANY -- The plan to firebomb an Albany concrete plant came together five years ago. It was late at night, and a pair of beefy men inside the former Mad River tavern on North Pearl Street asked a bartender for a pair of rubber gloves and some rags before slipping quietly out the door. They climbed into a new Mercury SUV, which was owned by their laborers union, and bought a 12-pack of ...
Calibre Macro World - Sep 21, 2008
Iraqi VP Presents Study on Tackling Unemployment
By Naseer Al-Ily Baghdad, Asharq Al-Awsat- Now that the problem of unemployment and the difficulties associated with it have grown worse, and because unemployment is considered the main reason behind the acts of violence from which the country is suffering, the Iraqi Executive Council has tasked one of its members, namely, Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi, to prepare a paper or study that ...
Asharq Al-Awsat - Sep 21, 2008
Irving hospital caused man's death, Texas Supreme Court says
Christopher Hogue was a freshman at Texas Tech University in Lubbock when he got the unexpected call from his mother: His father was dying from heart complications at an Irving hospital. He and his brother, Robert, then a senior at Tech, boarded a plane and arrived three hours before their 52-year-old father breathed his last. Now, more than a decade later, the state Supreme Court, by a vote of ...
Star-Telegram - Sep 21, 2008
Maxim Announces Proposed Settlement of Delaware Derivative Lawsuit
Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: MXIM) announced that the Company, certain of its current and former Maxim Integrated Products, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: MXIM) announced that the Company, certain of its current and former executive officers and directors, and plaintiffs have entered into an agreement to settle a stockholder derivative action that was filed in the Court of Chancery of the ...
MarketWire - Sep 22, 2008
THE BUSH BOX
Thanks to the unprecedented $1 trillion bailout of the economy and new agreements with Iraq, Barack Obama and John McCain find themselves running for an unenviable position: Hostage-in-chief. It doesn't matter who wins the election. Either side will spend all of a first term (maybe even a second), cleaning up after George W. Bush - with little or no options as to how.
New York Post - Sep 21, 2008
North Carolina lawyer must apologize for Flight 5191 crash Web site
Sep. 18--A North Carolina lawyer accused of improper advertising after the crash of Comair Flight 5191 must publicly apologize for starting a misleading Web site days after the crash that killed 49 people in 2006. Joseph Anderson, a lawyer from Winston-Salem, must take out newspaper advertisements apologizing to the 49 families who lost someone in the Aug. 27, 2006 Comair crash in Lexington in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 18, 2008
State worker won't honor subpoenas in 'Troopergate' case
JUNEAU, Alaska -- Alaska's investigation into whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power, a potentially damaging distraction for John McCain's presidential campaign, ran into intensified resistance Tuesday when the attorney general said state employees would refuse to honor subpoenas in the case. In a letter to state Sen. Hollis French, the Democrat overseeing the investigation, Republican ...
Chicago Daily Herald - Sep 18, 2008
Appeals Court to Consider State's Death Penalty Gridlock: SMALL STEP IN BATTLE OVER LETHAL INJECTION
Sep. 18--Five months after the U.S. Supreme Court offered a legal road map to states dealing with challenges to lethal injection, California is no closer to resuming executions on the nation's largest death row. Today, however, the legal battle over lethal injection in this state will finally inch forward when an appeals court in San Francisco considers one of the two cases paralyzing ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 18, 2008
Court rulescouple only entitled to costs of care, not husband's lost wages
A Dublin man, who took leave from his financial planning business to care for his wife who suffered long-term brain injury in a traffic accident, is entitled to be paid for the fair market value of the care he provided, Ohio Supreme Court justices determined Wednesday. In the 5-2 decision, justices reasoned John Hutchings was not due lost wages during the time in which he voluntarily cared for ...
The Daily Reporter - Sep 18, 2008
Appeals court reinstates conviction of 'Mafia Cops'
A federal appeals court yesterday reinstated the conviction of the infamous 'Mafia Cops' and ordered that they be sentenced for taking part in eight mob murders. The charges against former Dets. Louis Eppolito, 60, and Stephen Caracappa, 66, involved some of the darkest allegations of murder and corruption ever to involve the . Even after the murder conviction was set aside, they remained in ...
Newsday - Sep 18, 2008
Merrill Lynch shareholders file suit over BofA buyout
Merrill Lynch shareholders filed suits this week against the brokerage firms CEO John Thain and its board over Bank of Americas proposed $50 billion buyout. The lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court, claims the deal is wrong, unfair and harmful to Merrill public shareholders. The suit, filed by law firm Murray, Frank & Sailer, says Merrills shareholders have been and will continue to be ...
Dayton Business Journal - Sep 18, 2008
Patient information used to be confidential
To the Editor: I've never been to a psychologist and, while I know who Vince Young is, I prefer books to football. Nonetheless, when I first read about Young's 'disappearance,' I became vaguely uncomfortable to learn that a psychologist shared information about her discussions with him. It was reported in the Sept. 13 Tennessean that that same psychologist confirmed Young's thoughts of suicide. ...
Tennessean - Sep 18, 2008
Stokes loses lawsuit
Jury orders radio talk-show host to pay $3.8 million in defamation case A Flathead County District Court jury ordered radio host John Stokes Wednesday to pay $3.8 million to Davar and Todd Gardner for slamming them with malicious false accusations on his show. I am so thankful for the verdict that the jury brought. It was all we hoped for and more. He [Stokes] has a message that he cannot do ...
Daily Inter Lake - Sep 18, 2008
Ex-chiefs have earful for candidates, sharp words for FCC
Michael Powell and William Kennard, former chairs of the Federal Communications Commission under presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, respectively, spoke candidly about their experiences heading the regulatory agency at a National Press Club event Tuesday. Held by the Information Economy Project at George Mason University, the forum was meant to provide frank advice on telecom policy to ...
ArsTechnica - Sep 18, 2008
Kilpatrick's swagger gone as he nears exit: Here, there, but rarely in the office
Sep. 18--As speculation grows on where Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick will go after his scandalous tenure ends today, questions remain about where he has been since becoming Detroit's first chief executive to cop felony pleas while in office. Unlike his predecessor, Dennis Archer, who came to city hall and worked from his desk until his last day in office, Kilpatrick has not been seen much in the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 18, 2008
EDITORIAL: Governor's influence helps bushwhack school lawsuit
Sep. 18--Four years ago a group of mostly rural school systems sued the state over education funding. That lack of funding, the 50 systems said, was the reason their students did poorly. The state funding formula gives more money to larger school systems. The suit, filed by the Consortium for Adequate School Funding in Georgia, was progressing through the court system and seemed poised for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 18, 2008
Estate drained during guardianship, suit alleges
Sep. 18--The estate of an evangelist who died this year is suing the Department of Human Services, alleging that her financial assets were depleted during a guardianship. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday on behalf of the estate of Martha "Vicki" Peterson, whose personal representative is Carl R. Peterson, her husband. The filing in Tulsa County District Court alleges a conspiracy to defraud Vicki ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 18, 2008
BRIEF: Ohio Supreme Court rejects ban on guns in parks
Sep. 18--Cities and counties may not restrict the right of Ohioans to carry firearms, a divided state Supreme Court ruled this morning. In a 4-3 decision, the court struck down a ban on carrying concealed weapons in public parks by the city of Clyde, a small town in northwestern Ohio. The case has implications for dozens of cities across Ohio, including Columbus, that banned certain types of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 18, 2008
Woman on feeding tube dies; Schiavo-like case moot
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- A woman kept alive by a feeding tube since a stroke has died, effectively ending a legal battle between her husband and mother in a case similar to Terry Schiavo, whose fate became the subject of national political debate in 2005. Karen Weber, 57, had been in and out of a nursing home and Okeechobee hospital since having a stroke in December.
Washington Post - Sep 18, 2008
Florida Attorney General's Office Files Mortgage Fraud Suit
ORLANDO - The Florida Attorney General's Office is suing 10 companies and 15 individuals for their alleged roles in a major mortgage fraud scheme. According to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Orlando, the defendants obtained more than $37 million in mortgages for at least 60 home purchases and siphoned off more than $6 million of the proceeds for their own use.
Tampa Tribune - Sep 18, 2008
Offshore Sham
WASHINGTON -- The other night, when House Democrats appeared to reverse their long-standing ban on offshore oil drilling, the electorate was hoodwinked again. At least, the Democratic leadership hoped the electorate was hoodwinked. In August, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was beginning to feel the heat from a citizenry angered by high energy prices, particularly high gasoline prices.
Town Hall - Sep 18, 2008
Ninth Circuit Rejects Challenge to Arizona Immigration Law
By SHERRI M. OKAMOTO, Staff Writer The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday upheld the constitutionality of an Arizona law requiring employers to verify the employment status of their workers and penalizing those who knowingly hire illegal aliens. Affirming the decision of U.S. District Court Judge Neil V. Wake of the District of Arizona, the three-judge panel held that the Legal ...
Metropolitan News-Enterprise - Sep 18, 2008
Taser panel mostly lawyers
Sep. 18--Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. picked seven fellow lawyers and two police chiefs for a 10-member panel that will study the use of Tasers by law enforcement. "I, like every citizen in Allegheny County, feel a certain uneasiness with a technology that I'm not familiar with," said former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ralph Cappy, who will chair the group ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 18, 2008
New: Second wrongful-death suit filed in 'angel of death' case
WOODSTOCK Attorneys filed a second wrongful-death lawsuit against a Woodstock nursing home Wednesday on behalf of a woman whose son died while he resided there.Sharon Hunt of McHenry alleges in the lawsuit that her son, John Sherman, died as a result of a drug overdose given while he was being cared for at the Woodstock Residence nursing home at 309 McHenry Ave.
Northwest Herald - Sep 18, 2008
Beach court suspends order from U.K. on man's legal bills
Sep. 18--VIRGINIA BEACH -- A Circuit Court judge has suspended a British order to collect more than $1.4 million in legal bills from a retired Beach surgeon who has been in a contentious divorce fight for more than a decade. Last month, Dr. Mansur Rahnema learned that the Supreme Court of England and Wales had awarded the London law firm of Dean & Dean Solicitors 817,709 pounds for representing ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 18, 2008
Starr turns event at law school into a stellar occasion
Sep. 18--Good lawyers can read judges like tea leaves, and there are few better at it than Kenneth Starr. The legal heavyweight made an appearance at the UA's James E. Rogers College of Law Wednesday, highlighting a panel on constitutional law. A former federal judge and U.S. solicitor general, Starr is probably best known for his Whitewater land-deals investigation, one of several scandals that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 18, 2008
Minton: Transparency a long-term goal of state court system
Sep. 18--The goal for the court system over the next several years is to become more transparent and easier for the public to use, said Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice John Minton. Minton was the speaker Wednesday at a Constitution Day event at Western Kentucky University at the Mass Media and Technology Hall. Minton, a Bowling Green resident and WKU graduate, was sworn in as Kentucky's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 18, 2008
Quick Takes: Psychologists Toughen Ethics Code, Apology From Debate Coach, Enrollment Data, Facebook Snoops, Call for Energy Research, Split at Truman State, Scalia Trashes Chicago Law School, Strike at Windsor, Pre-Nike Life Stumps Syracuse
The membership of the American Psychological Association has to specifically bar members from working in settings where people are held outside of the protections of international law or the U.S. Constitution. The vote 8,792 to 6,157 follows years of intense debate in which some psychologists accused their scholarly association of leaving loopholes in its anti-torture policy.
Inside Higher Ed - Sep 18, 2008
Kaplan Fox Seeks to Recover Losses for Investors Who Purchased Auction Rate Securities From Northern Trust
Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer LLP Kaplan Fox & Kilsheimer LLP (www.kaplanfox.com) has filed a class action suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against Northern Trust Securities, Inc., Northern Trust Corporation, and Northern Trust Company ("Northern Trust" or the "Company") that alleges violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 on behalf of ...
MarketWire - Sep 18, 2008
Entrepreneur Growth Capital Announces New Attorney Funding Division
Entrepreneur Growth Capital, LLC ("EGC") continues its expansion into new financial services with the creation of its Attorney Funding Division. This division will provide financing services to plaintiff law firms by buying their legal fees from settled cases. "The entire area of financing for plaintiff law firms is evolving rapidly and we saw an opportunity to bring our decades of experience in ...
PR Newswire - Sep 18, 2008
Alaska AG: State employees won't honor subpoenas
JUNEAU, Alaska Alaska's investigation into whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power, a potentially damaging distraction for John McCain's presidential campaign, ran into intensified resistance Tuesday when the attorney general said state employees would refuse to honor subpoenas in the case. In a letter to state Sen. Hollis French, the Democrat overseeing the investigation, Republican Attorney ...
Augusta Chronicle - Sep 17, 2008
Wisconsin Department of Revenue eyes Internet sales to boost tax revenue
Sep. 17--State officials want a major rewrite of sales tax rules to bring in $46.5 million more over the next two years, make it easier to collect taxes on Internet sales and reverse the effects of a recent high-profile court decision that opened a massive hole in the state budget. This is at least the fourth attempt to enact the so-called "streamlined sales tax" proposal, which could finally ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
BRIEF: Culliton elected DuPage County chief judge
Sep. 17--DuPage Judge Stephen Culliton has been elected the county's chief judge for the next three years. Culliton, 64, was elected Wednesday by the county's 15 Circuit Court judges to complete the term of Judge Ann Jorgensen, who was appointed in June to the Illinois Appellate Court. Culliton, who will start his term in December, was appointed an associate judge in 1998 after serving as chief ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
Defendants in prison suit ask case to be dismissed
Sep. 17--Several defendants accused in a lawsuit of being responsible for exposing prisoners and prison workers to toxic material as part of a computer recycling program are asking a federal judge to dismiss the plaintiff's claims. Overall, 26 current and former inmates and employees of the Federal Correctional Institution in Marianna, Fla., are suing the U.S.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
GOP ticket draws big crowd in Ohio: McCain vows to fight for Wall Street reform; Palin says she'll lead the effort to 'drill now'
Sep. 17--VIENNA -- Sen. John McCain promised a crowd of more than 7,000 Tuesday afternoon near Youngstown that he would get tough on Wall Street. "I will fight as president of the United States to reform Wall Street and make sure Washington works for your interests," he told the boisterous audience that filled an expansive hangar at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
House debates bill to kill D.C. gun restrictions
WASHINGTON ? The House took up NRA-backed legislation Tuesday to eliminate most of the gun restrictions in the nation's capital, including a ban on semiautomatic weapons. The House action comes three months after the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handgun possession, ruling that what had been one of the nation's toughest gun control laws violated the ...
Arizona Daily Star - Sep 17, 2008
Brimer-Davis eligibility lawsuit is moved to Dallas County court
Sep. 18--FORT WORTH -- The Texas Supreme Court on Wednesday moved a lawsuit to Dallas County that will determine whether former Fort Worth Councilwoman Wendy Davis is ineligible to challenge Republican state Sen. Kim Brimer on the November ballot. Before the state's highest court moved the case, attorneys were scheduled to present oral arguments today at the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 18, 2008
Sixteen Foreign Nationals and Corporations Indicted on Charges of Illegally Exporting Potential Military and Explosives Components to Iran
A federal grand jury in Miami, FL, has returned a Superseding Indictment charging eight individuals and eight corporations in connection with their participation in conspiracies to export U.S.-manufactured commodities to prohibited entities and to Iran. The defendants are named in a thirteen (13) count Indictment -- returned on Sept. 11, 2008 and unsealed today -- that includes charges of ...
PR Newswire - Sep 17, 2008
Gas price-gouging complaints prompt state to subpoena suppliers and corporate officials
As the Fueling Station reported yesterday, the rampant complaints about price-gouging in the wake of Hurricane Ike have prompted the state's top consumer protection official to subpoena 16 gasoline terminal operators that supply fuel to Florida stations. Now Attorney General Bill McCollum's office has also subpoenaed the corporate officers of four large retail chains that run gas stations in ...
St. Petersburg Times - Sep 17, 2008
Florida attorney general sues 25, claiming mortgage fraud
The Florida Attorney General's Office today sued 10 companies and 15 individuals for their alleged roles in a major mortgage fraud scheme first reported by the St. Petersburg Times last year. In number of defendants, the case may be the largest mortgage fraud case ever filed in the United States, the office said. According to the lawsuit filed in Orlando, the ring obtained more than $37-million ...
St. Petersburg Times - Sep 17, 2008
Court postpones land deal ruling for Thai ex-PM Thaksin, wife+
The court also issued new arrest warrants for the couple, who live in exile in Britain, to bring them back to hear the verdict. The court indicated the defendants have to be present in court to hear the ruling, but it added a verdict will be delivered Oct. 21 even if the defendants fail to appear. The court issued arrest warrants for Thaksin and Potjaman in the same case when the couple failed ...
Breitbart.com - Sep 17, 2008
Meralco execs face arrest: Firm spokesman says estafa case aims to harass
Sep. 17--The Department of Justice has sought the immediate arrest of 16 top officials of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) for the non-bailable offense of syndicated estafa. The officials had been accused by an advocacy group of allegedly misappropriating almost P1 billion in interests earned from consumers' meter and bill deposits. The department's move came after one of its prosecuting teams, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
Mother sues EnergyUnited after boy was electrocuted: Six-year-old touched an uninsulated wire while he was climbing a tree in his neighbor's yard.
Sep. 18--A Rowan County mother has filed a lawsuit against an electric utility company for what she claims is the wrongful death of her 6-year-old son who was electrocuted in March while climbing a tree. Deborah Kenemore alleges in her lawsuit that EnergyUnited violated national safety standards that resulted in her son's death. EnergyUnited provides electrical power to Rowan County, according ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 18, 2008
State office misdirected fraudulent lawyer complaint
Sep. 17--A Minnesota board in charge of the lawyer discipline system said today it received a complaint against Howard O. Kieffer in February but that it was probably misdirected. The Minnesota Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility received a complaint about Kieffer seven months ago, said director Martin Cole. The tip came from a person in Duluth, Cole said, but he would not reveal the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
VSP Vision Care's Appeal to Supreme Court Bolstered by Filing of Three Amici Briefs
Prevent Blindness America, the National Association of School Nurses and the National Council of La Raza collaborated and recently filed an amicus brief in support of VSP(R)'s efforts to regain its federal tax-exempt status. The National Taxpayers Union and Professor Darryll K. Jones of Stetson University College of Law also filed amicus briefs with the U.S.
PR Newswire - Sep 17, 2008
Persecuted Aramaeans, a Pseudo-Nation of "Assyrians", Kurdish Terrorists, and the Anti-Christ
Americas presence in Mesopotamia (Iraq being a disastrous colonial term with no History) contributed only to bloodshed, Islamist radicalization, and total disaster for the Aramaean Christian minority. Quite characteristically, the American President does not even refer to them by their proper and historical name; in his scarce references, he strangely calls them Assyrians.
American Chronicle - Sep 17, 2008
Court denies bid to stop boat launch
Sep. 17--BEULAH -- State officials may build a boat launch on Crystal Lake, despite some neighbors' efforts to block the plan, an appeals court ruled. A Michigan Court of Appeals panel this month denied a local group's bid to prevent the state Department of Natural Resources from building a boat launch near Mollineaux Road west of Beulah, a site opposed by some nearby shoreline property owners. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
The cost of justice in Falls court often a lot higher than elsewhere: Judge's fees for minor offenses hiked to pay for a new building
Sep. 17--If you get a ticket for a minor traffic violation in northeast Summit County, you'll pay a lot more money than if you're caught elsewhere in the county. Why? Because the judge who runs the municipal court in Cuyahoga Falls says his court needs the money -- and because he can charge anything he wants. Judge Kim Hoover is the driving force behind the Falls court, which has jurisdiction ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
Persecuted Aramaeans, a Pseudo-Nation of "Assyrians", Kurdish Terrorists, and the Anti-Christ
America s presence in Mesopotamia (Iraq being a disastrous colonial term with no History) contributed only to bloodshed, Islamist radicalization, and total disaster for the Aramaean Christian minority. Quite characteristically, the American President does not even refer to them by their proper and historical name; in his scarce references, he strangely calls them Assyrians .
Los Angeles Chronicle - Sep 18, 2008
Thai ruling party rebels agree on candidate
Bangkok: A rebel group in Thailand's ruling People Power Party (PPP) agreed on Tuesday to back a brother-in-law of ousted leader Thaksin Shinawatra as prime minister, its spokesman said. The faction's climb-down from a threat to pull out of the party after a night of haggling for cabinet positions makes the election of Somchai Wongsawat at today's special session of parliament highly likely.
Gulf News - Sep 17, 2008
Federman & Sherwood Announces That a Securities Class Action Lawsuit Has Been Filed Against MEMC Electronic Materials, Inc. (NYSE: WFR)
On September 16, 2008, a class action On September 16, 2008, a class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri against MEMC Electronic Materials, Inc. (NYSE: WFR). The complaint alleges violations of federal securities laws, Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5, including allegations of issuing a ...
MarketWire - Sep 17, 2008
Federman & Sherwood Announces That a Securities Class Action Lawsuit Has Been Filed Against NextWave Wireless Inc. (NASDAQ: WAVE)
On September 16, 2008, a class action On September 16, 2008, a class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California against NextWave Wireless Inc. (NASDAQ: WAVE). The complaint alleges violations of federal securities laws, Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5, including allegations of issuing a ...
MarketWire - Sep 17, 2008
Scalia says judges need to interpret, not rewrite Constitution
Sep. 16--LOGAN -- In recent years, American judges have taken to "abstract moralizing" at the expense of their real job, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Monday. As a result, judicial selection has become mired in a political snakepit because people expect new appellate judges to "rewrite" the U.S. Constitution and make policy decisions that are normally the purview of the executive and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
Troopergate probe running into new resistance
Alaska's investigation into whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power, a potentially damaging distraction for John McCain's presidential campaign, ran into intensified resistance Tuesday from state Republican lawmakers who want to end it or delay it past the election. Republican vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaks during a campaign rally in Golden, Colo., Monday, Sept. ...
Tuscaloosa News - Sep 16, 2008
Alaska AG: State employees won't honor subpoenas
Republican vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaks during a campaign rally in Golden, Colo., Monday, Sept. 15, 2008. Gallery: On the Trail JUNEAU, Alaska -- Alaska's investigation into whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power, a potentially damaging distraction for John McCain's presidential campaign, ran into intensified resistance Tuesday when the attorney general said ...
The State - Sep 17, 2008
EDITORIAL: Politics, guns
Sep. 16--Congress is likely to take up a bill of some sort this week to repeal the District of Columbia's gun registration requirements and make it easier for citizens to legally buy semiautomatic weapons. Rather than being a significant step toward more freedom in our nation's capital, however, it is likely to play out as a political ploy designed to boost the re-election prospects of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
Farmers Branch dipping into reserves to pay bills
Sep. 16--As the Farmers Branch City Council prepares to approve a new budget tonight amid shaky economic times, officials are dipping into savings to cover legal and other bills from the current year. "Quite frankly, the hardest thing in the world is to bring the city through an economic crisis, and right now we're going through an economic crisis in the U.S.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
EDITORIAL: Bipartisanship, for what purpose?
Sep. 16--John McCain's promise in his acceptance speech to end "partisan rancor" may resonate with exasperated voters in California. They too are looking for someone, anyone, to help end the gridlock in Sacramento and Washington. But to what end is the Republican presidential candidate offering to reach across the aisle on Capitol Hill "to get this country going again"? For more votes to make ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
Choosing freedom or security
Sep. 16--The debate of freedom versus security will take center stage Wednesday at Oklahoma State University. The school is hosting Mickey Edwards, foreign affairs expert and former Oklahoma congressman, in honor of Constitution Day. Edwards will give a talk called "National Security and the Rule of Law" in the Peggy V. Helmerich Browsing Room of the Edmon Low Library beginning at 3:30 p.m.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
California ballot initiative on gay marriage seen as larger issue for the country
SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ The stakes of the ballot drive to forbid same-sex marriage reach far beyond California's geographic and political borders in what has emerged as another chapter in America's culture wars. Christian groups, wealthy benefactors and self-styled pro-family groups from all over the nation are watching closely _ and weighing in with money. Gay-rights groups and wealthy individuals ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
Legal Fight Over Drug Liability Law
A Supreme Court ruling may reinterpret a statute that now allows consumers to sue drug makers over serious side effects. Prescription drugs sometimes cause serious side effects. A ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court expected this fall could radically alter consumers' ability to seek recourse from drug makers should they suffer harm. The case, called Wyeth vs. Levine, may lead to a new ...
Truth Out - Sep 16, 2008
House debates bill to kill D.C. gun restrictions
WASHINGTON-The House took up legislation Tuesday to eliminate most of the gun restrictions in the nation's capital, including a ban on semiautomatic weapons. City officials contend it will be harder to protect dignitaries but are fighting an uphill battle against the National Rifle Association in an election year. The House action comes three months after the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 vote, struck ...
Macro World Investor - Sep 16, 2008
Sprint still battling Illinois company in court over WiMax deal
Sep. 17--Sprint Nextel still confronts a court action in Illinois attempting to block its WiMax deal with Clearwire following a new ruling in the case. Cook County Circuit Judge Kathleen M. Pantle has denied Sprint's motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by subsidiaries of iPCS, an Illinois company that sells Sprint-branded wireless service. In exchange for a promise from Sprint that it would have ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
California court decision could affect Kansas as well
Sep. 17--A California court decision could have legal implications for Kansas and eight other states that grant in-state tuition to illegal immigrants, an opponent of those laws said Tuesday. Kris Kobach, chairman of the Kansas Republican Party and lead attorney in the California case, said the 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento agreed with his claim that California's tuition law ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
Lautenschlager's appeal tossed
Sep. 16--MADISON -- Former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager today lost her legal claim that legislators must disclose who they worked with on a vetoed bill that would have legalized the carrying of concealed weapons in Wisconsin. Although Lautenschlager began the lawsuit to force disclosure of who legislators may have shared drafts of the concealed carry bill when she was attorney general, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
For companies courting surgeons, how far is too far?
MINNEAPOLIS _ When medical device salesman John Thomas heard in late 2000 that there was a new doctor in Arkansas specializing in patients with ailing backs, he stopped by his office to see if the two could do a little business. The would-be customer, Dr. Patrick Chan, said he was partial to a metal plate made by Medtronic Inc. _ just the kind of item Thomas sold working for a distributor of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
S. Ky. judge prolongs ban on early inmate release
Sep. 16--SOMERSET -- A ban could continue for months on using controversial new parole rules to release prison inmates from three southern Kentucky counties. Whether such a ban will spread statewide, however, remains a question for another day. In an order issued Monday, Circuit Judge David A. Tapp barred the state corrections commissioner from using the rules to release felons from his circuit ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
Larger SC bench to decide if FIR registration must
Sep. 17--NEW DELHI -- Should the police register an FIR immediately on receiving a complaint? The issue was on Tuesday referred to a larger bench of Supreme Court after a two-judge bench headed by Justice BN Aggarwal said it was unable to take a final call on it in wake of conflicting judgments delivered earlier by the apex court. The court's direction came on a petition filed by a man whose ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
Meralco execs face arrest: Firm spokesman says estafa case aims to harass
Sep. 17--The Department of Justice has sought the immediate arrest of 16 top officials of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) for the non-bailable offense of syndicated estafa. The officials had been accused by an advocacy group of allegedly misappropriating almost P1 billion in interests earned from consumers' meter and bill deposits. The department's move came after one of its prosecuting teams, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
BRIEF: Nomad Husain turns 93 in exile
Sep. 17--NEW DELHI -- Artist Maqbool Fida Husain will celebrate his 93rd birthday in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday. He has no regrets being away from home and friends on this special day, for the third successive year. Husain is in self-imposed exile since January 2006, living in Dubai and London. "I am a nomad. Static life has no meaning for me. Art compels me to travel and wander from place to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
Bihar boy dies after principal thrashing
Sep. 17--MOTIHARI (BIHAR) -- A class V student in Bihar's East Champaran district was allegedly beaten up so badly by his school principal and teachers that he died within a few hours. All that Gyan Ranjan, 11, had done was reply back to his teachers, police said. The incident of corporal punishment took place at the Holy Mission Children's Academy, a private residential school, in Rajepur block ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
Sabio wants expanded probe on bribery mess
Sep. 17--Sabio said he wants the probe expanded to identify the real source of the money and to determine if there was a conspiracy. Before the three-man Justice department investigating panel headed by Justice Undersecretary Ernesto Pineda, Sabio affirmed his earlier affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court fact-finding team and all other matters that he disclosed under oath, in relation to the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 17, 2008
EDITORIAL: Free speech lesson from Va. Justices
Sep. 16--Virginia knows James Madison, and spammer Jeremy Jaynes is no James Madison. But Virginia's leaders should also have more than a passing familiarity with the First Amendment. A Virginia Supreme Court ruling last week makes it embarrassingly clear that state lawmakers need to wipe the dust off their constitutional law books and refresh their memory on that topic.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
EDITORIAL: Disclosure
Sep. 16--The State Supreme Court made a good call last week. The case involved public records of settlements in wrongful-death cases. The settlement concerned surgeries performed at Fredericksburg's Mary Washington Hospital; it closed a suit by family members against a drug manufacturer. When the settlement was reached, the terms were not disclosed. The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star and the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
High court allows hearings via video
Sep. 16--The state's top judge is noticing taxpayers' pain at the gas pump. In a sweeping order Monday, S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Jean Toal said bail hearings, guilty pleas and preliminary hearings in magistrate and municipal courts statewide can be handled through videoconferencing from detention facilities. In issuing the order, Toal cited the "sharp increase in fuel costs" and the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
Cameras enter fight against marijuana
Sep. 16--A lone man enters a grove of giant marijuana plants, yanks them out and stacks his harvest. But a camera hidden near the illicit field caught it all. These days, even the ground can have eyes as police and pot growers engage in a high-tech battle. Police on both sides of the state line use covert cameras to watch outdoor fields and arrest growers. Marijuana growers in some states battle ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
Opinion poll ban proposal scrapped
Sep. 16--NEW DELHI -- The government has taken back the controversial Law Ministry proposal to frame a law to ban opinion polls, predicting the outcome of elections. It is now considering only restrictions on publication and telecast of exit polls till voting is over. The ban proposal was to be taken up by the Union Cabinet on September 4, but was quietly withdrawn at the last moment.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
Centerpiece of Dickie Scruggs' Flawed Katrina Legal Strategy Settled Out of Court
After Two Years of Emerging Evidence - Plaintiffs Say Claim Handled Properly - State Farm(R) Settles McIntosh Lawsuit BLOOMINGTON, Ill., Sept. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Just days after attorneys for Thomas and Pamela McIntosh of Biloxi, Miss., acknowledged State Farm handled their claim properly and admitted there was 'no credible evidence' State Farm engaged in bad faith, a compromise settlement has ...
PR Newswire - Sep 15, 2008
International news briefs: Russia eyes Mediterranean as alternative to Sevastopol naval base
SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine _ Russia could build up its presence in the Mediterranean to make up for the loss of its naval base in Ukraine's port of Sevastopol, a Black Sea Fleet official said Monday. "Undoubtedly, the withdrawal (of the Black Sea Fleet) from the Crimea will affect Russia's security in the south. New bases in the Mediterranean Sea could make up for the departure," Rear Adm.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 15, 2008
Former McKeesport captive to appeal for right to sue
Sep. 16--A woman who was held against her will in McKeesport for nearly a decade indicated Monday that she will appeal a federal judge's decision to dismiss a lawsuit against her captor and his employers. U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster ruled Friday that Tanya Kach's civil rights claims against Thomas Hose, the security company that hired him and the McKeesport school where he worked were ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
Second lawsuit challenges Farmers Branch attempt to deny rentals for illegal immigrants
Sep. 16--A second set of opponents has filed a federal lawsuit over Farmers Branch's latest attempt to deny rental houses or apartments to illegal immigrants. Like a suit filed earlier this month, it challenges a new ordinance that requires renters to apply for occupancy licenses. Those who are not citizens would have their immigration status checked against a federal database, and those in the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
Lawyering businesses to bankruptcy
The Eggs Benedict on a thick slice of Italian toast with a side of German potato pancakes at the Dor-Stop Restaurant in Dormont is one of the best breakfasts in town. We were at a sidewalk table reading the morning newspaper and the guy at the next table was talking about the closing of the Hollywood Theater across the street. 'Closed for now,' reads the marquee.
Pittsburgh Tribune Review - Sep 15, 2008
Harry Potter 'Lexicon' case not over yet: 2 Mich. men plan to file appeal to try to get book published
Sep. 15--The two Michigan men who lost a lawsuit against Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. haven't given up on publishing a book version of the popular Harry Potter Lexicon Web site. Roger Rapoport, a Muskegon publisher, and Steve Vander Ark, a Grand Rapids area librarian and author, expect their attorneys this week to file a notice of appeal preserving the men's right to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 15, 2008
Hospitals' suit against tobacco industry is large in every dimension
Sep. 15--ST. LOUIS -- Everything about the City of St. Louis v. American Tobacco seems over the top. Big money. Big delays. Big teams of attorneys. Big fines. It's the oldest lawsuit pending in St. Louis Circuit Court. Missouri hospitals and the nation's largest tobacco companies have sparred for almost 10 years over pretrial details in the billion-dollar case.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 15, 2008
Boardroom buzzwords: security, insurance cover
Sep. 16--NEW DELHI -- The spate of bomb blasts in prosperous metros has sparked off "security management" and "terror insurance cover" as the new boardroom buzzwords. With the five blasts in Delhi last Saturday that followed similar attacks in Ahmedabad and Bangalore earlier this year, private security system providers are also suddenly in great demand. Increased frequency has resulted in higher ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
Case against lawyer-son of acquitted Air India...
VANCOUVER - Jaspreet Singh Malik, the lawyer-son of former Air India bombing suspect Ripudaman Singh Malik, has lost his bid to get a dishonourable-conduct case against him thrown out. A law society disciplinary panel has ruled there is enough evidence that Jaspreet Malik misled a B.C. Supreme Court judge when he helped in his dad's attempt to get legal aid in the terrorism case.
Windsor Star - Sep 15, 2008
No reprieve for BMW case lawyers
Sep. 16--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court on Monday declined to give immediate relief to senior advocates R.K. Anand and I.U. Khan, who were last month banned from appearing before any court within the jurisdiction of Delhi High Court for the next four months. A bench headed by Justice B.N. Aggarwal also made it clear to the counsel for the two advocates that it would not entertain any arguments ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
All about animal instincts
Sep. 16--MUMBAI -- New dos and don'ts have been prescribed for the way animals and birds can be picturised. So some filmmakers are opting for computergenerated jaanwars.. while others are treating them better than their best friends, reports Roshmila Bhattacharya. It may not have rocked the box office but Tahaan did engage the discerning viewer. So did its ensemble cast of actors, not to forget ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
Justice Roxas not a victim -- justices
Sep. 16--In fact, they added, he should have been disciplined a long time ago for his handling of a couple of controversial cases, including the one on the Philippine Communications Satellite Corp. (Philcomsat). Instead of playing the victim, Roxas should be repentant for getting into trouble, several magistrates, who requested anonymity, told The Manila Times.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 16, 2008
'Star Trek's' George Takei Weds in Buddhist Ceremony: Nichelle Nichols and Walter Koenig were the maid of honor and best man, respectively
Sep. 15--George Takei has boldly gone into matrimony. The " Star Trek" actor has finally wed his longtime partner, Brad Altman, in a Buddhist ceremony in downtown Los Angeles Sunday, reports People. "All I can remember is what the priest said," Takei says. "That this moment will never happen again. It's something to savor." The ceremony included the exchange of vows, sipping sake from red ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 15, 2008
Attention Purchasers of TOUSA, Inc. Common Stock Pursuant to TOUSA's Prospectus, Dated September 7, 2005; Your Rights May Be Affected Announces Bernstein Liebhard & Lifshitz, LLP
Attorney Advertising -- On July 25, 2008, Attorney Advertising -- On July 25, 2008, Bernstein Liebhard & Lifshitz, LLP (the "Firm") (www.bernlieb.com) announced that on July 14, 2008, Judge Kenneth Marra of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida appointed the Firm to act as sole lead counsel in Durgin v. Technical Olympics USA, Inc., et al., Case No. ...
MarketWire - Sep 15, 2008
Federman & Sherwood Announces That a Securities Class Action Lawsuit Has Been Filed Against Synchronoss Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNCR)
On September 5, 2008, a class action On September 5, 2008, a class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey against Synchronoss Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SNCR). The complaint alleges violations of federal securities laws, Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5, including allegations of issuing a series ...
MarketWire - Sep 15, 2008
Torrington Man's 'Bag Of Bones' Revives Cold Case
Sep. 14--Already facing serious drug charges, Kenneth Gelormino Jr. walked into the Litchfield state police barracks 18 months ago, hoping the contents of the bag he was carrying could solve his legal troubles. He gave the bag to detectives, who were startled to discover what was inside -- bones from a human arm. Gelormino told police the bones belonged to Lester "Chip" Stewart, who had been ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 14, 2008
Anti-spam law violates free speech, court says
AP) The Virginia Supreme Court declared the state's anti-spam law unconstitutional Friday and reversed the conviction of a man once considered one of the world's most prolific spammers. The court unanimously agreed with Jeremy Jaynes' argument that the law violates the free-speech protections of the First Amendment because it does not just restrict commercial e-mails it restricts other ...
Deseret Morning News - Sep 14, 2008
McCain fumbles Palin's record
NEW YORK -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Friday defended two debunked television ads attacking Democrat Barack Obama and claimed erroneously that running mate Sarah Palin never sought money for lawmakers' pet projects as Alaska governor. Palin sought $197 million in so-called 'earmarks' for 2009. In the previous budget year, she asked for earmarks worth $256 million.
Chicago Daily Herald - Sep 15, 2008
Widow's suit to keep husband's frozen sperm denied
Sep. 14--A state appellate court has decided that frozen sperm left behind by a deceased Sacramento County sheriff's deputy cannot be used by his widow to become pregnant. Justices in the 3rd District Court of Appeal were asked to decide whether the widow, Iris Kievernagel, had the right to conceive a child from her late husband's frozen sperm. Deputies Joseph Kievernagel, 36, and Kevin Blount, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 14, 2008
Nominees differ on Supreme Court
Bob Deans, Cox News Service The candidates haven't spoken much about it, but American life could be dramatically affected by the next president's picks for justices for the U.S. Supreme Court and federal appellate courts.With the Supreme Court split with four liberals, four conservatives, and a single swing vote, it's likely that at least two liberals would retire on the next president's ...
Raleigh News & Observer - Sep 15, 2008
Missouri leads the nation in juvenile justice reform
Sep. 14--ST. LOUIS -- Hope for the once-fallen teen sparkles in an emerald green class ring under the fluorescent lights of the Hogan Street Regional Youth Center. "It's a blessing," says Terrell, 17, fingering the ring he earned for passing his GED exam with 1,000 points to spare. He was awarded the ring at a cap-and-gown ceremony last month in the facility's gym, where he was cheered on by 29 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 14, 2008
Palin, Biden studied on abortion, gun views
Sep. 14--The views of a vice presidential candidate on issues like abortion and gun rights usually get little attention. But for many reasons, America is getting an earful about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's skills as a caribou killer and Delaware Sen. Joe Biden's feud with Catholic bishops over when the clock starts ticking on a human life. The attention paid to the Republican vice presidential ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 14, 2008
Forum looks to abolish Ky. death penalty
Sep. 14--"It's not 'if' the death penalty will be abolished -- it's a question of when," the Rev. Pat Delahanty told a dozen people gathered Saturday in a Sunday school classroom at Holy Spirit Catholic Church. Thirteen states have no death penalty, he said; while some of them never have, just last year New Jersey abolished it, and several more states are moving in that direction.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 14, 2008
Program turns to online masses to improve patents
WASHINGTON -- Some of the biggest players in the technology industry complain that the U.S. patent system is broken -- putting too many patents of dubious merit in the hands of people who can use them to drag companies and other inventors to court. And Blaise Mouttet, a small inventor in Alexandria, Va., thinks he knows why. The problem, he said, is that 'there are too many lawyers and not ...
Detroit News - Sep 15, 2008
Constitutional mythbusters
The U.S. Constitution, signed by its 39 framers on Sept. 17, 1787, established our nation and government built on ideals such as liberty, equality, justice and commitments to the rule of law. During the last 221 years, the debate, interpretation and reinterpretation of this incredible document have spawned myths and misunderstandings. As a prelude to Constitution Day, faculty at the University ...
Arizona Daily Star - Sep 14, 2008
Despite scandals, poll says RP judiciary not the worst in Asia
THE PHILIPPINE judicial system still scores better than some of its Southeast Asian neighbors, a poll released in the wake of a bribery scandal at the Court of Appeals showed. The survey of expatriate businessmen, conducted by the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC), judged Hong Kong and Singapore as having the best judicial systems in Asia while Indonesia and Vietnam ...
Business World - Sep 14, 2008
Hugo Chvez tightens his grip
FOR much of the past eight months, since suffering defeat in a referendum on changing the constitution, Hugo Chvez has seemed to be on the defensive. Abroad, he repaired strained relations with Colombias president and with Spains King Juan Carlos. At home, he backpedalled on unpopular measures, such as a new socialist educational curriculum and a draconian intelligence law.
The Economist - Sep 14, 2008
Barbour goes back to friendly court
Haley Barbour has generally gotten what he s wanted out of the Mississippi Supreme Court. It will be interesting to see if the Republican governor can keep that string alive in the flap over the ballot order in November. Barbour has agreed with fellow Republican Delbert Hosemann, the secretary of state, that the special election between interim U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker and Democratic challenger ...
Greenwood Commonwealth - Sep 14, 2008
A constitutional court?
Dean Amado Valdez of the UE College of Law could have been deliberately provocative when, advocating the implanting of a constitutional court in our body of judicial institutions, he said: "This is the last chance to redeem the Judiciary." (Nowadays, the Judiciary has its high - and low - moments, but I would not venture to use the word "redemption." Its swift resolution of the imbroglio at the ...
Philippines Daily Tribune - Sep 14, 2008
Posco closer to starting line
Sep. 15--NEW DELHI -- Even as most mega projects in the country are increasingly getting mired in controversies relating to land acquisition, India's largest foreign direct investment venture, Posco's 12 million tonne per annum (tpa) steel plant in Orissa, is inching closer towards the starting line. On a high, post a Supreme Court verdict on forest diversion last month that freed up over 2,900 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 15, 2008
Legal Bytes: E-businesses face the long-arm reach of the law
Just ask the people at Getty Oil, who had the idea of offering branded credit cards over its website to New Jersey residents. One of them became irate when Getty switched to a generic gasoline product, and sued in New Jersey, alleging violation of federal petroleum regulations. Getty argued that the New Jersey court had no jurisdiction, because Getty had no offices in New Jersey, but the court ...
East Bay Business Journal - Sep 15, 2008
In MP, malnutrition deaths a non-issue
Sep. 15--MADHYA PRADESH -- Madhya Pradesh has learnt to live with malnutrition deaths. They disturb no one. The Bhopal edition of Hindustan Times, which has been focussing on them from time to time for the last two years, remains a lone voice: no other newspaper, much less the government, has taken up the issue seriously. Only a handful of NGOs have been at it, but they too have failed to dent ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 15, 2008
Many Supreme Courts? It's possible
Sep. 15--NEW DELHI -- Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan has said that India can have zonal benches of the Supreme Court, if the principal bench hears only constitutional matters and inter-state disputes. "In many countries -- Canada, Brazil, South Africa, the UK, the USA, Supreme Courts adjudicate only disputes between the states. If a constitutional court is there, creating an appellate ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 15, 2008
Secret sex tape can't be used, court says: Man accused of assault of wife in coma
Sep. 12--Prosecutors can't use secret videotapes of a Watertown minister having sex with his comatose wife while she was in a nursing home, the 4th District Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. The man faces eight felonies -- four counts of second-degree sexual assault of an unconscious person and four counts of third-degree sexual assault -- as well as a misdemeanor.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 12, 2008
Circus sued over treatment of elephants
Sep. 11--Not everyone is thrilled that the circus is in town. At issue is the treatment of the performing animals, especially the seven elephants that will be among the star attractions when the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus opens tonight at Arco Arena for the first of nine shows in four days. "If people knew what went on behind the big top, they should be outraged about the cruelty ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 11, 2008
Consumers Union Urges Federal Trade Commission to Protect Consumers With Gift Cards When Retailers Go Bankrupt
Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, filed a petition today with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) asking the agency to protect consumers from losing money on gift cards when retailers file for bankruptcy. The issue has come to light following recent retailer bankruptcies and millions in lost gift card dollars for consumers. 'Gift cards shouldn't be the gift that stops ...
PR Newswire - Sep 11, 2008
Documentary plays chicken with the poultry industry
That s the provocative movie poster tagline superimposed over the back-end of a chicken for Shall We Gather at the River, a film documentary directed by Don McCorkell, a former state legislator from Tulsa. Thursday at the Circle Cinema, with McCorkell introducing the documentary and state Attorney General Drew Edmondson speaking at 7:30 p.m. between showings.
Tulsa World - Sep 11, 2008
Couple says holdings are protected
An Evans woman accused of costing many people their life savings, homes or both with her real estate dealings blamed the downturn in the real estate market and banks for the financial troubles, including her own bankruptcy. And the attorney for Regina and Charles 'Greg' Preetorius contends that any assets and property held in her corporations' names are protected from creditors.
Augusta Chronicle - Sep 11, 2008
Tell It, Paul Begala
Without further comment, the lede of Begala's HuffPo article about McCain, Palin, the truth, the media, and the relationship between the four of them: What else? What more can we do with LipStickOnAPigGate? Talk about it. Have dueling surrogates on our channel to talk about it. Interview each other talking about it. Point to how others in the media have talked about it. Done. Done. Done.
Columbia Journalism Review - Sep 11, 2008
Colo. high court to decide on natural gas case
DENVER -- A case with potentially far-reaching effects on Colorado's oil and gas industry will be decided by the Colorado Supreme Court. The court heard arguments Wednesday in a dispute over water that's pumped from the ground in order to draw natural gas out of coal beds. The justices are expected to rule later. Landowners in southwest Colorado had sued, saying the practice threatens their ...
Central Utah Daily Herald - Sep 11, 2008
- Hefty settlement ends court clerks lawsuit
Pregnant employee claimed manager bullied her The state has paid $315,000 to a former Multnomah County juvenile court clerk to settle a lawsuit alleging workplace discrimination and harassment. Sheri Peters filed suit in federal court two years ago, alleging that after telling the juvenile justice center manager she was pregnant in August 2004, she was retaliated against, berated and bullied by ...
Outlook Online - Sep 12, 2008
Wisconsin wineries using co-ops to avoid wholesalers: New law says all winemakers must go through wholesaler
Sep. 12--Wisconsin wine producers are beginning to bunch together to keep their products sold in local supermarkets and liquor stores. As the result of a state law taking effect Oct. 1, smaller wineries are taking steps to form cooperatives that would act as wholesale distributors. On Thursday, Jon Hamilton, vice president of the Wisconsin Winery Association, consulted in Madison with the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 12, 2008
Lose your house, lose your vote in Michigan
Indymedia (IMC) says: Indymedia says: Your speech has the same fate as the polar bears! (ha ha). Indybay.org says: this news blog is automatically censored! We don't even have to work for our money! Chicago Indymedia says: We will delete this news blog; remove the 911 hoax from our server! Cleveland.Indymedia.org says: look at this theme! we can't wait to put American citizens against the wall! ...
Boston IMC - Sep 12, 2008
Who's afraid of impeachment?
Sep. 12--NEW DELHI -- It will take more than mere intentions and words to impeach a corrupt judge in India. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called for honest judges, but how do you keep them in line if they have no fear of punishment. Not even impeachment. Some former judges of the Supreme Court have said that the impeachment process is so "highly politicised" and ineffective that Calcutta ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 12, 2008
Sen. Cornyn Seeks Criminal Investigation of Corporate Officers at Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac
Sen. Cornyn Seeks Criminal Investigation of Corporate Officers at Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac Says in Wake of Record Corporate Bailout, Any Who Violated Criminal Laws Must Be Held Accountable WASHINGTON Citing past examples of corporate malfeasance by Fannie Mae, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, Vice-Chair of the Senate Republican Conference, announced on the Senate floor this morning that he has sent ...
U.S. Senator John Cornyn - Sep 11, 2008
EPA Considering Carbon Regulation Options
In an exclusive interview with CarbonInsider.com, the director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Change Div. indicated that the agency is anticipating widespread carbon regulatory restrictions on business. EPA is moving ahead with preparations that could well include imposing on industry mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions which experts have said lead to global ...
TickerTech.com - Sep 11, 2008
Special education proposals ruled out: Overwhelming opposition dooms bids to cut parent input and revise hearings
Sep. 12--Under pressure from politicians and thousands of parents of special-education students, the state Department of Education has backed down from proposed rule changes that would limit parental consent for ending special-education services. Billy K. Cannaday Jr., superintendent of public instruction, said the department also would withdraw a proposal to move the due-process hearings from ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 12, 2008
Inman's trial put on hold: Inman's attorneys accuse prosecutor of intimidating witness
Sep. 12--PICKENS -- Jerry Buck Inman will have to wait awhile before learning whether he will be sentenced to death or life in prison without parole. His death penalty trial was put on hold indefinitely Thursday after his attorneys accused 13th Circuit Solicitor Bob Ariail of trying to intimidate a defense expert Wednesday by suggesting she could face criminal penalties if she testified.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 12, 2008
Doctors Fight Drug Industry's Free Gifts
TRENTON, N.J. -- Just about every segment of the medical community is piling on the pharmaceutical industry these days, accusing drugmakers of deceiving the public, manipulating doctors and putting profits before patients. Recent articles and editorials in major medical journals blast the industry. Medical schools, teaching hospitals and physician groups are changing rules to limit the influence ...
WISN Milwaukee - Sep 12, 2008
Telco to fiber-deploying town: we sue because we care
Monticello, Minnesota, for trying to put in a fiber optic network of its own. Why would a company try to prevent a town from building itself a faster network? TDS tells us that it's really just looking out for the taxpayer (and its own infrastructure investment). Not satisfied with the current DSL and cable offerings, Monticello hatched an ambitious plan to wire up its entire town with fiber, ...
ArsTechnica - Sep 12, 2008
Lawsuit filed over 'sober house'
Sep. 11--SALEM -- A Saugus man filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city for not allowing him to open a "sober house" in The Point neighborhood. Michael Viola has accused city officials of discriminating against the disabled by blocking a home for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts at 17-23 Salem St. The suit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Boston.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 11, 2008
Members of Artes Medical face suit
Sep. 11--A shareholder lawsuit filed against current and former board members of San Diego-based Artes Medical alleges that insider trading, channel stuffing and cronyism contributed to the loss of 90 percent of the company's share value in the last year. The lawsuit also says that the insider trading prompted a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation involving the former chief ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 11, 2008
Ars Book Review: "Intellectual Property and Open Source"
You'd have to do a lot of man-on-the-street interviews before you'd find someone who could explain the difference between a patent and a trademark. And even the relatively savvy participants in the Ars forums have been known to mangle copyright's fair use doctrine, misunderstand key provisions of the GPL, or foolishly assume that the law must track their own notions of common sense.
ArsTechnica - Sep 12, 2008
Jury Slaps City with $8 Million Police Misconduct Verdict
San Diego County history, a Superior Court jury Monday ordered the city of San Diego to pay $8 million to a 28-year-old man who, in early 2006, fell into a coma after allegedly being knocked to the ground by a San Diego Police Department officer. Officer Joseph De Veaux knocked San Diego resident Pablo Gomez off his feet, causing Gomez to fall backward and hit his head on the pavement after an ...
Voice of San Diego - Sep 11, 2008
Senate eyes another petition on ZTE deal
Sep. 10--The Senate blue-ribbon committee is mulling over the filing of a second motion for reconsideration before the Supreme Court, to clarify its decision on the executive privilege case filed by former Socio-economic Planning Secretary Romulo Neri. Neri now heads the Social Security System. Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, the committee chairman, said senators have many objections to the Supreme ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 10, 2008
Killer won't walk: Court flips ruling
Sep. 10--LIMA -- A man convicted of a 2001 murder will remain in prison following a federal appeals court reversing a lower court's overturning of his verdict. Tierre Manley, convicted of murder with a gun in the June 2001 shooting death of Stephen Glover Jr., had that conviction overturned by M a g i s t r a t e Judge William H. Baughman Jr. of the U.S. District Court Northern District of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 10, 2008
Enron payout plan approved: Shareholders may see some money before the end of the year
Sep. 10--Enron shareholders could start pocketing their part of $7.2 billion in settlements of massive federal civil litigation by year-end now that a judge has approved the distribution plan. Late Monday U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon approved a plan to distribute the money to eligible shareholders, clearing the way for the California-based law firm that runs the litigation to move toward ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 10, 2008
Provena to take tax case to state Supreme Court
Sep. 10--Provena Covenant Medical Center on Tuesday said it will take its case to the Illinois Supreme Court after a state appeals court last month put the Urbana hospital's tax exemption in jeopardy. "The Appellate Court opinion runs counter to the law, facts and evidence of our case, but also unfairly impugns the proud history of charitable and religious mission service by Provena Covenant ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 10, 2008
"Food, Inc." filmmaker lets them eat burgers (Reuters)
Related Articles A 'Summer' to remember for Kid Rock September 2, 2008, 8:51 am Australians load up on AC/DC albums September 2, 2008, 9:50 am Mexican Supreme Court compares Walmart to Mexican dictatorship September 5, 2008, 10:59 am Mexico's Supreme Court slams Walmart's labor practices September 5, 2008, 11:27 am TORONTO (Reuters) - Documentary filmmaker Robert Kenner still eats hamburger, ...
Yahoo! News Australia - Sep 10, 2008
Federal Court of Appeals in a Divided Decision Reverses District Court Ruling Dismissing VIOXX(R) Securities Class Action
Merck & Co., Inc. said today that it is considering asking either the full court of appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court to review a divided decision of a three-judge panel of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals reinstating a consolidated securities class action suit. The suit, brought by investors in connection with disclosures regarding VIOXX, had been dismissed by a federal district court in April ...
DiGiTAL50 - Sep 10, 2008
Amazon Defense Coalition: Chevron's Environmental Clean-Up in Ecuador Falls Far Short of Company Claims, Report Says
An independent court-appointed expert in Ecuador has found that 42 out of 46 toxic waste pits inspected in the Amazon rainforest operated exclusively by Chevron contain high levels of toxins in violation of environmental norms in both Ecuador and the U.S. The findings are a devastating blow to Chevron's legal strategy in a class action trial in Lago Agrio, Ecuador filed in 2003 by 30,000 ...
Macro World Investor - Sep 10, 2008
Victims' families question value of detainee trials
WASHINGTON _ This time of year especially, Carole O'Hare gets stuck in a sad reverie at her California home, wondering about the last moments of her mother's life, alone, aboard the hijacked Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001. "I think of my mom sitting on that plane by herself," she says of Hilda Marcin, 79, listed as victim No. 2,964 on the Pentagon's Sept. 11 war crimes charge sheet.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 10, 2008
EDITORIAL: Sarah Palin interview today: 10 things inquiring minds want to know
Sep. 11--Two weeks after Sen. John McCain named Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, she is finally going solo with a major network. Portions of her interview with ABC News anchor Charlie Gibson will be broadcast today. Until now, Palin has not participated in news shows, press conferences or interviews. A team of media handlers has been preparing her for the Gibson interview.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 11, 2008
Trib argues for release of public officials' cell-phone records
Sep. 11--A lawyer for the Tribune-Review Publishing Co. told state justices Wednesday that cell-phone records of public officials are public documents and should be available for public inspection. "The Right to Know Act gives people an opportunity to see how government spends its money," attorney Ronald Barber said during a hearing before the state Supreme Court, Downtown.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 11, 2008
Medical schools, journals fight industry influence
TRENTON, N.J. - Just about every segment of the medical community is piling on the pharmaceutical industry these days, accusing drugmakers of deceiving the public, manipulating doctors and putting profits before patients. In this undated file photo, Journal of the American Medical Association editor-in-chief Dr. Catherine D. DeAngelis is seen in her office in Chicago, Ill.
The Dispatch - Sep 11, 2008
Hybrid taxis couldn't handle NYC streets: Lawsuit
Taxi operators have sued the city over requiring yellow cabs to go green, saying cars that run on a mix of gasoline and electric power can't handle the workout they would get on New York City streets. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court on Monday, weeks before an Oct. 1 deadline requiring new cabs to get 25 miles per gallon. It asked a federal judge to strike down the city requirement. ...
Yahoo! Canada - Sep 10, 2008
Liability reform having positive effect on medical community, study shows
Houston Business Journal - by Monica Perin Reporter Related News Five years after the Texas Legislature passed new laws restricting medical liability claims, the Texas Medical Association says a recent survey proves the reforms have worked. The online survey of 1,391 physician members of TMA found that since September 1, 2003, when the new laws went into effect, Texas physicians are ...
East Bay Business Journal - Sep 10, 2008
Educators: Special-ed costs threaten tax cap plan
Sep. 10--Special-education costs on Long Island have been rising more than 15 percent a year -- more than twice the rate for total school expenses -- and educators say this could spell trouble if the state imposes a proposed cap on property taxes. The reason? Special-education spending is largely shielded from cutbacks by a federal law guaranteeing students with disabilities a "free, appropriate ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 10, 2008
50 Cent wins right to see son on alternate weekends
Sep. 9--The multiplatinum hip-hop star 50 Cent briefly became just a satisfied father named Curtis Jackson at a Suffolk Family Court appearance in Central Islip yesterday when he won the right to see his 11-year-old son on alternating weekends. The temporary schedule will last until Oct. 22, when Jackson's visitation dispute with the boy's mother, Shaniqua Tompkins, is set to go to trial.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
Enron settlement: $7.2 billion to shareholders, $688 million to lawyers
Sep. 9--Eligible shareholders whose Enron holdings became worthless when the company crumbled in scandal will receive $7.2 billion in settlements under a distribution plan approved in federal court. And the California-based law firm that ran massive Enron shareholder litigation for more than six years will get $688 million -- plus interest -- for its work, U.S.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
CSPI Sues to Stop MillerCoors' 'Sparks' Alcoholic Energy Drink
The nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest today filed suit (http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/complaint_millercoors.pdf) against MillerCoors Brewing Company, formerly Miller, over its alcoholic energy drink, Sparks. The product has more alcohol than regular beer and contains unapproved additives, including the stimulants caffeine and guarana. The lawsuit is asking the Superior Court of ...
PR Newswire - Sep 9, 2008
Justice Department Issues Report on Antitrust Monopoly Law
Report Provides Consumers, Businesses, and Policy Makers With Analysis of Single-Firm Conduct Under the Antitrust Laws WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Department of Justice today issued a report informing consumers, businesses and policy makers about issues relating to monopolization offenses under the antitrust laws. The report, 'Competition and Monopoly: Single-Firm ...
PR Newswire - Sep 9, 2008
Russian officials sue British American Tobacco
MOSCOW: Russia's top health officer said Monday his governmental agency is suing British American Tobacco's Russian office for misleading the consumers, Russian news agencies reported. Gennady Onishchenko, director of consumer rights agency Rospotrebnadzor, said he has signed a lawsuit against BAT for 'misleading the consumers' and infringing on their rights.
International Herald Tribune - Sep 9, 2008
ACLU seeks nearly $400,000 from Pulaski, McCreary
Sep. 9--"I'm not really happy with any figure at all, but a lower figure is better." Those were the words of Pulaski County Judge-Executive Barty Bullock yesterday afternoon, after hearing the ACLU is seeking is seeking nearly $400,000 in attorney fees in the Ten Commandments case Pulaski County has been involved in since 1999. According to a report in The Lexington Herald-Leader, the ACLU is ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
BRIEF: Judge dismisses portions of Katrina lawsuit
Sep. 9--The annexation by the City of Meridian of part of Lauderdale County has been delayed, according to Meridian Chief Administrative Officer Ken Storms. During a Council of Governments meeting Monday, Storms said a group of citizens in the annexed area were granted a two week extension on the time they were initially given to decide whether they wanted another hearing on the annexation. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
Pali Names New General Counsel
Pali Holdings, Inc. today announced that Barbara Bishop has joined the firm as General Counsel. She is based in the firm's New York headquarters and reports to Brad Reifler, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Joseph Schenk, Chief Operating Officer. Bishop has been practicing law for 32 years of which the last 23 years have been with Bear Stearns. 'Barbara's broad experience in both local ...
PR Newswire - Sep 9, 2008
Major advertisers protest Google-Yahoo search advertising deal
(Computerworld) A trade group that represents large national advertisers like Ford, Sara Lee, Wal-Mart and Pepsi has sent a objecting to a proposed . The Association of National Advertisers -- which represents 400 companies that spend more than $100 billion annually in advertising -- said yesterday that it sent the letter to Assistant Attorney General Thomas Barnett after what it called a ...
Computerworld - Sep 9, 2008
Banks' death sentence on hold
Sep. 9--The psychological disorders clouding convicted mass murderer George Banks' thoughts with delusion and irrationality, including a firmly held belief that a higher power overturned his death sentence, have rendered him incompetent to be executed, Senior Judge Michael T. Conahan ruled Monday. "Banks is out of touch with reality," Conahan said in a 21-page memorandum that accompanied his ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
James Surowiecki: The politics of pay discrimination.
She was an ordinary middle-class mom who, despite fierce criticism, succeeded in a male-dominated profession. She challenged the local establishment and became a national figure, earning herself a spot as a featured speaker at her partys recent Convention. But she wasnt the governor of Alaska. She was a woman named Lilly Ledbetter, a former middle manager at a Goodyear plant in Alabama, who ...
New Yorker - Sep 9, 2008
Compensation argued for Staten I. ferry crash victim
Sep. 9--Staten Island Ferry victim James McMillan Jr. deserves to be compensated for a life of lost dignity and independence, his attorney told a federal jury yesterday. "This is something that happened, that could have happened to any New York City commuter," attorney Evan Torgan said of the Oct. 15, 2003 crash of the Andrew J. Barberi into a Staten Island dock.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
CBI gets nod to question judges
Sep. 10--NEW DELHI -- Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan has given the CBI permission to question two sitting judges of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in connection with the "cash-at-judge's-door" scam, allegedly involving judges, lawyers and Chandigarh-based property dealers. This is the first time the CJI has allowed questioning of sitting high court judges, sources said, adding, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 10, 2008
Give Husain security: Friends
Sep. 10--NEW DELHI -- A day after the Supreme Court refused to initiate criminal proceedings against painter MF Husain for allegedly hurting public sentiments, his friends and supporters on Tuesday said the government should provide him security to enable him to return to India. The Supreme Court order on Monday describing Husain's Bharat Mata painting as a "work of art," came as a major relief ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 10, 2008
Sweating to return to the courtroom: Ex-judge Velasquez seeks redemption with community service
Sep. 9--Former Monterey County Superior Court Judge Jose Angel Velasquez knows he'll never sit on the bench again, but he wants to practice law. In order to do that, Velasquez says he is doing everything he can -- including cutting cornstalks in a field outside Soledad to give them to local organizations. "There's no better way to cleanse your mind and your soul," he said Monday.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
Speakers deliver straight talk at forum
Sep. 9--When former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich spoke Monday of the challenges facing the nation, he didn't pull any punches. "With the rise of China and India, we no longer have the margin to be willfully stupid," he said. The line drew applause from many of the 800 attendees of the Blanchard Leadership Forum. The event, held at the Columbus Convention & Trade Center and sponsored by ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
Hazleton's anti-illegal immigrant law back in court: Panel of judges to hear case four days before Nov. 4 election in which mayor is running for Congress.
Sep. 9--Hazleton will get to argue before a federal appeals court on Oct. 31 that a judge wrongly struck down the city's ordinance making it illegal to hire or rent housing to illegal immigrants, Mayor Lou Barletta announced Monday. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to have the appeal heard by a three-judge panel, and recent rulings by other federal appeals courts have given the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
Inmate to die though 198 sentenced before him
Sep. 9--TAVARES Richard Henyard was born two months after Gary Alvord was condemned to die. Yet Henyard, 34, scheduled for execution this month for the murders of two Lake County girls, leapt ahead of 198 other Florida killers sentenced to death before him, including Alvord, 61, who has resided on death row longer than any other inmate in the nation. Why Henyard now? "I'm not able to answer that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
Armstrong County woman wants land back
Sep. 9--Sally Moody is hoping the state Supreme Court will return to her family a strip of land used by railroads for more than 150 years. Moody, 77, of Applewold in Armstrong County, and several other land owners are challenging a rails-to-trails group that wants to convert the former railroad path crossing her property into a trail. The state Supreme Court heard the case Monday in Pittsburgh. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
Ga. Supreme Court to hear appeal in Bibb murder case
Sep. 9--The Georgia Supreme Court is scheduled to hear an appeal in a Bibb County murder case today to determine whether a man convicted of killing a pizza delivery person in 2004 should get a new trial. Damian Darnell Henderson, 33, is serving a life sentence at Hancock State Prison in the shooting death of Steven Lamar Bass, 25, following a shootout at a San Juan Avenue duplex, according to a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
BRIEF: Group files suit over energy drink
Sep. 9--The Center for Science in the Public Interest has filed a lawsuit against MillerCoors over the marketing and formulation of its Sparks energy-alcohol drink. The Washington-based advocacy group said the drink contains "unapproved" additives, including caffeine and guarana. The lawsuit asks the Superior Court of the District of Columbia to stop MillerCoors from selling the drink.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
County seeks a settlement in records lawsuit
Sep. 9--Muskogee County commissioners hope to settle a lawsuit in which the plaintiffs are seeking to obtain copies of county records at reduced rates. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a California businessman who collects "current computer-readable assessment database information of real property." Roger Hurlbert, doing business as Sage Information Services, alleges the fee totaling more than ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
Senate eyes another petition on ZTE deal
Sep. 10--The Senate blue-ribbon committee is mulling over the filing of a second motion for reconsideration before the Supreme Court, to clarify its decision on the executive privilege case filed by former Socio-economic Planning Secretary Romulo Neri. Neri now heads the Social Security System. Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, the committee chairman, said senators have many objections to the Supreme ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 10, 2008
High Court sacks CA Justice Roxas: Sabio receives suspension, other magistrates get sanctions
Sep. 10--The Supreme Court sacked an appellate justice from the Court of Appeals and sanctioned others in connection with a recently concluded investigation into improprieties by magistrates in a case between Meralco and GSIS. The High Court dismissed from the service Associate Justice Vicente Roxas, whom the Tribunal earlier found guilty of "multiple violations of the canons of Judicial ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 10, 2008
EDITORIAL: Tell-all father's rights registry needs more exposure
Sep. 9--Fathers-to-be are not exactly queuing up to get on Virginia's Putative Father Registry. One year after its creation, only 64 men have signed up. The registry was created so that unmarried men can preserve their legal rights in case they father a child out of wedlock. The response is just as underwhelming in the other 35 states with similar registries.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
TransUnion owes millions free credit monitoring
WASHINGTON - In a class action settlement, the credit bureau TransUnion has agreed to provide free credit-monitoring services to millions of consumers to settle claims it illegally passed along private information for marketing purposes.Although TransUnion denied any wrongdoing, the settlement requires the company to sign up consumers for either six months or nine months of monitoring.Now unless ...
Rutland Herald - Sep 9, 2008
Jury selection to begin in OJ Simpson robbery case
AM (2 hrs 3 mins ago) By KEN RITTER, AP 2 hrs 3 ago: 2 hrs 15 ago: OJ to get his wish for jury to hear his case 3 days ago: OJ co-defendant again loses bid to postpone trial 3 days ago: OJ co-defendant renews appeal to postpone trial 5 days ago: Lawyer: OJ Simpson ready for trial in Las Vegas 5 days ago: OJ Simpson lawyer: 'Ready for trial' in Las Vegas 10 days ago: Nevada Supreme Court ...
Examiner-Milwaukee - Sep 9, 2008
BRIEF: Restraining order sought to block Farmers Branch rental license ordinance
Sep. 8--Opponents filed a request Monday for a temporary restraining order to block Farmers Branch's latest effort to stop housing rentals to illegal immigrants. The request followed the filing of a lawsuit last week targeting the measure, Ordinance 2952, which is scheduled to go into effect Saturday. The ordinance would allow the rental of homes or apartments to anyone who obtained a rental ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 8, 2008
Medical device payments to doctors draw scrutiny
With 25 million Americans suffering from back pain, spinal surgery has become a growth industry. Recently, at St. Joseph s Hospital in St. Paul, Dr. Charles Burton, left, replaced a spinal neurostimulator. Burton is vice president of the Association for Ethics in Spine Surgery, a grassroots group of doctors who do not accept compensation from companies for using their devices.
Minneapolis Star Tribune - Sep 9, 2008
Tort reform has cash flowing in governor race
Sep. 8--JEFFERSON CITY -- In the battle over big money, the race for Missouri governor boils down to this: Big Business vs. Big Law. If the old Watergate-era directive -- "follow the money" -- still holds true, then the code to decipher who wants to see either Democrat Jay Nixon or Republican Kenny Hulshof occupy the Governor's Mansion can be found in filings with the Missouri Ethics Commission. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 8, 2008
Lawsuits target baby-food plant in Sanger
AM Sep. 7--Two former top managers of a Sanger baby-food processing plant are fighting a legal battle with the company's president, claiming he repeatedly violated food-safety standards. In separate lawsuits, they say that John Ypma, founder of Initiative Foods, put consumers' health at risk by cutting corners, including approving the use of sweet potatoes that were full of maggots and shipping ...
Macro World Investor - Sep 8, 2008
Toxic footprint of meth labs isn't easily erased: Few labs seized now, but issues persist
Sep. 7--AS A RESTORATION SPECIALIST -- or as he calls it, a demolition grunt -- Chris Pease's days were spent inside homes and apartments where authorities had found meth labs. After police cleared out, he and a crew suited up in full-body protective gear and set about the dirty, painstaking job of making the buildings safe. They pulled out furniture and carpeting, tore out sinks, counter tops ...
Calibre Macro World - Sep 8, 2008
Scam savvy: 9 tips to protect from con artists
'They said, 'Don't worry.' They took me in a limo to their office. They said, 'Sign here, sign there,' and I did.' And that's how Priscila Nano, 66, a divorcee, came to lose the house in Great Neck that she'd lived in and loved for 29 years. Nano is not alone. Consumer Action, an advocacy group, reports that, while people older than 60 make up 15 percent of the U.S.
Newsday - Sep 8, 2008
State high court hears Washington County tax-plan gripe
Sep. 9--A citizens group fighting a tax-increment financing plan given to a Washington County outlet mall told state Supreme Court justices Monday that people should be able to challenge such plans in court. Citizens Against Tax Incremental Financing sued the county, South Strabane and Trinity School District after they approved a 20-year tax plan for the development of the Victory Centre ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
Victim's father lunges at killer
Sep. 9--A death-penalty hearing in a Wyandotte County courtroom was disrupted Monday when the father of the murder victim lunged at the defendant. The sentencing hearing for Gary Kleypas, convicted of capital murder in the death of 20-year-old Pittsburg State University student Carrie Williams in 1996, was halted for several minutes before resuming. After the jury heard the 911 recording from ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
EDITORIAL: Onorato's trials
Sep. 9--Something rings troublingly false about Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato's self-professed altruism over the badly broken property tax assessment system. First, Mr. Onorato imposes an unconstitutional "base-year" system in the guise of halting "back-door" tax increases. Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick slapped him. Then, in advance of oral arguments on his appeal this ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
BRIEF: Court seeks RBI response on credit card interest rate
Sep. 9--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court on Monday sought a response from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on several petitions filed by multinational banks challenging the order of National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission restraining banks from charging over 30 per cent annum interest from credit card holders for delayed payment. Admitting the bunch of petitions, a bench headed by Justice B ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
Magnolia Green project caught in suit on funding
The developers of Magnolia Green are in a bit of a jam. According to a recently filed civil lawsuit, the developers sent in the lawyers when iStar Financial Inc., their New York-based lender, requested that the developers post money -- $24.3 million in 15 days to be precise. Magnolia Green Development LLC, Philip Pilevsky and Raymond L. Zimmerman are claiming that iStar's financial situation and ...
Richmond Times Dispatch - Sep 9, 2008
KC-based association is at center of insurance-regulation storm
Sep. 9--A states-rights battle stretching back to the Civil War has heated up, catching one of Kansas City's largest businesses in the brewing storm. The clash is over insurance regulation, which ultimately determines what consumers pay to insure everything from their homes and autos to their lives and financial security. And while this regulatory thunderclap is largely being played out behind ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
EDITORIAL: Another big step backward
Sep. 9--The Supreme Court's ruling last week to uphold its March ruling on the Neri vs. Senate Committee case, in effect, affirms the right of the President and her chosen people to hide--from the Congress, the media or any person or institution seeking the truth about the executive's activities--their lies, their attempts to lie and to commit acts that could be criminal or are in fact criminal.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
Foreign cos can claim tax deduction: SC
Agencies New Delhi, Sept 7: The Supreme Court has held that foreign companies can claim tax deductions for foreign exchange losses on account of currency fluctuations. A bench headed by Justice S H Kapadia while dismissing the Income tax department's petition held that the loss arising on account of 'foreign currency translation' was allowable as deduction and the gains on the same account were ...
Central Chronicle - Sep 9, 2008
Fannie Mae investor sues five banks
Shareholder sues banking giants, claiming they did not tell her about off-balance sheet accounting proposals A shareholder is suing five banks for allegedly not warning her about accounting change proposals which caused Fannie Mae shares to nosedive in price. Karen Orkin, who bought 600 Class B Fannie Mae shares, filed the suit at the Supreme Court in New York this week as a proposed class ...
Finance Director - Sep 9, 2008
5 CA justices found guilty: Magistrates committed improprieties ? panel
Sep. 9--With facts on hand that five of the eight justices of the Court of Appeals really did commit acts of impropriety in connection with the controversial Meralco-GSIS case, the Supreme Court en banc will deliberate today on possible penalties against the five justices. The Supreme Court spokesman, lawyer Jose Midas Marquez, said on Monday that the penalties may range from "simple admonition ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 9, 2008
DVD copier by RealNetworks is sure to ire Hollywood
People have been avidly feeding music CDs into their computers for years, ripping digital copies of albums and transferring the files to their other computers and mobile devices. This has not happened nearly as much with DVDs, for both practical and legal reasons. But that may soon change. On Monday, RealNetworks, the Seattle digital media company, will introduce RealDVD, a $30 software program ...
International Herald Tribune - Sep 9, 2008
For companies courting surgeons, how far is too far?
Sep. 8--When medical device salesman John Thomas heard in late 2000 that there was a new doctor in Arkansas specializing in patients with ailing backs, he stopped by his office to see if the two could do a little business. The would-be customer, Dr. Patrick Chan, said he was partial to a metal plate made by Medtronic Inc. -- just the kind of item Thomas sold working for a distributor of devices, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 8, 2008
Jobs in the balance: Do illegal workers help or hurt the U.S. economy?
Sep. 8--TULSA, Okla. -- Fluid teamwork is necessary in the hot, cramped kitchen of a mom-and-pop restaurant near an interstate ramp. A tangle of brown faces -- head chef Jose, his wife, parents, two brothers and sister -- cooked the American comfort food in the humid hive. In the middle of the controlled chaos stood Teri Kidd, the white owner of the restaurant, basking in the sweet smell of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 8, 2008
Plea bargain reversal would be a first in Utah: Widows of men killed by a reckless driver say they didn't know the deal had been struck
Sep. 8--Utah crime victims for years have asserted their constitutional right to be heard at sentencing hearings and informed of court proceedings. Now, Peggy and Patricia Hay, who were left widows by a reckless driver, are going a step further and attempting to reverse a plea bargain. If they are successful, it would be the first time in Utah that a victim got a binding plea agreement ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 8, 2008
Politics makes strange pen pals
Sep. 8--I hear things. Things like this from John Elfmont of Redondo Beach: "After the last comma in the last sentence of your piece on Sarah Palin, you used the phrase 'get real.' Amen, brother! Though a lifelong conservative Republican, I am sick to death of all of them from 'W' on down. I'm sick to death of the empty cliches about the 'American people,' blah blah blah.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 8, 2008
City nets free legal work in firefighters' suit: Group hopes to bring reverse discrimination case before U.S. Supreme Court
Sep. 8--NEW HAVEN -- A mega-law firm with extensive experience before the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to represent the city for free in a reverse discrimination lawsuit by 20 city firefighters. The Boston-based firm WilmerHale has more than 1,000 lawyers in 11 cities on three continents, according to its Web site. While the country's highest court has not yet indicated whether it will accept ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 8, 2008
Bartolomei files repeat lawsuits against Niagara Falls: Dispute focuses on development rights
Sep. 8--NIAGARA FALLS -- As city officials try to move forward on downtown development, the deals made decades ago continue to haunt them. John P. Bartolomei, the Niagara Falls lawyer who built the former Niagara Splash Water Park and made several other leases on downtown property, recently filed two more lawsuits against the city in an effort to recoup money he says he would have made if his ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 8, 2008
ITPCG Reveals Extreme Costs Swings Among Organizations With Varying Legal Holds Maturity Practices
The IT Policy Compliance Group (ITPCG) today The IT Policy Compliance Group (ITPCG) today announced the availability of its latest benchmark research report titled, "Improving Results for the Legal Custody of Information." Based on interviews conducted with 235 organizations, it finds that costs associated with legal holds on information vary considerably, depending on organizational size and ...
MarketWire - Sep 8, 2008
Former Bank of China Managers and Their Wives Convicted for Stealing More Than $485 Million, Laundering Money Through Las Vegas Casinos
Two former managers of the Bank of China and their wives were convicted on Aug. 29, 2008, by a federal jury in Las Vegas on charges of racketeering, money laundering, international transportation of stolen property as well as passport and visa fraud, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Gregory A. Brower of the District of Nevada ...
PR Newswire - Sep 2, 2008
More Conn. residents affected by data breach
HARTFORD, Conn. - Connecticut officials say 135,000 more state residents may be affected by a security breach at Bank of New York Mellon than the bank initially announced. Gov. M. Jodi Rell and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal say the state is now demanding more information from the bank and considering possible sanctions. The bank at first said 500,000 Connecticut residents were potentially ...
Boston Herald - Sep 2, 2008
Palin was member of party calling for vote on Alaskan secession from US
US Republican presidential candidate John McCain with his vice-presidential running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, in Ohio. Photograph: Matt Sullivan/Reuters New revelations about the Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin including her membership of a party that wants Alaskans to vote on becoming a separate country are raising questions about how thoroughly John McCain's ...
Guardian Unlimited - Sep 2, 2008
State Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal in priest abuse case
Sep. 3--The state Supreme Court on Tuesday ended a long-standing lawsuit against the Green Bay Catholic Diocese over the sexual abuse of a 10-year-old boy by a priest at a parish school in 1988. The high court declined to take up the appeal of David Schauer, now 30 and living in Arizona, who said church officials had known about the abuse and warned his parents not to take any action at the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 3, 2008
Suit fails to show liability, Upper St. Clair school district says
Sep. 3--Lawyers for Upper St. Clair School District are asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit claiming they failed to protect a student from being raped by a boy accused of other attacks. In court papers filed Tuesday, lawyers for the district and its employees said only one teacher -- an independent contractor employed by Wesley Institute -- knew about reports of previous assaults; ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 3, 2008
Couture headed back to UFC
LAS VEGAS: The Ultimate Fighting Championship and its heavyweight champion Randy Couture have settled a public dispute and scheduled his return to the octagon. Couture and UFC President Dana White announced Tuesday that Couture will fight Brock Lesnar on Nov. 15 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. 'We had some problems with Randy, we've solved them all.
International Herald Tribune - Sep 2, 2008
Judge dismisses lawsuit against Diebold: Shareholders charged investors were misled
Sep. 3--A federal judge dismissed a class-action lawsuit filed in 2005 against ATM and voting machine maker Diebold Inc. of Green, saying that shareholders failed to prove the company lied about its financial health and misled investors. Five shareholder lawsuits were filed in late 2005 against Diebold and some current and former officers and directors, alleging federal securities laws were ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 3, 2008
Sayles Werbner Earns Rare Texas Supreme Court Ruling Upholding Punitive Damages Award in Medical Malpractice Case
Attorneys from the Dallas litigation firm Sayles Werbner are announcing a rare Supreme Court of Texas opinion upholding a medical malpractice award for the family of a man who died of a heart attack after waiting 12 hours for treatment following his admission to a hospital emergency room for chest pains. The opinion issued by the high court on Friday in Columbia Medical Center of Los Colinas Inc. ...
PR Newswire - Sep 2, 2008
Another lawsuit challenges voter-approved development regulations
Attorney Ken Weiss wants his latest lawsuit on a fast track. ST. PETE BEACH Yet another in a long list of lawsuits challenging voter-approved development regulations was filed against the city last week. The City Commission is expected to discuss the lawsuit, either in public or in a private 'shade' session with its attorney, at its meeting tonight. At issue are four ballot questions ...
St. Petersburg Times - Sep 2, 2008
OASIS responds to Dr Bronners lawsuit
The Organic and Sustainable Industry Standards (OASIS) has brought a motion against Dr Bronners Magic Soap for attempting to stifle free speech with its lawsuit against the organic certification body. In its motion OASIS has gained the support of the free-speech charity the First Amendment Project for its attack against All One God Faith (AOGF), which trades as Dr Bronners Magic Soap.
Cosmetics Design Europe - Sep 2, 2008
Sayles Werbner Earns Rare Texas Supreme Court Ruling Upholding Punitive Damages Award in Medical Malpractice Case
Attorneys from the Dallas litigation firm Sayles Werbner are announcing a rare Supreme Court of Texas opinion upholding a medical malpractice award for the family of a man who died of a heart attack after waiting 12 hours for treatment following his admission to a hospital emergency room for chest pains. The opinion issued by the high court on Friday in Columbia Medical Center of Los Colinas Inc. ...
Biz Journals - Sep 2, 2008
Ragland wants new trial after $63.3 million verdict
Sep. 2--Shane Ragland wants a new civil trial in the 1994 shooting death of a University of Kentucky football player because he thinks the $63.3 million verdict against him is excessive. In a motion filed in Fayette Circuit Court, Ragland's attorney, David Broderick of Bowling Green, said the jury in the August wrongful death trial acted "under the influence of passion or prejudice or in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 2, 2008
Judge: Kilpatrick ouster hearing can proceed
Sep. 2--A judge ruled today that Gov. Jennifer Granholm can proceed with a removal hearing Wednesday against Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Kilpatrick's attorneys said they would immediately appeal to the Michigan Court of Appeals. Wayne County Circuit Judge Robert Ziolkowski said Granholm's public and private comments about Kilpatrick's criminal case and the Detroit City Council's request that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 2, 2008
'Raise against fundamental rights'
By Our Correspondent LAHOREA PETITION was moved on Tuesday before the Lahore High Court challenging the 31 per cent increase in electricity tariff, requesting to declare the increase against the fundamental rights of citizens provided by the Constitution. Advocate Malik Tariq Aziz in his petition stated that according to economic experts, the utility bills of a family goes beyond 20 per cent of ...
The News International - Sep 2, 2008
MCD blames police for encroachments
Sep. 3--NEW DELHI -- The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) has told the Supreme Court that failure on the part of Delhi Police has enabled vendors to illegally occupy pavements and public places in the Capital. The corporation moved an application before the apex court accusing the Delhi Police of violating Supreme Court orders directing removal of unauthorised vendors.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 3, 2008
Courts see through flip-flops of witnesses
Sep. 3--NEW DELHI -- Don't bank on hostile witnesses: that's the message going out to all high-profile accused following Sanjeev Nanda's conviction in the BMW hit-and-run case. Increasingly, courts are taking into account relevant portions of otherwise 'unreliable' witnesses' testimonies to do justice. The trend started after Delhi High Court, in December 2006, convicted three of the accused in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 3, 2008
UA law school plans talks by Supreme Court justices
Sep. 3--The University of Arizona law school's annual tradition of bringing in U.S. Supreme Court justices to campus appears set for another year. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor plan to visit the James E. Rogers College of Law this academic year, and Justice Stephen Breyer will make two appearances next week.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 3, 2008
Suit asks if trash talking can make you an outlaw: Commissioner sues city over his free speech rights
Sep. 3--HALLANDALE BEACH -- A city commissioner has filed a civil rights suit against his own city claiming his colleagues are preventing him from talking trash -- literally. Commissioner Keith London's federal lawsuit attacks a motion passed in May that prohibits commission members from discussing anything related to a pending lawsuit between the city and Waste Management Inc.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 3, 2008
Art motivated lawyer's thefts
A COMPULSION to collect artwork motivated a former high-profile lawyer to steal from his clients and partners, a court has heard. In the Supreme Court in Hobart today, John William Avery, 60, of Battery Point, pleaded guilty to 130 charges of stealing and dishonesty. Crown prosecutor Tim Ellis SC told the court that between December 2001 and March 2006 he stole $512,218 from the law firm where ...
The Mercury - Sep 3, 2008
ABCP appeal headed to Supreme Court
TORONTO - The battle over billions of dollars of investments known as asset-backed commercial paper appears headed for Canada's highest court. The investments, also known as ABCP, were supposed to be safe and short-term. But about $32 billion of ABCP has been frozen for about a year - much of it held by Canadian pension plans. Smaller amounts are held by companies and individuals.
Lethbridge Herald - Sep 3, 2008
Environmental Law Scholar Michael Wara Joins Stanford Law School Faculty
STANFORD, Calif. Stanford Law School today announced the appointment of environmental scholar Michael Wara as Assistant Professor of Law. Trained as a lawyer and a scientist, Wara's current research focuses on the emerging global carbon trading market and mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. His broader scholarship encompasses the legal, ...
Centre Daily Times - Sep 2, 2008
A Chinese experiment in democracy meets fierce resistance
When Fang Zhaojuan began organizing her neighbors here to impeach village leaders whom she suspected of corruption, she had no idea that the challenge would lead her first to the hospital and then to jail. She was following the law, after all, and had launched legal petitions signed by a large majority of villagers. They believed they had been cheated of proper compensation when their village ...
Yahoo! Canada - Sep 2, 2008
Court voids state's grocery tax
Sep. 2--The state can no longer tax your baked beans, frozen waffles, or that Big Mac from the drive-thru, a state appeals court ruled yesterday. Handing Ohio grocers and fast-food restaurants a victory, the Franklin County Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that the commercial activities tax (CAT) created by state lawmakers in 2005 cannot, under the Ohio Constitution, be applied to food consumed ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 2, 2008
A nine-year wait ends
Sep. 3--NEW DELHI -- A delayed verdict in the BMW hit-and-run case raises serious doubts over the efficiency of the criminal justice system that took almost a decade to convict the culprit. Failure to take a trial to its logical conclusion within a reasonable timeframe can erode people's faith in the system leading to social anarchy and lawlessness. Apart from the victims, who suffered an ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 3, 2008
Did Palin use power in state police, family dispute?
For the past several years, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, has been embroiled in a bitter family feud that has drawn in the state police, the attorney general, the governor's office and the state legislature. A bipartisan state legislative panel has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate whether Palin improperly brought the family fight into the ...
Newsday - Sep 1, 2008
How to Get More Time from the Bank to Stop Foreclosure Posted By : Nick Adama
The most important factor homeowners in foreclosure need to remain aware of is how much time they have left to work out a solution, either to save the home or unload it with the least financial damage. The bank, working through its local attorneys, will typically attempt to push through the legal process as quickly as possible, in order for the lawyers to get paid and the bank to have an empty ...
ArticleAddict - Sep 1, 2008
Parental-rights cases: Who should pay?: A state board hammered by a $3.8 million shortfall has shifted the responsibility to counties to pay for lawyers for poor adults who are losing parental rights.
Sep. 2--If you are a low-income parent and your child is being taken away, you used to be able to get a state public defender to represent you. Not anymore. The State Board of Public Defense, battered by a $3.8 million shortfall, has shifted the responsibility to counties to pay for lawyers for poor adults who are losing parental rights or are otherwise involved in cases where children need ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 2, 2008
EDITORIAL: Peter Schrag: Props. 5 and 8 will make waves nationally
Sep. 2--Although hardly anyone's noticed, billionaire financier George Soros and some other very deep pockets are back on the California ballot with a drug and criminal sentencing reform measure that makes their prior efforts seem modest. Given the prison mess we've locked ourselves into, Soros' proposal may be the brightest light on a bleak horizon. This one, Proposition 5, called NORA, the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 2, 2008
3 CEOs credit SMU Law with helping them reach the top
Sep. 2--With Sarbanes/Oxley disclosures, the prospect of more regulation looming and litigious minefields to tip-toe through, companies are turning to lawyers -- or at least those with law degrees -- to run the show. In years past, the inside track to the top offices seemed to belong to chief financial officers. Now, the general counsels of the corporate world may find an edge.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 2, 2008
Thai army chief renounces force
'I can insure to every person that the Thai police and military will not use force against any civilian by any means,' the army commander, General Anupong Paochinda, said at a news conference. He asserted that the military is 'on the people's side' and presented it as an honest broker between the government of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej and protesters who are demanding his resignation.
International Herald Tribune - Sep 2, 2008
Full Text Remarks of the 2008 Republican National Convention's Opening Day Now Available
Today, First Lady Laura Bush and Mrs. Cindy McCain addressed the opening session of the 2008 Republican National Convention. Other speakers included Republican National Committee Chairman Robert M. 'Mike' Duncan, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), and U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). A full text of remarks delivered today, as prepared for delivery, appears below.
PR Newswire - Sep 1, 2008
Look into the crystal ball: future being revealed as Vermont town lifts ban on fortunetelling
ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt. (AP) _ Behold, the future is being revealed and it looks bright for fortune tellers, clairvoyants, tarot card readers and anyone claiming to contact spirits in this corner of northern New England.Soothsaying might still be banned in some parts of the country, but St. Johnsbury has repealed the ordinance against peering into the future that it had on the books since 1966.'When ...
Newsday - Sep 1, 2008
Maple Leaf Foods' problems hard to digest
MAPLE LEAF'S TOP MAN Michael McCain: President and chief executive officer 2007 Salary and bonus: $3.3 million Age: 50 Born: Florenceville, N.B. Educated at: Mount Allison University. Honours in Business Administration from the University of Western Ontario Residence: Lives in Toronto with his wife Chris and their five children. McCain joined Maple Leaf Foods after his father, Wallace, bought ...
Toronto Star Online - Sep 2, 2008
Who makes up 30% of Bush fans?: President's stalwart supporters often share his evangelical faith and feel a strong tie to him despite his mistakes
Sep. 2--Daniel Darling thinks George W. Bush is doing a good job as president, and that means roughly 70 percent of Americans think Darling is a nut. He is not. What he is, perhaps not surprisingly, is the pastor of an evangelical church in the far north suburbs. He is a man of faith--the same general faith as Bush. He is passionately anti-abortion. He believes all leaders make mistakes and that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 2, 2008
When religion & health care collide, patients lose
By RICHARD P. SLOAN Los Angeles Times Last month, the California Supreme Court ruled against two physicians who allegedly denied -- based on their religious opposition -- a legal medical treatment to a patient based on her sexual orientation. The decision was issued in a lawsuit filed by a lesbian against doctors in a Vista, Calif., medical group who refused to artificially inseminate her.
South Bend Tribune - Sep 1, 2008
Third party ads start early in attorney general, Supreme Court races
Sep. 1--CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Third parties have started ad campaigns in what many consider two of the most crucial state contests come November. The Center for Individual Freedom, West Virginia Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse and the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce all have ads running that name specific candidates in the attorney general and state Supreme Court races.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 1, 2008
Missouri judges evaluated a new way for retention vote
Sep. 1--Review teams of six lawyers and six laymen will provide voters with an evaluation as well as results from a survey of lawyers and opinions of jurors. Twenty-three St. Louis-area judges on the Nov. 4 ballot will learn this week whether newly constituted review teams think they should keep their robes. Also under refreshed scrutiny are Missouri Supreme Court Judge Patricia Breckenridge and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 1, 2008
Apex court panel suggests tax to decongest Delhi
Sep. 1--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee has mooted the idea to levy congestion tax on vehicles to decongest Delhi roads. In its report placed before the National Capital Regional Planning Board (NCRPB), which has submitted a blueprint suggesting solutions to meet the growing demands of Delhiites, the monitoring committee said there should be a cap on the number of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 1, 2008
Neb. irrigation dispute heads to state high court
LINCOLN, Neb. - A case that could help define state government's role in restricting a lifeblood of the state economy, irrigation, is before the Nebraska Supreme Court. Two years ago, the state Department of Natural Resources shut down new irrigation development in portions of the Platte River Basin. The department had studied the basin and determined that allowing more wells would strain water ...
Beatrice Daily Sun - Sep 1, 2008
EDITORIAL: Stab at peace comes up short
Sep. 1--A Muslim insurgency has been fought in Mindanao, the main island in the southern part of the Philippines, for decades. A few weeks ago, the government of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo signed a historic peace agreement that would have ceded part of the province to the insurgents. It now appears that the deal will unravel in the face of legal challenges, a victim of deep and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 1, 2008
In-house lawyers can now prosecute cases of underpayment
The Workplace Ombudsman has gained approval to use in-house lawyers to litigate against employers accused of underpaying their staff. Attorney-General Robert McClelland has given the national regulator a two-year exemption from the Legal Services Directions 2005. Workplace Ombudsman Chief Counsel Leigh Johns welcomes the decision, saying it will lead to a reduction in the agencys legal bills. ...
Australasian Bus and Coach - Sep 1, 2008
The Private Sector: Countrywide acquisition may not keep it from seeking bankruptcy
NEW YORK -- Countrywide's acquisition by Bank of America Corp. was supposed to help keep the troubled mortgage lender from collapse. Things might not turn out exactly as planned. The people who did the deal hoped that a strong bank would rescue a weak one. But the deal's structure may have only delayed the inevitable -- Countrywide still could face bankruptcy or a federal takeover potentially ...
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Sep 2, 2008
Lawyer sues businesses over handicapped access
Sep. 1--SALEM, N.H. -- Two building owners are facing federal lawsuits filed by a Dracut, Mass., lawyer, who claims he could not comfortably enter their businesses or use their bathrooms in his wheelchair. It's one of several lawsuits Dino Theodore, 48, has filed in federal courts against businesses in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. The Salem cases are targeting 327 South Broadway, home of the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 1, 2008
Seinfeld files counter-suit against cook
In a counter-lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, Seinfeld hits back at chef Missy Chase Lapine - who sued his wife Jessica in January. Lapine claimed bestselling cookbook 'Deceptively Delicious' had been 'brazenly plagiarised' from her own book 'The Sneaky Chef' - both of which describe how to hide healthy ingredients in children's foods. Seinfeld's subsequent appearance on US ...
Irish News - Sep 1, 2008
Some turn violent in GOP convention protests
ST. PAUL, Minn. Demonstrations near the Republican National Convention site turned violent Monday, as protesters harassed some delegates, smashed windows, slashed car tires and threw bottles. Police using pepper spray arrested more than 250 people.</p><p>The trouble happened not far from the Xcel Energy Center convention site where the GOP was starting its four-day meeting.
Lake Wylie Pilot - Sep 2, 2008
LegalView Informs Mesothelioma Blog Readers of Asbestos Still in Use in America
LegalView reported on the details of several thousand tons of asbestos still being used in the United States, even though the material has been highly associated with an incurable form of lung cancer. The U.S. Geological Survey reported on the use of asbestos in a 2005 study and found that asbestos was being used in several everyday products. Denver, CO (PRWEB) September 1, 2008 -- LegalView, ...
PRWeb - Sep 1, 2008
School boards oppose 3 proposed amendments
Sep. 2--SANFORD School boards are taking a stand against three proposed amendments to the state constitution that they say will damage public schools. Seminole County School Board members, who voted unanimously last week to oppose amendments 5, 7 and 9, say the changes would drain funding from schools already crippled by drastic state budget cuts. The Volusia County School Board also voted to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Sep 2, 2008
Nicaragua: heartbeat of protest, Sergio Ramrez
Sergio Ramrez is a Nicaraguan writer. He was vice-president of the country from 1984-90 during the period of the Frente Sandinista de Liberacin Nacional (FSLN) government. In 1995 he broke from the FSLN to form the Movimiento de Renovacin Sandinista (MRS). His many books include (Alfaguara, 2006). He was named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993, and was awarded the Medalla ...
Open Democracy - Sep 2, 2008
Extendicare REIT Calls Lawsuit Claims False and Misleading
Extendicare Real Estate Investment Trust ("Extendicare REIT" or "Extendicare") (TSX: EXE.UN) today said claims made in a lawsuit filed August 21, 2008, in Washington State Court in Seattle, against Extendicare Homes, Inc. and Fir Lane Terrace Convalescent Center, Inc., two wholly owned U.S. based subsidiaries of Extendicare REIT, are false and misleading. Extendicare REIT also says it will ...
MarketWire - Aug 28, 2008
Court hears big-box appeal - roanoke.com
Attorneys involved in the contentious case of the Blacksburg big-box store widely thought to be a Wal-Mart Supercenter got a shock at a hearing Wednesday in Richmond. In a rare moment of candor, Virginia Supreme Court Justice Barbara Milano Keenan told attorneys for the town, Ohio developer Fairmount Properties and activist group BURG that the court would likely grant two appeals seeking to block ...
Roanoke Times - Aug 28, 2008
Thai protesters defy court order to leave compound
BANGKOK, THAILAND (AP) - Thousands of demonstrators _ some armed with golf clubs, batons and bamboo sticks _ defied a court order to end their occupation of the prime minister's office compound on Thursday, vowing to remain until the country's leaders resign. Dozens of members of the People's Alliance for Democracy clad in military fatigues wielded makeshift weapons as they stood guard around the ...
Washington Times - Aug 28, 2008
Top Mexico court shows support for abortion law
Mexico's Supreme Court was poised Wednesday to uphold legal abortion in the capital despite deep opposition elsewhere in the heavily Catholic country. Eight of the 11 Supreme Court justices said during deliberations that they would vote against declaring the law unconstitutional. Eight votes would be needed to strike it down, but only three judges have spoken in favor of doing so.
Kansas City Star - Aug 28, 2008
Coming soon....Facebook: the Movie, by Aaron Sorkin
The friendships, disputes and sudden fantastic wealth of a Harvard student who invented Facebook have been retold on a million webpages but now it appears the creator of The West Wing will write the big-budget Hollywood version of the story. A film about the social networking phenomenon has been commissioned by Sony Pictures and Aaron Sorkin, the master of a thousand intrigues in the popular ...
The Times - Aug 28, 2008
Land dispute divides Brazil's north
Aug. 28--RAPOSA SERRA DO SOL'S INDIGENOUS TERRITORY IN BRAZIL -- Brazil's Supreme Court is to deliver a decision in a land dispute case that is being called one of the most important rulings in the country's history because of the long-term impact it will have on indigenous peoples. The case revolves around Raposa Serra do Sol, a territory which is home to 19,000 indigenous people comprising ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
Same-sex marriage ban is losing, state pollsters say
Aug. 28--Likely voters in California would soundly reject a ballot measure to ban marriage between same-sex couples if the election were held today, a Public Policy Institute of California poll finds. Through telephone surveys of 2,001 California adults, the poll found that 54 percent of voters said they would vote against Proposition 8, while only 40 percent said they would support it.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
Foreigners step up humanitarian aid to conflict areas in Mindanao: Medco says int'l community eager to help victims of ongoing war
Aug. 29--AN intensified humanitarian aid from various foreign governments is set to arrive next week in Mindanao's conflict areas, an official said Thursday. Janet Lopoz, Executive Director of Mindanao Economic Development Council (Medco), said the international community has expressed its ardent desire to help the victims of the fighting between the government forces and the Moro Islamic ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 29, 2008
Goodhue County judge got special deal in divorce, complaint says: Timothy Blakely of Goodhue County received a $63,503 discount in exchange for directing mediation business to his lawyer, the state Board on Judicial Standards alleges.
Aug. 28--A Goodhue County Judge improperly received a $63,503 discount on his $108,876-divorce in exchange for directing mediation business to the lawyer who handled his contentious split, the state Board on Judicial Standards alleges in a complaint filed with the state Supreme Court. The 9-page complaint signed by David S. Paull, executive secretary of the board, includes numerous e-mails ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
Split Panel Supports Trial Judge in His Use of 'Ultimate' Sanction
A divided appeals panel has backed the decision of an exasperated trial judge who threw an attorney and her former employer out of court after both parties 'willfully' disobeyed discovery orders in spite of repeated warnings and sanctions. In an unsigned opinion, three justices of the Appellate Division, 1st Department, held that then-New York Supreme Court Justice Rolando T.
Yahoo! Canada - Aug 28, 2008
Judge orders Vermont to enforce housing rules
In the latest chapter in the long-running legal case, Franklin County Superior Court Judge Ben Joseph issued a summary judgment in favor of Vermont renters tenants, represented by Vermont Legal Aid, ordering the department to come up with a plan to enforce the building codes as intended by the Legislature. He said that between 2002 and earlier this year, state inspectors found more than 4,000 ...
Yahoo! Canada - Aug 28, 2008
Panel wants to regulate political ads
Aug. 28--MADISON -- Members of the state's elections watchdog said they would like to find a way to regulate the nasty, anonymous political ads that have cropped up in recent Supreme Court races, but that they don't yet know whether they have the power to do anything about them. "I think it called into question the independence of the judiciary," Government Accountability Board Chairman Thomas ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
Out-of-state interests spend big on I-1000
Aug. 28--Out-of-state money is pouring into the campaigns both for and against Washington Initiative 1000, the measure known by supporters as death with dignity and by opponents as physician-assisted suicide. The campaign has turned bitter in recent weeks over the role that out-of-state interests, including the Roman Catholic Church, are playing in the debate over a physician "aid-in-dying" law ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
MHP to reel in top court's power
GKSEL BOZKURTANKARA TDN Parliament Bureau In the lead up to the new legislative term, the opposition Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, has begun to draft constitutional amendments to constrain the powers of the top court. The MHP aims to constrain party closures by limiting the conditions of closure to only crimes of terrorism and violence. Although the draft is yet a product of the MHP ...
Turkish Daily - Aug 28, 2008
Same-sex marriages discussed
Aug. 28--A group of religious leaders gathered at a downtown Modesto church Wednesday night to discuss same-sex marriage, a heavily debated issue. But heated rhetoric and animosity were nowhere to be seen as panelists on both sides of the issue talked about their beliefs and views of a proposed state law that would prevent gay couples from marrying. Proposition 8 is the November ballot ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
Judge won't delay order against RI governor
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - A contract dispute between Governor Carcieri and the state's largest public employees union is now before the Rhode Island Supreme Court. Carcieri's lawyers appealed to the court Wednesday after a lower court judge refused to delay her order blocking the governor from raising health insurance costs for union members. Lawyers for the governor and the union met privately ...
Eyewitness News - Aug 28, 2008
Wake's all-year lawsuit lives on: Consent question goes to high court
Aug. 28--RALEIGH -- Wake County's ability to tell families where their children will go to school for the next three years is in question now that the state Supreme Court has agreed to hear the year-round lawsuit. The Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to hear a case that will decide whether the Wake County school system needs parental permission to assign students to year-round schools.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
Hu makes proposal on regional peace, common prosperity for SCO
DUSHANBE - Chinese President Hu Jintao, in a keynote speech Thursday at the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tajik capital Dushanbe, made a five-point proposal for joint efforts to develop lasting peace, common prosperity and regional harmony. Strengthening strategic consultation and political mutual trust Efforts should be made to promote mutual support on important ...
CHINAdaily - Aug 28, 2008
Exxon Valdez settlement checks could be distributed in October: Partial agreement reached in long case
Aug. 27--Lawyers in the epic Exxon Valdez court case have negotiated a settlement to pay out most of the $507.5 million the U.S. Supreme Court awarded in June, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs confirmed Tuesday. Under the deal, Exxon will release about $383 million for distribution to the nearly 33,000 commercial fishermen and others who sued Exxon after the disastrous 1989 oil spill in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 27, 2008
State court to hear year-round school case
Aug. 27--RALEIGH -- The state Supreme Court agreed today to hear a case that will decide whether the Wake County school system needs parental permission to assign students to year-round schools. The high court granted the request from Wake CARES, a parent group, to hear the appeal contesting Wake's right not to seek parental consent. The high court also left in place an order blocking ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 27, 2008
An ultimatum from State Farm in payment battle: Decision sought in settlement
Aug. 27--BILOXI -- State Farm has told Roland Moran he can take or leave a final payment for damage from Katrina. Moran must decide by Friday whether he will settle for the $57,000 State Farm is offering. The company refuses to pay the amount set through an arbitration process -- $170,150 for additional wind damage -- but the state and courts have left him little if any recourse.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 27, 2008
Ruling: Legal ads don't need to be in Statesman: The Idaho Supreme Court says private notices can be placed in the Idaho Business Review.
Aug. 27--The Idaho Supreme Court Tuesday overturned a lower-court ruling that said certain local legal notices must be published in the Idaho Statesman, not a business weekly. The court ruled for the Idaho Business Review, saying a state law that dictates where government and private legal notices must be published was unconstitutional. That means some private legal notices that both papers ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 27, 2008
Top Mexico court shows support for abortion law
Mexico's Supreme Court was poised Wednesday to uphold legal abortion in the capital despite deep opposition elsewhere in the heavily Catholic country. Eight of the 11 Supreme Court justices said during deliberations that they would vote against declaring the law unconstitutional. Eight votes would be needed to strike it down, but only three judges have spoken in favor of doing so.
Kansas City Star - Aug 28, 2008
Pakistani lawyers to press government
Pakistani lawyers were set to launch protests on Thursday pressing the government to reinstate judges purged by former president Pervez Musharraf, as militants attacked police in the northwest, killing 11 people. Disagreement over the judges led to a split in the ruling coalition this week, dashing hopes for political stability in the nuclear-armed country after Musharraf's resignation last week. ...
Reuters via Yahoo! - Aug 28, 2008
Attorney general proposes sensible rules on medical pot
Article: :/c/a/2008/08/27/EDHB12IKBA.DTL Home of the San Francisco Chronicle Home Delivery| Today's Paper | Ads SFGate Web Search by YAHOO! | Advanced Search Quick links to the best of SFGate | Still can't find it? see Site Index News Today Sections Sports More Features Food Travel Living Entertainment Classifieds Attorney general proposes sensible rules on medical pot Print E-mail ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Aug 28, 2008
Maple Leaf accused of hiding Listeria risk
A class-action lawsuit against Maple Leaf Foods in the wake of a tainted-meat affair that has claimed six Canadian lives accuses the company of telling its commercial partners about the contamination four days before warning the public. One of the class-action lawsuits filed by Merchant Law Group alleges the company 'was aware of the potential toxicity of several of its food products four days ...
Global T.V. - Aug 28, 2008
Gerrymandering a key culprit in California budget mess
Proposition 11, which would strip the Legislature of its power to draw state Senate and Assembly district lines, is desperately needed. George Skelton, Capitol Journal SACRAMENTO -- For Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, nothing better illustrates the evils of legislative gerrymandering -- and the need for Proposition 11 on the November ballot -- than Sacramento's two-month budget stalemate.
Los Angeles Times - Aug 28, 2008
Pass 'Lilly's law'
But as Ledbetter told a national audience from the stage of the Democratic National Convention, her lawsuit against Goodyear was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, because she had not filed the claim within 180 days of the wage disparity (as required by federal law). That limit fails to reflect the 'realities of the workplace,' as dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Aug 28, 2008
N.S. man launches class-action lawsuit against diabetes drug Avandia
HALIFAX, A Nova Scotia man has launched a class-action lawsuit against the federal government and the company responsible for the popular drug Avandia, most commonly used to treat Type 2 diabetes. Counsel for Ronald Finck of Shinimicas Village filed the statement of claim in Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Halifax on Wednesday. Named as defendants are Glaxosmithkline Inc., Glaxosmithkline PLC, ...
Calibre Macro World - Aug 28, 2008
Horton gets life for 1974 murder of Prairie Village teen
Aug. 28--For the second time, John Henry Horton has been sentenced to life in prison for the 1974 murder of a Prairie Village girl. And again, just as he had declared at his first sentencing, Horton, 61, maintained he was innocent. "I'm not guilty of this," he told District Judge James Franklin Davis on Wednesday, as he stood between his attorneys, Michael McCulloch and Carol Cline.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
Wake's all-year lawsuit lives on: Consent question goes to high court
Aug. 28--RALEIGH -- Wake County's ability to tell families where their children will go to school for the next three years is in question now that the state Supreme Court has agreed to hear the year-round lawsuit. The Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to hear a case that will decide whether the Wake County school system needs parental permission to assign students to year-round schools.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
Land dispute divides Brazil's north
Aug. 28--RAPOSA SERRA DO SOL'S INDIGENOUS TERRITORY IN BRAZIL -- Brazil's Supreme Court is to deliver a decision in a land dispute case that is being called one of the most important rulings in the country's history because of the long-term impact it will have on indigenous peoples. The case revolves around Raposa Serra do Sol, a territory which is home to 19,000 indigenous people comprising ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
Joker slams Palace move: Seeking help from Sweden, UK ?misguided'
Aug. 28--The messenger got a mouthful from an administration ally on Wednesday. Sen. Joker Arroyo said that whoever advised President Gloria Arroyo to seek the help of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair in resolving the Muslim insurgency in southern Philippines should be fired. "This idea is injudicious as it is misguided, a frying pan to the fire approach," he added.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
UC whistle-blower suit shield draws fire
Aug. 27--Lawmakers and University of California employees are pushing to overturn a court ruling that essentially declared UC exempt from most whistle-blower lawsuits. The California Supreme Court ruled last month that UC employees cannot seek damages in court if the university properly investigated their whistle-blower claims. That exemption does not apply to other state agencies, including the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 27, 2008
Husband gets guardianship in Schiavo-like case
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. --A judge on Wednesday granted temporary guardianship to the husband of a woman on a feeding tube in a case similar to the lengthy legal dispute over whether Terri Schiavo should be kept alive. Karen Weber, 57, has been in and out of a nursing home and hospital since having a stroke in December. She is now hospitalized on a feeding tube in Okeechobee and suffering from ...
The State - Aug 28, 2008
For rights pioneers, another wall falls: As students, they fought segregation. Now they celebrate Obama's rise
Aug. 28--FARMVILLE, Va. -- When Joy Cabarrus Speakes and 450 other high school students went on strike here 57 years ago, she couldn't have imagined that an African-American would someday be running for the White House. All they were asking for was classrooms that weren't tar paper shacks that leaked when it rained. Their strike would help lead one day to the landmark 1954 U.S.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
Young killer to get new sentencing
Aug. 27--Michael D. Taylor was too young for a death sentence when he raped and murdered a classmate at McCluer North High School in 1995, but later went to death row for a prison killing. On Tuesday, a divided Missouri Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing hearing in the capital case, with a new set of jurors. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Laura Denvir Stith said that prosecutors ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 27, 2008
Ethanol plant clears hurdle: DEQ will grant company permit it needs to build in Hopewell
Aug. 28--The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality today will grant Osage Bio Energy LLC an air permit the company needed to begin construction of an ethanol plant in Hopewell. The Glen Allen-based company plans to build a facility with the capacity to produce up to 68.2 million gallons of ethanol per year. 8/27/08 7:08 PM on inRich.com Construction is expected to begin in early October, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
Court hears big-box appeal - roanoke.com
Attorneys involved in the contentious case of the Blacksburg big-box store widely thought to be a Wal-Mart Supercenter got a shock at a hearing Wednesday in Richmond. In a rare moment of candor, Virginia Supreme Court Justice Barbara Milano Keenan told attorneys for the town, Ohio developer Fairmount Properties and activist group BURG that the court would likely grant two appeals seeking to block ...
Roanoke Times - Aug 28, 2008
BRIEF: Venango County animal control officer admits exceeding authority
Aug. 28--An animal control officer being sued for taking six kittens from a couple in Venango County admits she overstepped her legal authority. Tammy Kerr said she was following orders from her employer, the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Kerr said she has been sent to 27 counties since she was hired for her $17-an-hour job in June.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
In the hard fought battle after Hurricane Katrina of homeowner versus insurance company, it at first appeared the policyholder would prevail. But time has shown that, on appeal, the insurer almost always wins.
Initially, the court victories came easily. On the stand, telling their tales of battling to get their insurance claims paid, the homeowners almost always won, often with bad-faith penalties. But on appeal, in both federal and state courts, insurers prevailed, winning key legal precedents and knocking down monetary judgments if the parties had not settled. 'For a policyholder in the trial court ...
NOLA Live - Aug 27, 2008
New policies make it harder for CPS to remove kids: Fort Bend parents' lawsuit led to changes calling for court orders before state pulls alleged victims from homes in abuse cases
Aug. 27--AUSTIN -- Texas child abuse investigators are being advised to seek court orders before removing children from their home in all but the most dangerous situations, one of several major policy changes demanded by a federal appeals court. The new standards, lauded by parental rights advocates and decried by prosecutors, arose out of a ruling late last month by a three-judge panel of the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 27, 2008
The armour strengthens around privilege
At a time when many U.S. corporations are complaining that solicitor-client privilege is under assault by government prosecutors, the Supreme Court of Canada justices are sending a very different signal in Canada. A landmark decision on privilege handed down by the nation's top court has drawn the cloak around lawyer-client communications even tighter, with the court saying regulators do not have ...
Globe Investor - Aug 27, 2008
Ruling won't stop local home-school families
Aug. 27--Six Christian families across Pennsylvania intend to continue their federal court battle in hopes of receiving an exception from state law mandating that they supply their local school districts with documentation about the home-schooling of their children. The families, represented by the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association, have been tied up in litigation for four ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 27, 2008
States sue EPA over greenhouse-gas emissions from refineries
Twelve states, the city of New York, and the District of Columbia are suing the U.S. EPA for not regulating greenhouse-gas emissions from oil refineries. The suit accuses the agency of violating the Clean Air Act by refusing to issue standards for controlling carbon dioxide emissions from new or updated refinery equipment. In essence, the suit is an attempt to force the Bush administration to ...
Grist Magazine - Aug 27, 2008
State: Nassau attorney's pension improper
Aug. 27--Albert D'Agostino, the politically prominent Nassau attorney who got a six-figure public pension after the state retroactively approved 21 years of credit for him, must give up his pension and pay back the more than $600,000 he has collected, the New York State comptroller's office said yesterday. In an Aug. 19 letter to D'Agostino, the comptroller's office said D'Agostino had been ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 27, 2008
BRIEF: High court candidate argues why her 'incumbent' rival has an edge
Aug. 26--State Supreme Court candidate Jill Clark argued in before a panel of former justices today that her opponent, Justice Lori Gildae, was illegally appointed and has an unfair advantage in the upcoming primary. By appointing justices to fill vacancies, then labeling those justices as incumbents on ballots when they run for election, the state has "basically eliminated elections," Clark ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 26, 2008
Court ruling favors employers in lawsuit over meal breaks
California employers are breathing a little easier at lunch time after a California Court of Appeals recently ruled in their favor over employee meal breaks. The state's rules over meal and rest breaks had become one of the most contested and costly issues in the workplace. Numerous lawsuits were filed by employees alleging that their bosses broke the law by not giving them a meal break for ...
Fresno Bee - Aug 27, 2008
Godhra case: Probe team gets extension
Aug. 27--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday gave the five-member special investigation team (SIT) tasked with going into the post-Godhra riots till December 31 to complete its probe. A bench headed by Justice Arijit Pasayat extended the time given to the team headed by former CBI director R.K. Raghavan after it submitted its preliminary report to the court.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 27, 2008
EDITORIAL: Gaming the system: Rein in the lawyers
Aug. 27--"Lawyers Gone Wild" might be a good title for a movie about the machinations employed by former Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board lawyers to place nose to thumb and waggle their fingers furiously at state law. A least four former gaming board lawyers -- including former board Chairman Tad Decker -- have gone to work for casinos in the commonwealth.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 27, 2008
A Sports Hero vs. a Government Villain
This is a true story about two men named Mike, both of whom lived in Durham, North Carolina, two years ago. Both had ambitions and dreams, but that is where the similarities end. One Mike sought to build lives, and the other sought to tear them down. One Mike nearly destroyed the life of the other, and for no good reason except that the destruction of the first Mike and his family would help him ...
LewRockwell.com - Aug 26, 2008
ADCB urges others to join lawsuit
Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank (ADCB) which is leading a class action in a New York court against four US financial institutions alleging fraud, yesterday said it is talking to other Gulf banks and investors to join the lawsuit.ADCB said in a statement that it expects additional investors to 'join or support' the legal action against against Morgan Stanley, the Bank of New York Mellon and ratings ...
Zawya.com - Aug 27, 2008
Gov to conduct removal hearing
DETROIT -- Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's tenuous grip on his fate slipped even further Tuesday when Gov. Jennifer Granholm authorized a historic Sept. 3 hearing on whether to bounce him from office. Putting even more pressure on the mayor to cut a deal in his dual felony cases, Granholm rejected every argument from Kilpatrick attorneys to cancel the hearings. Instead, the mayor's tenure will rest on ...
Detroit News - Aug 27, 2008
Tel-Aviv Court Rules in Favor of Sun Pharmaceutical; No Special Tender Offer Necessary in Taro Offer
Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Reuters: SUN.BO, Bloomberg: SUNP IN, NSE: SUN PHARMA, BSE: 524715) today announced it was victorious in all elements of its defense of the litigation brought against it in the Tel-Aviv District Court by Taro Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (Taro) and certain of its directors. The Tel-Aviv Court yesterday rejected Taro's contention that Sun Pharma should have ...
PR Newswire - Aug 26, 2008
Centerra Gold Comments on Kyrgyz Republic Court Decision
Centerra Gold Inc. (TSX: CG) stated that according to available information the Bishkek Inter District Court of the Kyrgyz Republic today dismissed a lawsuit filed by a Vice-Speaker of the Parliament, K.S. Isabekov, against the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic relating to the Company's Kumtor project. The lawsuit sought to annul the Government's decree approving the December 31, 2003 agreements ...
MarketWire - Aug 26, 2008
Milberg LLP Announces Its Investigation on Behalf of Certain Investors of CIT Group, Inc. -- CIT
Attorney Advertising. The law firm of Milberg Attorney Advertising. The law firm of Milberg LLP is investigating possible illegal conduct as alleged in proposed class action lawsuits filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against CIT Group, Inc. ("CIT" or the "Company") (NYSE: CIT) and certain of CIT's officers and directors for violations of the ...
MarketWire - Aug 26, 2008
Milberg LLP Announces Its Investigation on Behalf of Certain Investors of GT Solar International, Inc. -- SOLR
Attorney Advertising. The law firm of Milberg Attorney Advertising. The law firm of Milberg LLP is investigating possible illegal conduct as alleged in proposed class action lawsuits filed in the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire against GT Solar International, Inc. ("GT Solar" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: SOLR) and certain of GT Solar's officers and directors for ...
MarketWire - Aug 26, 2008
Court rejects challenge to constitutionality of PCAOB
U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit in a vote of 2-1 upheld the constitutionality of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB). The Board was created five years ago by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), responding to a mandate in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The Court rejected the claim by Beckstead & Watts LLP, a Nevada accounting firm, and the ...
AccountingWEB - Aug 27, 2008
Stull, Stull & Brody Announces Class Action Lawsuit on Behalf of Shareholders of MF Global, Ltd.
Attorney Advertising. Notice is hereby given Attorney Advertising. Notice is hereby given that Stull, Stull & Brody filed a lawsuit seeking class action status on August 25, 2008 in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of purchasers of MF Global, Ltd. ("MF Global" or the "Company") (NYSE: MF) common stock between March 17, 2008 and June 20, 2008, ...
MarketWire - Aug 26, 2008
Young killer to get new sentencing
Aug. 27--Michael D. Taylor was too young for a death sentence when he raped and murdered a classmate at McCluer North High School in 1995, but later went to death row for a prison killing. On Tuesday, a divided Missouri Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing hearing in the capital case, with a new set of jurors. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Laura Denvir Stith said that prosecutors ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 27, 2008
South Carolina high court rebukes Transportation Department
Aug. 26--LADSON -- The state Transportation Department broke the law four years ago when it used an emergency provision to hire a contractor on the long-delayed Ladson Road project without soliciting bids, the S.C. Supreme Court ruled Monday. The five-mile stretch of the Ladson Road project was a headache for residents from 2000 to 2004 because the first contractor, Eagle Construction of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 26, 2008
Werther's Law: Werther
Why do politicians make disastrous decisions with the consistency of iron filings obeying a magnet? Decisions that in retrospect (and frequently in prospect) seem doomed to failure? After 9/11, did it make any sense when, after coming close to the point of capturing Osama bin Laden, the U.S. government began pulling troops, materiel, and intelligence assets away from the hunt in order to invade ...
Antiwar.com - Aug 27, 2008
AT&T Thanks Democrats For Telecom Immunity
In private party in Denver crashed by Salon.com... tags: legal business telco privacy Politics There's a slew of private corporate-sponsored parties occurring at this week's Democratic National Convention in Denver, one of which was hosted by AT&T. AT&T is surely eager to thank Democrats for recently getting them off the hook for handing over American phone and data records to ...
Broadband Reports - Aug 27, 2008
Women hail Clinton legacy
Aug. 28--DENVER -- As the political pundits debate the possibly fractious relationship between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, for the women of the Democratic convention her legacy is clear. At the "Unconventional Women" gathering for the convention this week, women from the Democratic party celebrated the 88th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment to the US constitution, which ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 28, 2008
EDITORIAL: Shut loophole on inequality: Wage case shows dilemma
Aug. 27--Lilly Ledbetter's pay-discrimination case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court last year and the Alabama Goodyear plant supervisor lost in a 5-4 decision. When Ms. Ledbetter retired from her job of 19 years, she got an anonymous note that her salary of $45,000 a year was $6,600 less than the lowest-paid male supervisor. She sued for sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 27, 2008
Text of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's remarks to the Democratic National Convention
DENVER, CO - I am honored to be here tonight. A proud mother. A proud Democrat. A proud American. And a proud supporter of Barack Obama. My friends, it is time to take back the country we love. Whether you voted for me, or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. We are on the same team, and none of us can sit on the sidelines.
Wave 3 - Aug 27, 2008
High court shields lawyer in case of missing boy
Aug. 27--CLAYTON -- Defense attorney John Rogers does not have to give a grand jury information he gathered about the disappearance five years ago of Christian Ferguson, a disabled 9-year-old boy, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. Rogers represented the boy's father, Dawan Ferguson, a bounty hunter from Pine Lawn whose story that Christian was taken in a carjacking was met with open ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 27, 2008
Bolting of a Trojan horse
This is a sheer bolting of a Trojan horse. And the PPP will now realise ruefully after inflicting what devastating cuts to it internally and nationally has Nawaz Sharif left the coalition headed by it at the centre. Asif Zardari may have been driven by the compelling political reality that the two main poll winners coalescing together could be a potent force to face up to the formidable ...
Frontier Post - Aug 27, 2008
'Idol' to gain more girl power
Let's see -- there are nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court and now 'American Idol' is adding a fourth to its panel of judges. Grammy-nominated songwriter Kara DioGuardi will sit alongside churlish Simon Cowell, vapid Paula Abdul and pitch-conscious dawg-ster Randy Jackson when the eighth season of 'American Idol' premieres in January, the Fox network said Monday.
The Detroit Free Press - Aug 27, 2008
Serial killer's penalty phase likely to carry emotional toll
Aug. 25--STOCKTON -- Having already found him guilty of serial murders, a jury deciding the fate of William Jennings Choyce now may get a glimpse into the defendant's childhood and psychological makeup in the second part of his trial. Choyce, 54, is expected to return to San Joaquin County Superior Court next week when jurors likely will hear emotional testimony from Choyce's relatives and those ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 25, 2008
Lottery quick to pull games
Aug. 25--Fortune seekers should look elsewhere before spending $5 on an instant-win "The Price Is Right" ticket from the Pennsylvania Lottery. The $100,000 and $50,000 top prizes have been claimed, but game tickets are still being sold because two trips to Hollywood remain. The last $50,000 prize was claimed in April, and the final $100,000 prize in May. The state Lottery Commission yanks most ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 25, 2008
Seattle holds off on gun restrictions
Aug. 25--As summer began, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels said he was taking steps to prohibit guns on all city-owned property after three people were injured in a shooting at Seattle Center's Northwest Folklife festival. But as the Center's summer festival season concludes with Bumbershoot this weekend, no prohibition has taken effect. "It's very complex. The city owns numerous properties citywide ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 25, 2008
State has yet to start mental illness registry: Database would bar them from purchasing guns in wake of Virginia Tech massacre
Aug. 25--CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- More than two months after the law took effect, the state hasn't started compiling a mental health registry meant to prevent potentially dangerous individuals from buying a gun. The names of at least 708 West Virginians housed in mental facilities could be placed on the registry right now. The registry will include basic information about people who have been ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 25, 2008
Pakistan's governing coalition splits, promising more convulsions
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan _ Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif pulled his party out of Pakistan's coalition government and joined the opposition Monday, a blow to chances for political stability in the nuclear-armed country. The dramatic break came one week after Pervez Musharraf resigned the presidency under pressure and amid a growing Islamist insurgency, which threatens Pakistan's stability and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 25, 2008
Judge won't delay OJ Simpson trial in Las Vegas
Judge refuses to delay OJ Simpson Las Vegas trial 5 days ago: Co-defendant seeks delay of OJ Simpson trial 5 days ago: OJ Simpson co-defendant seeks trial delay 20 days ago: OJ co-defendant appeals for separate trial 21 days ago: Co-defendant in OJ Simpson case pleads guilty 21 days ago: OJ Simpson co-defendant enters plea in Las Vegas 21 days ago: Co-defendant in O.J.
Examiner.com - Aug 25, 2008
Guardian watches over every foster child in state
Aug. 26--The state's 16,000 foster children, she likes to say, are hers. And, by law, they are. For 12 years, D. Jean Ortega-Piron's name has appeared on every Juvenile Court order as the legal guardian of all minors in the custody of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. She handles the most vital decisions in their lives like whether they should be prescribed ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 26, 2008
Court denies bid to restore bail license: The state had suspended the Tul-san's license for not producing records.
Aug. 26--OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Monday denied immediate relief for a Tulsa bail bond agent whose license was suspended by the Oklahoma Insurance Department. The license of Quan Minh Hoang, vice president of Affordable Bail Bonds in Tulsa, was suspended after Hoang failed to keep required records at his place of business and make them available for inspection, according to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 26, 2008
Employers should heed worker complaints about retaliation
Virtually all of the laws that regulate employers prohibit retaliation, which means companies can't take action against an employee who exercises certain rights, opposes unlawful activity or participates as a witness in another employee's claim. Employees who report illegal activities (the so-called whistle-blowers) and those who file for workers' compensation, serve on juries, complain of ...
Tennessean - Aug 26, 2008
Uncertain times for Pakistan: Demise of ruling coalition leaves weaker government to fight Taliban
Aug. 26--ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The breakup of Pakistan's ruling coalition Monday likely paves the way for the widower of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali Zardari, to win the Sept. 6 presidential election while potentially ending most of the political squabbling that has paralleled a surge in strength by militants in recent months. But while Zardari's party is expected to patch ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 26, 2008
Fired ticket manager sues Hempfield Area
Aug. 26--Hempfield Area's former ticket manager filed a whistleblower's lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh against school directors, Superintendent Terry Foriska and Athletic Director Greg Meisner alleging he was unfairly blamed and then fired when $2,400 in ticket money disappeared and mysteriously reappeared. Mike Burrell Jr. claims in the lawsuit that he discovered the theft ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 26, 2008
Listeriosis linked to 12 deaths: health officials
Canadian health officials now say 12 deaths have been linked to listeriosis. Six of those deaths have been linked to an outbreak of tainted meat at Maple Leaf Foods in North York, Ont. The spike in deaths is because they have reworked the definition to include any cases where Listeria is an underlying or contributing factor to a person's illness, said Agricultural Minister Gerry Ritz at a news ...
CTV.ca - Aug 25, 2008
How unscrupulous campaign strategists are taking advantage of a quirk in our brains " and what reporters can do to stop helping them
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama at church (not a mosque). (AP photo) Because of the way humans process information, political journalists who think they are dispelling false beliefs may actually be spreading them. Two brain experts offer ground rules for reporters who want to avoid becoming accessories to disinformation campaigns. Rule one: Stop repeating things that aren't true. ...
Nieman Watchdog - Aug 25, 2008
Attorney can get texts in Greene case
DETROIT -- In a victory for the attorney representing the family of slain exotic dancer Tamara Greene and a blow to Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a federal judge has ruled that text messages exchanged by Kilpatrick and other city officials must be released as part of a lawsuit against the city involving the dancer's death. U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen held that Norman Yatooma, the attorney ...
Detroit News - Aug 25, 2008
Patients And Physicians Alliance Asks DNC to Remove Governor Ed Rendell as Democratic National Convention Speaker
The Patients And Physicians Alliance The Patients And Physicians Alliance (P.A.P.A.) (www.fightingdocs.com), an organization of physicians and patients formed to stop Pennsylvania's erosion of health care services, blames Pennsylvania's Governor Ed Rendell for the commonwealth's continued closure of hospital maternity care services, trauma centers, and medical practices, and is asking the ...
MarketWire - Aug 25, 2008
Wind farm opponents plan appeal
A group of rural Taylor County landowners plan to appeal to the Texas Supreme Court a recent ruling that people cannot sue solely because they dislike how wind turbines sound or look. The 11th Court of Appeals, which serves 28 counties in West Central Texas, ruled Thursday that a lower court was correct in deciding that state law 'does not provide a nuisance action for aesthetic impact.' Dale ...
Abilene Reporter - Aug 26, 2008
Physicians in Training: When doctoring is not about dollars
Christopher Dodd tends to a typical patient, Luis Orozco, 52, who had half of his left leg amputated after a cut toe turned into a gangrene infection. Orozco, a welder, doesn't have health insurance and didn't monitor his diabetes, which, left unchecked, can lead to serious foot problems. ''This was something we could have taken care of,'' Dodd said. ''Maybe then this wouldn't have happened.'' ...
Miami Herald - Aug 26, 2008
Apex court questions new changes in Master Plan
Aug. 26--NEW DELHI -- Taking exception to the latest amendments to the Master Plan for Delhi-2021, allowing commercialisation of the entire ground floor in the city, the Supreme Court on Monday wondered if the government did not know about the need for these changes at the time of notifying the MPD-2021. "There must be some fresh material which the government did not know at the time of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 26, 2008
Quest for statewide smoking ban continues
Scientific Evidence Shows Secondhand Smoke Is No Danger Written By: Jerome Arnett, Jr., M.D. Published In: Environment & Climate News Publisher: The Heartland Institute Exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) is an unpleasant experience for many nonsmokers, and for decades was considered a nuisance. But the idea that it might actually cause disease in nonsmokers has been around only since the ...
Casper Star Tribune - Aug 26, 2008
Cascal N.V. Provides Update on Operations in Panama
LONDON, Aug. 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cascal N.V. (NYSE: HOO), a leading provider of water and wastewater services in seven countries, today announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Aquas de Panama, SA, ('APSA') has filed for an 'amparo' with the Supreme Court in Panama. An 'amparo' is a constitutional action that seeks to protect the right to private property and due process.
PR Newswire - Aug 25, 2008
Ticker: Bill Clinton not happy with convention role
DENVER, Colorado (CNN) " Bill Clinton is perplexed and, frankly, not happy that he was asked to speak about national security Wednesday night at the and not about the economy, the issue that he rode to the White House at another time of economic peril, a source close to the former president said Monday. Some close to Clinton are encouraging him not to stick with the nights theme of national ...
CNN - Aug 25, 2008
Women are crucial for the Democratic ticket's chances in November
Aug. 26--DENVER -- Without women, Democrats can't win. Missouri Democratic delegate Kristy Manning of St. Peters knows it, and so does her party's presumptive presidential nominee, Barack Obama. The importance of female voters to Democrats has been a given since 1980, when experts began realizing that women as a bloc tend to lean Democratic, in some cases by double digits.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 26, 2008
Gov. may decide on ouster hearing today
DETROIT -- Gov. Jennifer Granholm is expected to announce today whether she'll proceed with hearings next week that could remove Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick from office, amid continued speculation that a plea deal could still be in the works for the embattled mayor. Granholm is expected to announce her intentions after reading final legal arguments submitted Monday by attorneys for Kilpatrick and the ...
Detroit News - Aug 26, 2008
Boise law school proposals hit snags: Concordia needs more money. U of I is trying to work with the Ed Board's third-year school plan.
Aug. 25--A pair of law schools once racing to open in Boise next fall now face delays that could keep either school from opening until at least 2010. University of Idaho's dream of growing a full-fledged, three-year law school in Boise was dismantled by the State Board of Education last week. State education leaders have permitted U of I to start only a third year of law school in Boise by 2010 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 25, 2008
Gun 'Rights' Vs. Freedom
Supporters of the right to keep and bear arms have long recognized the value of firearms for the defense of life, liberty and property. But in Florida, a perverse conception of the 2nd Amendment has produced the opposite effect: The cause of gun rights is being used to attack property rights. In 1987, Florida wisely affirmed personal freedom by letting law-abiding citizens get permits to carry ...
Post Chronicle - Aug 25, 2008
State having trouble finding work for prison labor crews
Aug. 25--OLYMPIA -- In this realm, the Department of Corrections has more than enough employees. What it wants are qualified employers. For the first time since a 2004 state Supreme Court ruling, the agency has the ability to contract with private businesses to run operations inside prisons, using inmates for a work force. "The offenders that work for Class I industries are paid a prevailing ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 25, 2008
Adding color to the courthouse: With the help of a Houston artist, U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison uses his artistic judgment to create a work environment seldom seen in courtrooms
Aug. 25--Jurors seeking a place to rest their eyes in court usually can choose from serious lawyer faces, dark paneling and portraits of retired judges in robes. But in U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison's court, a panelist's gaze can stop on the bright blues of a modern canvas reminiscent of an underwater scene, the bold reds of a painting named Allred Dawn or four other engaging modern pieces ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 25, 2008
A pay discrimination fix
Abill to restore to women (and men) the right to fully recover damages for gender-based pay discrimination got stuck in the U.S. Senate earlier this year, but California has an opportunity to move forward with a corrective measure of its own. Unfortunately, that bill too -- AB 437 by Assemblyman Dave Jones (D-Sacramento) -- is in danger of being blocked by critics who brand it a job ...
Los Angeles Times - Aug 26, 2008
States sue EPA over refinery emissions
NEW YORK - Twelve states, including all six in New England, are suing federal environmental regulators over greenhouse gas emissions from oil refineries, the New York attorney general's office said yesterday. The suit, led by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, charges that the Environmental Protection Agency violated the federal Clean Air Act by refusing to issue standards, known as new ...
Boston Globe - Aug 26, 2008
Job bias lawsuits on the increase: Rise may be due to economy and easier online access to EEOC
Aug. 24--The worsening economy seems to be good for something -- the job-discrimination lawsuit business. In Houston and nationwide, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is getting increasing numbers of inquiries about workplace law. Full-fledged complaints about mistreatment in the workplace are up nationwide. And the number of discrimination-based workplace lawsuits has jumped in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 24, 2008
Hazing case due in court
Aug. 24--A defense attorney for one of the teenagers accused in the Wilson baseball team sexual abuse case said he has had "positive" and "very productive" discussions with the Niagara County district attorney's office since it made a plea offer to the three defendants last month. As the three players' attorneys prepare for an appearance Thursday in Town Court, the school superintendent said the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 24, 2008
Not feeling well? You may be allergic to your workplace
NEW YORKFor Patty Mulcahy, it began with itchy eyes. They started to water two years ago when renovation began on the Midtown office building where she was working as an assistant at a television network. By the fifth day, after 30,000 square feet of new carpeting had been glued in place, the redness and swelling became unbearable. She ended up in the emergency room.During the next three months, ...
Chicago Tribune - Aug 24, 2008
Calif. won't probe NY Sen. Schumer over IndyMac
Moving on general news and financial services. NEW YORK (AP) _ California authorities have rebuffed a request to investigate whether Sen. Charles Schumer helped fuel IndyMac Bancorp Inc.'s collapse by expressing concerns about the major mortgage lender's soundness. The California Attorney General's office said in a letter Thursday that there was 'insufficient evidence' to investigate the New ...
Newsday - Aug 24, 2008
OPINION: Biden brings engaging personality to Obama's ticket
Aug. 24--As Joe Biden's airplane landed on a barely visible grass strip in a small Iowa town one summer night in 1987, members of his entourage breathed a sigh of relief. But the Delaware senator was looking ahead. "Pizza," he announced. "Let's order pizza." When it arrived, he made one of the more unusual campaign promises I've ever heard, pledging that, if elected president, he'd name an ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 24, 2008
Pakistan's ruling coalition on verge of collapse
Bhutto widower to run for Pakistan president 1 day ago: Pakistan army says 37 militants killed in Swat 1 day ago: Bhutto widower proposed for Pakistan president 2 days ago: Pakistan coalition averts crisis after blasts 2 days ago: Pakistan army kills 16 militants in northwest 2 days ago: Shaky ruling coalition meets after Pakistan blasts 2 days ago: Suicide bombers kill 67 at Pakistani arms ...
Examiner-Burlington - Aug 24, 2008
Seeking a fair tax equation
Aug. 24--HARRIETSTOWN -- If a single, clear move toward property tax equity rose from a hundred ideas Friday it was: one market, one park. Adirondack Action, a citizen political action group, called a property valuation conference drawing input from 130 Adirondack taxpayers counting 30 town supervisors and two-dozen Adirondack assessors. En masse, the room scrutinized Adirondack state land ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 24, 2008
A county exploits a crippled Clean Water Act (10)
The federal Water Pollution Control Amendments of 1972 have gone from being a powerful tool created by the Nixon administration to prevent and enforce anti-pollution laws at the state and federal level to an excuse to avoid enforcement by cities and counties across the West-including Pima County. Better known as the Clean Water Act, it boasts statutory authority to control pollution discharges ...
Nogales International - Aug 24, 2008
Fight or Flight: Taken from family and threatened with deportation, a legal resident battles his detention in South Texas
Aug. 24--Juan Larin-Ulloa has been fighting his entire life. As a government soldier in his native El Salvador, he fought against the advance of the Communist Farabundo Marti National Liberation front. As a refugee of the same bloody war that ravaged his country and uprooted his family, he fought for asylum in the United States. And when the fight landed on the doorstep of his Wichita, Kansas ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 24, 2008
EDITORIAL: Wildlife act is at risk: Industry-friendly policy shift guts the Endangered Species Act
Aug. 24--The Bush administration's latest assault on science, good government and common sense, not to mention the public lands all Americans own in common, would effectively short-circuit the valuable Endangered Species Act. The proposed change in administrative rules would allow government agencies with no particular expertise in wildlife to decide on their own if the projects they want to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 24, 2008
Brown challenges 'supermajority' rule for taxes: State Supreme Court will hear lawsuit Sept. 9
Aug. 24--OLYMPIA -- Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown is doing something that would make many a politician squirm: going to court to make it easier to raise taxes. A 15-year-old law declaring that a tax increase requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature is unconstitutional, she argues. Her fast-track lawsuit will be heard by the state Supreme Court on Sept. 9.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 24, 2008
Content Code: the ball in many courts
With the Supreme Court stepping in to lay down coverage norms in media, the information and broadcasting ministry deciding to accord high priority to content code and News Broadcasters Association (NBA) setting up a high powered team to facilitate self regulation, the ball of content code is now in three courts. More than any media market in the world, what should flow into the drawing rooms is a ...
Yahoo! India - Aug 24, 2008
Epic Systems' $300 million expansion tangible sign of success: Madison firm helps in shift from paper to electronic health records
Aug. 24--VERONA -- The complex of buildings, set on the crest of a small hill against a backdrop of slightly rolling farmland, is a startling sight. Epic Systems Corp. will have spent more than $300 million on the complex southwest of Madison when work on the most recent expansion ends late next year. It may be the most tangible sign of the company's success.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 24, 2008
OPINION: Getting the picture on 'illegal'
Aug. 24--There's a familiar retort intended to derail suggestions that untangling the problem of illegal immigration might involve something beyond just shipping immigration violators back where they came from: "What is it about 'illegal' that you don't understand?" Having fielded this retort more than a few times, I have to say that it's popular among those who seem inordinately proud to have ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 24, 2008
Obama-Biden team previews their campaign strategy: Experience. Foreign policy chops. Fists for a political fight. And, if Obama's lucky, an appeal to white working-class voters.
Aug. 24--SPRINGFIELD -- Barack Obama returned Saturday to the place he launched his improbable campaign for the presidency 18 months earlier to introduce running mate Joe Biden as a tough-spirited champion of the American worker tested by personal tragedy. Though Biden is seen to provide an important advantage by adding foreign policy heft to a candidate criticized for inexperience, Obama and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 24, 2008
Florida 'cowboy' gallops into Alaska politics: 'STOP THE CORRUPTION': With fistful of money, Vic Vickers grabs the spotlight.
Aug. 24--Raymond "Vic" Vickers, the Florida transplant dishing out $1 million in a quixotic bid for the U.S. Senate, is running on a "stop the corruption" platform. But as recently as 2005, Vickers himself was touched by scandal down in Florida. There were lawsuits, countersuits and allegations that Vickers had urged an associate to romance an elderly widow to secure control of a shipping ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 24, 2008
Meetings set for potential court advocates
CASA Kane County will be holding informational meetings for anyone interested in becoming a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) volunteer for abused and neglected children on these dates: 10 to 11 a.m. Monday, Aug. 25; 4 to 5 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 27; 10 to 11 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 28: 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 28 at the Messenger Public Library in North Aurora; 10 to 11 a.m.
Chicago Daily Herald - Aug 24, 2008
EDITORIAL: The fiscal challenge for the executive
Aug. 25--LAST week, a team from the Japan Credit Rating Agency (JCRA) visited the Philippines to undertake a review of the country's economic performance and fiscal position. The review forms part of the rating company's process of revisiting its credit rating on the Philippines and determining whether we would merit an upgrade. An upgrade would improve our chances of attracting more foreign ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 25, 2008
Blumenthal Asks Regulators To Reopen Electric-Meter Probe
Consumer Watchdog: George Gombossy Based on customer complaints his office has received, as well as those sent to me, state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is asking state public utility regulators to reopen their investigation into meter accuracy issues at Connecticut Light & Power Co., the state's largest utility. Blumenthal said in an interview last week that he is concerned with both ...
Hartford Courant - Aug 24, 2008
A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash
Orange Park, Fla. - David Campbell switched on the overhead projector and wrote 'Evolution' in the rectangle of light on the screen. He scanned the faces of the sophomores in his Biology I class. Many of them, he knew from years of teaching high school in this Jacksonville suburb, had been raised to take the biblical creation story as fact. His gaze rested for a moment on Bryce Haas, a football ...
Truth Out - Aug 24, 2008
AG files suit against mortgage companies - Central Penn Business Journal
State Attorney General Tom Corbettyesterday announced that consumer protection lawsuits have been filed against two mortgage company owners that illegally solicited consumers throughout Central Pennsylvania and other parts of the state over the past year and a half. Lawsuits were filed against Baltimore-based Direct Leadsource owner Charles A. Ruppersberger IV and State College, Centre ...
Central Penn Business Journal - Aug 24, 2008
Exclusive: Obama's Lost Law Review Article
More from Politico.com Provided by As president of the Harvard Law Review and a law professor in Chicago, Barack Obama refined his legal thinking, but left a scant paper trail. His name doesn't appear on any legal scholarship. But an unsigned - and previously unattributed - 1990 article unearthed by Politico offers a glimpse at Obama's views on abortion policy and the law during his student ...
KPVI - Aug 24, 2008
Decades-old riverfront suit settled
Henderson Circuit Court's oldest active lawsuit was recently settled when the city of Henderson paid $58,400 to get clear title to riverfront property formerly claimed by Dennis Francis Sr. The lawsuit dates back three decades, although the land dispute is nearly a decade older. It was filed June 2, 1978, by Thorp Credit Inc. of Indiana, which held two second mortgages, against Dennis J.
Evansville Courier - Aug 24, 2008
"ILLEGAL INVASION NEWS": 80+ illegal have been arrested in the past month in Hawaii
'IT'S NOT 'IMMIGRATION' AND THEY'RE NOT 'IMMIGRANTS'': 1. http://www.whas11.com/video/index.html?nvid=265420 WRIT OF MANDATE (FIRST OF ITS' KIND IN THE COUNTRY, LEXINGTON, KY.) 2. MUST SEE VIDEO & READ ARTICLE: THIS IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE: http://www.buffalonews.com/nationalworld/international/story/421229.html Davis warns of a new civil war with Southern states Sees possibility of secession due ...
PHX News - Aug 24, 2008
Methane Hydrate -- the Next Big Fuel Source? Ebiz news from Japan
Japanese business and government agencies are not sitting on their collective hands, but instead are deeply involved in futuristic projects that border on science fiction. Japanese trading houses have already cornered the world's LPG and LNG transport and brokerage, Sanyo and others are leaders in solar electricity, and Toto and others are developing the world's most cost-efficient fuel cells.
Japan Inc - Aug 24, 2008
Can you really 'navigate' the Santa Cruz River?: Boating in 18 inches of water takes grit, humor and muscle
Aug. 24--ON THE SANTA CRUZ -- The afternoon sun was searing. The canoe was stuck amid rocks and filled with gray sewer water. The waterlogged boat was too heavy to turn over and dump out the muck. I was soaking wet well above the knees, sunburnt, dehydrated in the 95-degree heat and high humidity, and growing more exhausted by the second. In short, I was trapped, wondering what in the hell to do ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 24, 2008
A former believer takes on the leader: Critics call the Fellowship of Friends a cult; members say it's a school of spiritual development
Aug. 24--It's not that the emperor wears no clothes at the 1,171-acre property in the Sierra foothills with a winery, cemetery and main building meant to resemble a French castle, says Elena Haven. The old folk tale speaks of adults afraid to say their ruler is naked. But Haven, a former member of the Yuba County-based Fellowship of Friends, said silence surrounded the colorful clothes -- the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 24, 2008
Environmentalists warn of a future where laws no longer apply
Aug. 24--MISSION -- National representatives of the Sierra Club warned on Friday that the Bush administration's proposed relaxation of the Endangered Species Act could lead to an ongoing disregard of environmental laws, with results echoing construction of the U.S.-Mexico border fence. Under the new provisions, federal agencies would have the authority to independently determine whether ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 24, 2008
A Senate stalwart who bounced back
September 1987 was a month of ruin and renewal for Joe Biden. Then a three-term senator from Delaware, Biden saw his bid for the Democratic nomination for president in tatters after he had been caught cribbing from other politicians' speeches. He exited the race amid a chorus of Washington chatter that the presidency would never be his. Yet just as his candidacy was ending, Biden, as chairman of ...
International Herald Tribune - Aug 24, 2008
Feds seek county court records
Aug. 21--WILKES-BARRE -- The FBI has subpoenaed the Luzerne County's Treasurer's Office, seeking documents related to spending by the Luzerne County courts. Federal agents, who seized court-related records from the county Juvenile Probation Office in June, are investigating the financial ties of county President Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Senior Judge Michael T.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 21, 2008
Mexico City's abortion-rights law faces constitutional test
MEXICO CITY _ More than a year after abortion was decriminalized in this capital city, abortion opponents hope the Mexican Supreme Court will reverse the legislation in a decision that could reverberate across Mexico and Latin America. Mexico's highest court heard public testimony in the spring, and is expected to rule as early as this month on the constitutionality of the local abortion ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 21, 2008
Accomplice in 1996 slaying gets execution delay: Opponents say 'law of parties' is archaic and unjust
Aug. 21--In a blistering opinion that labeled state court proceedings "an insane system," a federal judge Thursday halted the execution of Jeffery Wood to allow mental health experts to determine whether the killer is sane enough to be put to death. U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia's ruling came less than six hours before Wood, 35, was to be executed for his role as getaway driver in the 1996 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 21, 2008
Attempt to change much of constitution fails court test: Changes to constitution go too far, appeals judges say
Aug. 21--LANSING -- A sweeping proposal led by Michigan Democrats and labor unions to rewrite much of the Michigan Constitution appears dead after a court ruling Wednesday. A unanimous three-judge panel of the Michigan Court of Appeals said the proposal for the November ballot was an illegal attempt to enact a general revision of the state constitution. The number and scope of the proposed ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 21, 2008
Granholm gets fighting words on Kilpatrick: Plea to scrap hearing bucks council argument for ouster
Aug. 21--Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's attorney tried again Wednesday to dissuade Gov. Jennifer Granholm from judging whether to remove the mayor from office, while the City Council's lawyer argued that the unprecedented show must go on. In sharply worded legal motions to Granholm before she decides whether to proceed with a Sept. 3 hearing, both sides took shots at each other -- and, in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 21, 2008
No right to know your judges: Govt
Aug. 22--NEW DELHI -- The Government does not want people to know their judges. The Ministry of Law and Justice has said the Right To Information Act does not cover Supreme Court and High Court judges. "Constitutional authorities like the President, Chief Justice of India, Supreme Court judges, Chief Justices of High Courts and other judges of the High Courts are outside the purview of the Right ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 22, 2008
Barack Obama says John McCain would deliver a third Bush term; McCain camp wonders Bush who?
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama likes to say, 'We can't afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out George Bush's third term.' Bush's 'third term' has become a favorite attack line for Democrats, repeated almost daily by the candidate and his surrogates. They argue that McCain favors failed Bush administration economic policies and would keep U.S. troops in Iraq for the forseeable future.
Minneapolis Star Tribune - Aug 22, 2008
Manila asks Malaysia to mediate talks
Aug. 21--The government seems to be sending mixed signals to Muslim rebels in southern Philippines. While President Gloria Arroyo on Tuesday was ordering the military to crush the insurgents from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) for their deadly attacks in two provinces in Mindanao on Monday, her chief adviser on the peace process-- Hermogenes "Jun" Esperon Jr.--was convincing Kuala ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 21, 2008
Philippines drops Muslim peace deal after dithering
The comments from Jesus Dureza signal the end of a territorial agreement reached last month between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which is fighting for some amount of self-rule in the mineral-rich Mindanao region. Analysts said while deal was hastily drawn-up, its scrapping would delay resolving by months, and possibly years, the decades-long conflict in the south ...
International Herald Tribune - Aug 22, 2008
Should a security professional have a...
Posted by (ISC)2 My own experience and talking to colleagues has prompted me to wonder whether the day has arrived that security professionals will need a legal background. The information security management professional is under increasing pressure to cope with the demands of the organization for access to information, to manage the expectations of the data owner on how and where the ...
ZDNet UK - Aug 21, 2008
Manjhi not abandoned, says SC
Aug. 21--NEW DELHI -- Manjhi, who was born to a surrogate mother in Jaipur, is not an abandoned baby, the Supreme Court said on Wednesday. The proceedings on Manjhi's petition requesting the court to permit her to leave India alongwith her grandmother for Japan witnessed heated arguments between the judges and NGO, Satya. Snubbing the NGO, which moved the Rajasthan High Court to restrain Manjhi ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 21, 2008
Lawsuit Takes a Swing at Wii Motion Controller
A handheld device manufacturer claims it is the rightful owner of the technology that powers Nintendo's wildly popular, motion-sensitive Wii game controller. Hillcrest Labs is suing the video game giant for infringing four of its patents. Nintendo has so far not commented on the matter, saying it hasn't received any legal notifications on the matter. Ready to take your business to the next ...
E-Commerce Times - Aug 21, 2008
The Freedom to Worship and the Courts
By Andrew C. Spiropoulos 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof....' When citizens believe that a law violates that principle of the U.S. Constitution, they turn to the courts, constitutionally appointed as the guardians of these principles. Citizens will challenge a law for impermissibly establishing a faith, or for ...
Calibre Macro World - Aug 21, 2008
Mich. voters to decide on medical marijuana, lifting stem cell research ban
Aug. 21--LANSING -- The field of statewide ballot proposals for 2008 appears to be set at two -- medical marijuana and embryonic stem cell research -- following approval of ballot wording by a state elections panel today. The proposal to permit the cultivation, possession and use of marijuana by patients with certain debilitating illness, like muscular dystrophy and HIV-AIDS, was designated as ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 21, 2008
Execution of mentally ill man put on hold in Texas
WASHINGTON A view of the "death chamber" at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Huntsville Unit. A US court on Thursday granted a stay of execution to a mentally ill Texas man who was set to die for his role in a murder-robbery, even though he did not pull the trigger. (/File) A US court on Thursday granted a stay of execution to a mentally ill Texas man who was set to die for his role in a ...
Turkish Press - Aug 21, 2008
EDITORIAL: Listen to the candidates and not the special-interest groups
Aug. 21--It's not too early to worry about next spring's election for Wisconsin Supreme Court. Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson will be up for re-election and, if the past two years are any indication, she likely will face opposition from big-money groups running so-called "issue ads" that actually are de-facto campaign ads. And, again based on past history, the ads will likely play on negative, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 21, 2008
Clemency petition postpones Skillicorn execution
Aug. 21--JEFFERSON CITY -- The Missouri Supreme Court on Wednesday postponed the scheduled execution of Dennis Skillicorn to give his lawyers more time to gather information for a clemency petition. Skillicorn, 49, of Kansas City, is on death row for the murder of an Excelsior Springs man in 1994. He was scheduled to be executed next Wednesday. The court denied a petition by Skillicorn's lawyers ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 21, 2008
Terrorists could gain from fighting--Australia
Aug. 22--The Australian envoy to Manila on Thursday warned that renewed fighting in southern Philippines could derail talks for lasting peace there, negate the country's efforts to stamp out terrorism and possibly open the gates to international terrorists. "We are concerned about recent developments in Mindanao, with the civilians being affected and their houses being burned," Ambassador Rod ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 22, 2008
Panel set to name Missouri high court nominees
Aug. 21--JEFFERSON CITY -- The nominees for an open seat on the Missouri Supreme Court should be known today, when the commission reviewing applications selects three finalists to present to the governor. Twenty-three individuals have applied to replace Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr., a 16-year veteran of the court who left last month to become a federal judge.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 21, 2008
EuroGas Files Official Request With Slovak Republic and European Commission to Accelerate Return of Germerska Poloma Talc Concession to Its Rozmin Affiliate Pursuant to Order by Supreme Court of Slovak
EuroGas, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: EUGS) (FRANKFURT: EUG) (XETRA: EUG) (HAMB: EUG) (STUTTGART: EUG) today announced that it has EuroGas, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: EUGS) (FRANKFURT: EUG) (XETRA: EUG) (HAMB: EUG) (STUTTGART: EUG) today announced that it has officially requested an acceleration of the return of the Gemerska Poloma talc mining concession to Rozmin s.r.o. by filing official requests with the ...
MarketWire - Aug 21, 2008
California Farmers Applaud Federal Appeals Court Ruling & Call On Governor to Immediately Repeal Obsolete Regulations
The court case has been wrapped up in a complex set of federal pesticide regulations linked to the Clean Air Act. Both state regulators and farmers have agreed that a federal order requiring the state to reduce volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from pesticide use by 20 percent was unnecessary, said Roy. The state sued in federal court and a group of farmers joined as an intervener.
Business Wire - Aug 21, 2008
Two Individuals Plead Guilty to Trafficking In More Than Half a Million Tubes of Counterfeit Toothpaste
Two individuals and two corporations pleaded guilty today in Brooklyn, N.Y., to charges of trafficking in counterfeit Colgate toothpaste, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Benton J. Campbell for the Eastern District of New York announced. Saifoulaye Diallo, 51, from the Bronx, N.Y., and Habib Bah, 47, of Queens, N.Y.; and two New York ...
PR Newswire - Aug 21, 2008
Government of Canada Takes Action to Prevent Crime in the Northwest Territories
The Honourable Rob Nicholson, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, on behalf of the Honourable Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety, today announced more than $688,000 in funding to support five crime prevention projects that focus on helping at-risk Aboriginal youth in the Northwest Territories. The Honourable Rob Nicholson, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, ...
MarketWire - Aug 21, 2008
Government of Canada Continues With its Review of the Youth Criminal Justice Act
The Honourable Rob Nicholson, P.C., Q.C., M.P. for Niagara Falls, Minister of Justice & Attorney General of Canada, will today hold a roundtable discussion in Yellowknife on the functioning of the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA). The roundtable is part of the Minister's cross-country tour to meet key youth justice stakeholders and partners in all regions of Canada to seek their input on ...
MarketWire - Aug 21, 2008
Federman & Sherwood Announces That a Securities Class Action Lawsuit Has Been Filed Against Perini Corp. (NYSE: PCR)
On August 20, 2008, a class action On August 20, 2008, a class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts against Perini Corp. (NYSE: PCR). The complaint alleges violations of federal securities laws, Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5, including allegations of issuing a series of material ...
MarketWire - Aug 21, 2008
Mysterious Honey Bee Disorder Buzzes into Court
WASHINGTON, DC -- The nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council filed a lawsuit Monday in federal court in Washington DC to force the federal government to disclose studies on the effect of a new pesticide on honey bees. Studies on the pesticide, clothianidin, were ordered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from the pesticide's manufacturer, Bayer CropScience, in 2003 when the federal ...
NBC 10 - Aug 20, 2008
Another win for gay rights: STATE HIGH COURT: DOCTORS CANNOT DISCRIMINATE
Aug. 19--Declining to carve out a religious exemption to civil rights laws, the California Supreme Court has ruled that the constitutional rights of religious freedom and free speech do not exempt doctors from state anti-discrimination laws. In a year when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in California, Monday's unanimous decision was another victory by gay rights groups that could ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
BRIEF: Time added for comment on rules for court records
Aug. 19--Court watchers and public-records advocates will have another month to comment on proposed rules that would limit access to certain court records. The Ohio Supreme Court yesterday put out its revised rules for a second, and probably final, period for the public to weigh in before the full court adopts the policy for all Ohio courts. The 30-day comment period ends Sept.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
CALIFORNIA EXTREME: YOUR FAITH OR YOUR JOB (Maggie Gallagher)
The California Supreme Court made one thing perfectly clear this week as a matter of constitutional law: When it's a case of religious liberty vs. sexual liberty, sexual liberty wins. In the case of Benitez v. North Coast Women's Care Medical Group, the California Supreme Court asked: 'Do the rights of religious freedom and free speech, as guaranteed in both the federal and the California ...
Yahoo! - Aug 20, 2008
Petition against smoking ban fails: Proprietors to huddle today after referendum effort wilts
Aug. 19--Surfside Beach restaurant and bar owners pledge to continue their efforts to get rid of a smoke ban, despite a recent failure to get a referendum item put on the November ballot. A group of business owners are expected to meet today to regroup and discuss requesting a special election, said Jonathan Staton, owner of Dagwood's Deli and Sports Bar. "They may think it doesn't hurt our ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
Government of Canada Continues With its Review of the Youth Criminal Justice Act
The Honourable Rob Nicholson, P.C., Q.C., M.P. for Niagara Falls, Minister of Justice & Attorney General of Canada, will today hold a roundtable discussion in Iqaluit on the functioning of the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA). The roundtable is part of the Minister's cross-country tour to meet key youth justice stakeholders and partners in all regions of Canada to seek their input on ...
MarketWire - Aug 19, 2008
EDITORIAL: Dependency court reforms will be worth the cost
Aug. 19--Few readers had heard of dependency courts and few legislators had paid attention to them before Mercury News Staff Writer Karen de Sa's series in February, "Broken Families, Broken Courts," exposed monumental problems in their operation. But awareness from the articles and the focus brought by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George have created hope for reforming the courts ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
Court rules against retiree trust
Aug. 19--Taxpayers will have to decide how their local governments pay for retiree health insurance after a state Supreme Court decision Monday. The court ruled that a trust fund set up to help South Carolina cities and towns cover future retiree benefits is unconstitutional because it would invest in publicly traded company stock. In November, S.C. voters will decide whether to change the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
BRIEF: Texas Supreme Court rejects state Sen. Kim Brimer's bid to kick opponent off ballot
Aug. 19--The Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a request by state Sen. Kim Brimer to remove opponent Wendy Davis from the November ballot. An appeal of an earlier defeat on this issue, however, is still pending with the 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth. Mr. Brimer, a Republican, has argued that Ms. Davis, a Democrat and former Fort Worth City Council member, isn't eligible to be on the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
Bank of America's Countrywide Acquisition Has Drawbacks
Countrywide's acquisition by Bank of America Corp. was supposed to help keep the troubled mortgage lender from collapse. Things might not turn out exactly as planned.The people who did the deal hoped that a strong bank would rescue a weak one. But the deal's structure may have only delayed the inevitable Countrywide still could face bankruptcy or a federal takeover potentially involving ...
Hartford Courant - Aug 19, 2008
ABCP may land in top court
For the second time this summer, the Supreme Court of Canada may decide the fate of investors with billions of dollars at stake, after an opponent of the $32-billion asset-backed commercial paper restructuring announced plans to pursue the challenge to the highest court in the land. Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., which is stuck with $70.7-million (U.S.) of ABCP because of last summer's freeze-up in the ...
CTV.ca - Aug 19, 2008
Woman says medical leave led to firing on O'Hare project
The former head of the O'Hare Modernization Program claims she was demoted and ultimately fired by the city after she requested days off because of a medical condition. Teresa Rodriguez alleges in a federal discrimination lawsuit filed Tuesday that she was terminated from her position after she was hospitalized with a serious health condition called Supraventricular Tachycardia (SVT).
Chicago Sun-Times - Aug 19, 2008
Can a Woman be Fired for Absenteeism Related to Fertility Treatments? A Federal Court of Appeals Says No.
Like many other women, Cheryl Hall was afflicted with infertility. After taking one leave from work, and requesting a second, to undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF), she was fired. Does Title VII, the main federal anti-discrimination law, prohibit an employer from firing an employee under these circumstances? In a recent ruling, , the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit said yes. ...
Find Law - Aug 19, 2008
Plastic-bag coalition sues Manhattan
COURTS: Group argues that an EIR was required for the city to ban their product. COURTS: Group argues As promised, a group of plastic retailers and manufacturers has sued Manhattan Beach for its recent ban on plastic bags. The Save the Plastic Bag Coalition has asked a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge to toss out the prohibition on grounds that the city violated the California ...
Daily Breeze - Aug 19, 2008
Gov't told to answer dolphin case
MANILA, Philippines - The Supreme Court has asked government lawyers to comment on a petition filed by environmental lawyers to have oil exploration in the Taon Strait in the Visayas declared illegal. But the high court did not issue a temporary restraining order against the drilling activity. An oil rig used for test drilling was already pulled out from the waters off Pinamungahan town in west ...
Philippine Daily Inquirer - Aug 19, 2008
BRIEF: MCD's hoarding plea rejected
Aug. 19--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court appointed committee has turned down the request of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to permit advertising displays mounted on mobile vans as well as on the rooftops of the buildings. In a setback to the corporation and other civic agencies the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority (EPCA) has disfavoured the mounted advertisement ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
Editorials on Pervez Musharraf's resignation
The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday, Aug. 19: AFTER MUSHARRAF For much of this decade, the Bush administration viewed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as indispensable _ a key ally in the war on terror. His government enjoyed billions of dollars in U.S. aid money. Monday brought a game-changer. Musharraf announced in a television address to his countrymen that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
Ms. Stites goes to Washington
Aug. 19--While strolling through our nation's capitol, Emily Stites was thrilled to see the people she had been missing the most -- good old Oklahomans. "I walked by the Supreme Court on the day they were overturning the handgun ban, and I saw all these people who looked and talked like me, and I thought, 'These are my people. They're here. These good Southern people have made their way to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
High Court fines Justice Roxas over two unresolved motions
Aug. 20--Embattled Justice Vicente Roxas of the Court of Appeals received a P15,000-fine from the Supreme Court for failing to resolve two motions for reconsideration--a violation of court rules and judicial conduct. Voting unanimously, the Supreme Court en banc sternly warned Roxas that a repeat of the violation would merit a more severe penalty. The sanction was handed in a 15-page resolution ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 20, 2008
Despite violence,US will still help Mindanao--envoy
Aug. 20--The United States will continue to provide millions of dollars in development aid to southern Philippines despite recent deadly attacks by separatist Muslim rebels. The assurance was made Tuesday by Kristie Kenney, the US ambassador to the Philippines, who expressed hope that the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) would be able to again negotiate peace ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 20, 2008
Court seeks details of amenities in Govt schools
Aug. 20--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the Delhi Government to furnish details about lack of teaching staff and infrastructural facilities like building, fire safety, drinking water and toilet in the schools run by its education department. A bench headed by Justice Dalveen Bhandari, which has been has been monitoring the steps taken by the Delhi Government for improving the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 20, 2008
Duke Energy, ex-employee settle suit in Ohio court
Duke Energy Corp. confirmed Monday that it has reached an out-of-court settlement with a former employee who claimed he was fired for questioning payments the utility made to some major corporate customers. Former employee John Deeds' lawyer also confirmed that a settlement was reached over the weekend. Both sides refused to disclose terms of the agreement.
Press Democrat - Aug 19, 2008
Nursing home bill in works
STERLING HEIGHTS -- Lawmakers are struggling to put together legislation that would ensure nursing home patients are treated with dignity even after they die. The Michigan Court of Appeals unanimously ruled last week that because a dead body is not a person, it is not protected under a statute meant to deter patient abuse in nursing homes. The case involved Lillian McIntyre, who died in the ...
Detroit News - Aug 19, 2008
Last day to send primary ballots
Aug. 19--Washington voters have plenty of choices today in the state's first top-two primary. There are 10 choices for governor, although most voters are probably only familiar with two. Incumbent Chris Gregoire and her 2004 opponent Dino Rossi have been moving toward a rematch since shortly after Democrat Gregoire won the final recount and defeated a Republican Party court challenge in 2005. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
Police shooting complaint filed
Aug. 19--LONG BEACH -- The mother of a man shot and killed by a Long Beach Police officer in May has filed a complaint against the city alleging wrongful death and civil rights violations. Roketi Su'e, a 46-year-old Samoan man, was shot multiple times in the torso in front of his home in the 3400 block of East 67th Street on May 17 after an alleged struggle with two police officers.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
Principal unified his schools: Jack Graybill worked during racially charged times.
Aug. 19--For a few years in the early 1970s, John "Jack" Graybill found himself at the center of one of Roanoke's most contentious debates. As principal of Jefferson and Patrick Henry high schools, Graybill was charged with keeping his students -- both black and white -- focused on education at a time when the politics of school desegregation swirled around them.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
Woodward Acquires MPC Products Corporation
Woodward Governor Company (NASDAQ: WGOV) Woodward Governor Company (NASDAQ: WGOV) today announced Woodward and MPC Products Corporation have entered into a definitive stock purchase agreement under which Woodward would acquire MPC in a transaction valued at approximately $383 million. MPC, a privately-held company headquartered in Skokie, Ill., operated under the leadership of Joseph Roberti and ...
MarketWire - Aug 19, 2008
State high court upholds murder-for-hire conviction
Aug. 19--The Utah Supreme Court today upheld the murder-for-hire conviction of Paul Christopher Allen, who was found guilty of plotting the death of his 24-year-old wife more than a decade ago. In a unanimous decision, the high court said Allen -- a non-lawyer representing himself -- did not adequately argue the issues and failed to identify flaws in his trial that called for a reversal of his ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
New Jersey Manufacturer Agrees to Reduce Harmful Emissions
Colorite Specialty Resins, headquartered in Somerville, N.J., has agreed to perform corrective measures at its Burlington, N.J., manufacturing facility that will reduce harmful emissions of vinyl chloride to resolve alleged violations of federal and state environmental laws, the Justice Department, the State of New Jersey, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today.
PR Newswire - Aug 19, 2008
Price-fixing Comes Back After Supreme Court Ruling
Manufacturers are embracing broad new legal powers that amount to a type of price-fixing - enabling them to set minimum prices on their products and force retailers to refrain from discounting. For the better part of a century, punishing retailers for selling at cut-rate prices was an automatic violation of antitrust law. However, a Supreme Court ruling last year involving handbag sales at a ...
TheDay.com - Aug 19, 2008
NEJM Files Amicus Brief in Supreme Court Preemption Case
Drugmakers Merck, Wyeth and Bayer Healthcare withheld important information from the FDA regarding the safety of certain drugs, costing tens of thousands of lives, according to 10 former and current editors and authors of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). The drug companies have withheld key information from the FDA and ardently negotiated against stricter label warnings all the while ...
FDA News - Aug 19, 2008
Capital notes
Aug. 19--New attorney general lays down e-mail rules E-mail helped document much of the misbehavior among staff members in the Ohio attorney general's office, but now the office is telling employees to think twice before hitting "send." E-mail messages among employees, including former Attorney General Marc Dann himself, revealed a culture of drinking, cursing and sexual harassment in his 17 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
Musharraf's claims versus realities
Musharraf's gifts to the nation.Suicide bombings across the countryTribal areas unrestBalochistan unrestTargeted killingsDisappeared/missing peopleSacking of judiciary twiceDeclaration of 'martial law' twiceHanding over Pakistani citizens to US for bountyAttacks on media freedomMay 12 Karachi carnage and no accountabilityScandals/mismanagement during Musharraf's regimeSteel Mills (privatisation ...
Business Recorder - Aug 20, 2008
Nevada Jury Awards Inventor Gil Hyatt $388 Million Against California's Taxing Agency
Gil Hyatt, a Nevada inventor, scientist and engineer with over 70 patents from the United States Patent & Trademark Office to his credit, was awarded more than $388 million by a Nevada jury against the Franchise Tax Board of the State of California. Liability was based on torts committed by the Franchise Tax Board while auditing Mr. Hyatt's residency, during the time he received substantial sums ...
Biz Journals - Aug 18, 2008
Illinois' med mal law on trial
Aug. 18--A lawsuit testing the constitutionality of Illinois' medical malpractice reforms is expected to come before the state's Supreme Court this fall -- and with it the very real possibility that the law will be nixed. State Sen. Bill Haine, D-Alton, was one of the leaders in a long bipartisan effort to draft the legislation, which was approved after dozens of doctors fled from the Metro East ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 18, 2008
Court rules medical services can't be denied on religious grounds
The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that doctors can't use their religious beliefs as a reason to refuse treatment to patients because doing so violates the state's anti-discrimination law. Documentation: State Supreme Court ruling From the U-T archives: High court hearing pits religious vs. equal rights (5/29/08) Court to hear insemination case (5/27/08) Maternal wish, doctors' faith at ...
SignOn San Diego - Aug 18, 2008
No joke: Be careful what you say
BY TERESA MCALEAVY SPECIAL TO THE RECORD For those inclined to telling ethnic jokes, there's plenty of clarity in the state Supreme Court's recent ruling saying hateful language at work is actionable under New Jersey's Law Against Discrimination.Those who shrugged off as harmless phrases such as "dirty Jew" now know there's nothing funny or inoffensive about such words.
North Jersey.com - Aug 18, 2008
Nevada Jury Returns $388 Million Award for Bullivant Client
Gilbert P. Hyatt, a Nevada inventor, scientist and engineer with more than 70 patents from the United States Patent & Trademark Office to his credit, was awarded more than $388 million by a Nevada jury against the Franchise Tax Board (FTB) of the State of California. These punitive damages were based on torts committed by the FTB while auditing Hyatt's residency, during 1991 and 1992, when ...
San Francisco Business Times - Aug 18, 2008
'Super Lawyers' making its case
Aug. 18--David and Jeff Stowman, a father-and-son law practice in Detroit Lakes, Minn., enjoy their "Super Lawyer" status and even promote it with their limited advertising budget. But they're not sure what it means. Barbara Brown, the marketing manager for the Minneapolis firm of Meagher & Geer, has 19 of her firm's attorneys on the 2008 Super Lawyer list, although she doubts that the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 18, 2008
EDITORIAL: Church members needed court, got a worship service
Aug. 18--Circuit Judge Ashley McKathan of Andalusia seemed like a Roy Moore wannabe four years ago when he came to court wearing a robe embroidered with the Ten Commandments. The previous year, Mr. Moore was unseated as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state courts' headquarters in Montgomery.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 18, 2008
President orders militaryto defend every inch of RP
Aug. 19--President Gloria Arroyo ordered the police and military to "defend every inch of Philippine territory" against forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) who overran several towns in Lanao del Norte province in southern Philippines on Monday. Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, though, said that the government will continue negotiating peace with the MILF despite the renewed ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
Texas mental health program delayed over fears of drug-company influence
Aug. 18--AUSTIN -- A state mental health plan naming the preferred psychiatric drugs for children has been quietly put on hold over fears drug companies may have given researchers consulting contracts, speakers fees or other perks to help get their products on the list. The Children's Medication Algorithm Project, or CMAP, was supposed to determine which psychiatric drugs were most effective for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 18, 2008
Different versions of peace pact circulating
Aug. 19--A copy of the supposedly official memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain that is circulating in some quarters is different from the draft memorandum of agreement that also was supposed to be signed by the government negotiating panel and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) two weeks ago in Malaysia. This was the clarification made on Monday by Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
Did Washington waste millions on faulty voting machines?
Aug. 18--WASHINGTON -- Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding that have gone to upgrade the nation's voting machines since 2003 were used to purchase touch-screen systems that many states are now scrapping because of concerns about their security and reliability. State governments in Alaska, California, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Tennessee and New Mexico have decided to replace their ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 18, 2008
EDITORIAL: Ground swell for renegotiation
Aug. 19--Throughout the country the ground swell of support for the renegotiation of the Memorandum of Agreement on An-cestral Domain (MOA-AD) has been growing. The most telling of many developments showing that renegotiation is the will of the majority of Filipinos--including some important Moro leaders--are those in the House of Representatives and among local government officials.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 19, 2008
Mainers urged to use care when pre-buying oil
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) " Consumers looking to buy oil in advance of the upcoming heating season should be cautious and ask questions, state and industry officials agree. The warning comes ahead of Tuesdays foreclosure auction of Veilleux Oil & Services Inc., a defunct Biddeford dealer charged with accepting money from customers and failing to deliver heating oil last season.
Bangor Daily News - Aug 18, 2008
Ideal and reality: medias role in India
Having discussed, in a previous article, the role of art and literature in a country such as India as it stands today, we should consider the role of the media in such a context. What do we see on television these days? Some channels show film stars, pop music, disco and fashion parades (often with scantily clad young women), astrology or cricket. Is it not a cruel irony and an affront to our ...
The Hindu - Aug 18, 2008
Iowa attorney general files suit alleging Sumner, Fairbank stations sold E85 as unleaded gas
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Iowa investigators claim a company spiked unleaded gasoline and 10-percent ethanol-blended fuel with cheaper E85 at stations in Sumner and Fairbank. The Iowa attorney general's office filed a consumer-protection lawsuit in Black Hawk County District Court against Jerry Fratzke, who owns Pronto Market stations in Sumner and Fairbank. The suit asked the court to order ...
Canadian Business Magazine - Aug 18, 2008
More gay men are becoming daddies
The cost remains high, and a good lawyer is essential. Yet despite complications, the idea of becoming a biological dad with help from a surrogate mother is gaining allure among gay men as the status of 'married with children' grows ever more possible. With same-sex marriage now legal in California even to nonresidents, and Massachusetts extending its 4-year-old gay-marriage policy to ...
CNN - Aug 18, 2008
CIBC World Markets sees softening in Canadian household credit
CIBC World Markets sees softening in Canadian household credit KRISTINE OWRAM August 18, 2008 06:12 TORONTO - Canadian consumers are starting to feel the sting of a slowing global economy as they go deeper into debt and see their wealth erode, according to a report released Monday by CIBC World Markets."With the recent correction in the stock market and a slowing housing market, Canadians are ...
Metronews - Aug 18, 2008
Blockades: Acts of War Were just completed U.S. War Games preparation for a Naval Blockade of Iran?
INFORMED SPECULATION: Were just completed U.S. War Games preparation for a Naval Blockade of Iran? by Stephen Lendman Igniting another world conflict should give everyone pause. Especially given the Bush administration's design for 'full spectrum dominance' and stated unilateral right to achieve it with first-strike nuclear weapons. From July 21 - 31, Joint Task Force (mostly US, but also UK, ...
The Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel Newspaper - Aug 18, 2008
Cooperation of Ombudsman, law enforcement bodies discussed
Human Rights Commissioner of Oliy Majlis of Uzbekistan (Ombudsman) and OSCE Project Coordinator in Uzbekistan organized a seminar entitled 'Interaction of Ombudsman with judicial and law-enforcement bodies in the sphere of human rights protection' in Tashkent, Pravda Vostoka newspaper reported. Representatives of Supreme Court of Uzbekistan, ministries of justice, internal affairs, Office of ...
Turkish Weekly - Aug 18, 2008
Final Briefs Filed in Critical Wine Shipping Case
DISCRIMINATION AT ANY LEVEL OF THE THREE DISCRIMINATION AT ANY LEVEL OF THE THREE TIERS OF THE ALCOHOL DISTRIBUTION CHAIN IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. FURTHER, A STATE MAY NOT REQUIRE AN IN-STATE PHYSICAL PRESENCE TO PARTICIPATE IN INTERSTATE COMMERCE. This was the core message embodied in Specialty Wine Retailers Association's final brief submitted today in the case of Siesta Village Market v.
MarketWire - Aug 18, 2008
In order to un-form an imperfect union...
Q. I entered a civil union in Vermont. Three years later I left the union and moved from Vermont to Massachusetts. My partner wants me back and refuses to start an action in Vermont to dissolve our civil union. I dont want to move back to Vermont to establish residence. Will Massachusetts dissolve my civil union? - G.T., Newbury A. Vermont law provides that if either party to a civil union ...
Boston Herald - Aug 18, 2008
Riverwalk Fire Victims Seek Answers Through Filing of Class-Action Complaint Against Developer and Contractors
Attorney Robert J. Mongeluzzi's Firm says disaster was an accident waiting to happen CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa., Aug. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- A class-action complaint was filed in Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas this morning alleging that negligence on the part of the developer, building and management contractors of the Millennium apartment complex here contributed ...
PR Newswire - Aug 18, 2008
Conservative Elon student aspires to lead: Local resident in U.S. spotlight
Aug. 18--A Kernersville native who hopes to become a force in conservative politics was among the pro-gun-rights activists demonstrating in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 26 in advance of its historic ruling that struck down the District of Columbia handgun ban. Amanda Prevette, 21, a rising senior at Elon University, said she went with co-workers to support Americans' constitutional ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 18, 2008
Kenney judge puts strict limits on media access
Aug. 18--When jurors visit the scene where John Kenney shot Mel and Elizabeth Grimes, they will do so in private. Contrary to jury visits in other high-profile homicide cases in Monterey County, Judge Stephen Sillman ruled that portion of the trial off-limits to the public and media. It is one of several limits the judge has placed on media covering Kenney's case, which has drawn national ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 18, 2008
Duke Energy, ex-employee settle suit in Ohio court
CINCINNATI Steve Brash told The Associated Press the settlement was confidential and that the two sides could not disclose terms of the deal. John Deeds filed the lawsuit after losing his job in 2005. He accused Duke of retaliating against him after he told supervisors the $22 million in annual payments appeared to be sham transactions. Deeds' attorney Randy Freking also confirmed the ...
Springfield News Sun - Aug 18, 2008
Unico, Inc. Issues Statement on Press Release Issued by Krause Kalfayan Benink and Slavens, LLP
Unico, Incorporated (OTCBB: UNCO), a natural Unico, Incorporated (OTCBB: UNCO), a natural resource company in the precious metals mining sector, today issued a statement regarding a press release issued by Krause Kalfayan Benink and Slavens, LLP, a law firm located in San Diego, California on August 15, 2008. The press release stated that Krause Kalfayan Benink and Slavens, LLP had filed a ...
MarketWire - Aug 18, 2008
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro: Firm Appointed Lead Counsel in Charles Schwab YieldPlus Class Action
Today United States District Judge William Alsup appointed Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro lead counsel in the class-action litigation against Charles Schwab Corporation (Nasdaq: SCHW) involving Schwab YieldPlus Funds Investor Shares (SWYSX) and Schwab YieldPlus Funds Select Shares (SWYPX). (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080317/AQM144LOGO) Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro filed the first ...
PR Newswire - Aug 18, 2008
California Supreme Court Ruling Threatens Medical Care and Religious Freedom, Says Americans United for Life
California Supreme Court Ruling Threatens Medical Care and Religious Freedom, Says Americans United for Life CHICAGO, Aug. 18 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The California Supreme Court today ruled that patient demand for nonessential, elective care trumps the freedom of conscience of physicians and their ability to practice medicine in accordance with their religious or moral beliefs.
San Francisco Business Times - Aug 18, 2008
A new wedding boom awaits
WHILE MUCH of the country remains to be sold on the concept of same-sex marriage, the atmosphere in Provincetown is positively giddy as it braces for what is expected to be another wave of nouveau nuptials.Former governor Mitt Romney warned against letting Massachusetts become the 'Las Vegas of same-sex marriage,' and even Provincetown has shown some ambivalence on the marriage issue in the past. ...
Boston Globe - Aug 18, 2008
Musharrafs exit poses challenge for Pakistan
(AP) ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Pervez Musharraf resigned Monday as the president of Pakistan, avoiding a power struggle with rivals vowing to impeach him that would have deepened the countrys political crisis. His exit, announced in an emotional televised address, leaves the politicians who pushed out the stalwart U.S. ally to face the Islamic militants and economic problems gnawing at this ...
KAALtv.com - Aug 19, 2008
Ruling on ABCP restructuring plan likely won't mark and end to courtroom battles
The decision by the Superior Court had prevented ordinary corporate and individual investors from suing brokerages, financial services companies, the banks and bond rating agencies for millions of dollars in losses they suffered from the collapse of the short-term investments last year. The restriction on lawsuits was one of the main reasons the players in the financial community, particularly ...
News 91.9 Moncton - Aug 19, 2008
Here's the secret every jury needs to know
I've got a secret to tell you. It's about jurors. Jurors called for duty on criminal cases have a secret power. It's a secret because in a trial neither the judge nor the lawyers are allowed to tell the jurors this power exists. But it does. It's called 'jury nullification.' It doesn't mean the jury gets nullified. It means the jury can nullify a law or nullify the application of a law to a ...
Winnipeg Sun - Aug 17, 2008
Vail in culture shock as arts benefactor faces trial
Alberto Vilar, right, founder of Amerindo Investment Advisors Inc., leaves U.S. District Court in Manhattan after a July 2005 hearing for his investment fraud case. He was accompanied by his lawyer Jeffrey Hoffman. Alberto Vilar likely would have attended a February performance of Puccini's tragic opera Tosca to mark the 10-year anniversary of the Beaver Creek performance hall that bears his ...
Rocky Mountain News - Aug 17, 2008
On Company Equipment, Don't Expect Privacy
Most people are getting very comfortable with technology. Non-typers have evolved into typers. Non-writers have learned to get by. People once not inclined to make telephone calls now make them without blinking. Using technology, though, may put them at risk either on or off the job site.Hope Haslam, director of Consulting Services at Epiq Systems Inc., headquartered in Kansas City, Kan., works ...
Hartford Courant - Aug 17, 2008
Construction begins on $57M San Diego border fence
Smuggler's Gulch. The gorge was overrun by illegal immigrants until U.S. authorities launched a crackdown in the 1990s that pushed traffic to the remote mountains and deserts of California and Arizona. At a cost of about $16 million a mile, the fence will be far more expensive than fences the U.S. government is building elsewhere along the nation's 1,952-mile border with Mexico. U.S.
San Francisco Chronicle - Aug 17, 2008
Windmills Split N.Y. Town And Families
Article:Windmills split upstate NY town and families:/n/a/2008/08/16/national/a100906D55.DTL Home of the San Francisco Chronicle Home Delivery| Today's Paper | Ads SFGate Web Search by YAHOO! | Advanced Search Quick links to the best of SFGate | Still can't find it? see Site Index News Today Sections Sports More Features Food Travel Living Entertainment Classifieds Windmills split ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Aug 17, 2008
ROSEN: 'We the people'
By Mike Rosen, Rocky Mountain News (Contact) Updated 01:43 a.m., August 15, 2008 More Opinion Columns & Blogs Story Tools Change text size Share 'We the people of the United States in Order to form a more perfect Union . . . do ordain and establish this Constitution.' When those words, the Preamble to the Constitution, were crafted, the context was to introduce a document prescribing the ...
Rocky Mountain News - Aug 17, 2008
Border fence started
SAN DIEGO - Scrapers and bulldozers began filling a deep canyon Friday to make way for a border fence in the southwestern corner of the continental United States after 12 years of planning, environmental reviews and legal challenges. The 3.5-mile stretch extends from Border Field State Park on an oceanfront cliff through 'Smuggler's Gulch' canyon, which was overrun by illegal immigrants until ...
Daily Breeze - Aug 17, 2008
Increasing Liability Risks Threaten Growth and Trouble Boards
Issue Date: July/August 2008, Posted On: 7/29/2008 By Fayazuddin A Shirazi A study conducted by Lloyds, a London based insurance market, reveals that board members are increasingly concerned about the increasing number of corporate litigation cases facing the boards and the escalating cost in mitigating such risks. Among the companies surveyed, almost seven in ten have faced lawsuits in the past ...
Chief Executive - Aug 17, 2008
Sonny Bill free from Bulldogs for $750k
Former ALP powerbroker Graham Richardson has ended the Sonny Bill Williams saga, brokering a deal between the renegade footballer and the Bulldogs. In a heady chain of events played out late last night, the club has verbally agreed to a $750,000 payout from Williams, allowing him to break a five-year deal to take up a $2 million contract with French rugby side Toulon.
Dominion Post - Aug 17, 2008
Early dam plan supports Georgia's claim to Lanier water
One of the core issues of the 18-year-old water dispute between Georgia, Florida and Alabama is whether water supply is an authorized use of Lake Lanier. Alabama and Florida contend it was not an original use and are challenging Georgia's agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on water storage based on a law passed a year after Lanier was completed.
Gainesville Times - Aug 17, 2008
Risk-taking part of our character
Since a state Supreme Court ruling nearly 40 years ago, wearing protective headgear while riding a motorcycle has been voluntary in Illinois. Despite the dire predictions of carnage on our highways following that decision, the fatality rate for motorcycle accidents is lower in Illinois than in California, which has a mandatory helmet law.Credit goes in part to an aggressive rider-training program ...
Chicago Tribune - Aug 17, 2008
Who you gonna CALL?
Aug. 17--Bad boys. Bad boys. Whatcha gonna do when they come for you? "They" in this case is the police. And if it so happens that they indeed "come for you" then it's likely your next destination is the local lockup. So what next? Well, there are only three ways to make bail: you can pay up in cold hard cash, use the equity in your home as collateral, or call a bail bondsman.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 17, 2008
Japan to grant citizenship to children born out of wedlock
TOKYO _ The Japanese government plans to revise the Nationality Law to remove a provision requiring parents to be married for their children to obtain Japanese citizenship, according to government sources. The decision came after the Supreme Court ruled in June that denying Japanese citizenship to children born out of wedlock to Japanese fathers and foreign mothers is unconstitutional, the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 17, 2008
EDITORIAL: Readers have right to know tax-paid salaries
Aug. 17--Taxpayers deserve to know how their hard-earned dollars are being spent. That is the primary reason behind the newspaper's California Public Records Act requests of Sutter and Yuba counties and the cities of Marysville and Yuba City for the names, titles and salaries of current county and city employees. The newspaper is entitled to this information -- the California Supreme Court ruled ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 17, 2008
Lawyer's penalty weighed in fraud case
SARASOTA - A Florida Bar referee recommended that John A. Yanchek be suspended from practicing law for two years after the Sarasota attorney admitted earlier that he engaged in mortgage fraud and lied about the existence of escrow funds. John Yanchek likely faces more serious punishment on bank fraud, conspiracy and other charges. Yanchek has been indicted on conspiracy and other federal charges ...
Southwest Florida Herald Tribune - Aug 17, 2008
Land Law Amendment Targets 'Vestiges Of Racism'
TALLAHASSEE -- There's a new Amendment 1 in Florida, and it doesn't have anything to do with your tax bill. In November, the first proposal voters will see on the presidential election ballot would eliminate an obscure provision of the Constitution that can stop people ineligible for U.S. citizenship from owning property in Florida. That may sound reasonable, given the short list of groups ...
Macro World Investor - Aug 18, 2008
Candidates try to navigate politics of abortion
When Barack Obama and John McCain offered their sharply divergent views on abortion this weekend at an Orange County church, it was a rare chance to hear the presidential rivals address one of the most contentious issues in American politics. Each has sought to steer clear of the often fierce disputes between their parties on abortion, relegating it to the low ranks of campaign quarrels.
Los Angeles Times - Aug 18, 2008
Laws to Rein in Internet Portals Are Needed
The government and the ruling Grand National Party have decided to revise related laws governing print and online news outlets, classifying Internet portals as news organizations so that they will face more social responsibility. The aim is to classify Internet portals so they fall under the jurisdiction of the Press Arbitration Commission and can be held accountable in a court of law if an ...
Digital Chosun - Aug 17, 2008
Lawyer for Rhode Island says ex-lead paint companies shouldn't be able to recover court costs
A lawyer for Rhode Island said Friday that three former lead paint companies should not be allowed to recoup costs from a nine-year legal fight with the state that ended last month in their favor. The state Supreme Court in July overturned a landmark jury verdict that found Sherwin-Williams Co. and two other companies responsible for creating a public nuisance.
Fargo Forum - Aug 17, 2008
Judge in sniper trial named to Va. Supreme Court
RICHMOND, Va. - The judge who presided over the trial of sniper mastermind John Muhammad was appointed to the Virginia Supreme Court by Gov. on Friday. The Democrat selected Virginia Court of Appeals Judge LeRoy F. Millette Jr. to succeed Justice G. Steven Agee, who was recently appointed to 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Kaine also appointed Chesterfield County Circuit Judge Cleo E.
Hampton Roads Daily Press - Aug 17, 2008
Broken Promises: Residents frustrated as developers of planned community abandon project
Aug. 17--First in a three-part series DALLAS TWP. -- Unlike many retirees, Joseph Gualtiere moved out of Florida, leaving the palm trees and ocean breezes in his rear-view mirror to return to northeastern Pennsylvania to live closer to his aging sisters. The Dakota Woods development planned for Dallas Township looked like the perfect destination. The 37 acres along Route 309 were tucked in a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 17, 2008
Tensions run high in southern Philippines province
ALEOSON, Philippines _ A renegade force of Muslim rebels began slipping into the villages near Aleoson in late June. By the time they were pushed out last week in three days of bloody fighting, the rebels had razed at least 50 houses, pilfered livestock and rubbed emotions raw between Christians and Muslims, according to residents and the Philippines military.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 17, 2008
Thomas must face ethics probes, high court says: Decision is a blow to Maricopa County attorney
Aug. 17--The state's high court on Friday decided that Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas must still face multiple ethics investigations ongoing against him, despite his claim that the agency that launched them is politically motivated. The decision is a blow to the Valley's top prosecutor, who has been engaged in an intense legal battle for months trying to get the investigations tossed. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 17, 2008
AG says he's in talks with Bank of America
The California attorney general disclosed Friday he is in negotiations with Bank of America, the parent of Countrywide Financial Corp., Legal Newsline reported. Attorney General Jerry Brown was the first of a handful of state attorneys general to file a lawsuit against Countrywide over its home lending practices. Speaking to Legal Newsline Friday, Brown said his negotiations with Bank of America ...
Webindia123 - Aug 17, 2008
DPS RK Puram hosts Youth Congress
Aug. 18--NEW DELHI -- Delhi Public School, R.K.Puram organised the Justice Grover Memorial DPS Youth Congress Session 2008 in the memory of Late Justice A. N. Grover, former Chairman, DPSS. Principal Dr (Mrs) Shayama Chona welcomed Vinod Grover and Pramod Grover, sons of Late Justice Grover and eminent guests and judges. The topic of the session was 'Rage and Aggression in youth today -- is ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 18, 2008
Civilians killed in southern Philippines
Muslim separatist rebels left a trail of bloodied corpses and burning homes after a series of pre-dawn attacks on towns in the southern Philippines, on Monday. AFP reporters saw nine bodies lying bloodied by a roadside in one village as black smoke billowed from houses burning in the background. Five other civilians were killed in another village by the marauding Moro Islamic Liberation Front ...
Brisbane Times - Aug 18, 2008
CMAP put on hold over fears of drug-company influence on research
AUSTIN A state mental health plan naming the preferred psychiatric drugs for children has been quietly put on hold over fears drug companies may have given researchers consulting contracts, speakers fees or other perks to help get their products on the list. The Children's Medication Algorithm Project, or CMAP, was supposed to determine which psychiatric drugs were most effective for children ...
WFAA.com - Aug 18, 2008
Virginia Beach attorney relishes unpopular causes
Aug. 18--VIRGINIA BEACH -- As he pored over depositions and sorted through evidence last week, preparing for a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city, Kevin Martingayle said he never imagined that he would be at the center of so much conflict. His case against Virginia Beach, scheduled for trial in November, claims that racial profiling and selective enforcement tactics by the city hurt ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 18, 2008
Venezuelans protest Chavez's new socialist push
CARACAS, Venezuela --Riot police used tear gas Wednesday as they blocked hundreds of Venezuelans protesting what they call new moves by President Hugo Chavez to concentrate his power. The demonstrators said a blacklist barring key opposition candidates from elections and a series of socialist decrees are destroying what's left of their democracy. Though the protest of about 1,000 people chanting ...
The Sun News - Aug 13, 2008
Lawyers claim Manchin crossed the line in fighting judgment against DuPont
Aug. 13--CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Lawyers in a case against chemical giant DuPont say records show that Gov. Joe Manchin got a little too cozy with the company in its quest to have a $382 million circuit court verdict against it reviewed by the state Supreme Court. A Harrison County jury last year ruled that DuPont carelessly dumped toxic chemicals near the site of a plant in Spelter, W.Va.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Judicial corruption: Learn from US, Canada, says Govt
Aug. 14--NEW DELHI -- The chief Justice of India (CJI) should put in place a permanent mechanism to probe corruption allegations against judges on the lines of judicial councils in the United States and Canada, the government said on Wednesday. The mechanism in form of a committee, with five senior-most judges of the Supreme Court as its members, could provide a solution to the decades-old ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 14, 2008
Child's wish supreme in court
Aug. 13--NEW DELHI -- The court should ascertain wishes of a minor child before taking a final call on his or her custody, says the Supreme Court. Departing from the prevailing law a bench headed by Justice C K Thakker denied custody of a nine-year-old boy to his natural guardian, the father by permitting the child to live with his maternal grandparents. The father is facing trial for alleged ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Medellin execution highlights flaw in international law: experts
The execution of a Mexican citizen by the United States against the orders of the UN's highest court highlights a flaw in international law that enables countries to snub rulings without repercussions, experts say. While the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) orders are binding, their execution are left up to states who consent voluntarily to the court's jurisdiction, they told AFP.
AFP via Yahoo! - Aug 13, 2008
Former state Supreme Court justices: Judges shouldn't disqualify selves because of proposal
Aug. 13--Michigan judges should not disqualify themselves from cases involving a controversial ballot proposal that would, among other things, cut judicial pay, said a group of former state Supreme Court justices in a statement released today. The seven former justices -- three Democrats, three Republicans and an independent -- said they expressed no opinion on the merits of the Reform Michigan ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Loophole in tobacco regulation bill
A loophole in a sweeping tobacco regulation bill would give the industry a 21-month window to introduce some new products without first getting federal approval. The House last month overwhelmingly passed the legislation, which for the first time would empower federal public health authorities to regulate tobacco. Some tobacco foes say the bill's 21-month escape clause would let companies start ...
The Sun News - Aug 13, 2008
Tale of bin Laden's driver to go Hollywood
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba _ It's true that a production company owned by Hollywood heartthrob George Clooney optioned the story of Osama bin Laden's driver. Not quite true are tabloid reports that Clooney is reserving for himself the role of retired Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Swift, the former Navy JAG officer who championed the case of driver Salim Hamdan from the prison camps to the U.S.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
City held in contempt of court over take-home vehicles
Aug. 13--A judge has held the city of Buffalo in contempt of court, a rare ruling that is prompting the city to temporarily return take-home vehicles to seven employees. City Hall's top attorney said the cars will be returned to the blue-collar workers by the end of today, but she vowed to appeal State Supreme Court Judge Timothy Drury's ruling. "We have been defending the city in hopes of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
EDITORIAL: Let's reconsider the death penalty
Aug. 13--No one has been executed in North Carolina in two years, but capital punishment is still on the books. A challenge to North Carolina's method of execution by injection was recently cast aside by the U.S. Supreme Court. So it's no surprise that Orange County District Attorney Jim Woodall decided to seek the death penalty for Demario Atwater, the 22-year-old charged with the murder of UNC ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
What you need to know about Washington's top-two primary
Aug. 13--Washington state's first top-two primary election will be held Tuesday. We solicited questions from readers about the new primary, and added a few of our own. Here are the answers: Q: Why are we having a primary in August? Isn't that early? A: The state used to have its primary in mid-September. But elections officials said they need more time between the primary and the November ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
ACLU, DGA, AFTRA Gang Up on FCC
The American Civil Liberties Union , flanked by unions representing directors and actors, told the Supreme Court the Federal Communications Commission has no business regulating any speech short of outright obscenity. The ACLU -- joined by the Directors Guild of America , the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and several others -- asked the Supreme Court to rethink the FCC's ...
International Broadcasting Convention - Aug 13, 2008
Pakistan Eyes Generals Amid Musharraf Impeachment Option
The ex-commando, who seized power in a coup nine years ago, has yet to make any public response after being given the option of facing a confidence vote in parliament or being impeached. A session of the National Assembly, Pakistan's lower house of parliament, has been called for Monday, coincidentally Musharraf's 65th birthday, to start what could be a lengthy process unless the president ...
KOOL 108 - Aug 14, 2008
Fighting for the rights of the chronically ill
The ADA, signed into law in 1990 by President George H. W. Bush, was designed to give people with disabilities an equal crack at employment, public services and accommodations. It was hailed as a long-awaited recourse for those who face discrimination. With costs soaring and consumers asked to make more decisions, you need up-to-date health advice. But a series of Supreme Court decisions ...
MarketWatch - Aug 13, 2008
McCain, Obama Both Stretch the Truth
Hillary Clinton was positively skewered during her failed presidential campaign for claiming she landed in Bosnia 'under sniper fire,' but Barack Obama and John McCain have told their share of whoppers, too. In no particular order, Politico, in partnership with PolitiFact, a partnership between the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly, present McCain and Obama's biggest distortions ...
KPAX - Aug 13, 2008
Probe uncovers irregularities in Court of Appeals
Aug. 14--The three-man Supreme Court panel investigating the Court of Appeals justices has found some procedural lapses and unusual actions by the appellate court's Eighth Division. The probe stems from the division's decision to void the cease-and-desist order of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to the stop the counting of proxy votes at the annual stockholders' meeting of the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 14, 2008
Jury to convene in malpractice case against Mayo Clinic
Aug. 13--An Olmsted County jury could decide Wednesday whether Mayo Clinic doctors were negligent 11 years ago in their treatment of an infant who ended up with permanent brain damage. Final testimony in the medical malpractice trial is expected Wednesday morning, followed by closing arguments and instructions from Judge Robert Birnbaum. The lawsuit was initiated in 2001 by Nancy and Michael ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Cherokees to restore high court building
Aug. 13--The Trail of Tears was no doubt the single most heinous crime visited upon the Cherokee people. But events in downtown Tahlequah Tuesday may have done much to restore tribal pride. The Cherokee Nation, Cherokee Nation Enterprises, and local and state officials kicked off the restoration of the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court building, the oldest government building in Oklahoma.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Patient seeks right to sue over surgery mishap
Aug. 13--RALEIGH -- A man who had surgery with instruments that had been washed in hydraulic fluid is hoping a state Supreme Court ruling will clear the way for him to sue Duke Raleigh Hospital in court. Bennie Holland, 49, was one of more than 3,600 patients operated on in November and December 2004 when hydraulic fluid was mistakenly used to wash surgical instruments.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
BRIEF: Nebraska, Colorado still overusing Republican River
Aug. 13--LINCOLN -- Nebraska and Colorado continue to fall short in their efforts to not overuse their shares of the Republican River, the Kansas water czar said Wednesday. "Compliance is not optional," said David Barfield, chief engineer of the Kansas Division of Water Resources. "Both Colorado and Nebraska can expect to hear from Kansas in the near future about these new violations." Barfield ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
As Omaha smokers retreat to patios, some patrons balk
Aug. 13--Lawrence Weatherall plopped into a chair on the restaurant patio and exhaled. A cool breeze swept the smoke away. Two tables behind him, an older couple grumbled about the stinky cigarette in his hand. "What?" the 29-year-old Weatherall said, flinging his hand into the air. Smokers are retreating outdoors to bar beer gardens and restaurant patios in light of the city's ban on indoor ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Ex-director pleads guilty in Cobo probe
DETROIT -- The former director of Detroit's Cobo Center could receive a sharp reduction in his sentence if he provides 'substantial assistance' in an ongoing investigation of City Hall corruption, a federal prosecutor said Thursday. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Chutkow made the remarks as Lou Pavledes pleaded guilty to a felony financial offense in U.S. District Court in Detroit.
Detroit News - Aug 13, 2008
Securities suit nets $1.5M for Hopkinton, N. Bedford
Massachusetts investors will get back millions of dollars from major Wall Street firms as a result of two settlements announced yesterday regarding the controverisal sale of auction-rate securities. Attorney General Martha Coakley, whos already wrung nearly $40 million out of UBS for its role in selling the risky bond-like products, said yesterday shes reached an agreement with Morgan Stanley for ...
Boston Herald - Aug 13, 2008
Indymac lied about its financial health, stockholders claim in suit
LOS ANGELES -- Stockholders of failed Pasadena lender IndyMac filed a lawsuit against the bank's former heads claiming they violated federal securities laws by lying about the bank's health. Last month, stockholders lost money when IndyMac Bank collapsed and was seized by federal regulators in the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. Soon after, CNN reported that the FBI was ...
Los Angeles Daily News - Aug 13, 2008
Sarraf Gentile LLP Announces Class Action Lawsuit Against Reddy Ice Holdings, Inc.
A class action lawsuit has been filed on A class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of those who purchased or otherwise acquired securities of Reddy Ice Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: FRZ) between August 10, 2005 and March 6, 2008, inclusive (the "Class Period"). The class action was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
MarketWire - Aug 13, 2008
/ CORRECTION - Court Grants Final Approval of $33 Million Gender Class Action Settlement With Smith Barney
In the news release, "Court Grants Final In the news release, "Court Grants Final Approval of $33 Million Gender Class Action Settlement With Smith Barney," issued earlier today by Mehri & Skalet, PLLC, we are advised by the company that the first paragraph should read "Professional women across America won a major employment victory today against the investment house when a federal court ...
MarketWire - Aug 13, 2008
Schools' windfall may be a bust: Legislators say there's no money to pay the $747 million from civil fines a judge says is due public schools
Aug. 13--RALEIGH -- Legislative leaders said Tuesday there's not enough extra cash on hand to pay $747.9 million a Wake County judge says must go to North Carolina public schools. As a result, the legal victory that caps a decade-old court battle may result in schools getting no new money after all. Wake County Superior Court Judge Howard Manning Jr. has ordered the state to turn over civil ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
EDITORIAL: California wins on medical pot law: Fourth District Court of Appeal upholds validity of state law over federal supremacy
Aug. 12--On July 31 California's Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed that California's medical marijuana laws are valid despite the fact that federal law does not make any provision for the medicinal use of marijuana. This means that state, county and local officials, whether they like the laws put in place by the people through the initiative process and later the Legislature are duty-bound ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Group of evangelicals, Catholics applauds Democrats' proposed abortion plank: It includes commitment to reduce number through prenatal care, income support, adoption programs
Aug. 12--It's not every day that you hear religious leaders praise Barack Obama and the Democratic Party for their anti-abortion stance. But today, a group of evangelicals and Catholics said they were encouraged by the proposed Democratic platform, which includes a commitment to reduce the number of abortions with prenatal care, income support and adoption programs.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Political-conduct rules might loosen for judges
Aug. 13--Although they run in partisan primaries and are popularly elected, judges in Ohio long have been barred from getting their hands dirty with some of the more political aspects of running for office. The Ohio Supreme Court now is proposing rules that would change that -- a little. The new setup won't happen until after this year's election, however. The proposed revisions to the Code of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Schwarzenegger sues California controller over pay cuts
Aug. 12--Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration sued Democratic state Controller John Chiang on Monday in an effort to cut pay for about 180,000 state employees by the end of August, moving the salary battle from the political arena to the courtroom. Chiang vowed to defy the Republican governor's pay instructions asking that 150,000 state employees receive the federal minimum wage of $6.55 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
City held in contempt of court over take-home vehicles
Aug. 12--A judge has held the city of Buffalo in contempt of court, a rare ruling that is prompting the city to temporarily return take-home vehicles to seven employees. City Hall's top attorney said the cars will be returned to the blue-collar workers by the end of today, but she vowed to appeal State Supreme Court Judge Timothy Drury's ruling. "We have been defending the city in hopes of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Preate files suit for those serving life sentences
Aug. 12--SCRANTON -- A Scranton attorney who once served as the state's top prosecutor has filed a federal lawsuit against the state Board of Pardons, alleging the board is violating the state constitution by arbitrarily refusing to grant clemency hearings to inmates serving life sentences. The lawsuit filed by attorney Ernest D. Preate Jr. alleges a merit review system implemented by the board ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Lesbian couple files for divorce: Fresno County sees likely first split since gay marriages began.
Aug. 12--A same-sex couple who were married in Fresno County on June 27 -- just 10 days after county clerks in California started issuing marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples -- has filed for divorce. The couple, Theresa Ramirez and Adelita Guajardo, are among more than 100 same-sex couples who applied for a marriage license in the county since June.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Texas officials initially estimated 70 charges against FLDS: Current number of cases unknown
Aug. 12--While Texas authorities were initially investigating 20 cases of sexual assault and 50 bigamy cases involving FLDS members, it's unclear how many of those cases remain open four months later. Texas Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Tela Mange confirmed the number of cases -- outlined in an April e-mail -- was accurate in the month officials raided the Yearning for Zion Ranch near ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
EDITORIAL: Duty of the state
Aug. 13--No surprise that the National Legal Aid & Defender Association would recommend that Ohio devote additional resources to providing lawyers for poor people charged with crimes. What was striking about the organization's report, conducted for Hamilton County and released last week, was the persuasiveness of its arguments. Ohio is out of step, and the victims aren't merely often ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Protesters sue again, seek more space: Two groups taking cases to state court
Aug. 12--REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION -- St. Paul is facing two new lawsuits related to protest activity at September's Republican National Convention. Both suits were announced Monday, each claiming a designated protest area, which will house a large stage with amplified sound for the duration of the Sept. 1-4 event, is inadequate. The suits also ask a Ramsey County judge to force the city to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Appeals court to consider interest on punitive damages in Exxon Valdez suit
WASHINGTON _ Once again, plaintiffs who have been waiting for a payout in the Exxon Valdez lawsuit will have to continue their wait. The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to decide whether Exxon Mobil Corp. should pay interest on punitive damages, which would nearly double the $507 million award punishing the company for its role in an oil spill that leaked 11 million gallons of crude oil ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Judge fined for improper actions: Board: He jailed without trial man who harassed his friend
Aug. 13--A Dakota County judge has been fined and reprimanded for jailing a man who harassed his friend without offering the man the right to a trial and a defense attorney. The Minnesota Board on Judicial Standards announced Tuesday it had issued a civil penalty of $1,000 to Judge Michael V. Sovis for failing to act impartially and failing to allow all parties the right to be heard.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Deserter to learn his fate
Aug. 13--Between phone calls Tuesday afternoon, Chuck Fager was at his computer creating a couple of signs for a rally in support of Fort Bragg deserter Jeremy Hinzman. Fager, who is director of the Quaker House in Fayetteville, plans to be ready no matter which decision is announced today on Hinzman's request for permission to remain in Canada on humanitarian grounds.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
More to story, says judge about rant: He wants panel hearing charges to know ?other facts.?
Aug. 12--An Allen Superior Court judge facing judicial misconduct charges and possible removal from office does not deny making derogatory comments to the family of a man sentenced in another judge's courtroom last year. But Judge Kenneth Scheibenberger wants the Indiana Supreme Court commission that will have a say in his fate to hear the whole story. "Judge Scheibenberger does not dispute the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Child's wish supreme in court
Aug. 13--NEW DELHI -- The court should ascertain wishes of a minor child before taking a final call on his or her custody, says the Supreme Court. Departing from the prevailing law a bench headed by Justice C K Thakker denied custody of a nine-year-old boy to his natural guardian, the father by permitting the child to live with his maternal grandparents. The father is facing trial for alleged ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Seeking justice in Guantanamo
Aug. 13--DOHA, Qatar -- Al Jazeera's Tom Ackerman reported from the Guantanamo Bay trial of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver. Here he examines what motivated Charles Swift, the US lawyer who defended him. After his sentencing, for the first time Salim Hamdan broke into a smile, hugged his lawyers, waved to the court observers and in his meagre English, said: "Bye-bye everybody." ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
New bench to hear Ghaziabad fund scam case
Aug. 13--NEW DELHI -- Yet another bench was constituted to hear the multi-crore Ghaziabad provident fund scam that allegedly involves 36 judges. The move came after an unprecedented spat last week between Justice BN Agrawal and former law minister Shanti Bhushan that led to the senior most judge of the Supreme Court withdrawing from the case. Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan has ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Dems win over religious leaders
Aug. 13--It's not every day that you hear religious leaders praise Barack Obama and the Democratic Party for their anti-abortion stance. But yesterday, a group of evangelicals and Catholics said they were encouraged by the proposed Democratic platform, which includes a commitment to reduce the number of abortions through prenatal care, income support and adoption programs.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Fairness in forensics
A Mississippi judge has recently taken the unusual step of allocating several thousand dollars in county funds so a defendant, accused of murdering a Jackson State University co-ed last November, can hire a forensic expert to examine the evidence in the case, scheduled for trial in September. With forensic evidence _ fingerprints, DNA, ballistics, bloodstain patterns, footwear analysis and the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Fighting threatens peace plan in Philippines
ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines _ Fierce fighting between Muslim rebels and the Filipino military over the past three days has dealt a setback to a peace plan aimed at ending the world's longest-running insurgency and raised fears of violence spreading elsewhere in the southern Philippines. The fighting, which has displaced at least 130,000 residents, began Sunday when Philippine armed forces ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
BRIEF: Duke asks court to dismiss lawsuit
Aug. 12--Duke Energy has asked a federal court to dismiss an environmentalists' lawsuit that aims to stop expansion of the Cliffside power plant west of Charlotte. The Southern Environmental Law Center, which has fought the addition of an 800-megawatt addition to Cliffside on behalf of five environmental groups, filed the suit July 16. The group claims Duke is violating the federal Clean Air Act ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Charter schools try to save themselves using tax dollars
Aug. 13--FAILURE -- or perceived failure -- is expensive. Just take a look at Renaissance Charter School, in business since 1999. In April, the School Reform Commission unanimously voted to begin the process of shutting down the Mount Airy school, citing years of sloppy management, high staff turnover and low student achievement. Since then, Renaissance officials, in a scramble to save the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Fairway man sues Time Warner over cable box rental requirement
Aug. 13--It irks Fairway resident Matthew Meeds that he has to rent a cable box from Time Warner Cable in order to watch premium channels. He'd rather buy one from a manufacturer of his own choosing. But Time Warner doesn't give him that option. Instead, like the company's other customers in the Kansas City area, Meeds must pay a monthly fee for the box. "I think that for most people, if they ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Ex-Blues chief sues state: Jews claims decision to cut severance deal is unconstitutional
Aug. 13--William L. Jews, the former chief executive officer of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, has sued Maryland's top insurance regulator over its decision to deny him about $9 million in severance and other pay, calling the regulatory move unconstitutional. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore this week, takes issue with a ruling last month by state Insurance Commissioner ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Schools told to let Christian group in rent-free: A federal judge granted an injunction, saying the school district's fee policy is unconstitutional.
Aug. 12--NEWPORT NEWS -- A federal judge has ordered Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools to stop charging a Christian group to use one of its schools as a meeting place while a lawsuit against the school district is under way. In granting a preliminary injunction requested by the Child Evangelism Fellowship of Virginia, U.S. District Judge Raymond A.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Decision to seek death penalty draws strong reaction
Aug. 12--CHAPEL HILL -- The last time a defendant received the death penalty in Orange County was more than 35 years ago. And the attorney who defended that man -- and who had the sentence ultimately overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court -- said Monday "that's not a bad thing." "I'm an opponent of the death penalty, and have been for years," said attorney Bob Epting, "and I believe that Orange ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
EDITORIAL: MILF leadership must show sincerity
Aug. 12--The leadership of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front has failed to prove its sincerity in seeking to make peace reign in Mindanao. A senior leader of the organization, Eid Kabalu, is the designated MILF spokesman. He is a familiar face, voice and name in newspapers and broadcast media. He has blamed the government military and civilian volunteers for the MILF's failure to withdraw ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Ranchers seek solution to conservation easement jam: A Denver lawyer says a lawsuit might be the best answer.
Aug. 12--SWINK -- Landowners in the Lower Arkansas Valley are searching for options now that some conservation easements have been deemed invalid by the Colorado Department of Revenue. One tactic under consideration is a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service and the state of Colorado. On Monday, about 50 Southern Colorado landowners, who have either had trouble selling tax credits from ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Panel: Deny funds to errant colleges
Aug. 12--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court-appointed Raghavan Committee has suggested to the University Grants Commission (UGC) to link release of grants to educational institutions with the compliance of the apex court directions to curb ragging in colleges. The suggestion is made in wake of the regulatory bodies expressing their helplessness to prevent ragging in colleges.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Mar asks SC to stop signing of peace pact
Aug. 12--Sen. Manuel "Mar" Roxas 2nd asked the Supreme Court on Monday to stop the government from pushing through with what he called as an unconstitutional memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain that Malacanang had planned to sign with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The government welcomed the motion for intervention filed by Roxas, saying the move will further clarify the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
City takes offensive against drug houses: Appleton Ave. building subject of lawsuit
Aug. 13--For city officials, the events of June 29 were the last straw at 7251 W. Appleton Ave. Five armed men were ransacking a first-floor apartment when a woman who lived in another unit walked in on them, according to a lawsuit. The intruders tortured her with a Taser before realizing they were in the wrong apartment. Then they went down the hall and kicked in the door of apartment No.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Lawsuit by Danieal's parents called 'disgusting'
Aug. 13--Two of the city's top officials yesterday expressed outrage over the filing of a civil lawsuit by the parents of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly, who were recently criminally charged in the girl's death. "This is unfortunately one of the most insane, obscene and disgusting things I've heard in all my public life," Mayor Nutter said after an unrelated news conference yesterday.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 13, 2008
Brower Piven Encourages Investors Who Have Losses in Excess of $100,000 From Investment in Reddy Ice Holdings, Inc. to Inquire About the Lead Plaintiff Position in Securities Fraud Class Action Lawsuit Before the October 7, 2008 Lead Plaintiff Deadline
Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation announces that a class action lawsuit has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of purchasers of the common stock of Reddy Ice Holdings, Inc. ("Reddy Ice" or the "Company") (NYSE: FRZ) during the period between August 10, 2005 and March 6, 2008, inclusive ...
MarketWire - Aug 12, 2008
Schwarzenegger sues to cut state salaries for missed budget deadline
SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger filed suit Monday to force the slashing of state salaries each time legislators bust their annual budget deadline _ a move he hopes will transform a debilitating political dynamic. By opting to go to court, Schwarzenegger may well be conceding no pay cuts will happen this year, since the legal process is likely to be protracted.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 11, 2008
Arrest made in '75 slaying: DNA leads to new suspect in killing of Emporia teacher; man now dead was convicted
Aug. 12--The 1975 rape and killing of an 88-year-old Emporia woman may have been solved by a pioneering DNA project aimed at clearing people wrongly convicted decades ago. Thomas Pope Jr., 53, of Emporia was arrested yesterday and charged with rape and first-degree murder in the Jan. 2, 1975, death of Eva King Jones, a retired teacher attacked in her home across North Main Street from the police ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Esch urges focus on Afghan-Pakistani border
Aug. 12--Fresh off a trip to Afghanistan, congressional candidate Jim Esch said the United States is not focused on the job of fighting terrorists hiding in the border region with Pakistan. Esch, the Democrat running against Republican incumbent Lee Terry in Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District, said terrorists are regrouping in the mountainous border region and flushing them out is in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
N.C. renews bid to cut air pollution: The state revives a battle with EPA over pollution that blows in from other states
Aug. 12--North Carolina wants federal air regulators to require power plants to cut pollution that is wafting into the state and is renewing a legal bid to force 13 states to curb pollution. The state attorney general and two environmental organizations filed a motion Monday asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia for an immediate hearing.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Inmates' attorney calls jail system 'unsafe': Class-action lawsuit dates to 1977, targets treatment, conditions
Aug. 11--Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's tough-guy policies spawned pink underwear, chain gangs and two meals a day for jail inmates, as well as an international media following. He's parlayed the jail's reputation as a hell-hole into four terms in office. But now that a 30-year-old federal lawsuit alleging unconstitutionally inhumane treatment for inmates in his jails has been re-energized ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 11, 2008
Disbarred attorney admits to fraud count: Real estate lawyer misused client funds in escrow accounts
Aug. 12--ALBANY -- An Albany-area attorney who recently was disbarred by a state appeals court for misusing client funds pleaded guilty to a related bank fraud charge Monday in U.S. District Court. William F. Tessitore, 60, a real estate attorney and married father of two children, faces a maximum of 30 years in prison for his conviction, but he is likely to receive substantially less ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Mar asks SC to stop signing of peace pact
Aug. 12--Sen. Manuel "Mar" Roxas 2nd asked the Supreme Court on Monday to stop the government from pushing through with what he called as an unconstitutional memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain that Malacanang had planned to sign with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The government welcomed the motion for intervention filed by Roxas, saying the move will further clarify the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Panel: Deny funds to errant colleges
Aug. 12--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court-appointed Raghavan Committee has suggested to the University Grants Commission (UGC) to link release of grants to educational institutions with the compliance of the apex court directions to curb ragging in colleges. The suggestion is made in wake of the regulatory bodies expressing their helplessness to prevent ragging in colleges.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Looking back on John McCain's visit to Lima
Aug. 11--Now, to the important things when it comes to rehashing John McCain's visit to Lima last week. Like, how long did McCain talk? Was anyone turned away? Why did they pick the Civic Center to host the event? And, most of all, where did Mc-Cain have lunch? That last question is actually a nobrainer, given this is Lima, Ohio. Mc-Cain may call himself a "maverick" politician who will go ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 11, 2008
Q&A: Tribal lawyer says there's a united front on California gambling
Aug. 11--Howard Dickstein is a tribal lawyer who fought major casino expansions that voters approved for four Southern California tribes. He is sounding an alarm over prospects of an initiative to overturn a state Supreme Court ruling by restoring state lottery Keno games. The Bee talked with him about gambling in California. Gov. Schwarzenegger's office is now adamant it doesn't support ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 11, 2008
Sabio under fire in SC investigation
Aug. 12--CHAIRMAN Camilo Sabio of the Presidential Commission on Good Government tried to influence his younger brother, Court of Appeals Justice Jose Sabio, to take the side of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) in its intra-corporate war with the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco). Justice Sabio, who is five years younger than Chairman Sabio, admitted Monday before the three-man Supreme ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Death for tourist killers
Aug. 12--NEW DELHI -- Terming the rape and murder case of the Australian woman Dawn Emilie Griggs as "rarest of rare", a city court on Monday sent the two convicts -- cab driver Jyotish Prasad (28) and his friend Ashish Kumar -- to gallows. "To be hanged till death," said Additional Sessions Judge Vinod Kumar. His words came as a shock to the mother of the main convict, Prasad, who could not ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Protesters sue again, seek more space: Two groups taking cases to state court
Aug. 12--REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION -- St. Paul is facing two new lawsuits related to protest activity at September's Republican National Convention. Both suits were announced Monday, each claiming a designated protest area, which will house a large stage with amplified sound for the duration of the Sept. 1-4 event, is inadequate. The suits also ask a Ramsey County judge to force the city to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Lure of land gives way to frustration
Aug. 12--SIERRA BLANCA -- Weathered skin hanging over her petite frame, June Ellingson says she is happy with the desert home that leaves her perched precariously close to death nearly every day. "It's quiet, peaceful," she says, flashing a two-toothed grin. "I can look out and see the stars at night and almost count them as they pop out." But when night gives way to another scorching day, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
St. Paul sues to recover investment money: The city wants almost $1 million, as well as punitive damages, because it says Merrill Lynch did not disclose the risk. The broker said the investment was legal.
Aug. 12--St. Paul is suing its longtime investment broker to recoup money lost in a risky investment that the city claims it was misled into making. The city says Merrill Lynch knowingly sold it an investment -- backed by risky mortgage loans and originated in the Cayman Islands -- that is unauthorized under Minnesota law. Merrill Lynch maintains that the investment was legal.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Conporec Requests Procedures with Respect of the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act
Conporec Inc. (TSX VENTURE: CNX)(ALTERNEXT: ALCNX) ("Conporec" or the "Company"), announces today that the Company requested and obtained an initial ordinance from the Court under the terms of the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA). Until this initial 30 days period or until any other delay decided by the Court, this ordinance aims the Canadian activities of Conporec but do not affect ...
MarketWire - Aug 11, 2008
Brower Piven Encourages Investors Who Have Losses in Excess of $250,000 From Investment in SemGroup Energy Partners, L.P. to Inquire About the Lead Plaintiff Position in Securities Fraud Class Action Lawsuit Before the September 19, 2008 Lead Plaintiff eadline
Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation announces that a class action lawsuit has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of purchasers of the common units of SemGroup Energy Partners, L.P. ("SGLP" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: SGLP) during the period between July 17, 2007 and July 17, 2008, ...
MarketWire - Aug 11, 2008
Six Flags pursues plan to sell beer in the park
Aug. 12--Six Flags has quietly submitted its application to the state to sell liquor at its two Arlington parks, but protesters will have their chance to be heard by a judge later this year. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has set a protest hearing for Oct. 14-15 in Fort Worth, where an administrative judge will listen to testimony for and against the application.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Governments of Canada and Nova Scotia Sign an Agreement for Electronic Monitoring Technology
The Honourable Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety along with the Honourable Len Goucher, Minister of Immigration for Nova Scotia, on behalf of the Honourable Cecil Clarke, Attorney General and Minister of Justice for Nova Scotia, today announced an agreement for the use of Nova Scotia's electronic monitoring systems in a pilot program for federal offenders.
MarketWire - Aug 11, 2008
Government Initiates Electronic Monitoring for Federal Offenders
The Honourable Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety today announced that the Government of Canada is launching a program to electronically monitor federal offenders. The Honourable Stockwell Day, Minister of Public Safety today announced that the Government of Canada is launching a program to electronically monitor federal offenders. "This initiative will better protect communities and ...
MarketWire - Aug 11, 2008
Danieal Kelly's parents, charged in her death, are suing for damages
Aug. 12--WHAT A MESS! The parents of 14-year-old Danieal Kelly face criminal charges in connection with her death, but have now also filed a lawsuit against their criminal co-defendants, blaming them for the girl's demise. Danieal, as a recent Philadelphia District Attorney's Office's grand-jury report so gut-wrenchingly detailed, died two years ago of starvation while lying in her own feces, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Texas Bus Crash Could Have Been Prevented, Attorney Says
The attorney who helped win one of the most The attorney who helped win one of the most notable bus crash lawsuits in Texas history says a Houston bus company and one of its drivers are likely to blame for the recent deadly bus crash near the Texas-Oklahoma border that has claimed the lives of 17 passengers so far. Attorney Mark Werbner of Dallas' Sayles Werbner says the allegations that the ...
MarketWire - Aug 11, 2008
Lawsuits, foes derail biolab schedule
Aug. 12--Boston University conceded yesterday its high-security anti-bioterrorism lab won't be opening on time due to all the legal wrangling surrounding the controverisal project. But that won't stop Boston University Medical Center from conducting mock "emergency" drills and training early next year to test its public safety and health procedures. The $178 million lab, where the university ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 12, 2008
Courts keeping cases secret: District judges sealing many documents
Aug. 10--View an interactive map of sealed records from each county. Oklahoma's district court judges are sealing thousands of court cases and documents -- mostly because attorneys simply asked them to. More than 2,300 cases statewide have received a judge's order to make at least one record in the file not available to the public, according to a Tulsa World analysis going back to 2003.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Court of eye appeal: Halls of Judicial Center decked with a corpus of delectable works
Aug. 10--The business of the Ohio Supreme Court is legal, but its pleasure is artistic. More than 170 artworks -- with more on the way -- grace the Ohio Judicial Center at 65 S. Front St., Downtown. From Hocking Hills landscapes to Aminah Robinson paintings, pieces by (mostly) Ohio artists have been donated, lent or bought for the 1933 building -- renovated to become the court's home in 2004. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Gay divorce cases complicated by differences in state, federal law
BOSTON _ Sometimes the joy of same-sex marriage is followed by the pain of divorce, but Peter Zupcofska is there to help. In Boston, he's become known as "the master of gay divorce." For a $25,000 retainer, he can lead couples through the intricacies of how best to break up. Zupcofska said divorces presented gay couples with a new opportunity "to make things right" when a relationship ended. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Brain surgeon returns to town: High malpractice insurance rates forced him out
Aug. 10--BELLEVILLE -- One of the region's top neurosurgeons plans to re-open his practice in Belleville next month after a five-year absence. Dr. William W. Sprich, 56, said he expects to start seeing patients Sept. 2 at his new office at Belleville Memorial Hospital. Sprich closed his Belleville office in the summer of 2003 and relocated to St. Mary's Hospital in Clayton, Mo.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Law students to work on freeing innocent inmates
Aug. 10--The odds will be steep, the clients reviled and the long path ahead is already marked by rejection and failure. But that's just fine when the potential payoff is freedom and justice, said University of Michigan law professors David Moran and Bridget McCormack. Moran and McCormack are spending the summer setting up the Michigan Innocence Clinic, a student law clinic to challenge what ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
EDITORIAL: Odd Hamdan trial raises disturbing questions
Aug. 10--The curious trial of Osama bin Laden's driver raises still more doubts about the Bush administration's handling of terrorism-related cases. Bush personally approved the idea of sending the driver, Salim Hamdan, to trial under the controversial military commission system that gives big advantages to the prosecution. The prosecution then portrayed Hamdan as a terrorist conspirator, a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
EDITORIAL: Verdict for America
Aug. 10--One of the darkest eras in the history of the American system of jurisprudence finally has resulted in something that looks like justice. A military tribunal last week acquitted Salim Hamdan, who was a driver for Osama Bin Laden, of conspiracy to engage in terror, the more serious of two charges brought against him. He was convicted on a lesser count of providing material support to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Utah crime victims gaining more clout
Aug. 10--Crime victims have long depended on prosecutors for justice. But Peggy Hay and Patricia Hay, sisters-in-law who were left widows by a reckless driver, say a plea bargain approved by the former Duchesne County attorney denied them theirs. Now they want the Utah Supreme Court to rule their rights were violated and overturn the deal. From speaking up at sentencings to conferring with ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Widows' fight over plea deal goes to top Utah court: Ex-Duchesne County attorney misrepresented their stand on driver's plea in double fatal, they say
Aug. 10--In February 2005, John and Patricia Hay celebrated his retirement and her birthday by taking a trip to Las Vegas with his brother and sister-in-law, Dan and Peggy Hay. The four were headed home to Colorado, on Highway 40 in Duchesne County, when driver Brandon R. Lane, trying to pass a semitrailer, hit the Hays' Jeep head-on, court records said. The brothers were killed instantly and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Support of McCain fuels talk that Lieberman might once again be a VP candidate
WASHINGTON _ If a few votes had shifted eight years ago, Joseph Lieberman might now be the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Instead, the Connecticut senator, who won re-election in 2006 as an independent, is one of Republican John McCain's more potent political weapons, maybe even potent enough to make another run at vice president, this time as a Republican.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Law school taking no new students this fall
Aug. 10--The Barkley School of Law won't accept any new students when classes resume Aug. 18 and will offer limited classes for about 20 previously enrolled students. Those changes are part of an effort by the school's new owners and dean to overcome the past and establish credibility. "I want to make it as clear as possible that this is not just a name change (from the American Justice School ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Govt shelves bill against corrupt judges
Aug. 11--NEW DELHI -- A bill empowering people to complain against corrupt judges will remain a pipe-dream. The government has shelved a move that would have made it mandatory for the judiciary to put in place a mechanism to probe corruption against judges for the first time. Succumbing to pressure from its allies keen to avoid a confrontation with the judiciary, the UPA government has frozen ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 11, 2008
Public defender race heats up: It is the first contested race for the office in the history of the 1st Judicial Circuit
Aug. 10--For the first time in the history of Florida's 1st Judicial Circuit, there is a contested race for public defender. And it's gotten ugly. With the Aug. 26 primary looming, Republican candidates James Owens and Kelly Merritt Richards aren't holding back their criticism of one another. Owens accuses Merritt Richards of being an insider who will maintain the " status quo" in an office ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Mayor's suit dropped: Counts against Roger McMillian dismissed by federal judge
Aug. 10--Stillwater Mayor Roger McMillian has been dismissed from a sexual harassment lawsuit. The charges were dismissed with prejudice Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. "With prejudice" means the plaintiffs cannot re-file the claim against McMillian. McMillian declined comment Friday night. He did issue a written statement earlier (see page A3).
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Son battled officers; now mom fights suit: Year after Shingle Springs shootout, deputies seek $8 million from widow
Aug. 10--A carved post and a boulder mark the place where Eddie Mies gunned down his dad last year on the family's rustic homestead in Shingle Springs. Up the hill a little farther, among the dusty pines and chaparral, stands another wooden post and a cairn of smaller rocks. This is where Mies, who was 34, died of bullet wounds from the ensuing gunbattle with El Dorado County deputies.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Faculty complaints: Chancellor nullifies grievance panel findings
Aug. 10--Since losing his job at the University of Missouri, Horstmeier has been working out of state. On this particular trip, he also weighed his options after Chancellor Brady Deaton overturned a grievance panel decision that Horstmeier believes vindicated him. Horstmeier claimed he lost his job as the result of a university rule violation, because he suffered in a hostile work environment, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Jitters drove energy deal: Nervous analysts urged power plant settlement
Aug. 10--Fielding calls from folks on Wall Street isn't in the typical job description for someone working for a conservation group. But the calls were about the costliest construction project in state history, the $2.3 billion We Energies power plant being built in Oak Creek. Jittery stock analysts visited with representatives of Clean Wisconsin in Madison this spring, wanting to know whether ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Land records go online -- but they're pricey: Many court clerks require contracts, with advance payments of up to $960
Aug. 10--Searching real estate property records online instead of wasting valuable time and gas driving to the local courthouse makes perfect sense to Reed Adams, whose job requires frequent document checks. "With the cost of gas right now, it's an excellent saving for us," said Adams, director of land surveying for the civil engineering firm of Koontz-Bryant PC.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
BRIEF: People on the move
Aug. 10----Kemp Smith: Jeanne "Cezy" Collins, a partner at Kemp Smith law firm, was recently appointed by the Texas State Bar to the Texas Access to Justice Commission for a three-year term. The commission was created in 2001 by the Supreme Court of Texas to develop and implement policy initiatives to expand access to and enhance the quality of justice in civil legal matters for low-income ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Lawyer says legal climate not hurting business
Aug. 10--Beckley attorney Thomas Rist feels the legal profession is taking an unfair shellacking by special interest groups that blame lawyers for West Virginia's dead-last ranking by Forbes magazine in doing business. And Rist, while only 31, has the experience to make comparisons. Early on in his career, he practiced law, and still holds a license to do so, in California, juggling his time ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Law clinic preparing Page Mill database: Tenant petitions to be filed to rent board
Aug. 10--As she sat with her 2-year-old son Jorge in an East Palo Alto law clinic Thursday morning, 45-year-old Juana Yanez was in a real bind. Her landlord, Page Mill Properties, has raised the rent for her studio twice since November from $600 to $1,250 effective Sept. 1. "I called them because I thought it was a mistake," Yanez said. "And they never returned my call." Yanez's plight caught ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Irving criticized as it plots its own course to get water from Oklahoma
Aug. 10--The small town of Hugo, Okla., has excess water it wants to sell. The thriving and thirsty city of Irving wants to buy it. Sounds easy enough, right? Yet a deal reached this week by the Dallas suburb to buy millions of gallons a year from the southeast Oklahoma city has officials fretting on both sides of the Red River and clouds a long-term plan by a sprawling North Texas water ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Looking back on John McCain's visit to Lima
Aug. 11--Now, to the important things when it comes to rehashing John McCain's visit to Lima last week. Like, how long did McCain talk? Was anyone turned away? Why did they pick the Civic Center to host the event? And, most of all, where did Mc-Cain have lunch? That last question is actually a nobrainer, given this is Lima, Ohio. Mc-Cain may call himself a "maverick" politician who will go ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 11, 2008
Lawsuit says real estate company is anti-children
Aug. 11--To view a copy of the lawsuit, click here. LAS CRUCES -- A Las Cruces woman has sued a real estate company here, alleging she suffered discrimination when the company refused to rent a property to her after learning she had grandchildren. Mary L. Hernandez of Las Cruces filed suit Wednesday in federal court, against Monarch Real Estate Corp. The El Paso-based Border Fair Housing and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 11, 2008
Hamilton County Sheriff-elect Jim Hammond prepares for 'tons of challenges'
Aug. 10--Hamilton County Sheriff-elect Jim Hammond defeated three opponents in Thursday night's election, winning by more than a 2-to-1 margin over Democrat Greg Beck. Mr. Hammond, 64, who previously served as the county's chief deputy, pledged to greet each of his employees, as well as form a coalition to tackle school violence. He succeeds former Sheriff Billy Long who resigned in February and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
11,000 couples later, gay marriage largely a nonevent in Massachusetts
BOSTON _ When Michele Frost and Mary Helen Walker enrolled their 3-year-old daughter, Shea, in preschool, it required a change in the school application form. But it was no big deal: Officials simply substituted the words "mother" and "father" with "Parent 1" and "Parent 2." When they got their marriage license, city employees behind the counter were more interested in the child than they were ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
18 protective orders under wraps: Critic says sealed records are possibly dangerous.
Aug. 10--In Tulsa County, 18 protective orders have been sought by unknown people against unknown assailants with an unknown outcome. Even the judge is not listed. Oklahoma County has six such protective order cases and one with a protective order issued against an unnamed person. This is unfair to the public and possibly dangerous, according to Joey Senat, former president of Freedom of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 10, 2008
Some sex offenders can live by schools: 2003 law doesn't apply if crimes were before then
Aug. 11--The Franklin County sheriff's office has a list of 231 sex offenders who live within 1,000 feet of a school or a day-care center. But most of them likely won't have to move because the Ohio Supreme Court determined in February that the 2003 law that bans them from living near schools doesn't apply if they committed their crime before the law took effect.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 11, 2008
Q&A: Tribal lawyer says there's a united front on California gambling
Aug. 11--Howard Dickstein is a tribal lawyer who fought major casino expansions that voters approved for four Southern California tribes. He is sounding an alarm over prospects of an initiative to overturn a state Supreme Court ruling by restoring state lottery Keno games. The Bee talked with him about gambling in California. Gov. Schwarzenegger's office is now adamant it doesn't support ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 11, 2008
Honduran Chi executed for 2001 Arlington murder
Aug. 8--HUNTSVILLE -- Heliberto Chi, the native Honduran who shot an Arlington store manager in the back during an after-hours robbery in 2001, was executed Thursday evening after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch appeal to spare his life. Chi, 29, was prounounced dead at 6:25 p.m. while the two sons of his victim witnessed the lethal injection in a tiny room adjacent to the death ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
State workers union sues over Schwarzenegger's job cuts
Aug. 7--The largest state employees union filed a lawsuit Wednesday in Sacramento Superior Court alleging that the state mishandled its termination of some temporary and part-time employees last week, potentially costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. The state is still processing some exit paychecks due last week for employees and will be forced to pay them additional compensation because it ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Move against Musharraf threatens Pakistan turmoil
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan _ The leaders of Pakistan's ruling coalition Thursday said they'd impeach President Pervez Musharraf, a move that could ignite a political firestorm even as the government is under mounting American pressure to crack down on Islamic insurgents allied with al-Qaida. A political battle could push nuclear-armed Pakistan into protracted turmoil; prevent its shaky civilian ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
It's a rich man's court: House panel
Aug. 8--NEW DELHI -- In the court of law, some appear to be more equal than others. That's what a parliamentary panel believes is the case in the India. High profile corporate disputes are getting preference in courts at the cost of poor people, who cannot afford the highly paid lawyers in their fight for justice and have to suffer endless delays, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
Court rules against federal judge
Aug. 8--EL PASO -- U.S. District Judge Frank Montalvo had no right to keep three men implicated in the public corruption investigation from hiring whomever they wanted as a lawyer because the men have never appeared before the judge, a court ruling that became public Thursday states. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that Montalvo did not have the jurisdiction to keep El Paso ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
Clemens seeks to keep suit in Houston
Aug. 8--Rusty Hardin will file a motion in federal court today arguing that Roger Clemens' defamation suit against Brian McNamee should remain in Houston. "We basically filed a brief that says if you injure someone in Houston, Texas, you should properly be held accountable in Houston," Hardin said. "McNamee slandered Roger in Houston, and that's where the injury occurred." McNamee told former ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
Anthrax victim's widow convinced dead suspect was the killer: Widow of Boca Raton victim is convinced FBI pinpointed correct suspect
Aug. 8--WEST PALM BEACH -- The widow of anthrax victim Bob Stevens, a tabloid photo editor who worked in Boca Raton and was the first victim to die, says she is satisfied the FBI pinpointed the right man in the 2001 attacks. Over the years since her husband's death, Maureen Stevens has periodically expressed doubts about whether the case would ever be solved, even as she sought more information ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
Recall vote aimed at easing tensions exacerbates instability in Bolivia
COCHABAMBA, Bolivia _ More than once, President Evo Morales' jet has been forced to divert when opponents stormed an airport and declared: You're not landing here. Thousands of supporters of the leftist Morales, meanwhile, had this state's opposition governor fleeing for his life when they set fire to his government office building. With civil and calm dialogue in short supply, both sides hope ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
State suing lending giant: Countrywide ?stacked the deck'
Aug. 7--HARTFORD -- Adding to the growing list of legal and financial woes swirling around beleaguered Countrywide Financial Corp., Attorney General Richard Blumenthal Wednesday sued the mortgage giant for allegedly luring consumers into deceptive loans they could not afford and c h a r g i n g e x c e s s i v e fees. The lawsuit, filed in Superior C o u r t i n H a r t f o r d , seeks ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Baird Hails Successful Conclusion to Elephant Ivory Smuggling Sting
Canada's Environment Minister John Baird today congratulated Canadian and American enforcement officers for a big victory in the battle against international elephant ivory smuggling. Canada's Environment Minister John Baird today congratulated Canadian and American enforcement officers for a big victory in the battle against international elephant ivory smuggling.
MarketWire - Aug 7, 2008
Lewis-Palmer grad's 'Jesus speech' lawsuit thrown out
Aug. 7--Lewis-Palmer School District 38 did not violate the First Amendment rights of a 2006 graduate when it disciplined her for mentioning Jesus Christ in a valedictorian speech, a federal judge has ruled. The former student, Erica Corder, said Thursday she is considering an appeal. U.S. District Court Judge Walker D. Miller dismissed the lawsuit Corder filed in August 2007 accusing the school ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Legal Aid helps the down and out
Aug. 7--DURHAM -- It is common knowledge that Durham and many other counties have public defenders to assist poor criminal defendants. However, it is less well known that free legal help also is available for low-income people with civil woes, such as victims of identity theft and those with looming house foreclosures, mountains of consumer debt and other wallet-numbing nightmares.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Lawyer admits transporting prostitute across state lines for Jesters convention
Aug. 7--A former state court law clerk admitted Thursday that he drove a prostitute to Ashland, Ky., in his motor home in 2005, and agreed to cooperate with an ongoing federal investigation of the nationwide fraternal order that was meeting there at the time. Michael R. Stebick, 60, pleaded guilty to a felony conspiracy count alleging he transported the unnamed woman across state lines for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Ultraman deal gets zapped
Aug. 7--Media Network Retail Co (MNR) has cancelled a plan to buy the rights to the Japanese superhero Ultraman for distribution in Thailand from Tsuburaya Productions despite the settlement of a decade-long legal dispute in the Japanese company's favour. Tsuburaya demanded that MNR fight on its behalf more than 10 cases now in court over the copyright of the superhero, said Samart ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Judges call for extensive reforms
Aug. 7--Santa Clara County's two top juvenile court judges are calling for sweeping reforms of the dependency courts far beyond what a statewide commission is considering, contending the current child welfare system designed to protect children from abuse "often does more harm than good." Judges Patrick Tondreau and Katherine Lucero wrote to a commission studying problems in the state's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Osteen suit: Faith in jury, not in God
Aug. 8--It turns out that the latest Trial of the Century, Continental flight attendant Sharon Brown's lawsuit seeking 10 percent of Victoria Osteen's net worth, is not primarily over hemorrhoids and Brown's loss of faith in God. Not that those two things aren't worth a tithe of the millions Osteen has earned with her husband, Joel, as co-pastor of Lakewood Church, one of the largest in the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
Questions and answers about Kilpatrick's decision
Aug. 7--Following are some questions raised by Wednesday's decision by Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to waive his preliminary examination in Detroit's 36th District Court and take his criminal case directly to Wayne County Circuit Court. QUESTION: What does it mean that Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty, his former chief of staff, intend to waive their preliminary examinations? ANSWER: The ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Judge to weigh Garden City Hotel proposal
Aug. 8--The controversy over $4 million in tax breaks for the potential buyer of the Garden City Hotel is now in the hands of a judge. State Supreme Court Justice F. Dana Winslow yesterday heard arguments from attorneys for the Garden City school district, the village, the hotel's owners and buyers, the Hempstead Industrial Development Agency and the Nassau County assessor.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
EDITORIAL: There is no substitute for hard evidence
Aug. 7--The judiciary seems to be caught in two minds about banning the Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi), going by the ping-pong decisions coming out of courts. On Tuesday, a special tribunal of the Delhi High Court lifted the ban on Simi, saying that the government had failed to provide sufficient evidence to justify continued curbs on the fundamentalist group.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Man executed for 1991 robbery, murder in Arlington
Aug. 8--A man convicted of the 1991 aggravated robbery and murder of an Arlington store manager was executed Thursday at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Walls Unit. Heliberto Chi, 29, was pronounced dead at 6:25 p.m., less than three hours after the Supreme Court denied his final appeal in a 9-0 vote. "Heliberto Chi was executed Thursday for the 2001 slaying of Armand Paliotta, the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
SC stays tribunal order lifting ban on SIMI
Aug. 7--NEW DELHI -- Eleven hours after a court lifted the ban on the Islamic student body SIMI, an unidentified man opened a creaking, cobwebbed door inside a three-storey building at Zakir Nagar's lane no. 9 -- after six years. The furniture is crumbling and the air is musty. The man who opened the door refuses to say who is, jumps on a motorcycle and speeds away.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Profile: Pervez Musharraf
Aug. 8--DOHA, Qatar -- When asked in an interview with Al Jazeera's Darren Jordan early in 2007 what he would like his legacy as president of Pakistan to be, Pervez Musharraf said he wanted to be remembered as a "reformer and developer." "[Pakistanis] must remember me as a reformer and developer, someone who saved them from catastrophe and introduced sustainable democracy," he said.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
Female football player, mother file lawsuit
Aug. 7--EVANSVILLE -- A former football player at Evansville High School and her mother have filed a federal lawsuit alleging discrimination by coaches and staff. Ivyanne Elborough broke her clavicle as a freshman member of the football team last year. The lawsuit alleges Elborough was injured because she was told to practice without safety equipment, even though the rest of the team was wearing ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Lawyer-judge showdown in Supreme Court
Aug. 8--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court on Thursday witnessed an unprecedented spat between its second senior-most judge and former Law Minister Shanti Bhushan. The showdown took place during the hearing of multi-crore Provident Fund scam, involving 36 judges of the Allahabad High Court and Gaziabad district court. Stung by the senior advocate's remark that Supreme Court was protecting corrupt ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
Little legal recourse for breast-feeding mom
Aug. 8--A mother doesn't have much legal recourse if she's asked to stop breast-feeding in a public place -- as Jessica Denny learned at a Berea McDonald's on Wednesday. Kentucky's 2006 law that prohibits interfering with a breast-feeding woman doesn't carry any penalties. But it could form the basis of a lawsuit, said Lexington attorney Robert Abell. Denny, who was asked to leave the McDonald's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
Career over, legacy lingers: City faces possible fines in two situations linked to ex-DPW chief McTygue
Aug. 8--SARATOGA SPRINGS -- The Thomas McTygue era may be coming back to bite the city. The Appellate Division of state Supreme Court ruled last week that the former public works commissioner violated the constitutional rights of Ken Mar Development by arbitrarily blocking its access to a lot it owned in 2006. It said the developer may seek compensatory damages against the city and McTygue, and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
S.C. Supreme Court denies Willis' appeal
Aug. 8--FLORENCE -- The S.C. Supreme Court has denied Florence Mayor Frank Willis' appeal in which he sought a new Democratic mayoral primary against Stephen J. Wukela. "Once the court rules, that's it -- it's over," Willis said after the ruling was announced Thursday. Wukela, with 1,469 votes, defeated Willis by one vote in the certified tally from the primary.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
Municipal judge faces misconduct charges from stay-away order
Aug. 8--Municipal Judge James DeLeon is facing misconduct charges for allegedly issuing an improper "stay away order" to assist an acquaintance. The charges leveled by the state Judicial Conduct Board yesterday could lead to a reprimand, suspension or dismissal from the bench. Samuel Stretton, DeLeon's attorney, said that his client will admit to the facts charged in the board's complaint, and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
Honduran Chi executed for 2001 Arlington murder
Aug. 7--HUNTSVILLE -- Heliberto Chi, the native Honduran who shot an Arlington store manager in the back during an after-hours robbery in 2001, was executed Thursday evening after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch appeal to spare his life. Chi, 29, was prounounced dead at 6:25 p.m. while the two sons of his victim witnessed the lethal injection in a tiny room adjacent to the death ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Gun owners arm themselves with advocacy group
Aug. 7--As the District prepares to fight double-barreled attempts to loosen its gun-control laws, some of the city's gun rights pioneers have done what folks in Washington do best -- they have formed a lobbying group. About a dozen residents have pledged their support to Capital Gun Owners, a new D.C.-based gun advocacy and education group headed by Northwest resident Amy McVey.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Sex offender's suit over registry change dismissed
Aug. 8--Is a sex offender registry a tool for community safety, or punishment by public shame? A lawsuit filed against New York State last year by a convicted sex offender, which was dismissed in federal court in Central Islip on Monday, argues that the registry can be abused as punishment instead of its original public service purpose, and that extending the registration period is a violation ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
Cornfield raises hackles in Wales: Fines, legal action possible in dispute over land use
Aug. 8--WALES -- The kettle is hot, but the corn isn't popping just yet. Threats of daily fines and a lawsuit, all over a 7-acre stand of corn, have people talking in the small village of Wales, just west of Waukesha. Property owner Kent Hanson says the corn crop is better for the community than a plot of unchecked, unsightly weeds. Village President Jeffrey Flaws wants the corn taken out ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
BRIEF: Court disbars dishonest lawyer: William F. Tessitore quits after admitting taking client's money
Aug. 8--ALBANY -- An Albany-area attorney has been disbarred after a "substantial conversion" of client funds, a state appeals court said Thursday. William F. Tessitore, a lawyer since 1991, also resigned from practice, according to the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court. The court ordered Tessitore to immediately cease practicing law. The decision said Tessitore "disclosed the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
Troy OKs Rensselaer water deal: Pact settles lawsuit, sets $1.7M in payments on bill dating back to 1998
Aug. 8--TROY -- The city of Rensselaer's decade-old water debt will finally be paid off under the terms of an agreement approved 9-0 Thursday night by the Troy City Council. Rensselaer will pay Troy $1.7 million in fees, interest and penalties for water bills unpaid since 1998. The settlement resolves a lawsuit brought in March 2007 by Troy against Rensselaer in state Supreme Court.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 8, 2008
Federman & Sherwood Announces to All Current Owners of Magma Design Automation, Inc. (NASDAQ: LAVA) Common Stock
YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED that the Parties YOU ARE HEREBY NOTIFIED that the Parties to a shareholder derivative action styled Susan Willis v. Rajeev Madhavan, et al.; Civil Action No. 1:05-CV-045834 (Superior Court of CA, County of Santa Clara) (the "Derivative Action") have entered into a Stipulation and Agreement of Settlement (the "Stipulation") to resolve the allegations asserted in the ...
MarketWire - Aug 7, 2008
Imperial Reports 2008 Second Quarter Financial Results
Imperial Metals Corporation (TSX: III) reports comparative financial results for the three and six months ended June 30, 2008 and June 30, 2007 are summarized below and discussed in detail in the Management's Discussion and Analysis. Imperial Metals Corporation (TSX: III) reports comparative financial results for the three and six months ended June 30, 2008 and June 30, 2007 are summarized below ...
MarketWire - Aug 7, 2008
Pennichuck Corporation Announces Second Quarter 2008 Earnings
Pennichuck Corporation (NASDAQ: PNNW) today Pennichuck Corporation (NASDAQ: PNNW) today announced that net income for its second quarter ended June 30, 2008 was $792,000, or $.19 per share (basic). This compares to $1.3 million, or $.32 per share (basic), for the same quarter in 2007. Prior year second quarter net income was higher due principally to a non-operating after-tax gain of ...
MarketWire - Aug 7, 2008
Federman & Sherwood Announces That a Securities Class Action Lawsuit Has Been Filed Against Zimmer Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: ZMH)
On August 5, 2008, a class action lawsuit On August 5, 2008, a class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana against Zimmer Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: ZMH). The complaint alleges violations of federal securities laws, Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5, including allegations of issuing a series of ...
MarketWire - Aug 6, 2008
State settles lawsuit in teen-sex case
Aug. 7--Kansas taxpayers will pay $475,000 to settle a lawsuit defending how health care providers report teen sexual activity, spurred by a 2003 attorney general's opinion by Phill Kline, lawyers for the plaintiffs said. Court costs and fees for lawyers representing the state's health care providers were settled last week between the Center for Reproductive Rights, which sued Kline, and the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Omaha builder, Cass County settle lawsuit
Aug. 7--PLATTSMOUTH, Neb. -- Cass County will pay an Omaha construction company $65,000 to drop its lawsuit after the county canceled a contract to build a highway maintenance garage near Plattsmouth. Prairie Construction had asked for $88,437 for lost construction work, plus attorney fees and interest payments. Under the settlement, Prairie will not receive attorney fees or interest payments, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Bennett Environmental Inc. Announces Second Quarter Results
Bennett Environmental Inc. (TSX: BEV) (the "Company" or "BEI") announced today its second quarter results for the period ended June 30, 2008. In commenting on the results, Mr. Christopher Wallace, Chairman of the Board, observed that the absence of activity at the Company's Saint Ambroise facility had a negative impact on the overall financial results. However, the Company's dependence on Saint ...
MarketWire - Aug 6, 2008
C2 Global Technologies Inc. Reports 2008 Second Quarter Results
C2 Global Technologies Inc. ("C2" or the "Company") (OTCBB: COBT) today reported its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2008. All amounts are stated in US dollars. C2 Global Technologies Inc. ("C2" or the "Company") (OTCBB: COBT) today reported its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2008. All amounts are stated in US dollars.
MarketWire - Aug 6, 2008
Catalina Marina Del Rey Flyer -- the Ferry to Catalina From Marina Del Rey -- Wins Court Battle Over Rights
CATALINA-MARINA DEL REY FLYER ("Marina CATALINA-MARINA DEL REY FLYER ("Marina Flyer") (Sea Planes, Inc), operating luxury scheduled passenger ferry service from Fisherman's Village in Marina Del Rey (near LAX, Venice, Santa Monica) to Avalon and Two Harbors on Catalina Island, was sued in 2006 by a small company named Pacific Adventure Cruises ("Pacific") for allegedly interfering, unlawfully, ...
MarketWire - Aug 6, 2008
Optimal Group Announces Second Quarter 2008 Results
Optimal Group Inc. (NASDAQ: OPMR) today announced its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2008. All references are in U.S. dollars. Optimal Group Inc. (NASDAQ: OPMR) today announced its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2008. All references are in U.S. dollars. Revenues for the second quarter ended June 30, 2008 consisted of revenues from both the ...
MarketWire - Aug 6, 2008
Florida Bar Grants Prestigious Construction Law Board-Certification to Ft. Myers Resident Attorney
Becker & Poliakoff, P.A., a diversified Becker & Poliakoff, P.A., a diversified commercial law firm with more than 125 attorneys in 15 offices throughout Florida, in New York City, and affiliated offices in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, today announced that attorney Tom Code has been granted certification by the Florida Bar in the area of construction law in recognition of special ...
MarketWire - Aug 6, 2008
Florida Bar Grants Prestigious Construction Law Board-Certification to Weston Resident Attorney
Becker & Poliakoff, P.A., a diversified Becker & Poliakoff, P.A., a diversified commercial law firm with more than 125 attorneys in 15 offices throughout Florida, in New York City, and affiliated offices in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, today announced that attorney Lisa Colon has been granted certification by the Florida Bar in the area of construction law in recognition of special ...
MarketWire - Aug 6, 2008
Ohio high court to hear case of dead shoplifter: Giant Eagle files appeal after lower court orders new trial in Akron man's death
Aug. 7--The Ohio Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal of a lawsuit brought by the family of a shoplifter who died while being restrained outside the Giant Eagle store in Rootstown Township. Earlier this year, the Ohio 9th District Court of Appeals ordered the case retried after a jury found store workers negligent in the death of Paul Niskanen, but the judge refused to award punitive ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Irving has its eye on Oklahoma water
Aug. 7--When it comes to finding new ways to whet North Texans' appetite for water, Irving officials hope they will succeed where some of the region's biggest water providers haven't -- by piping it in from Oklahoma. The Irving City Council is set to vote tonight on what is believed to be the first water sales agreement between an Oklahoma water authority and a Texas customer.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Four more file answers to lawsuit: Men deny culpability in regard to councilman's complaint
Aug. 6--CAVE CITY -- Four additional defendants have filed answers to a civil suit accusing them of deliberate tortuous acts of conduct against a Cave City councilman and his wife. Capt. Michael Bale, Bruce Neville, Jason Logsdon and Brian Wilson, firefighters with the Cave City Volunteer Fire Department, deny most of the allegations made in the complaint filed in Barren Circuit Court by Cave ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
Carpitcher asks Kaine for pardon: This is the last chance at freedom for the man, whose accuser recanted her testimony in 2000.
Aug. 6--Aleck J. Carpitcher, a convicted child molester whose claim of innocence is now supported by the woman who testified against him as an 11-year-old girl, has one last shot at freedom. He took it Tuesday, filing a petition for clemency with Gov. Tim Kaine. "This is the very last chance for relief, and unless Mr. Carpitcher is granted clemency from his wrongful conviction, Mr.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
'Free SIMI dangerous'
Aug. 7--NEW DELHI -- The ban on the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) would continue for now as the Supreme Court on Wednesday stayed a designated tribunal's order quashing the centre's notification proscribing it under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. A bench headed by the Chief Justice of India, K.G. Balakrishnan, stayed the August 5 order of the tribunal after ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Huetter dispute goes to state: Eligibility of elected officials questioned
Aug. 7--HUETTER -- Huetter is little more than a blip on the Kootenai County map, but the tiny town of 100 residents could soon mark a new spot in Idaho elections law. An ongoing dispute over whether two elected town officials are eligible to serve their terms in office has been appealed to the Idaho Supreme Court. "I said from the beginning I was going to keep it up until the last thing because ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Engineering colleges fined for flouting rules
Aug. 6--MUMBAI, India -- In a major drive against erring engineering colleges, the higher and technical education department led by senior NCP leader Dilip Walse-Patil on Monday, imposed a fine of Rs 1 lakh each on four engineering colleges for admitting students after the prescribed date. According to an order passed by the director of technical education, S M Mahajan, a fine of Rs 1 lakh has ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
Judges call for extensive reforms
Aug. 7--Santa Clara County's two top juvenile court judges are calling for sweeping reforms of the dependency courts far beyond what a statewide commission is considering, contending the current child welfare system designed to protect children from abuse "often does more harm than good." Judges Patrick Tondreau and Katherine Lucero wrote to a commission studying problems in the state's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Questions and answers about Kilpatrick's decision
Aug. 7--Following are some questions raised by Wednesday's decision by Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to waive his preliminary examination in Detroit's 36th District Court and take his criminal case directly to Wayne County Circuit Court. QUESTION: What does it mean that Kilpatrick and Christine Beatty, his former chief of staff, intend to waive their preliminary examinations? ANSWER: The ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Rep. Bishop joins GOP colleagues for vacation rail against Dems
Aug. 7--WASHINGTON -- Tourists visiting the U.S. Capitol this week took a detour from the typical sightseeing trip to see Congress in action. Or at least protests about Congress' inaction. A cadre of Republicans, peeved that the House took a five-week vacation instead of staying to address high gas prices, commandeered the chamber floor to scold "anti-oil" Democrats who would rather jet home ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Questions remain despite conviction of ex-bin Laden driver: Rash of appeals likely for ex-driver, others
Aug. 7--WASHINGTON--The government has been trying to prosecute and convict Salim Ahmed Hamdan for war crimes for five years. On Wednesday, a Guantanamo Bay military jury found Hamdan guilty of supporting terrorism, and he now faces life in prison. So, mission accomplished? Hardly. The conviction of Osama bin Laden's former driver may have provided the Pentagon with a brief moment of certitude, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
CAPITAL NOTES
Aug. 7--Ex-BWC figure faces disciplinary hearing Prominent Cleveland Democrat George L. Forbes faces a public hearing next Thursday before the Ohio Supreme Court's Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline after a proposed sanction to resolve a pending complaint against him as a lawyer was rejected. Forbes, a member of the former Oversight Commission at the Ohio Bureau of Workers' ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Man convicted in 2001 slaying is set to be executed tonight
Aug. 7--AUSTIN -- Heliberto Chi, a Honduran native who led authorities on a six-week manhunt after gunning down an Arlington clothing-store manager in 2001, moved one step closer to execution Wednesday when the state's highest criminal court rejected his bid for a stay. Chi, condemned for killing Armand Paliotta during an after-hours robbery of the K&G Men's Superstore in Arlington, will be put ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Court defied critics in Medellin ruling: Its rejection of his appeal signals it is willing to buck foreign pressure
Aug. 7--In its rejection of Jose Ernesto Medellin's appeal, the Supreme Court made clear its refusal to bow to international pressure and its unwillingness to await related legislation that had not progressed beyond the "bare introduction of a bill." Medellin, 33, was executed Tuesday night after an almost four-hour delay as Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials awaited the high court's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Questions remain despite conviction of ex-bin Laden driver
WASHINGTON _ The government has been trying to prosecute and convict Salim Ahmed Hamdan for war crimes for five years. Wednesday, a Guantanamo Bay military jury found Hamdan guilty of supporting terrorism and he now faces life in prison. So, mission accomplished? Hardly. The conviction of Osama bin Laden's former driver may have provided the Pentagon with a brief moment of certitude, something ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
Black sheep even in judiciary: SC
Aug. 7--NEW DELHI -- Virtually admitting there was corruption in the judiciary, the Supreme Court on Wednesday said it couldn't issue a certificate that all judges were honest. "Black sheep are everywhere. It's only a question of degree," a three-judge Bench headed by Justice B.N. Agrawal said, during the hearing of petitions seeking "impartial and unfettered" probe into the multi-crore ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
EDITORIAL: There is no substitute for hard evidence
Aug. 7--The judiciary seems to be caught in two minds about banning the Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi), going by the ping-pong decisions coming out of courts. On Tuesday, a special tribunal of the Delhi High Court lifted the ban on Simi, saying that the government had failed to provide sufficient evidence to justify continued curbs on the fundamentalist group.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
SC stays tribunal order lifting ban on SIMI
Aug. 7--NEW DELHI -- Eleven hours after a court lifted the ban on the Islamic student body SIMI, an unidentified man opened a creaking, cobwebbed door inside a three-storey building at Zakir Nagar's lane no. 9 -- after six years. The furniture is crumbling and the air is musty. The man who opened the door refuses to say who is, jumps on a motorcycle and speeds away.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Hindustan Times, New Delhi, Neelesh Misra column: The (political) importance of being this terrorist group
Aug. 7--India just set a new global precedent in the battle against terrorism: for about 15 hours, we had a 'legal' terrorist group. On Tuesday, a High Court judge highlighted a farce in India's battle against terror when Justice Gita Mittal lifted the ban on the Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi), an alleged terror group, because of lack of evidence.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
EDITORIAL: No executive privilege for presidential advisers means more accountability
Aug. 6--here goes an activist judge again, encroaching on President Bush's ability to do his job. Oh, wait. U.S. District Judge John Bates, who on Thursday rightly slapped down yet another administration attempt to stretch presidential prerogative beyond the law, is a Bush appointee. Bates said that former White House counsel Harriet Miers could not claim executive privilege to avoid a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
Ilonggos arming vs. MILF: Senators slam Esperon, say he should resign
Aug. 7--Funds are being raised on Panay and Negros islands to arm Ilonggos in Mindanao against separatists, Sen. Manuel "Mar" Roxas 2nd revealed on Wednesday. Roxas did not say who was or were behind the fund-raising or exactly what for money is being collected. His statement, though, came a day after the government and Muslim rebels aborted their scheduled signing of a memorandum of agreement ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 7, 2008
Man whose porn conviction was reversed awaits release
Aug. 6--NEW 12:30 p.m. BLOOMINGTON -- A Gridley man whose conviction for child pornography was reversed by the appellate court is waiting to be released from prison on a personal recognizance bond. The Illinois Supreme Court approved the bond Tuesday for Jeffrey L. Shoemaker. The 53-year-old man was convicted in an April 2007 bench trial of creating child pornography.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
High court reverses child abuse conviction: Man serving life sentence in baby's death; justices say trial judge erred
Aug. 5--The state's top court Monday reversed the conviction of a Columbia man charged with homicide by child abuse in the 2000 beating death of his girlfriend's 9-month-old son. The S.C. Supreme Court in a 4-1 vote said the judge in Henry Fletcher's 2002 Richland County jury trial should not have allowed a friend of Fletcher's to testify about suspected prior acts of abuse involving 9-month-old ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
GOVERNMENT: Hoping lawsuit frees New York from handouts
Aug. 5--A taxpayer advocacy group with roots in Lockport has taken its concerns over state-sponsored economic development projects to a court in Albany. Buffalo attorney James Ostrowski on Monday filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court on behalf of more than 40 taxpayers who are hoping to put an end to New York's long-standing practice of using public money to support private businesses. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
Lawyer in investment scam OK with license suspension
Aug. 5--A Moosic attorney who admitted to helping bilk people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars is, for now, no longer allowed to practice law. David Gnall, 39, has agreed to a temporary law license suspension, according to paperwork filed July 31 at the Disciplinary Board of the state Supreme Court. The suspension stems from Mr. Gnall's guilty plea in January to misprision of a felony, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
Landowners urge justices to rethink open streams decision
Aug. 5--A group of Weber River Valley landowners is asking the Utah Supreme Court to reconsider the court's recent decision allowing anglers, rafters and other river users to walk in publicly owned waterways -- even when the water flows through private land. Utah's angling community has applauded the decision, saying it will open streams to the public that were previously accessible only to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
State wage cuts not needed, Chiang tells California Senate committee
Aug. 5--State workers, their unions and other officials warned legislators Monday that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to slash state worker pay during a budget impasse will disrupt lives while doing little to ease a supposed cash crunch. "We are not in a cash crisis," Controller John Chiang told the Senate Governmental Organization Committee. "The need for this is misdirected." Among the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
Court upholds Cablevision plan for remoteDVRs
Aug. 5--A federal appeals court yesterday ruled in favor of a Cablevision Systems Corp. service that would allow consumers to record programs remotely on its network storage facilities without the need for a separate video recorder. The ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan overturned a lower-court ruling last year that barred Cablevision from operating the service without ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
NYCLU sues to obtain race of suspects fired at by police
Aug. 5--The New York Civil Liberties Union is suing the New York City Police Department for information it says is important to learning how the NYPD polices minority neighborhoods. The group yesterday filed the suit in state Supreme Court in Manhattan seeking the release of information on the race of suspects shot at by police officers. Racial data was included for years in the department's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
Forbes ranks W.Va. worst for jobs again
Aug. 5--West Virginia touts itself as "Open for Business," but Forbes magazine feels the state has a long way to go -- right up from the cellar in its annual rankings of "The Best States for Business." Even Mississippi, longtime occupant of last place in state rankings of positive attributes, holds down 42nd place. Forbes has now put West Virginia at the bottom for the second year in a row.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
Are you above the law? SC asks Baalu
Aug. 5--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court on Monday threatened to issue arrest warrants against Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi and Union Shipping Minister TR Baalu for undue delay in filing their replies to its contempt notice in connection with the October 1, 2007 Tamil Nadu bandh in support of the Sethusamudram Project. "The Chief Minister is not above the law," a Bench headed by Justice ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
Yasukuni in spotlight as Aug. 15 nears: Low-profile Fukuda not expected to visit contentious Shinto shrine as he tries to keep relations with Asia positive
Aug. 5--Aug. 15 marks the 63rd anniversary of the end of World War II. For the people of Japan, including relatives of the war dead, it is a day of remembrance and of peace. And every year on this day, the spotlight shines on Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo -- especially on whether the prime minister and Cabinet ministers will pay a visit to pray for those enshrined there.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
EDITORIAL: Court of Appeals has reason to hear power plant case
Aug. 6--There has been a long-running battle over energy and how it's produced focused on a proposed coal-fired power plant in Early County. The legal machinations over the plant have been extensive. The Georgia Environmental Protection Division approved the permits, but the Friends of the Chattahoochee and the Sierra Club objected, and the case was sent to an administrative law judge who ruled ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
Ex-lacrosse attorney now on Duke team
Aug. 6--DURHAM -- A lawyer who helped exonerate three former Duke University lacrosse players falsely accused of rape has signed on to represent the school in a new case involving one of its athletes. Charlotte attorney Jim Cooney will help defend Duke and men's golf coach O.D. Vincent against former golf team member Andrew Giuliani's breach-of-contract lawsuit.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
Detroit Free Press Brian Dickerson column: Incumbent judges still untouchable
Aug. 6--Imagine a kingdom where public office is a lifetime sinecure -- where incumbents up for re-election are rarely opposed and almost never defeated, even when their tenures have been marked by controversy or scandal. Cuba? North Korea? An obscure county in Louisiana or Mississippi? No, I'm talking about the Michigan judiciary, almost all of whose members facing re-election this year will ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
Long Beach aldermen settle OpTech lawsuit
Aug. 6--LONG BEACH -- The Board of Aldermen on Tuesday night voted to accept settlement terms in a lawsuit OpTech filed against the city. The board went into closed session to discuss a possible settlement and came out 40 minutes later. Mayor Billy Skellie said no further action was necessary. But after the meeting, Alderman Charlie Boggs said the board agreed to finish out its contract with ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
Ventura preparing for trial against insurance company
Aug. 6--Ventura officials have ramped up their efforts -- and rhetoric -- in support of a lawsuit against a prominent local insurance company to recoup upward of $1 million in allegations of professional negligence and breach of contract. The city's suit against Ventura-based Tolman and Wiker Insurance blames the firm's out-of-town lawyers for stringing out their case, costing taxpayers hundreds ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
EDITORIAL: White House can't refuse: Judge rules it must comply
Aug. 6--Washington, D.C., is a town full of lawyers, a breed that favors clear distinctions. But some things are perhaps left murky. The tension between the president's right to confidential advice from his White House inner circle and Congress' right to inquire into the running of the government may well be one such area. Traditionally, neither the White House nor Congress wanted to push to the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
Retired justices to probeCourt of Appeals row
Aug. 5--The Supreme Court named three of its retired justices to a panel that will investigate apparent impropriety and corruption at the Court of Appeals. The inquiry arose from a case involving GSIS and Meralco that the appellate court ruled on last week. The retired justices will look into the dismissal by the justices of the Court of Appeals of the case in favor of Meralco and the alleged ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
Villar, de Castro lead insurvey among officials
Aug. 5--Senate President Manuel Villar Jr. remains on top of the surveys among top government officials after getting a plus 52 net satisfaction rating in the latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey. The 2008 second-quarter poll of the SWS, conducted from June 27 to 30, found out that 66 percent were satisfied and 14 percent were dissatisfied with the performance of the Senate president. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
Shasta's testimony would close courtroom: Privacy concerns outweigh public interest, judge rules
Aug. 6--BOISE -- A federal judge has ordered the courtroom closed if confessed killer Joseph Duncan's surviving victim takes the stand in his death penalty sentencing trial, even though the 11-year-old girl likely would testify from another room by closed-circuit television. "The Court finds the compelling interests in protecting the minor victim from further harm and embarrassment significantly ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
Big dig: WCS awards $80 million contract for nuclear waste pit
Aug. 6--Red bed clay will start churning in September to make way for the latest additions to the Waste Control Specialists facility in Andrews County. WCS announced Tuesday that it had awarded URS, one of the world's largest engineering firms, a three-year, $80 million contact to design and build a byproduct waste pit at the facility. These new facilities will enable WCS to begin operations ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
Murder victim's family sues for $50 million Multimillionaire and 6 others named in lawsuit
Aug. 6--BRENTWOOD -- A $50 million wrongful death lawsuit has been filed against multimillionaire John "Jay" Brooks and six others in connection with the murder of Derry resident Jack Reid. The lawsuit comes as Brooks, 56, of Las Vegas, prepares to go on trial for allegedly arranging Reid's murder in June 2005 and delivering the fatal blow to Reid's chest with a hammer.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
Officials seek to put 8 polygamist ranch children back in state custody
Aug. 6--SAN ANGELO -- Child Protective Services, forced by courts last spring to return hundreds of children to their parents in a polygamist sect, jumped back into Texas' tussle with the sect Tuesday. The state agency asked a judge to put eight of the children of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints back into state custody. In affidavits that provide the best view yet ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
County sued over food-labeling law: RESTAURANT INDUSTRY SEEKS STANDARDS ON DISCLOSING MEAL NUTRITION DATA
Aug. 6--Santa Clara County's effort to curb obesity by taking on the restaurant industry has landed local officials in a quickly expanding legal battle. The California Restaurant Association recently sued the county, trying to block June legislation that would require chain restaurants in unincorporated areas to include calorie counts on their menus. The county legislation, which does not apply ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 6, 2008
Palace defers to Court, postpones KL signing
Aug. 5--Malacanang postponed signing of a memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) "in deference" to the Supreme Court decision it issued Monday. "We submit to the sound discretion of the Supreme Court. It is a good opportunity for some issues to be threshed out, so we welcome the action taken by the Supreme Court," Press Secretary Jesus Dureza ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
Sierra Club to appeal TrAIL plan: Says chosen route less safe for the state environment
Aug. 5--An environmental group said it will appeal the state Public Service Commission's approval of the construction of the Trans-Allegheny Interstate Line (TrAIL) project. The PSC approved Allegheny Energy's plans for a 500-kilovolt transmission line that would cross 120 miles of north-central West Virginia last week. The Sierra Club's West Virginia chapter announced it would appeal the PSC ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
Lawsuit accuses Chinatown man of theme park scam
Aug. 5--In China the dragon is a symbol of good luck. But some local Chinese-Americans have charged that the "giant dragon" of Guilin has bled them dry. More than a dozen investors from Brooklyn, Queens and Nassau County maintain that they and nearly 100 others were bilked out of $5 million in a project to build a theme park in southern China that was to open in time for the Olympics.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
Setbacks in Enron case threaten other white-collar prosecutions
WASHINGTON _ Almost seven years after the energy giant Enron collapsed, a series of court decisions have opened the door to new trials for some of the convicted corporate executives and threatened to hobble the Justice Department's efforts to pursue future corporate-fraud cases. In the wake of the scandal, prosecutors pursued executives for covering up the company's financial bleeding and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
California state computers can't handle pay cut, controller says
Aug. 5--If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to issue minimum-wage checks to 200,000 state workers in less than a month, he may want to rehire any semi-retired computer programmers he terminated last week. The massive pay cut would exhaust the state's antiquated payroll system, which is built on a Vietnam-era computer language so outdated that many college students don't even bother to learn it ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
Famed trial lawyer Robert Montgomery dies
Aug. 5--Robert Montgomery spent more than half a century in the courtroom, forging a name for himself that often struck fear in the hearts of his opponents. The 78-year-old Palm Beach resident was a pre-eminent civil attorney and philanthropist extraordinaire, perhaps best known as lead counsel in Florida's multi-billion dollar lawsuit against the big tobacco companies.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 5, 2008
Our view on crowded skies: Air travel delays mount as local interests prevail (USATODAY.com)
Air travelers, who suffered through historic delays last year, are off to another sizzling summer of gridlock, thanks mostly to the spinoff effects of congestion in New York, which causes 75% of the nation's delays. This is nothing new. It just goes on and on not because of disinterest and not because solutions aren't available but because, as with many other problems, local opposition can ...
Yahoo! - Aug 4, 2008
Chip Makers Settle Calif. Suit
A nearly three year lawsuit between California Attorney General, Edmund Brown Jr., and four potato chip makers ended Friday. Heinz, Frito-Lay, Kettle Foods, and Lance Inc all agreed to cut levels of the cancer-causing chemical acrylamide in their potato chips and french fries to 275 parts per billion over three years. Brown calls the move 'a victory for public health and safety' in the state and ...
QSR Online - Aug 4, 2008
ERI's California Employment Law Update Conference Helps Employers Prepare for New Economy, Legal Risks
The Employer Resource Institute (ERI) is presenting a two-day conference specifically for HR professionals. The conference, the third-annual California Employment Law Update, will take place at San Francisco's Westin St. Francis on Nov. 5-7. 'What many employers don't realize is that employee lawsuits actually increase dramatically during times of economic hardship,' says Matthew T.
PR inside - Aug 4, 2008
Top Ten
Worst conference: Big Ten. Proof: Missouri 55, Illinois 35. Trendy junk: Clemson, Texas Tech, USF, BYU. Dumb handicapping: Picking a team to have a high ranking because of an easy schedule. Easy scheduling made Kansas State what it is today. Nothing. Easy scheduling is what a habitual loser does to pull itself from the pits, nothing wrong there. But once decent, you have to act decent.
Tulsa World - Aug 4, 2008
Israel to transfer Fatah fugitives to West Bank
AFP, Jerusalem Israel said on Monday it will transfer to the West Bank Fatah members who had fled the Gaza Strip amid concern that those who had already returned to the Hamas-ruled territory were in mortal danger. The announcement reversed a previous decision that more than 200 members of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's party who had fled Gaza into Israel on Saturday should be returned there ...
The New Nation - Aug 4, 2008
California to sue EPA
CALIFORNIA TO SUE EPA THE Attorney General of California, Edmund Brown, says the US state plan to sue the federal Environmental Protection Agency PA for continuing to wantonly ignore its duty to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from ships, aircraft, and construction and agricultural equipment. Ships, aircraft and industrial equipment burn huge quantities of fossil fuel and ...
Maritime Global Net - Aug 4, 2008
California computer system will make minimum-wage checks a throwback, too
SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to issue minimum-wage checks to 200,000 state workers in less than a month, he should explore whether he terminated any semi-retired computer programmers last week. The massive pay cut would exhaust the state's antiquated payroll system, which is built on a Vietnam-era computer language so outdated that many college students don't even ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 4, 2008
Philippines supreme Court halts Muslim land deal
By Manny Mogato MANILA - The Philippines Supreme Court issued a temporary restraining order on Monday to halt a territorial deal between the government and Muslim separatists, the latest setback for peace in the nation's volatile south. The agreement between Manila and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front , the country's largest Muslim rebel group, was to be signed in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday after ...
Yahoo! Singapore - Aug 4, 2008
Fracing key in volatile Garza case
One issue at the heart of a Texas Supreme Court case some say could potentially kill the state's natural gas industry, should it be decided one way, is the process that makes the entire industry possible and profitable in the first place. Hydraulic fracturing, or fracing for short, is a process by which a water-sand-chemical mixture is pumped down into a well in order to create cracks and splits ...
Fort Worth Business Press - Aug 4, 2008
'Girls,' Francis settle lawsuit
Jul. 31--PANAMA CITY -- U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak had heard the word "settlement" before in a "Girls Gone Wild" lawsuit, and he wanted to make sure Wednesday it was a done deal. "The defendant has already signed the documents?" Smoak asked the plaintiff's attorney, Mark Casto. "I certainly don't want to get to a dej vu all over again." B r i t t a n y Pitts, of Georg i a , s u e d ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 31, 2008
Driver swore allegiance to bin Laden, U.S. agent testifies
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba _ In a day that started in secrecy and ended in secrecy, the Pentagon prosecution got what it wanted: A federal agent testified Thursday that Osama bin Laden's driver confessed here in 2003 that he had sworn a pledge of allegiance to his boss. "He said he pledged bayat to Osama bin Laden," Robert McFadden, an agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 31, 2008
Exxon Mobil earns record $11.68 billion
Jul. 31--Record crude oil prices pushed Exxon Mobil Corp.'s second-quarter earnings to a record as well, with the Irving-based company reporting $11.7 billion in net income. That included an after-tax charge of $290 million to account for the Supreme Court's recent ruling that put a $508 million cap on punitive damages for the company's 1989 Alaska oil spill.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 31, 2008
Sen. Stevens pleads not guilty to making false statements
WASHINGTON _ Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska was arraigned Thursday afternoon in federal District Court in Washington, where he pleaded not guilty to seven counts of failing to disclose gifts he allegedly received from an oil services executive. Stevens waved to television cameras on his way into the courthouse, and left the hearing with his arms around his wife and daughter.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 31, 2008
Olmert to Quit as Israeli PM in September
In a surprise announcement from his residence in Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert says he will step down as Israel's prime minister immediately after his Kadima Party selects a new leader at a party convention on September 17. Mr. Olmert says he will not run in the Kadima Party primary and he will leave office once a new leader is chosen. He says he hopes a new party leader will be able to put together an ...
Turkish Weekly - Jul 31, 2008
BRIEF: Work comp claim denied in MLK case: Court: She's not entitled to benefits
Jul. 31--A woman who claimed her treatment following a decision to skip an annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration left her unable to work has lost the latest battle in her attempt to secure workers compensation benefits. In a 4-3 decision Wednesday, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that Patricia Brackett's "refusal to attend the mandatory event constituted intentional and willful ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 31, 2008
House Votes to Let FDA Regulate Tobacco
Decades after the surgeon general first warned that cigarettes were a health hazard, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Wednesday that would for the first time give the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco products. Stefan Zaklin/European Pressphoto Agency John Dingell supported the bill to regulate the tobacco industry.
New York Times - Jul 31, 2008
Complaints filed against Macomb County judge: Her behavior is called unprofessional
Jul. 31--Eastpointe police and the Macomb County Prosecutor's Office have filed a joint complaint with the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission about Norene Redmond -- a judge with the 38th District Court who already has been censured once by the state Supreme Court for her behavior on the bench. The complaint cites two incidents that Eastpointe Police Chief Michael Lauretti called unprofessional ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 31, 2008
Row over Iraq elections law
The Kirkuk issue has always been a major problem in Iraq. Recently, the Iraqi parliament had a tough time to approve the elections law because of the disagreement over voting in the disputed oil city of Kirkuk. Finally, last Tuesday, the Iraqi parliament passed the law, setting guidelines for provincial elections, despite a boycott by Kurdish lawmakers. Soon after the elections law was put to ...
Gulf News - Jul 31, 2008
Gore Expected to Be Star at Democratic Convention
Campaign 2008: Get the latest news, video, and polls! WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al Gore, long mocked as an exaggerating bore, seems certain to land a lead role at the Democratic National Convention as an internationally recognized defender of the Earth. Eight years after losing one of the closest White House elections ever, Gore is being embraced by party faithful as the Nobel Peace Prize-winning ...
KHYL-FM - Jul 31, 2008
Judge: Baseball plan moved too fast
Jul. 31--A judge said a state panel should have given Charlotte attorney Jerry Reese a chance to review a decision to let bonds not approved by voters to be used for a land-swap deal to help bring a baseball stadium to uptown. However, Senior Administrative Judge Fred Morrison stressed that his recent order does not reverse the decision of the Local Government Commission's executive committee to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 31, 2008
King & Spalding Earns Major Appellate Victory for The Home Depot
King & Spalding, a leading international law King & Spalding, a leading international law firm, earned a significant appellate victory for its client The Home Depot, Inc. in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. On July 28, 2008, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court's decision granting The Home Depot summary judgment and dismissing the case.
MarketWire - Jul 31, 2008
Nevada governor continues 'comped' meal tax fight
LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- Gov. Jim Gibbons wants to continue the state's $142 million battle with casinos over 'comped' meals. Gibbons administration officials said Wednesday they think new legal arguments could be used to hold on to taxes casino companies have paid on complimentary meals money the companies say they want back. Nevada lost the previous round in the fight to prevent the ...
Casino City Times - Jul 31, 2008
Ex-Thai leader's wife found guilty of tax evasion
The ruling against Pojaman Shinawatra is the first verdict in several corruption lawsuits against Thaksin and his inner circle. Thaksin, who was ousted in a 2006 military coup, denies all wrongdoing. Pojaman, her adopted brother Bhanapot Damapong, and her secretary were convicted of colluding to evade millions of dollars in taxes in 1997 through a complicated transfer of shares in the family's ...
1050 AM - Jul 31, 2008
Peru says no to outdoor-wood-boiler law
Jul. 31--PERU -- Peru officials shot down a proposed law that would have regulated the use of outdoor wood burners in the town. The council voted 3-1 this week to reject the local law. The proposal was a revision of legislation that the council considered two months ago when Supervisor Donald Covel appointed a committee to revamp the original draft. Councilor Brandy McDonald called the proposal ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 31, 2008
$2 million bias settlement between officers, Minneapolis derailed: The suit, which accuses the city and the Police Department of racial discrimination against five black officers, will go forward.
Jul. 31--A proposed $2 million settlement of a lawsuit by five black Minneapolis police officers alleging racial discrimination by the city and the Police Department is off the table. That revelation, contained in a notice filed Wednesday in federal court, came less than a week after the Minneapolis City Council adjourned without voting on the proposed settlement.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 31, 2008
Apex Oil ruling pleases residents in Hartford: Fined $150 million for fouling soil, water
Jul. 31--HARTFORD -- Rose Luebbert said her house was never affected by the oil companies' spills and leaks. But, whenever she would attend events at the gym on the north end of town, they would occasionally have to open the windows to air out the gas fumes. A resident for about 45 years, Luebbert said she was happy with a federal court holding Apex Oil Co. Inc.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 31, 2008
United sues its pilots union
Jul. 31--United Airlines asked the U.S. District Court in Chicago on Wednesday to bar the Air Line Pilots Association from encouraging its pilots to engage in what United called an illegal and disruptive "sickout" as a protest against the carrier's plans to slash the number of pilots it employs. A hearing was planned for Thursday in Chicago. In its lawsuit, the Chicago-based airline alleges the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 31, 2008
Vancouver denies 'vendetta' against fired police officer
Jul. 31--Vancouver officials are standing by their decision to fire a Vancouver police officer on the grounds that he included false information in drunken-driving reports. City officials had a muted reaction Wednesday to a Willamette Week story portraying the police department as targeting former officer Navin Sharma because he had the temerity to challenge the city establishment.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 31, 2008
Jury convicts former executive of mortgage fraud
BARTOW -- A former vice president for a subprime lender has been convicted of mortgage fraud, racketeering and grand theft. Orson Benn, who worked for Argent Mortgage Co., faces up to 105 years in prison when sentenced at a later date, Attorney General Bill McCollum's office said.A Circuit Court jury convicted Benn on Wednesday in connection with 130 loans worth about $13 million in Hillsborough, ...
Florida Today - Jul 31, 2008
Dallas Jury: AT&T Created Hostile Environment for Minority Employee at Arlington Call Center
A Dallas County jury awarded $411,339 to an AT&T A Dallas County jury awarded $411,339 to an AT&T call center employee this week after finding that race was a motivating factor in the company's repeated failure to promote her. Additionally, the jury agreed that AT&T had created a hostile work environment and retaliated against her when she complained.
MarketWire - Jul 31, 2008
Ca. to Sue EPA Over Greenhouse Gas Emissions
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California will sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for 'wantonly' ignoring its duty to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from ships, aircraft, and construction and agricultural equipment, state Attorney General Jerry Brown said on Wednesday. Brown said the lawsuit, to be announced at a news conference at the Port of Long Beach on Thursday and filed in Washington ...
Progressive Talk 1260 - Jul 31, 2008
SonoSite and GE Resolve First Lawsuit
BOTHELL, Wash. - (Business Wire) SonoSite, Inc. (Nasdaq:SONO), the world leader and specialist in hand-carried ultrasound for the point-of-care, today announced that the lawsuit General Electric Company (GE) filed against the company in federal district court in Madison, Wisconsin has been resolved (case no. 07-C-0273). Following the trial court's summary judgment rulings on July 24, 2008 the ...
Earthtimes.org - Jul 31, 2008
Two years after landslide, homeowners suing developer
Jul. 31--MOUNTAIN GREEN -- The landslide in an upscale Morgan County neighborhood has apparently stopped. But the fallout continues. Two years after one home was condemned as the hillside along Creekside Drive moved, owners of another just down the hill have moved out. Now, a third homeowner, Brian Pugh, has filed a lawsuit in 2nd District Court, alleging his builder misrepresented the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 31, 2008
SC to step in justices' row
Aug. 1--The Court of Appeals decided to have the Supreme Court settle a conflict between its Eighth and Ninth Divisions over which gets jurisdiction of a case involving Meralco and the GSIS. In an en banc resolution Thursday, the appellate court decided to elevate the "propriety of the actions of the justices concerned to the Supreme Court through the Office of the Court Administrator." On the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Aug 1, 2008
Sprint early termination fees are illegal, judge rules
Jul. 30--Californians fed up with being charged for ending their cell phone service prematurely won a major victory in a Bay Area court decision that concluded such fees violate state law. In a preliminary ruling Monday, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Bonnie Sabraw said Sprint Nextel must pay California mobile-phone consumers $18.2 million as part of a class-action lawsuit challenging early ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 30, 2008
Supreme Court Justice takes strong stand: Brent Benjamin issues 60-page opinion dismissing calls that he step down from Massey cases
Jul. 30--CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- State Supreme Court Justice Brent Benjamin has issued a 60-page opinion defending his decision to continue hearing cases involving Massey Energy even though its chief executive spent millions to defeat his opponent for the court seat. In the strongly worded opinion filed Monday, Benjamin called all the legal fuss over his participation in a $50 million appeal by the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 30, 2008
Chubb Survey Finds Private Companies More Exposed to Liability Risks, But Less Protected
Current Economic Conditions Increase Risks -- WARREN, NJ, July 30, 2008 - 'Despite a down economy and an increase in risks, private companies may not be purchasing sufficient management liability insurance to help protect their bottom line from a costly liability lawsuit,' said Lisa Jones, vice president, Chubb & Son, and private commercial product manager for Chubb Specialty Insurance.
Chubb - Jul 30, 2008
TVA's CEO says trust the agency
ASHEVILLE, N.C. - TVA will install new air pollution control equipment to three coal-burning power plants in East Tennessee, as it has previously pledged, TVA's president and CEO told a federal court here. A climate of tightening regulations, and the fact that TVA has already begun the upgrades, dictates finishing the upgrades, chief executive officer Tom Kilgore said.
Tennessean - Jul 30, 2008
Bush signs housing bill to provide mortgage relief
WASHINGTON President Bush on Wednesday signed a massive housing bill intended to provide mortgage relief for 400,000 struggling homeowners and stabilize financial markets. Bush signed the bill without any fanfare or signing ceremony, affixing his signature to the measure he once threatened to veto, in the Oval Office in the early morning hours. He was surrounded by top administration ...
WFAA.com - Jul 30, 2008
Chief Operating Officer Updates Shareholders of ERHC Energy Inc.
The following update on Company activities was The following update on Company activities was issued by Peter Ntephe, chief operating officer of ERHC Energy Inc. (OTCBB: ERHE), prior to the opening of the market on Wednesday, July 30, 2008. "To ERHC Shareholders: "I am pleased to update the ERHC Energy family on the company's recent progress. "We are happy that the London Court of ...
MarketWire - Jul 30, 2008
Peru rejects law to govern outdoor wood boilers
Jul. 30--PERU -- Peru officials shot down a proposed law that would have regulated the use of outdoor wood burners in the town. The council voted 3-1 this week to reject the local law. The proposal was a revision of legislation that the council considered two months ago when Supervisor Donald Covel appointed a committee to revamp the original draft. Councilor Brandy McDonald called the proposal ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 30, 2008
Diverse crowd gathers at vigil
Jul. 30--SHENANDOAH -- A candlelight vigil Tuesday night for an illegal Mexican immigrant fatally beaten earlier this month was marked by impassioned calls for racial unity and justice. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a national Hispanic civil rights organization, held the memorial for Luis Eduardo Ramirez Zavala, 25, who died July 14 from injuries he suffered after ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 30, 2008
David McGrath: I refuse to believe bowlers are bigots
To: St. Alvin's Bowling League From: David McGrath Subject: Those ugly Obama e-mails OK, I get it, guys. You've got Barack Obama in that purple robe looking like a Watusi or something, from when he visited Africa. And then his picture featured right next to a photograph of a smiling and youthful John McCain, circa 1968. In his military uniform. No caption, just the mute message that our choice ...
Capital Times - Jul 30, 2008
Decision applauded by ACLU: Federal ruling backs argument against sectarian prayer, it says
Jul. 30--A federal-appeals-court opinion in a Virginia case reinforces the argument against sectarian prayer at meetings of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union said today. The opinion, decided on July 23 by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, said that the city of Fredericksburg, Va., did not violate the rights of a minister serving on ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 30, 2008
M&R: Psychic has Newsom predictions
Although Simone (who long ago professionally dispensed with her first name, Carol) says her psychic readings days are largely behind her, she has come up with a few predictions: On Newsom becoming governor: 'I get a very positive energy about that. It's clear this is something he would like to do and he has a very strong personality, and I feel he'll get it.' And on the chances of Newsom landing ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Jul 30, 2008
Crosshair Completes Uranium Property Acquisition & Appoints Board Member
Crosshair Exploration and Mining Corp. (TSX: CXX)(AMEX: CXZ) is pleased to announce that it has closed on the agreement with Universal Uranium Ltd. ("Universal") to acquire all of Universal's 60% interest in its Central Mineral Belt (CMB), Labrador, uranium project, consisting of approximately 4,741 claims and including the Two Time uranium deposit, which sits outside the Labrador Inuit Land ...
MarketWire - Jul 30, 2008
Family resolves to take fight over exorcism to Supreme Court
FORT WORTH, Texas _ Laura Schubert Pearson was an impressionable 17-year-old when friends in her church youth group thought demons possessed her. Repeatedly, over two days, the youth pastor, his wife and others held the girl down on the floor of the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God Church in Colleyville, Texas, even as Pearson screamed, fought and begged to be released.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 30, 2008
AP: Barriers exist to Pa. constable system reforms
(AP) The head of Pennsylvania's judicial system, Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Castille, sees the state's constable system as a medieval remnant that could benefit from reform. Yet his own court has determined constables cannot be under the control of the judiciary, so any change will have to come from the Legislature. In an interview, the chief justice said he believes most of their duties ...
Times Leader - Jul 30, 2008
Farmer Is Suspended for Selling Another's Meat
Are Greenmarket officials unrealistic to expect that farmers in the Northeast s harsh climate should sell only what they grew? In November, Greenmarket, which runs 45 farmers markets in the five boroughs, took the rare step of suspending Jay Dines for selling meat he did not raise on his farm, a violation of their rule that vendors must raise, grow or make everything they sell at the ...
New York Times - Jul 30, 2008
Public Interest Groups Back Federal Court Appeal to Implement New U.S. Patent Rules; Proposed Regulations Would Curtail
In a friend-of-the-court brief filed in U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit inWashington, DC, the groups urged that a decision by the federal District Court forEastern Virginia blocking the proposed rules be overturned. The groups urged the appeals court to implement the USPTO's proposed rules immediately. The proposed regulations ask applicants to justify the need for more ...
NewsBlaze - Jul 30, 2008
Thai court accepts another case against Thaksin
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - The Thai Supreme Court accepted Wednesday a lawsuit alleging abuse of power by ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in connection with a government loan to Myanmar. It was the fourth case to go to court involving allegations of corruption and abuse of power against Thaksin, who was deposed in a September 2006 military coup. The first hearing is set for Sept.
AOL - Jul 30, 2008
Homebuilder closes shop: Blaming housing crisis, Sullivan Homes will sell properties to pay bank debts
Jul. 30--The national housing crisis is claiming one of Spokane's largest homebuilders. Sullivan Homes Inc. owes local banks about $16.2 million and has filed a petition in state court to liquidate its assets and pay off those debts. At least $900,000 is owed to other vendors and contractors. "This is absolutely a sign of the times," said attorney Nancy Isserlis, who will be appointed as the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 30, 2008
Former Va. governor Linwood Holton pens memoir
Jul. 30--RICHMOND -- During his history-making term as Virginia's governor in the early 1970s, Linwood Holton forged a friendship with acclaimed Thomas Jefferson biographer Dumas Malone. "Every time I went to the Charlottesville area, I would call him up and say, 'Well, have you got any Virginia Gentleman handy?' " Holton said with a chuckle. "And his response was, 'Come on over, governor, the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 30, 2008
NHL owners' loans helped buy Predators Commissioner says he was unaware money was given to investor 'Boots' Del Biaggio.
The Preds Sale: First of two parts Two NHL owners who stood to gain if William J. 'Boots' Del Biaggio III bought a stake in the Nashville Predators lent the California financier and the team a total of $27 million to help close the deal in December, according to court records, interviews and confidential internal documents obtained by The Tennessean.The two lenders - sports and entertainment ...
Tennessean - Jul 30, 2008
Student Papers Can Shed Shackles By Going Online
The freedom of the press, as guaranteed by the First Amendment, is often taken for granted in the United States. Yet, this promise has been hollowed by the placement of unnecessary limitations upon the freedom of the press in high schools. I experienced this as editor of my high school newspaper. The uneven relationship between school officials and students who seek to express themselves in ...
Hartford Courant - Jul 30, 2008
California tribe fears a return of Keno
Jul. 30--Indian gambling interests are concerned that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to bring back Keno, a popular bingo-like game banned 12 years ago for violating state gambling law. According to a draft of the governor's lottery plan obtained by The Bee, Schwarzenegger would propose a state constitutional amendment that tribes say could override a California Supreme Court decision that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 30, 2008
U.S. TV star Ed McMahon sued over legal bills
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former U.S. television star Ed McMahon's financial and legal woes worsened on Wednesday -- as well as fighting to save his home from foreclosure, he is now being sued for not paying a lawyer hired for his daughter. McMahon, 85, long-time sidekick to talk show host Johnny Carson, failed to pay divorce attorney Norman Solovay $275,168, according to the lawsuit filed in ...
Reuters UK - Jul 30, 2008
Disgraced NBA ref gets 15 months in jail
NEW YORK _ Timothy Donaghy took one more gamble by cooperating with the FBI, and Tuesday it paid off. A federal judge in Brooklyn took into account the disgraced former NBA referee's help with investigators in the yearlong probe of the basketball gambling scandal. She gave him a 15-month prison sentence _ about half of what the government recommended. "Everything worked out good," the normally ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Ruling clears way to begin Tiller trial
Jul. 29--George Tiller will learn today when he'll be scheduled for trial, after a judge ruled Monday that prosecutors can proceed with 19 misdemeanor charges against the Wichita abortion provider. Sedgwick County District Judge Clark Owens denied a motion by Tiller's lawyers to dismiss the charges, brought more than a year ago by the Kansas Attorney General's Office.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Court dismisses family's lawsuit against officials: Parents claimed the removal of their children during a child abuse probe violated their rights
Jul. 29--A federal appeals court agreed to dismiss a lawsuit claiming state and local officials violated a Fort Bend County family's constitutional rights when officials removed the children from their home during a child abuse investigation. While the ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals supports a lower court's finding against the Gary Gates family, the court said child welfare and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Five indicted sect members surrender in West Texas
Jul. 29--AUSTIN -- Four of the five polygamist sect members indicted last week with jailed leader Warren Jeffs surrendered to authorities in West Texas on Monday on an array of sexual-assault charges and face up to life in prison, Attorney General Greg Abbott said. The fifth man named in the indictments from Schleicher County also surrendered and faces six months behind bars on charges of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Judge kills suit to force collection of tax on cigarettes sold by Indians
Jul. 29--ALBANY -- A State Supreme Court justice has dismissed a state lawmaker's lawsuit seeking to force the collection of taxes on cigarettes sold by Indian retailers. The legal victory for the retailers, as well as the administration of Gov. David A. Paterson, means the state Department of Taxation and Finance can continue not to enforce the 2005 law, overwhelmingly passed the State ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
First death penalty hearing held: Md. panel listens to evidence on disparities
Jul. 29--A state commission appointed to study the death penalty began its work yesterday by hearing testimony on statistical evidence of racial, geographic and socioeconomic disparities in different states' imposition of death sentences. University professors, a former judge and statisticians from across the country appeared before the panel, which is assigned to offer recommendations to the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Backers of same-sex marriage ban to challenge rewording of Proposition 8
Jul. 29--Proponents of a ballot measure to ban same-sex marriages in California plan to appear in court today to challenge state Attorney General Jerry Brown's rewording of the measure's ballot summary. On the petitions circulated last year to qualify the measure for the Nov. 4 ballot, it was described as a "Limit on Marriage." But Brown's new title and summary of Proposition 8, posted on the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Appeals court affirms sentences for two border patrol agents
Jul. 29--WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court upheld lengthy prison sentences Monday for two Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a Mexican drug smuggler, prompting renewed appeals from their supporters for leniency from the White House. Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean have been imprisoned for more than a year. They were convicted in a Feb.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
War-crimes tribunal: Injustice, for all to see
The following editorial appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Monday, July 28: ___ Since when has a trial in an American courtroom opened with the prosecutor voluntarily screening a video of the accused, bound, hooded and being grilled by armed and masked government agents? What happened last week at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in the Bush administration's first terrorism war-crimes tribunal, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Same-sex area couple wins health care benefits fight
Jul. 29--The day the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit seeking spousal health care benefits for a legally married Buffalo lesbian couple, the organization's director claimed the case seemed like a "slam-dunk." Turned out, she was right. Nineteen days after filing the lawsuit against BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York, the NYCLU announced Monday that the health insurance ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Pugh: Virginia prayer case similar to his cause
Jul. 29--HIGH POINT -- High Point City Councilman Mike Pugh offered to join the Fredericksburg, Va., non-sectarian prayer case settled Wednesday by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. The court ruled Fredericksburg's City Council had the authority to require non-sectarian prayer and keep one of its members, the Rev. Hashmel Turner, from the prayer rotation because he used Jesus' name.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Pepper-spray burns blamed for jail death: In trial of deputy, medical examiner's official says windpipe injuries occurred while inmate restrained
Jul. 29--An array of autopsy photos in the case of Summit County Jail inmate Mark D. McCullaugh Jr. showed his windpipe was so badly burned from inhaling streams of pepper spray that it "clearly resulted in respiratory impairment" and, ultimately, led to his death, a medical examiner's official said Monday. George Sterbenz, the county's chief deputy medical examiner and the man who performed the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
OPINION: Legal picture muddled in game of budget chicken
Jul. 29--Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he'll slash wages for as many as 200,000 state employees and lay off 22,000 temporary workers until the state has a budget -- but he'd better keep a few lawyers around because he may find himself in an epic legal battle. Schwarzenegger's melodramatic act, which first surfaced last week and was tentatively scheduled to happen on Monday, now has been ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Correction officer claims discrimination: American Indian man plans to sue Albany County over alleged treatment at jail
Jul. 29--COLONIE -- An American Indian correction officer intends to sue Albany County, alleging systematic discrimination by co-workers and supervisors, his lawyer said Monday. Robert Hunter, 36, contends he was the target of derogatory comments and racial slurs for three years at the Albany County jail, and that his supervisors were not only aware but "frequently engaged in" them, his attorney ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Microtune Announces Second Quarter 2008 Financial Results
News PLANO, Texas-(Business Wire)-July 28, 2008 - Microtune(R), Inc. (NASDAQ: TUNE) today reported preliminary unaudited financial results for the second quarter and six months ended June 30, 2008. Net revenue for the three months ended June 30, 2008 was $26.6 million, a 7% increase compared to net revenue of $24.8 million for the second quarter of 2007, and a 5% increase compared to net revenue ...
DiGiTAL50 - Jul 29, 2008
Lawmaker's actions on gay-nuptial vote probed
Jul. 29--PHOENIX -- Last-minute legislative action that led to placement of a constitutional ban on gay marriage on the November ballot has triggered a rare state Senate Ethics Committee investigation. On a 3-2 vote, the committee agreed Monday to hold hearings on whether Sen. Jack Harper, R-Surprise, intentionally broke the Legislature's rules by cutting off a filibuster attempt last month, a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Special-interest lobbies pour millions into judicial races
CHICAGO _ Sixty-six percent of Americans can name at least one judge on the popular TV show "American Idol," while only 15 percent can identify John Roberts as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. That's according to a poll showing Americans are largely clueless when it comes to knowledge of the nation's judicial system. Yet special-interest lobbies _ from business groups to labor unions and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Zimmermann's parents drop federal lawsuit over 911 call hangup
Jul. 29--The parents of slain UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann dropped their federal civil rights lawsuit against Dane County and a former 911 dispatcher on Monday, about a month after the county's attorneys moved to dismiss the case. Monday was the deadline for Kevin and Jean Zimmermann to respond to the county's motion to dismiss the lawsuit on grounds it has no duty under the U.S. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
EDITORIAL: Gun control laws now under fire
Jul. 29--Felons want guns. Now there's a no-duh. But since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a citizen's right to own guns last month, the line is long of those saying "me, too." The 5-4 decision struck down Washington, D.C.'s ban on gun ownership one of the toughest gun-control laws in the country and a prime target for gun-rights activists. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia ruled ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Local officials fight pact with MILF in Court
Jul. 30--Officials from North Cotabato province went to the Supreme Court on Tuesday to block an agreement between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on the contentious issue of ancestral domain. The officials said they want the agreement to be made public, before it takes effect. In a media briefing Tuesday, Press Secretary Jesus Dureza said, "If there is a case filed ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 30, 2008
Supes back S.F. in labeling battle: Restaurant industry suing to block requirement
Jul. 29--San Mateo County supervisors are supporting San Francisco in its legal battle with the restaurant industry over a plan to require chains to post nutritional information on menus. The board of supervisors voted in closed session last week to file an amicus curiae -- or "friend of the court" -- brief backing the authority of San Francisco to establish a menu labeling law.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
McCain promotes drilling for oil off US coast
Republican John McCain said Monday that drilling for oil off the U.S. coast is an essential part of any plan to lower gas prices and reduce dependence on foreign sources, and he criticized Democrat Barack Obama for opposing it. 'We all know that a comprehensive solution is wind, tide, solar, all the other things all of us believe in,' McCain told reporters after touring San Joaquin Facilities ...
Anchorage Daily News - Jul 29, 2008
Tennessee: Cable appeals EPB case dismissals
Jul. 29--The cable industry has appealed to the Tennessee Court of Appeals a Nashville judge's dismissal of its lawsuit against EPB's fiber to the home project. "This preserves our legal rights," said Stacey B. Briggs, president and executive director of the Tennessee Cable Telecommunications Association. "Hopefully this will allow the merits of the case to be heard." The lawsuit claims EPB's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
BRIEF: SC notice to Centre on landfill site
Jul. 29--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court on Monday sought a response from Union of India on Municipal Corporation of Delhi's plea seeking permission for land in Bhatti Mines to establish a landfill site there. A bench headed by Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan issued notice to the Centre and Delhi Government after senior advocate Ravi Shankar Prasad claimed on behalf of the MCD that the corporation ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Court Declares Reuters Messaging May No Longer Use FaceTime Technology
The United States District Court for the The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York today entered judgment in favor of FaceTime Communications, Inc. in a contract dispute with Thomson Reuters Inc. over Reuters' use of FaceTime's intellectual property. According to the court, Thomson Reuters must cease use of FaceTime technology effective August 1, 2008.
MarketWire - Jul 29, 2008
Canada Revenue Agency: Former Football Canada CEO Fined $100,000 for Tax Evasion
John "Jack" Jordan, of Ottawa, pleaded guilty in the Ontario Court of Justice in Ottawa on July 28, 2008, to two counts of tax evasion. Mr. Jordan was fined $80,000 for evading federal income tax and fined $20,000 for evading GST. These fines are in relation to actions occurring from 1999 to 2004. The fine is in addition to any taxes and interest owed, as well as any civil penalties that may be ...
MarketWire - Jul 29, 2008
Attorney: Pool safety law not well known
An attorney for a swimming pool company president charged in the drowning of a Greenwich boy said Monday that there was a general lack of awareness about a safety law his client is accused of breaking. Shoreline Pools President David Lionetti of Stamford was arraigned on a second-degree manslaughter charge Monday in Stamford Superior Court. He did not enter a plea, but intends to plead not ...
Hartford Courant - Jul 29, 2008
Council takes time to Redflex
Jul. 29--LIMA -- The largest red light enforcement company in the country made its pitch Monday to contract with the city. Redflex is an Arizona company, but Joe Moore, customer service manager for Ohio, is based in Dayton. Redflex provides photo enforcement of red light violations for 200 communities across the country including Toledo, Columbus, Dayton, Springfield and others in Ohio.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
EDITORIAL: More good lawyers needed
Jul. 29--The Japan Federation of Bar Associations (Nichibenren) has made an emergency proposal to slow down the government's plan to increase the number of successful applicants in the annual national bar exam to 3,000 by around 2010. Nichibenren said that since the current system of nurturing legal professionals is still in an evolving stage, attention should be paid to maintaining the quality ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Joining the party: State, groundwater group spread word for pumpers to join mitigation plan
Jul. 29--Creating a water mitigation plan is all well and good. But someone has to provide the water. And state officials want to make sure no one's left handling the pump all alone. On July 11, Idaho Department of Water Resources Director Dave Tuthill issued his final order in a water delivery call made by two Magic Valley trout farms, finding that two of their rights had been damaged and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
EDITORIAL: Gov. Perry should halt this execution
Jul. 29--All eyes are on Gov. Rick Perry regarding the Aug. 5 execution date for Jose Medellin, a Mexican who confessed to the 1993 gang rape and murder of two Houston teenage girls. Although this newspaper opposes the death penalty, no one doubts the governor's prerogative under the law to permit the execution of convicted murderers. In this case, though, an international court has ruled that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
Left on the sidelines
Jul. 29--When it comes to wolves, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game was just getting used to calling the shots. Now, Fish and Game officials are relegated to the sidelines, cheering frantically for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service but unable to do much else. At least, that's the feeling Fish and Game Commissioner Wayne Wright has. Just months after the Canadian gray wolf was removed from ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 29, 2008
EDITORIAL: Undo-it-yourself: Couples who wish to divorce without attorneys might need extra help
Jul. 28--Judges in the Franklin County Domestic Relations Court say they're seeing a big increase in the number of couples seeking divorces without the help of lawyers. It's a sign of the uncertain economic times, and it's also part of the do-it-yourself movement evident in everything from real estate to home-improvement. The problem is, pro se litigants (Latin for "for self") usually don't know ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Bush approves execution of soldier who terrorized Fort Bragg area in 1980s
WASHINGTON _ President Bush on Monday approved the execution of an Army soldier who terrorized Fayetteville, N.C., for months in the late 1980s and was eventually convicted of raping and killing four women, and raping and attempting to kill another. Bush signed off on the death penalty for Ronald A. Gray, who grew up in the Liberty City area of Miami and was stationed at Fort Bragg at the time ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Special-interest lobbies pour cast into judicial races
Jul. 28--Sixty-six percent of Americans can name at least one judge on the popular TV show "American Idol," while only 15 percent can identify John Roberts as chief justice of the Supreme Court. That's according to a poll showing Americans are largely clueless when it comes to knowledge of the nation's judicial system. Yet special-interest lobbies -- from business groups to labor unions and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Wired tells us how to gain fame, feign sincerity
Jul. 28--The third annual "How To" issue of Wired may fall short of the high standards it has set in offering real-world advice on matters such as getting a real operator when calling consumer hot lines (yelling something rather nasty can work). But, once again, it is worth a gander. It leads with a bit more than one needs to know about getting Internet famous, profiling quasi-celebrity Julia ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Crimes Against Nature
The DA s office uses a 203-year-old law to jail prostitutes Editor s Note: The final story in a three-part series on police and prosecutors seeking harsh penalties for non-violent, low-level criminals. Night falls on Chef Menteur Highway and with the darkness come the prostitutes broken and addicted women willing to sell their bodies for cash to score their next fix.
New Orleans CityBusiness - Jul 28, 2008
Long arm of law chases Sonny Bill
SONNY BILL WILLIAMS could face proseccution for contempt of court if the Bulldogs backrower pushes ahead with his plan to switch codes and play rugby union in France. The NRL and Bulldogs yesterday applied to the NSW Supreme Court to start injunction proceedings that would stop Williams playing for any other club than the Bulldogs. Despite having another four years to run on his contract, ...
The Australian - Jul 28, 2008
Banking Department to Require Licenses for Internet Payday Lenders
Secretary of Banking Steve Kaplan announced today that Internet payday lenders and other out-of-state companies that make consumer loans to Pennsylvania residents will need to be licensed by the Department of Banking and comply with state laws. 'Pennsylvania consumers should be protected by Pennsylvania laws regardless of where the company they're doing business with is located, whether it's down ...
Portland Business Journal - Jul 28, 2008
More woes for Thai gov't as court accepts new graft case (AFP)
News - [New User? ] 7 VIDEO More woes for Thai gov't as court accepts new graft case July 28, 2008, 6:38 pm AFP [] BANGKOK, (AFP) - Thailand's Supreme Court dealt another blow to Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej's struggling government Monday, accepting a fresh graft case which could force three more ministers out of office. The court said it would consider a case accusing ...
Yahoo! News Australia - Jul 28, 2008
For athletes accused of taking drugs, a Perry Mason of their own
Attorney Howard Jacobs, who has defended athletes from Marion Jones to US swimmer Jessica Hardy, believes the system is tilted too much toward antidoping agencies. RSS Staff writer Christa Case Bryant discusses the process of appealing doping convictions. Christa Case Bryant Christa Case Bryant Tilted justice? Howard Jacobs, a lawyer who specializes in defending athletes accused of doping, ...
Christian Science Monitor - Jul 28, 2008
Prosecutor warns of risk of return to Islamic intolerance
A SENIOR Turkish prosecutor has raised tensions on the eve of a landmark court case that could leave Turkey deeply divided and without a government by warning that it is in danger of an 'intolerant' Islamic takeover. In an interview with The Guardian, Omer Faruk Eminagaoglu, the chairman of the association of judges and prosecutors (Yarsav) and deputy to Turkey's chief prosecutor, said the ruling ...
Brisbane Times - Jul 28, 2008
BRIEF: Missouri ready to replace high court judge
Jul. 28--With Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr.'s recent appointment as a federal judge, applications are being accepted to fill the vacancy on the Missouri Supreme Court created by his departure. Limbaugh, a judge on the high court for 16 years and a circuit judge for nearly five years before that, was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Federal agency plan makes a comeback with Patil
Jul. 28--NEW DELHI -- Conceived by former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani, adopted by Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil and aborted by states afraid of losing power, the concept of federal offences bounced back on Sunday with the Centre announcing its intention to convene a string of meetings with chief ministers, police chiefs and chief secretaries. At these meetings, the Centre not only ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
BRIEF: Detroit Council holds closed session on Kilpatrick forfeiture effort
Jul. 28--Detroit City Council is to meet in closed session at 9 a.m. today with its legal counsel, William Goodman, and other attorneys in the council's research and analysis division about the forfeiture proceedings involving Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. The council had previously voted to initiate forfeiture proceedings to remove Kilpatrick from office for allegedly violating the city charter in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
BRIEF: Kilpatrick attorney: 6-year-old could defend potential charges
Jul. 28--Potential assault charges against Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick are so ludicrous, one of his attorneys said, that a 6-year-old could successfully defend the mayor in court. Jim Parkman, a private defense lawyer from Alabama, went on to tell Frankie Darcell of WMXD-FM (92.3) on Sunday that he wants Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox to bring charges against the mayor.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Text messaging charge spurs class-action suit
MONTREAL -- As a former mobile telephone salesman, Eric Cormier knows just how complicated contracts can be. 'I know exactly how it works,' Mr. Cormier said Monday, after announcing he is launching a class-action lawsuit against Bell Mobility Inc., his mobile service provider. Mr. Cormier is suing over Bell's plans to charge 15 per incoming message to customers who do not pay a monthly fee for ...
Windsor Star - Jul 28, 2008
U.S. Chamber Exposes Breadth of Trial Lawyers' Earmarks in Congressional Bills
A Web site and media campaign exposing the vast number of liability expanding provisions slipped into key legislation by the plaintiffs' trial bar was launched today by the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform (ILR). The site, http://www.TrialLawyerEarmarks.com, illustrates the breadth and scope of the trial lawyer agenda through a tangle of vines overtaking the U.S. Capitol Building.
PR Newswire - Jul 28, 2008
Point of no return
Jul. 28--NEW DELHI -- An increasing number of bureaucrats in Delhi hailing from Jammu and Kashmir are refusing to go back to their home state after retirement fearing threats to life and property. Going by the number of petitions in the Delhi High Court, filed by such officials against the Government Estate Officer's order to vacate their official accommodation, the trend seems to be on the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
UNC researchers link genes, criminal behavior: The study's authors say parenting, social factors can override the genes' effects; they're careful to limit theory's application
Jul. 28--Maybe some boys really were born to be wild. Researchers at UNC Chapel Hill announced this month that they have found three genes that appear to affect the probability of a life of crime. The study looked at roughly 1,100 boys in middle and high school, ages 12 to 18. In 1996 and again in 2002, the participants were asked to take a 12-question survey to gauge their delinquent ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Kmart sued by ex-Laurel Mall workers
Jul. 28--HAZLETON -- Eight former employees of the Kmart store in the Laurel Mall have filed federal age discrimination lawsuits against the corporation, alleging they were terminated so that the company could hire younger, lower paid employees. The employees, all of whom were women over age 40, were fired in or around January 2006. Kmart maintained the action was part of a downsizing of the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Scientists find link between genes and boys' bad behavior
RALEIGH, N.C. _ Maybe some boys really were born to be wild. Researchers at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill announced this week that they had found three genes that appear to affect the probability of a life of crime. The study looked at roughly 1,100 boys in middle school and high school, ages 12-18. In 1996 and again in 2002, the participants were asked to take a 12-question ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
State's business lobby wants labor laws adjusted along with budget
Jul. 28--Last of two parts on special-interest influence on the budget. Companies like UPS would like their California truck drivers to decide when to take their lunch breaks. The world's largest package delivery service has spent $804,169 lobbying its cause at the Capitol since 2004. Now, business groups and like-minded Republicans have added relief from the meal and rest period rules to the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Santeria's animal sacrifices are legal, Florida police told
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ Although Santeria has been widely practiced in South Florida for decades, the Afro-Cuban religion, which at times includes animal sacrifices, remains cloaked in mystery and sensation. Just last year, police staged an armed raid on a Coral Gables, Fla., home where several goats, chickens and pigeons were being slaughtered in a ritual.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Proof relationships can last, what they say
Jul. 28--A relationship can be tough, but if it's meant to be, it will indeed be worth it. I was a senior in high school when this tall boy with beautiful blue eyes sat down in the empty seat in front of me in government class to run the projector. By the end of the first film on the Supreme Court, we were trying on each other's class rings. That was Oct. 30. Our first date was Nov. 4.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Congress Confronts Final Week of Work
In both the House and the Senate, lawmakers are engaged in an increasingly bitter fight over how to address the high price of gasoline a recognition that some very unhappy constituents are waiting for them back home in a major election year. A member just has to go home to know what is the No. 1 economic issue in a country where people are concerned right now about what to do about the ...
New York Times - Jul 28, 2008
USANA Health Sciences and Barry Minkow settle defamation, stock manipulation lawsuit
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Nutritional supplement and skin care products company USANA Health Sciences Inc. said Monday it settled a long-standing dispute between the company and investor Barry Minkow over defamation and stock manipulation accusations. USANA will withdraw its lawsuit against Minkow and his Fraud Discovery Institute in the U.S. District Court for the district of Utah.
Canadian Business Magazine - Jul 28, 2008
Secure Computing Reports Q2 2008 Results
Secure Computing Corporation (NASDAQ: SCUR), a Secure Computing Corporation (NASDAQ: SCUR), a leading enterprise security company, today announced second quarter GAAP revenue of $61.7 million. This represents a 7% increase in revenue compared to $57.6 million in the same quarter last year. Second quarter non-GAAP revenue was $69.2 million. This represents a 9% increase compared to the same ...
MarketWire - Jul 28, 2008
Applied Nanotech Holdings, Inc. Announces Court Decision
Applied Nanotech Holdings, Inc. (OTCBB: APNT) Applied Nanotech Holdings, Inc. (OTCBB: APNT) announced that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued its opinion in its litigation with Canon, Inc. The appeals court in part affirmed, and in part reversed, the rulings of the district court. While the appeals court accepted, without deciding, the district court's decision that SED, Inc. ...
MarketWire - Jul 28, 2008
Energizer Holdings, Inc. Files Patent Infringement Complaint in Federal Court Against Spectrum Brands
ST. LOUIS, July 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Energizer Holdings, Inc., (NYSE: ENR), and the Eveready Battery Company, Inc. have filed a Complaint with the United States District Court Western District of Wisconsin. The Complaint is against Spectrum Brands and alleges patent infringement of patents owned by Energizer. Energizer believes that Spectrum Brands infringe Energizer's US Patents ...
PR Newswire - Jul 28, 2008
Kastner's many claims eventually collapsed: His stories, and his behavior, started shifting, his principal says.
Jul. 28--It was about mid-December when Webster High School's principal started seeing some changes in English teacher and coach John Kastner. Kastner began having over-the-top reactions to people and situations that irritated him. His stories about money he planned to donate began shifting. He announced he was probably going to be deaf within a year. "At that point I thought 'too much drama, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Arroyo: 'We need VAT to survive global crisis'
Protesters who converged along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City Monday gave President Arroyo a failing mark during their own people s State of the Nation Address (SONA). abs-cbnNEWS.com (7/28/2008 6:06:03 PM) In her eighth State of the Nation Address, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo called on Congress to pass the bill that would extend the 20-year Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law ...
ABS-CBN News - Jul 28, 2008
Researchers link genes, criminal activity
RALEIGH, N.C. _ Maybe some boys really were born to be wild. Researchers at UNC Chapel Hill announced this week that they had found three genes that appear to affect the probability of a life of crime. The study looked at roughly 1,100 boys in middle school and high school, ages 12-18. In 1996 and again in 2002, the participants were asked to take a 12-question survey to gauge their delinquent ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 27, 2008
Texas Supreme Court's ruling didn't settle raging debate on exorcism
Jul. 27--When the Texas Supreme Court tossed out a lawsuit against a former Colleyville church involved in a traumatic exorcism, did the justices properly defend everyone's religious freedoms or simply get it all wrong? Opinions about the court's 6-3 decision in the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God vs. Laura Schubert are as sharply divided as those displayed by the justices themselves.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 27, 2008
Family resolves to take its fight over exorcism to U.S. Supreme Court
Jul. 27--Laura Schubert Pearson was an impressionable 17-year-old when friends in her church youth group thought demons possessed her. Repeatedly, over two days, the youth pastor, his wife and others held the girl down on the floor of the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God Church in Colleyville, even as Pearson screamed, fought and begged to be released. They cast it as wrestling with the devil.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 27, 2008
Debate rages on over IIRA
Jul. 27--It has been two years since Hazleton City Council passed an ordinance aimed at imposing financial penalties on landlords and businesses that knowingly provide housing or jobs to illegal immigrants. But the city still hasn't been able to enforce the ordinance known as the Illegal Immigration Relief Act. Mayor Lou Barletta remains optimistic that will someday change.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 27, 2008
South Florida malpractice victims have fewer options
Jul. 27--GROWING RANKS OF UNINSURED DOCTORS -- plus new laws and court decisions -- are discouraging attorneys from taking medical malpractice cases, leaving some South Florida victims of medical errors with few options. Attorneys, insurance officials and doctors said the number of new malpractice lawsuits has tumbled in recent years. The state does not count lawsuits when they are first filed, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 27, 2008
Schiavo debate relived in Valley: Sanger woman in coma center of wide dispute.
Jul. 27--Three years after the fight over Terri Schiavo pulled the nation into the end-of-life debate, the case of a comatose Fresno County woman is reopening old wounds -- and could prove even more inflammatory. The family of Janet Rivera, 46, wants to keep her alive in a Fresno hospital. The county, acting as her legal guardian, wants the issue decided in court.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 27, 2008
Trial set for Sand Dunes' water right: An investors group opposes feds' claim.
Jul. 27--ALAMOSA -- The federal government will try to secure its right to groundwater beneath the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve on Wednesday, when a three-week trial is scheduled to open in the Water Court for Division 3. Attorneys with the Department of Justice filed a claim to a right that would entitle it to all unappropriated water in the unconfined aquifer needed to maintain ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 27, 2008
US racketeering law is tested in Moscow
Russian authorities are hoping to make legal history by applying an American racketeering law in a Moscow court as they seek to recover billions of dollars in damages from the Bank of New York Mellon. Hearings resume Monday in the Russian Federal Customs Service's $22.5 billion lawsuit against the New York-based bank, which was at the center of a major money-laundering scandal in the late 1990s.
Newsday - Jul 27, 2008
Nigeria's Fragile Democracy
How sick is President Yar'Adua of Nigeria? In May, he admitted during a live television broadcast that he suffers from a kidney ailment, but sought to quell speculation that he was terminally ill by insisting that fears for his health are greatly exaggerated and politically motivated. There are plenty of world leaders in less-than-perfect health. But the stakes are especially high in Nigeria, ...
The New York Sun - Jul 28, 2008
Open courts vs. privacy: Move toward online access...
OTTAWA - The judges on the Supreme Court of Canada will decide this fall whether to post court documents online, the culmination of years of debate on whether throwing open the electronic doors threatens privacy rights in an era of Internet stalkers and identity thieves. Courts in several provinces are also considering the prospect of e-access to court files, with British Columbia being the first ...
Times Colonist - Jul 28, 2008
Small firms want input on greenhouse gas rules: Regulations could prove costly, critics contend
Small-business advocates want to make sure the gets their input before the agency imposes regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on July 11 that seeks public comment on the advantages and disadvantages of using the Clean Air Act to regulate stationary and mobile sources of greenhouse gases. The EPA was forced to address the issue ...
Business Journal of Milwaukee - Jul 28, 2008
SolGen asks SC to dismisscases vs. lawmaker: Devanadera maintains that the legal issues against Rep. Limkaichong are moot and academic
Jul. 28--THE House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET) has the exclusive jurisdiction to resolve cases relating to the election and qualification of congressmen, according to the Office of the Solicitor General. Solicitor General Agnes Devanadera made this manifestation even as it asked the Supreme Court (SC) to dismiss, for being moot, all cases challenging the citizenship and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
BRIEF: Missouri ready to replace high court judge
Jul. 28--With Judge Stephen Limbaugh Jr.'s recent appointment as a federal judge, applications are being accepted to fill the vacancy on the Missouri Supreme Court created by his departure. Limbaugh, a judge on the high court for 16 years and a circuit judge for nearly five years before that, was appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Federal agency plan makes a comeback with Patil
Jul. 28--NEW DELHI -- Conceived by former Deputy Prime Minister LK Advani, adopted by Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil and aborted by states afraid of losing power, the concept of federal offences bounced back on Sunday with the Centre announcing its intention to convene a string of meetings with chief ministers, police chiefs and chief secretaries. At these meetings, the Centre not only ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Santeria leaders hope tolerance of faith's rituals spreads: Humane animal killings in ceremonies are permitted under U.S. Constitution
Jul. 27--Although Santeria has been widely practiced in South Florida for decades, the Afro-Cuban religion, which at times includes animal sacrifices, remains cloaked in mystery and sensation. Just last year, police staged an armed raid on a Coral Gables home where several goats, chickens and pigeons were being slaughtered in a ritual. Several worshipers were held at gunpoint and detained for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 27, 2008
Turkish court prepares judgment on ruling party
Leading prosecutor wants Islamist party shut down EU officials condemn move as anti-democratic A senior Turkish prosecutor has raised tensions on the eve of a landmark court case that could leave Turkey without a government and deeply divided by warning that it is in danger of an 'intolerant' Islamic takeover. In an interview with the Guardian, Omer Faruk Eminagaoglu, chairman of the association ...
Guardian Unlimited - Jul 27, 2008
Groups support Layshock lawsuit: Say students have right to free speech
Jul. 27--HERMITAGE -- Three civil liberties organizations have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the Justin Layshock vs. Hermitage School District case, saying an appeals court's decision will have far-reaching effects. Layshock, then a Hickory High School senior, created an unflattering profile of his principal, Eric W. Trosch, on his grandmother's computer in December 2005, and posted the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 27, 2008
New battles erupt over gun laws following Supreme Court decision
ATLANTA _ Following the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down a ban on handguns, gun opponents are fighting to preserve or expand gun-free zones, igniting battles over whether civilians should be allowed to carry loaded weapons to places such as airports, public parks and even the Magic Kingdom. The same day a new law went into effect in Georgia allowing people who have obtained a legal ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 27, 2008
S.C. House attempted to go too far with reform
Last month, our state elected leaders took the right step in crafting a legislative compromise to protect the public's ability to stand up for its interests when industries and developers unlawfully pollute our clean air and clean water. Under long-standing law, an individual or group can challenge an unlawful state Department of Health and Environmental Control permit that would allow injury to ...
Spartanburg Herald-Journal - Jul 27, 2008
Lawsuit dropped over Calif. congresswoman's home
The Associated Press Rep. Laura Richardson, D-Calif., center, arrives for her fundraiser in Washington, in this Wednesday, June 25, 2008 file photo. A man who paid $388,000 for the congresswoman's home dropped a lawsuit that claimed she got special treatment when a bank rescinded the foreclosure, it was reported Saturday July 26, 2008. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson) TORRANCE, Calif.
Augusta Chronicle - Jul 27, 2008
Point of no return
Jul. 28--NEW DELHI -- An increasing number of bureaucrats in Delhi hailing from Jammu and Kashmir are refusing to go back to their home state after retirement fearing threats to life and property. Going by the number of petitions in the Delhi High Court, filed by such officials against the Government Estate Officer's order to vacate their official accommodation, the trend seems to be on the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Development groups weigh impact of verdict: High court says Beaver Dam meetings should be public
Jul. 28--A state Supreme Court ruling that a Beaver Dam economic development group is a quasi-governmental organization and must obey the state's open meetings and open records laws has been hailed as a victory for open government and criticized as a threat to economic development. The Beaver Dam Area Development Corp. secretly negotiated for months in 2003 with Wal-Mart to build a $55 million, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 28, 2008
Japan court upholds guilty verdict of former Internet mogul accused of securities violations
TOKYO (AP) _ A Japanese appeals court upheld the conviction of flamboyant former Internet mogul Takafumi Horie on Friday in an ongoing case that has come to symbolize this nation's effort to deal with white collar crime at emerging dot-coms.The Tokyo High Court rejected Horie's appeal of a lower court conviction of securities laws violations. He was found guilty in March last year of ...
Chicago Tribune - Jul 25, 2008
Wedemeyer pioneered cameras in courtrooms
Jul. 24--Appeals Court Judge Ted E. Wedemeyer Jr. died Wednesday, five months after being diagnosed with lung cancer. He was 75. Wedemeyer's death surprised most of the legal community. "I know that his death may come as a shock to most of you, as many of you did not even know he was sick," wrote Patricia S. Curley, the presiding judge in the 1st District Court of Appeals that sits in Milwaukee. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 24, 2008
In Texas: grand jury and not so public records
I am sitting outside the Schleicher County Courthouse once again, trying to piece together what is going on from afar. The word is that Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott will be here today. If so, he has not yet arrived.The panel entered a smaller building a few minutes ago. Apparently, the proceedings will take place in an auxillary building that has air conditioned.
Salt Lake Tribune - Jul 24, 2008
State to address criminals in mortgage industry
MIAMI - The head of a state agency that allowed thousands of criminals to sell home loans in Florida has acknowledged that his office did not follow a screening law, but blamed legislators for failing to provide money to enforce it. That's one of the explanations in a 40-page response to a Miami Herald investigation, which found that more than 10,000 people with criminal records were permitted to ...
Florida Today - Jul 24, 2008
Bob Barr Says: Maintain Economic Growth, Find New Energy Sources, Confront Global Warming
Bob Barr, former member of Congress from Georgia and Libertarian Party Candidate for President, today issued the following statement on energy and global warming: As America confronts a variety of domestic and foreign challenges in the future, it is essential that we preserve our prosperous, productive, and innovative economy. Without a strong economic foundation, it will be impossible for ...
PR Newswire - Jul 24, 2008
The "Fairness" Doctrine: America In The Balance
Even the most superficial understanding and regard for the critical importance of free speech and expression should generate nearly universal opposition to the Fairness Doctrine from across the political spectrum. After all, if the rights of any segment of society can be abridged, the rights of all others are threatened. Lurking in the gloom of the Democrat agenda is a resuscitation of the ...
Web Commentary - Jul 24, 2008
Top state court backs Christian group in hate-crimes case
Jul. 24--The state Supreme Court has upheld a lower court's ruling that tossed out language expanding Pennsylvania's hate-crimes law. The justices Wednesday upheld a November ruling from Commonwealth Court. The ruling handed a victory to conservative Christian group Repent America, which filed a lawsuit in 2005 challenging the amendment of the state hate-crimes law three years earlier.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 24, 2008
The Setu story
Jul. 25--NEW DELHI -- While MPs made their interventions on the confidence motion, the government was -- even as late as 11 pm on Monday -- working out the finer nuances of its new stance on the Ram Setu. A senior government official said the "government's latest position" was finalised in "a series of hasty meetings" late on Monday, when the DMK, which had been pressing for the speedy ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 25, 2008
Brussels Criticises Bulgaria and Romania on Anti-corruption Drive
The European Commission criticised Bulgaria and Romania yesterday for insufficient efforts to root out corruption but defended their inclusion in the European Union before they had seriously tackled their problems. The Commission announ-ced the suspension of EUR 486 M (USD 763 M, GDP 382 M) in EU funds to Bulgaria but emphasised this money had not yet been paid and all of it would be released if ...
Sofia News Agency - Jul 25, 2008
A Good Kid Gets a Day in Court, Again and Again
By the cold math of his police record, Yiskar Caceres already had at least three strikes against him. In seven months, he had been arrested three times on cocaine charges and had pleaded guilty to each one. And that came after four arrests for marijuana. But the judge saw something different when he looked over Mr. Caceress school transcripts and read the letters praising him as an intelligent, ...
New York Times - Jul 25, 2008
Emmett executed for '01 killing: Man loses final appeals and dies by injection for bludgeoning co-worker
Jul. 25--JARRATT -- Christopher Scott Emmett was executed by injection last night for the 2001 beating death of a co-worker in Danville. Emmett, who dropped his appeals over the legality of lethal injections for executions, became the 102nd person executed in Virginia since 1976. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine declined to intervene in the case yesterday evening. Emmett, 36, a construction worker and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 25, 2008
Ecuador's draft charter favors leftist president
MONTECRISTI, Ecuador A proposed new constitution grants Ecuador's leftist President Rafael Correa broad powers including the ability to dissolve Congress and set monetary policy, and would let him stay in office through 2017. The charter, up for initial approval Thursday, would help wrest power from Ecuador's widely discredited traditional political parties and more equitably distribute wealth, ...
SignOn San Diego - Jul 25, 2008
Very happy Arroyo tours NAIA 3, greets passengers
MANILA, Philippines-NAIA 3's most important passenger Thursday liked what she saw-never mind the six-year wait. A beaming President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo spent a leisurely hour touring and power-lunching with aviation VIPs at the newly opened terminal 3 of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA 3). She even took time to bid bon voyage to other passengers.
Philippine Daily Inquirer - Jul 25, 2008
Schultz files motion to split Sonics suit
SEATTLE _ Howard Schultz admits his lawsuit to reclaim the Sonics is a potential legal quagmire, which is why he wants the case against Clay Bennett divided into two parts _ a liability phase and a remedy phase. Schultz's Seattle-based attorney Richard Yarmuth filed a motion Thursday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Seattle asking Judge Marsha Pechman to "bifurcate," or divide, the case. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 25, 2008
Scholars slam government claim on Ram Setu
Jul. 25--NEW DELHI -- Did Lord Rama destroy Ram Setu, the bridge over which his monkey army invaded Ravana's Lanka -- as the government told the Supreme Court on Wednesday? India's leading authorities on the Ramayana want to throw that claim into the sea. With anger growing in India's right-wing parties over plans for a controversial multi-million dollar canal through the Palk Straits, research ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 25, 2008
Julie Steinberg | A low-carb energy diet
If you thought the Bush administration had finally woken up, smelled the CO2, and decided to do something about global warming after discussing it with the G-8, you are sadly mistaken. Two recent decisions concerning greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions not only affirmed the White House's typical reluctance to act on this issue, they have signaled an absolute refusal to engage with it at all.
Daily Pennsylvanian - Jul 24, 2008
Nearly a quarter of BP production at stake in Russia
The dispute that has come to symbolize the challenges of producing oil in an era of high prices and short supplies boiled over in May. That's when BP Plc, the world's third-largest oil company by sales, faced off in a private meeting with its billionaire partners in a 50-50 Russian joint venture called TNK-BP Ltd. at the beachfront Four Seasons Hotel near Limassol, Cyprus.
Houston Chronicle - Jul 24, 2008
FEMA seeks immunity from suits
NEW ORLEANS -- The Federal Emergency Management Agency asked a federal judge Wednesday for immunity from lawsuits over potentially dangerous fumes in government-issued trailers that have housed tens of thousands of Gulf Coast hurricane victims. Lawyers for victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita accuse FEMA of negligence for sheltering them in trailers with elevated levels of formaldehyde, a ...
Erie Times-News - Jul 24, 2008
Nokia, Qualcomm settle long-running dispute
SAN DIEGO - The legal salvos between Nokia Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. stopped months ago, part of what officials at the wireless industry heavyweights described as a truce in a long-running battle that spanned three continents.Peace came Wednesday as the two sides prepared for a courtroom showdown. Nokia, the world's largest handset maker, and Qualcomm, the world's largest maker of chips that run ...
Maysville-Online - Jul 24, 2008
Motorola settles in $10 billion trade-secret suit against it
Jul. 23--Now-defunct SPS Technologies Corp. has settled its $10 billion trade secret case against Motorola, the world's second-largest cell-phone maker, for an undisclosed sum, lawyers representing SPS said Tuesday. Motorola and the former Fort Lauderdale-based tech company represented by prominent lawyer Willie Gary settled with a retrial set to start Monday.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
Court siding with corporate interests, Exxon Valdez plaintiff tells Senate panel
WASHINGTON _ It's getting harder for ordinary people to sue big corporations in an effort to hold them accountable for gross misconduct, one of the plaintiffs in the Exxon Valdez lawsuit told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. The committee was examining the fairness of several recent Supreme Court decisions, including its opinion in the lawsuit filed by 32,000 fishermen and Alaska ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
Schwarzenegger plans to cut state worker pay to cope with late budget
Jul. 23--Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger plans to sign an executive order next week that will temporarily reduce pay for more than 200,000 state workers to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 per hour to preserve cash in the midst of a month-long budget standoff, according to a draft copy of the order obtained by The Bee. But a spokeswoman for Democratic state Controller John Chiang, who pays the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
Why courts matter
Late last month, the Colorado Supreme Court released a little-noticed decision that is the very embodiment of what is wrong with the state's highest court. Put simply, the four-member liberal court majority is all too eager to bend the law and prior court precedent if it can reach what may seem like a desired result. The case that most recently illustrates this tendency is not really ...
Denver Post - Jul 23, 2008
EDITORIAL: Come on in: Public can play on private stream beds
Jul. 23--The Utah Supreme Court has decided that the public has the right to walk on privately owned stream beds in order to enjoy the recreational benefits of public waters, that is, to fish, wade, swim, float and hunt. That's an expansive victory for public recreation, but it comes as a terrible shock to private property owners in Utah who thought their property was, well, private.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
Texas authorities begin pursuit of indicted sect members
AUSTIN, Texas _ Authorities began their pursuit Wednesday of five members of a West Texas polygamist sect accused of committing crimes against children, but acknowledged the men _ some of whom are believed to be influential elders who married underage girls _ could be difficult to find. By Wednesday evening, no arrests had been made, and state and county law enforcement officials said they had ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
EDITORIAL: Water challenges: A Douglas County water dispute raises issues that illustrate on a small scale why wars someday may be fought over water.
Jul. 23--Our part of eastern Kansas always has been blessed with an adequate -- plentiful, compared to much of the state -- supply of water. A dispute now playing out in the Eudora area, however, raises a number of issues that may become more urgent as population and the demand for water grow. The Kansas Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that challenges a new water district's right to use ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
No new trial for '88 killing, but no clean record, either
Jul. 23--Charles Ray Walters won't be able to erase a past sin from his record, but his future is a bit more secure after a ruling by the state Court of Appeals for Division II. In a unanimous decision issued Tuesday, a three-judge panel has ruled that the state cannot re-prosecute Walters for first-degree murder in the 1988 death of Michael Coon. Such a prosecution would violate Walters' ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
Mississippi executes condemned inmate Bishop
PARCHMAN, Miss. Bishop wore a goatee and a red prison jumpsuit with flip flops to his execution by lethal injection. He was pronounced dead at 6:14 p.m. His attorneys had argued his life should have been spared because he did not swing the hammer that killed 22-year-old Marcus James Gentry in 1998. Both Mississippi's governor and the U.S. Supreme Court denied appeals to avert the execution.
Fort Mills Times - Jul 23, 2008
Stanford Environmental Law Clinic Announces Ninth Circuit Upholds Case Requiring U.S. EPA to Regulate Invasive Species Pollution
ET STANFORD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Environmental Law Clinic at Stanford Law School today announced that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of environmental organizations seeking to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate ship discharges under the Clean Water Act. Dealing a setback to the shipping industry, the decision follows a 2005 lower court ...
Yahoo! Canada - Jul 23, 2008
Drug conviction thrown out on constitutional grounds: Search warrant used by police overstepped bounds
Jul. 23--A jury conviction of a man on drug charges was reversed in a split decision by the 1st District Court of Appeals on Tuesday after the majority found that the search warrant used by police did not meet standards protecting the man's constitutional rights. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Joseph Wall had sentenced Michael Anthony King, 35, of West Allis, to nine years in prison and five ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
Charges dismissed in Martin Tankleff murder case
Jul. 23--Martin Tankleff is a free man -- for good. Seven months after an appellate court threw out his conviction in the murders of his parents two decades ago, a Suffolk judge yesterday formally dismissed the charges against the Belle Terre man who spent 17 years in prison for a crime he says he did not commit. "It's 20 years overdue," said Tankleff, 37, speaking about his 1988 murder ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
Quebec gas price-fixing scheme may have been widespread
Wire-tap evidence used to obtain search warrants that led to charges in an alleged Quebec gas price-fixing scheme suggest discussions about prices took place in several regions beyond those targeted in a Federal Bureau Competition crackdown last month. According to documents obtained by the CBC's French-language network, several gas retailers in Montreal, Trois-Rivi res, Valleyfield, Sorel, Le ...
Northern Ontario Business - Jul 23, 2008
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce faces multibillion - dollar class - action investors' lawsuit
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce faces multibillion-dollar class-action investors' lawsuit TORONTO (AP) - A group of investors launched a multibillion-dollar class-action lawsuit in an Ontario court Wednesday against the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, alleging misrepresentations about the bank's exposure to the plunging U.S. subprime mortgage market. Toronto legal firm Rochon Genova LLP ...
Canadian Business Magazine - Jul 23, 2008
Employers too often pay for stress
Lawyers retained by damaged or troubled employees too often issue lawsuits without analyzing whether any legal wrong was committed by the employer. Increasingly, we are seeing claims issued by the more left wing members of my bar based on disability, gender and other forms of purported discrimination, which should be more vigorously defended than they are now.
National Post - Jul 23, 2008
A look at key parts of congressional housing bill
The housing bill Congress is preparing to send President Bush would: _Give the Federal Housing Administration $300 billion in new lending authority and relax standards to provide affordable, fixed-rate mortgages to debt-ridden homeowners. Any losses would be covered by an affordable housing fund financed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that finance mortgages. ...
International Herald Tribune - Jul 23, 2008
SC new battleground ofwarring political families: Former lawmaker Jacinto Paras says issues raised against Rep. Limkaichong are better left for the Court to settle
Jul. 23--THE Supreme Court (SC) is now the new battleground of two powerful political families fighting over the first congressional district of the province of Negros Oriental. Incumbent Rep. Jocelyn Limkaichong, following the conflicting decisions of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on her proclamation and disqualification as representative of the first district of Negros Oriental, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
Amerigroup payment to end lawsuit
Jul. 23--Amerigroup Corp., a manager of government health plans, agreed to pay $225 million to the U.S. and Illinois to settle a lawsuit alleging the company wrongfully denied coverage to pregnant women eligible for Medicaid. The Virginia Beach, Va., company also will pay legal fees of $9 million and enter a corporate integrity agreement, it said Tuesday. A federal judge in Chicago had ruled ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
Lawsuit targets Farmingdale's 'gentrification'
Jul. 23--Legal experts say a federal judge's decision to give the go-ahead to a housing discrimination lawsuit filed by Hofstra Law School and Latino tenants against the Village of Farmingdale shows how disputes about "gentrification" are expanding from cities to the suburbs. Hofstra and the plaintiffs, who include some day laborers, allege the village engaged in a deliberate campaign to drive ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
Hugo Chavez invites Russia to be protector against US
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has asked Russia to align itself with the Venezuela as protection from the United States. The call came as Chavez met his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev on energy matters. Russia and Venezuela have agreed to bilateral cooperation on energy, with Russia being allowed to explore new oil and gas territory in Venezuela's Orinoco basin.
Kazakhstan News - Jul 23, 2008
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce faces class-action lawsuit from investors seeking billions
TORONTO: A group of investors launched a multi-billion-dollar class-action lawsuit Wednesday against the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, alleging misrepresentations about the bank's exposure to the plunging U.S. subprime mortgage market. Toronto legal firm Rochon Genova LLP said Wednesday that the claim indicates the bank alleged that its total exposure to U.S.
International Herald Tribune - Jul 23, 2008
Judge holds off on ruling for Marlins stadium financing: Judge waits for Supreme Court results
Jul. 23--MIAMI -- A Miami judge hearing the lawsuit targeting the financing for a Florida Marlins ballpark and other Miami projects said Tuesday she will not rule on whether a public vote is needed on a portion of the funding for more than a month, until the Florida Supreme Court makes a decision on two similar cases. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri Beth Cohen, who said without the Supreme Court ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
Complaint targets initiative: Court asked to send I-1029 to Legislature instead of to ballot
Jul. 23--Initiative 1029 critics filed a complaint with the state Supreme Court on Tuesday, asking it to require that the long-term care measure be sent to the Legislature, rather than the Nov. 4 ballot. Petitions circulated by the Yes on 1029 campaign declared the measure was an initiative to the Legislature. But its sponsors at the Service Employees International Union filed it as a petition ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
S.D. official sues to block foreclosures, wants 'foreclosure sanctuary'
Breaking news, from Reuters: San Diego City Attorney Michael Aguirre said Wednesday that he filed a lawsuit against Bank of America Corp. and its Countrywide unit to prevent the mortgage lenders from foreclosing on homes in his city, which he aims to make a 'foreclosure sanctuary.' More: 'Aguirre plans to file similar lawsuits against Washington Mutual Inc., Wells Fargo & Co.
Los Angeles Times - Jul 23, 2008
10 Years After State Street Decision That Transformed Patents, Appeals Court May Reverse Field
Ten years and thousands of business-method patent applications later, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is considering whether to undo that decision in part or completely. In State Street Bank & Trust Co. vs. Signature Financial Group Inc., the Federal Circuit -- the nation's top patent court -- ruled in favor of Signature, upholding its patent for a data processing ...
Calibre Macro World - Jul 23, 2008
Debate over war crimes courts should wait
Another concern is the value of a court system that makes it more difficult to force a dictator from power when he knows he faces jail instead of retirement to a friendly country. These are legitimate questions, ones that should be discussed as the notion of permanent international judicial institutions develops in a world where borders are becoming less meaningful every year.
Portland Press Herald - Jul 23, 2008
Court Approves SemGroup's Essential Initial Motions in Connection with Company's Chapter 11 Restructuring
Motions Allow Use of Cash, Employee Wages and Benefits, Supplier Protection Program and Other Essential Relief TULSA, Okla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SemGroup, L.P. announced today that it has received Bankruptcy Court approval of its essential initial motions requesting relief, including authorization to use cash collateral. The use of cash collateral will enable SemGroup to utilize existing cash and ...
Business Wire - Jul 23, 2008
Because 'Dark Knight" needs more publicity
Jul. 23--Christian Bale, star of the box-office smash "The Dark Knight," is denying allegations he assaulted his mother and sister at a London hotel. Bale, 34, said the allegations were false on Tuesday, hours after the Welsh-born actor was arrested, questioned by London police and released on bail. The actor spent four hours talking with authorities but was not charged.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
Prisons to desegregate: Lode facilities first in state to comply with court mandate
Jul. 23--JAMESTOWN -- Inmates and staff at two California prisons in the Mother Lode face the prospect of turmoil and possible violence this summer as they take the state lead in complying with a court-mandated effort to desegregate prison dormitory bunk assignments and prison cells. "This is a big change for everybody," said Jerry Vasquez, 38, a member of the Fresno Bulldogs gang who is serving ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
POM Wonderful Announces Purely Juice Found Guilty of Deceiving Customers With Adulterated Pomegranate Juice and False Advertising
POM Wonderful announced today a legal victory for consumers when a US District Federal Court in Los Angeles found in favor of POM Wonderful in its lawsuit against Purely Juice, Inc. for false advertising and misleading marketing. In 2007, POM Wonderful filed a federal lawsuit against Purely Juice claiming it was deceiving consumers by selling adulterated, imported pomegranate juice.
PR Newswire - Jul 22, 2008
Judge nixes some evidence in bin Laden driver case
Judge nixes some evidence in bin Laden driver case By MIKE MELIA - Associated Press Writer GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba The judge in the first American war crimes trial since War II barred evidence that interrogators obtained from Osama bin Laden's driver, ruling he was subjected to "highly coercive" conditions in Afghanistan. AP Photo Salim Ahmed Hamdan is seen in this undated file photo.
Centre Daily Times - Jul 22, 2008
Movement seeks to skirt Electoral College
NEW YORK _ A measure that would push the Electoral College to the fringes of American politics has been an unlikely beneficiary of this year's protracted presidential primaries. Buoyed by a long presidential primary season that focused attention on states that usually are overlooked in the calculus of winning a nomination, states as far-flung as Massachusetts and Hawaii have passed or are ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
High Court tells PALto reinstate 2,000 workers
Jul. 23--As they say, you win some, you lose some. The Supreme Court upheld a suit filed by some 2,000 former employees and cabin crew of Philippine Airlines Inc. (PAL) who were retrenched 10 years ago when the airline downsized. The decision came a day after the same court ruled in favor of Lucio Tan, who owns the airline. On Monday, the Court said the government owed the Tan-owned Fortune ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
Warren Jeffs, five others indicted in polygamist sect case
ELDORADO, Texas _ Six men from a West Texas polygamist community _ including incarcerated sect leader Warren Jeffs _ have been indicted by a grand jury on charges including felony sexual assault of a child. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who announced the charges against members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on Tuesday evening, would not reveal the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
Yolo court lockout prompts demand for written rules
Jul. 22--Responding to what she called "a shocking" incident last month in Yolo Superior Court, the majority leader of the state Senate has proposed rewriting the state's rules governing courts to ensure that criminal proceedings remain public. Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, wrote to William Vickrey, the administrative director of the state court system, late last week and urged that changes ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
Supreme Court denies Klose's request for new hearing
Jul. 22--The North Dakota Supreme Court Monday denied convicted murderer Timothy Gene Klose's request that it overturn the Southeast District Court's decision against granting him a second post-conviction hearing. In October 2001, Klose was found guilty of shooting and killing Raymond Schultes on March 22, 2001, in Jamestown. The two men lived in the same apartment complex.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
Fight over couple's smelly farmland goes to higher court
Jul. 22--A Macomb Township couple told the Free Press a judge's order to send them to jail over the stench of their farmland flat-out stinks -- and they're hoping the state Supreme Court will agree with them. Ronald and Dolores Michaels are spared jail time until the higher court decides whether to grant an emergency injunction. The Michaels have been in and out of court since 1995 over their ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
Judge in Florida Marlins stadium suit: Let's roll the tape: Judge plans to show arguments in 3 related Florida Supreme Court cases before ruling
Jul. 22--MIAMI -- Still struggling with whether a public vote is required on a financing plan for $3 billion in Miami projects, including a Florida Marlins ballpark, a Miami judge is taking an unusual step. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri Beth Cohen said Monday she plans to show video of the Florida Supreme Court hearing arguments in three related cases, including the re-hearing in the case of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
Supreme Court mulls dirty words
Supreme Court mulls dirty words By: RANDY DOTINGA - For the North County Times Wednesday, March 5, 2008 12:48 PM PST Maybe it's happened to you.You're trying to tell a co-worker to stop dithering, and into your brain and out of your mouth comes a pithy saying about getting off a pot. If you were in the funny papers, a bubble above your head would read %#$*@!Someone might complain to human ...
North County Times - Jul 22, 2008
Wachovia posts $8.9 billion quarterly loss and cuts dividend
NEW YORK: Moving quickly to bring an end to its troubles, Wachovia, the U.S. banking giant, reported an $8.9 billion loss Tuesday and sharply reduced its dividend for its first quarter under new leadership. Investors had expected large losses since the bank named Robert Steel, a former under secretary of the U.S. Treasury, as chief executive to help steer it through the housing crisis.
International Herald Tribune - Jul 22, 2008
White House nixed Calif. emissions rule, ex-EPA official says
WASHINGTON _ The Environmental Protection Agency told the Bush administration that by law California should be able to set air-quality standards that were tougher than federal law, but President Bush rejected the advice and made clear that he wanted a single national standard, a former EPA official said Tuesday. The testimony from whistleblower Jason Burnett came as the Senate Environmental and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
Housing authority wants to buy disputed property
Roanoke's housing authority wants to buy a building that sits at the edge of a growing business and medical park -- and under the cloud of a possible condemnation. The board of the city's Redevelopment and Housing Authority voted Monday to offer $1.78 million for two parcels in the 1200 block of Williamson Road for development as part of the Riverside Center.
Roanoke Times - Jul 22, 2008
Planned bill targets Wisconsin Supreme Court decision on lawsuits by homebuyers
Jul. 22--State lawmakers say they plan to introduce legislation next year that would reverse a state Supreme Court decision blocking home buyers from suing sellers for punitive damages when they lie about the condition of a house. "Buying a home is a big investment, and when you do that you should have civil protections if the seller perpetrates fraud against you," said Sen.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
Whither federalization of Delaware corporate laws?
The question to be addressed is the extent to which there will be further intrusions by Congress into the international prominence of Delaware corporate law. That question should not be approached solely from a parochial and self-interested viewpoint. Rather, it requires a broad, rational and historic analysis. James Madison, the 'Father of the Constitution,' initially advocated at the 1787 ...
Delaware Online - Jul 22, 2008
BRIEF: Next Missouri execution set for September
Jul. 22--The Missouri Supreme Court today announced a September date for the state's first execution since 2005. The court previously stayed a scheduled July 30 execution for John Middleton, a northern Missouri drug dealer convicted of killing three people in two separate cases. On Friday, the court granted the state's motion to reconsider the stay, and announced that it would issue a warrant to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
Consumers will share $25 million settlement for unauthorized credit card charges
Jul. 22--EDWARDSVILLE -- A class-action lawsuit in Madison County has been settled for $25 million for consumers who never requested services or reports connected with their credit or debit cards, and the plaintiff's lawyer said the company also will have to change its business practices. Trilegiant Corp., based in Norwalk, Conn., settled the lawsuit earlier this month.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
The Lawyer as a Brand...in Nigeria
Managing the image of lawyers and law firms has always presented a challenge, given the constraints imposed by the profession's rules in many countries. In Nigeria it is even more so, given our peculiar environment. 'Lawyers are liars' is the catchphrase one often hears bandied about by members of the Nigerian public who view lawyers with great suspicion. They are also viewed around the world as ...
This Day Online - Jul 22, 2008
UnitedHealth income off 73%
Jul. 23--UnitedHealth Group reported sharply lower second-quarter earnings because of several unusual events, including a big payout for a shareholder settlement and costs related to recent job reductions. For the quarter ending June 30, net income for the Minnetonka-based health insurer fell to $337 million, or 27 cents per share, from $1.23 billion, or 89 cents per share, a year ago.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
EDITORIAL: Lessons still being learned: Virginia's newly unveiled Civil Rights Memorial is a historical marker with lessons for all.
Jul. 22--A private, nonprofit foundation unveiled the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial Monday in Richmond's Capitol Square. Now, among the statues of Virginia heroes of the Revolutionary and Civil wars that dominate the square, stands a memorial to an entire people and the battle they engaged to realize the finest ideal of the Founders of a new nation: All men are equal under the law.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
Roanoke rezones historic home: Civil rights lawyer Oliver Hill's childhood home will become a center for legal aid.
Jul. 22--The Roanoke City Council voted unanimously Monday to approve a rezoning request to turn civil rights pioneer Oliver Hill's childhood home into a legal aid center and museum. Washington and Lee University law students will use the house to provide legal aid services for clients age 60 years or older who are referred through Blue Ridge Legal Services, said Mary Natkin, assistant dean of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
JOY FORD Insists she doesn't want to sell">Music Row owner fights eminent domainA Music Row property owner has asked a Nashville court to stop an attempt by Metro government to seize her property, but the city agency and the development firm behind t
Nashville's attempt to seize property violates law, court filing says Share this article: A Music Row property owner has asked a Nashville court to stop an attempt by Metro government to seize her property, but the city agency and the development firm behind the effort said they have no intention of changing course. Lawyers for Joy Ford, owner of an independent music business, asked the Circuit ...
Tennessean - Jul 22, 2008
Former U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Employee Pleads Guilty To Disclosing Sensitive Procurement Information
A former employee of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers pleaded guilty to providing sensitive contract information to a bidder seeking to win a multi-billion dollar government contract, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division announced today. David M. Honbo, 60, of Las Vegas, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to one count of ...
PR Newswire - Jul 22, 2008
Love your saggy pants? ACLU explores lawsuit over city ban
Jul. 22--Saggers unite: The ACLU wants to talk to you about possibly being part of the first lawsuit of its kind nationally. Flint Police Chief David Dicks has said he will not back down from his policy of filing disorderly conduct or indecent exposure charges against those whose saggy pants allow too much underwear or their bottoms to show on city streets (see diagram, below).
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
FEMA seeks immunity from trailer suits
FEMA seeks immunity from trailer lawsuits Victims accuse agency of negligence, say they were exposed to toxic fumes Alex Brandon / AP file A FEMA trailer in the Broadmoor area of New Orleans on Feb. 14. U.S. health officials urged Gulf Coast hurricane victims out of their government-issued trailers after tests found toxic levels of formaldehyde fumes. FEMA wants immunity from a series of ...
MSNBC - Jul 22, 2008
Judge dismissed suit against Northampton County
Jul. 22--A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Northampton County and its coroner filed after death scene photos in a 2006 case fell into the hands of a deputy coroner's son and were placed on the Internet. James Werner Sr. of Lower Nazareth Township had claimed he became the object of scorn and ridicule, and had his privacy invaded, through the posting of death scene photos involving ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
SC new battleground ofwarring political families: Former lawmaker Jacinto Paras says issues raised against Rep. Limkaichong are better left for the Court to settle
Jul. 23--THE Supreme Court (SC) is now the new battleground of two powerful political families fighting over the first congressional district of the province of Negros Oriental. Incumbent Rep. Jocelyn Limkaichong, following the conflicting decisions of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) on her proclamation and disqualification as representative of the first district of Negros Oriental, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 23, 2008
Lawsuit challenges immigrant services
Jul. 22--A lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court seeks to stop the city of Lexington and some other government agencies from providing some benefits to undocumented immigrants. The lawsuit names the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government, the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department and the Kentucky Office of Vocational Rehabilitation. It argues that documented residents are suffering ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 22, 2008
Law Reinforces Montgomery as a Nanny State
From Marc Fisher's 'Raw Fisher' blog: Montgomery County, the government that brought you bans on trans fats, smoking and any sales of liquor except by the county's own stores, last week added a new kind of regulation, becoming probably the first place in the country to require residents who hire nannies to do so via a written contract. The move has the usual do-gooder genesis, a reflection of the ...
Washington Post - Jul 22, 2008
Gitmo trial begins for bin Laden's driver
The judge in the first American war crimes trial since World War II barred evidence on Monday that interrogators obtained from Osama bin Laden's driver, ruling he was subjected to 'highly coercive' conditions in Afghanistan.But Judge Keith Allred, a Navy captain, left the door open for the prosecution to use statements Salim Hamdan made at Guantanamo, despite defense claims that all his ...
Hendersonville Times News - Jul 22, 2008
Knife wife 'had recurring rage'
SMASHED glasses, slashed upholstery, shattered windows - this was how accused murderer Danielle Stewart allegedly took out her temper on her husband before fatally stabbing him. As newly released photos show Stewart's wild state when Chaim Kimel was killed with an antique knife, his daughter yesterday told a court about her stepmother's recurring violent rages.
Daily Telegraph Australia - Jul 22, 2008
Quebec gas price-fixing scheme may have been widespread
Wire-tap evidence used to obtain search warrants that led to charges in an alleged Quebec gas price-fixing scheme suggest discussions about prices took place in several regions beyond those targeted in a Federal Bureau Competition crackdown last month. According to documents obtained by the CBC's French-language network, several gas retailers in Montreal, Trois-Rivi res, Valleyfield, Sorel, Le ...
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - Jul 21, 2008
National security observers explain FISA ins and outs
The amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that President Bush signed on July 10 may be the most significant rewrite of the government's spying powers in a generation. But you might not know that from reading the legislation. It is a dense, often opaque, and patchworked set of new authorities that has puzzled even the few people who can actually call themselves FISA experts.
Government Executive - Jul 21, 2008
The Democrats & National Security
Since the Vietnam War the Republican Party has developed a reputation for having a superior approach to national security. Americans have long trusted the views of Democrats on the environment, the economy, education, and health care, but national security is the one matter about which Republicans have maintained what political scientists call 'issue ownership.' Partly, this is for particular ...
New York Review of Books - Jul 21, 2008
Lieberman touts McCain credentials to South Florida's Jewish voters
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ Eight years after running as the first Jewish American on a national political ticket, Sen. Joe Lieberman, a self-described "independent Democrat" from Connecticut, was in South Florida on Monday to prod Jewish voters to back Republican John McCain for president. Lieberman's first order of business in talks with a handful of Jewish residents at the Bon-Ami Cafe in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 21, 2008
ACLU Applauds Federal Court Decision To Toss Fine In "Wardrobe Malfunction" Case
FCC Cannot Leverage Random Fines For Fleeting Images Of Nudity NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today applauded a federal appeals court decision to uphold free speech by throwing out a $550,000 indecency fine leveraged against CBS for the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction that exposed her breast at the 2004 Super Bowl. Whatever ones view on what constitutes indecency, the government ...
American Civil Liberties Union - Jul 21, 2008
INDIA'S SUPREME COURT STOPS US$47 MLN REFUND ORDER AGAINST GAIL
(AsiaPulse via COMTEX News Network) -- The Supreme Court on Tuesday stayed the Gujarat High Court order directing state-owned GAIL (India's largest gas transmission and marketing company) to refund Rs 200 crore (US$47 million) it had collected from IPCL towards gas transportation charge. The Gujarat High Court had asked GAIL to refund the money to Reliance Industries, the new owner of IPCL, as ...
Quote.com India - Jul 22, 2008
Lying officers put court cases at risk: Some cases might be dismissed, officials say
Jul. 20--Police officers lying, getting fired and then being put back to work by a merit board is a "big problem" for prosecutors and police, said U.S. Attorney Sheldon Sperling. State and federal prosecutors say they can't use such an officer as a witness in a criminal case, so some important cases might have to be dismissed because the officer's testimony is deemed unreliable.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
Across Midwest, interest in medical marijuana grows
CHICAGO _ The move to legalize medical marijuana is advancing in the Midwest, with Michigan poised to be the first state between the Rockies and New England to sanction the use of the illegal drug by terminally or seriously ill people. Michigan voters will decide in November whether to authorize marijuana use, if a doctor determines suffering could be eased by the drug from such diseases as ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
A key moment in the struggle: Statues honor pivotal role that 1951 student walkout in Va. played
Jul. 20---- Herbert and Roma Allmon went to Capitol Square in yesterday afternoon's heat in hope of getting a glimpse of the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial. They got lucky. Sculptor Stanley Bleifeld, foundry owner Dick Polich and a cluster of volunteers had raised the covering to rub off a few spots -- part oxidation and part soot -- and to polish the 18 statues that make up the memorial.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
Wisconsin case gives Peterson supporters hope for new trial
Jul. 20--DURHAM -- The long and nationally televised Michael Peterson homicide trial was in full swing and approaching its midpoint at this time five years ago, producing many memorable moments as it slogged toward a conviction and life prison sentence for the successful novelist accused of killing his wife. One particularly eyebrow-raising event occurred in September 2003, a month before ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
Appeals court: 2nd policy covers accident injuries
Jul. 20--A man who suffered devastating injuries in a head-on collision with a semitrailer is entitled to collect on a second insurance policy, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. That decision, handed down last week, provides an extra layer of coverage for victims of truck accidents. According to court records, Tymer Yeates was a passenger in a car hit in May 2003 in Box Elder ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
Special assistant attorney general requested in suit against Blunt over e-mail records
Jul. 20--JEFFERSON CITY -- The Missouri attorney general's office Friday asked a judge to appoint a special assistant attorney general in the pending lawsuit against Gov. Matt Blunt over e-mail records. Cole County Circuit Court Judge Richard Callahan recently dismissed the suit, ruling that the plaintiff, former Missouri Highway Patrol chief Mel Fisher, did not have standing.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
EDITORIAL: New Wrinkle In D.C. Gun Ban
Jul. 20--Last month, a divided U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Washington, D.C., gun ban -- one of the strictest in the nation. The court ruled that the Second Amendment gives Americans the right to own and keep firearms in their homes -- even those who live in the District. The ruling was applauded by many in this region, where gun ownership is something of a proud tradition.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
Annexation law hot topic for session
Jul. 20--Election-year caution, a tradition that tends to make lawmakers avoid controversy like a plague, has put West Virginia's disputed annexation law in limbo for now. Come February, all that could change. In some counties, unrest is simmering over a law that some critics say emasculates the ordinary citizen's right to contest land grabbing by municipalities.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
OPINION: A plot to rule state
Jul. 20--So now you know. The Reform Michigan Government Now! proposal should really be called Hand It to the Democrats Later. It's carrot-and-stick politics -- chew on this smaller-government carrot and we'll stick you with one-party rule in Lansing for years, maybe decades, to come. No wonder so many are so cynical about politics. They don't see it anymore as the process for doing the things ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
Federal Lawsuit Filed to Halt Florida's Toxic Algae Blooms
Algae blooms are fouling Florida's beaches, lakes, rivers, and springs, threatening public health, and closing swimming areas. Last month, a water treatment plant serving 30,000 Florida residents was shut down after a toxic blue-green algae bloom on the Caloosahatchee River threatened the plant's source water supply. The public interest law firm Earthjustice is representing the Florida Wildlife ...
Environment News Service - Jul 20, 2008
EDITORIAL: Justice for all? Not if you're poor: Editorial
Jul. 20-- The legal profession's image took a beating from the fen-phen travesty. The state budget crunch gives lawyers a chance to lessen that taint. How? By stepping up and relieving Kentucky's overworked public defenders. Outrageous caseloads and $2.3 million in budget cuts are forcing them to refuse some indigent clients. The need is most acute in Fayette County, where a public defender ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
State falling behind in water planning: Architect of the Statewide Water Supply Initiative sounds an alarm as he leaves the job.
Jul. 20--Colorado may find itself playing catch-up if the state cannot plan for anticipated water shortages in the coming decades. That assessment was given to the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District board last week by the architect of the Statewide Water Supply Initiative. "We should be doing strategic planning for 50 and 100 years out for our water reserves," said Rick Brown, who ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
Bellingham author Martini shares his latest thriller 'Shadow of Power'
Jul. 20--Bellingham author Steve Martini shares his new legal thriller "Shadow of Power," about the ramifications that ensue after a law professor who has written a best-selling book announces that he has a previously unpublished letter written by Thomas Jefferson that portends a deep secret about slavery at the nation's founding. Question: What was the spark that led to this novel? Answer: The ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
State budget threatens bill giving foster kids a bigger say in court: BIGGER SAY AT HEARINGS FOR FOSTER KIDS AT ISSUE
Jul. 20--SACRAMENTO -- Child-welfare advocates fear last-minute funding concerns will cause Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to veto legislation that would permit foster children a greater role in dependency court hearings. Their worries stem from the administration's finance department analysis that put the cost of the measure at about $500,000 next year, and $900,000 the following year -- costs that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
La. doctor cleared in patient deaths recalls storm
NEW ORLEANSDr. Anna Pou wasn't worried as she made her way to Memorial Medical Center that sultry August weekend in 2005. Hurricane Katrina appeared headed to Florida. Even when warnings were issued for New Orleans, the respected cancer surgeon never thought of leaving. She stayed with her patients in what would become a personal and professional hell. Katrina struck Monday morning, Aug.
York Daily Record - Jul 20, 2008
2009 mayoral election draws big crowd of potential candidates: Message scandal prompts early, widespread interest
Jul. 20--More than a year before Detroit's mayoral election, many high-profile candidates are strongly considering a run for the job, unusually early because of the text message scandal. Nearly all of the likely candidates, who hail from backgrounds as diverse as business, law enforcement and civil service, say they may run because they want to restore integrity in city government.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
Madison psychiatrist is a big Web hit
Jul. 20--Amy O 'Connor, executive editor of the newly launched Time Inc. Web site Health.com, admits she scoffed at the notion of a psychiatrist from Wisconsin being the key expert for her site 's section on depression. In fact, she confessed her response was: "Oh please. Why would we want him? " Most of Health.com 's medical experts are from New York City, where Time is based.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 20, 2008
Court lets stand initiative on same-sex marriages: NOW LOOKS LIKE VOTERS WILL SETTLE CONTROVERSY
Jul. 17--With perhaps the last legal roadblock removed, it appears the fate of gay marriage in California will be up to the voters in November. The California Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a bid by civil rights groups to remove a measure from the November ballot that would restore the state's ban on same-sex marriage. Without comment, the justices unanimously refused to hear the legal ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 17, 2008
Top court limits employers' duty to accommodate
OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada placed new limits on the duty of employers to accommodate sick employees in a ruling Thursday that found Hydro-Quebec was justified in firing a mentally ill woman who missed almost 1,000 days of work in the seven years before she was sacked. 'The employer's duty to accommodate ends where the employee is no longer able to fulfil the basic obligations associated ...
DOSE - Jul 17, 2008
Rape victims' testimony sufficient: SC
Jul. 18--NEW DELHI -- In an extraordinary judgement, the Supreme Court has said that a man accused of rape can be convicted solely on the basis of the victim's testimony even without any evidence to corroborate the allegations. A bench of Justices Arijit Pasayat and P Sathasivam went to the extent of saying that a victim's testimony "does not require corroboration from any other evidence ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 18, 2008
Resolution of Exxon interest payment issue may be soon: FINAL JUDGMENT: It's normal to wrap up details in 32 days.
Jul. 17--JUNEAU -- The U.S. Supreme Court could decide by the end of the month whether Exxon Mobil Corp. owes $488 million in disputed interest to fishermen and other plaintiffs for the 1989 oil spill. A lawyer for the plaintiffs, as well as a spokeswoman for the high court, said the justices always issue what's known as a final judgment after rendering an opinion in a given case.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 17, 2008
5 people, Latino group join suit against MCSO sweeps: Plaintiffs claim profiling, mistreatment
Jul. 17--A class-action lawsuit alleging racial profiling is aimed at ending Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's much-publicized immigration sweeps. Four American citizens, a valid U.S. visa holder and a Latino activist group filed an addition to a lawsuit against Arpaio, the sheriff's office and the county Wednesday morning. They allege the Latino community is being unlawfully stopped and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 17, 2008
AZ court: Immigrants subject to smuggling law
PHOENIX - The state appeals court has upheld the conviction of an illegal immigrant prosecuted as a conspirator under Arizona's human-smuggling law. In its ruling, the court found that the law's wording is clear and unambiguous - illegal immigrants can be convicted for conspiracy to smuggle themselves into the country. The defendant, Juan Barragan-Sierra, argued that the Legislature didn't ...
Arizona Daily Star - Jul 17, 2008
Democrats obstructing U.S.'s energy plans
To the Editor: The Democratic Party is holding the country hostage by facilitating high oil prices in its continued refusal to permit the development of domestic supplies. The Democratic Party's stubborn obstructionist stance to place the country's energy needs above ideology is unforgivable and is beginning to be apparent to the common man. Despite Nancy Pelosi's false claims, oil, like any ...
Tennessean - Jul 17, 2008
Holding their liquor: Lawsuit threats, high insurance premiums and potential loss of licenses are incentives for bar owners to serve responsibly.
Jul. 17--This story is part of a series on DUI offenders in York County. For additional coverage and an interactive presentation with stories, photos and videos, click here. On Dec. 20, 1996, Rodney Burkholder ended the lives of Barbara Elaine Heaps and Anthony James Haefner. Burkholder, described later in probation reports as a chronic and belligerent drunk, had been drinking earlier that day ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 17, 2008
Press Gaggle by Scott Stanzel, FEMA Administrator David Paulison, and Under Secretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment Mark Rey
REDDING, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Aboard Air Force One En Route Redding, California 1:55 P.M. EDT MR. STANZEL: Good afternoon, everyone. As you know, we're on our way to California to view some of the devastating fire damage that's occurred over the course of the past few weeks. I'll go ahead and go through the President's schedule, and we're joined today by FEMA Administrator David Paulison, ...
Business Wire - Jul 17, 2008
Supreme Court clears way for mad cow suit against Ottawa to proceed
OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada won't stand in the way of a proposed multibillion-dollar class-action lawsuit on behalf of some 100,000 cattle farmers hurt by the 2003 mad cow scare. The high court declined Thursday to hear an appeal by the federal government and Winnipeg-based feed company Ridley Canada, who sought to derail the lawsuit. As is usual, the top court provided no reasons for ...
Brandon Sun - Jul 18, 2008
1st Court Holds Law License Can't Be "Restored"
Houston's 1st Court of Appeals has ruled against a disbarred attorney seeking to have his law license 'restored,' rejecting the attorney's argument that the judgment disbarring him is void because the conviction underlying it was set aside after he completed three years of probation. In a July 3 decision in Goldberg v. Commission for Lawyer Discipline and State Bar of Texas, the 1st Court ...
Texas Lawyer - Jul 17, 2008
EDITORIAL: Parting words that speak volumes
Jul. 17--"Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." Those were President Bush's parting words to his fellow leaders as he left a private meeting during the Group of Eight summit in Japan last week. The leaders of the world's richest nations were discussing ways to cut carbon emissions. Even after years of watching President Bush's sophomoric behavior at these summits, they were a bit shocked ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 17, 2008
Parents eyeing education proposals: Virginia seeks to revise special-education rules to align with federal law
Jul. 18--As a vote nears on changes to the state's special-education regulations, one Virginia Board of Education member said yesterday that he would not support a measure that is under heavy fire from parents. The proposed change would transfer the administration of the "due-process" system to the Department of Education from the Virginia Supreme Court. Officers are trained through that system ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 18, 2008
Enrile lauds High Court decision on JPEPA
Jul. 18--The Supreme Court decided correctly that a detailed information on the negotiations of the Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) constituted executive privilege, Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile said Thursday. "When you are dealing with a foreign government, you should be cautious in giving data, especially when it concerns national security," he said at the weekly Kapihan sa ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 18, 2008
Tubman exhibit highlights Brown v. Board verdict
Jul. 17--State Attorney General Thurbert Baker was in Macon on Wednesday to speak at the Tubman African American Museum, the site of a summer exhibition by the Library of Congress chronicling the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision overthrowing segregation in public schools. The exhibit, With an Even Hand, includes an extensive collection of documents, artwork, photography, multimedia and other ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 17, 2008
Lawmaker appeals for SC intervention: Rep. Limkaichong of Negros Oriental says there is no factual or legal basis for claims that she is Chinese
Jul. 18--A lawmaker from Negros Oriental has asked the Supreme Court (SC) to dismiss the petitions seeking her disqualification from office for not being a natural-born Filipino citizen. In a 40-page memorandum, Rep. Jocelyn Limkaichong of Negros Oriental, through lawyer Pete Quirino-Quadra, asked the High Tribunal to reverse and set aside a resolution of the Commission of Elections' (Comelec) ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 18, 2008
SC slams Govt for delay in notifying Food Act
Jul. 18--NEW DELHI -- The government's inability to notify the Food Safety Act invited the Supreme Court's wrath on Thursday. The court came close to passing an order to direct the Health Ministry to implement the Act by the end of August. A bench headed by Justice AK Mathur expressed anger on learning that the government was implementing the Act in a phased manner.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 18, 2008
BRIEF: Mukesh begins arbitration over Anil-MTN talks
Jul. 18--MUMBAI -- The fight between Ambani brothers is moving into a new arena. Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries (RIL) has decided to "commence arbitration" against Anil Ambani controlled Reliance Communications (RCom) over the latter's merger talks with Johannesberg-based telecom firm MTN. Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group's (ADAG) negotiations for a potential merger deal with MTN hit a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 18, 2008
RIDLEY Inc.: Update on Ontario BSE Lawsuit
Ridley Inc. (TSX: RCL) learned today that the Supreme Court of Canada has denied the application of Ridley Inc. and the Government of Canada for leave to appeal the June 21, 2007 decision of the Court of Appeal of Ontario that refused early dismissal of the proposed BSE class action lawsuit filed against Ridley Inc. and the Government of Canada by an Ontario dairy farmer.
MarketWire - Jul 17, 2008
Attorney general candidate Morganelli opposes sludge: John Morganelli said the issue is important to the York area.
Jul. 17--In a purely metaphorical sense, it's pretty common for political candidates to accuse their opponents of siding with excrement spreaders. But on a visit Wednesday afternoon to York, Democratic state attorney general candidate John Morganelli evoked the concept quite literally. He accused incumbent Tom Corbett of siding with agribusiness against public health on the issue of whether ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 17, 2008
Report: Danger from inferior work by private contractors on Iraq bases worse than acknowledged
Text Size : Inferior electrical work by private contractors on U.S. military bases in Iraq is more widespread than the Pentagon has acknowledged, according to a published report. A Senate panel investigating the electrocutions of Americans on bases in Iraq was told last week by former KBR Inc. electricians that the contractor used employees with little electrical expertise to supervise ...
International Herald Tribune - Jul 18, 2008
Lawsuit accuses FCStone of defrauding investors
Jul. 17--A 41 percent plunge in the price of FCStone Group's stock last week has triggered the filing of a securities class action alleging that the company defrauded investors. The lawsuit, which was filed Tuesday in federal court in Kansas City, comes after the company on July 10 announced earnings per share of 28 cents, or 19 cents less than analysts expected.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 17, 2008
No charges for cop in fatal crash
A Boston patrolman will not be criminally charged for killing a woman while racing to help imperiled fellow officers last year, but Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley still wants Hub cops to put the brakes on speeding cruisers. I am deeply troubled by this case and conclude that it was an unnecessary and avoidable tragedy, Conley said yesterday in a letter to Commissioner Edward Davis, ...
Boston Herald - Jul 17, 2008
SCO loses another round in Unix fight, to pay Novell $2.55M
At the beginning of its , imagined a day when companies like IBM, Novell Inc. and others would pay it large amounts of cash for alleged infringements on SCO-owned Unix code. Instead, even as those legal fights meander through U.S. courts, the tables were turned and SCO Wednesday was ordered to pay US$2.55 million to Novell for collecting Unix licensing revenue from that it wasn't entitled to ...
ITworld.com - Jul 17, 2008
Woman sues blogger Perez Hilton over posted e-mail
Perez Hilton over posted e-mail ' *To: <--TO Email REQUIRED! *From: <--FROM Email REQUIRED! CLEVELAND (AP) _ A woman has sued celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, saying she was fired from her job as a nurse after the gossip maven posted an e-mail she sent him that contained gay slurs. Hilton, whose real name is Mario Lavandeira, posted Diane Wargo's full name and work e-mail address along with ...
East Liverpool Review - Jul 16, 2008
Justice Is Swift for Novice Korean Jurors
SUWON, South Korea - When Park Kwang-rual received the summons to court, he immediately started wondering what he had done wrong. I tried to remember, Did I ever hit someone? Not repay a debt? Was someone suing me? said Mr. Park, a 41-year-old human resources manager. Only when he answered it did he realize it was a jury summons. Jung Hae-young, 30, left her summons in a heap of junk mail and ...
New York Times - Jul 17, 2008
Dismissal of lawsuit against two Catholic dioceses upheld: Claim too broad
Jul. 17--The state Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit against two Catholic dioceses, ruling that the Madison Diocese did not have a broad duty to warn potential future employers of a teacher's past sexual abuse of children. However, the court split 3-3 on whether to let the suit proceed against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, where church officials had begged parents not ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 17, 2008
Ken Starr to help Vision Service Plan fight IRS
Jul. 16--Rancho Cordova-based Vision Service Plan has added Kenneth Starr, the former Whitewater investigator, to the legal team fighting to restore the mammoth eye care insurer's federal tax-exempt status. The announcement adds a well-known litigator to VS.'s stable of attorneys who will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether the company is a "not-for-profit" business.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 16, 2008
Court upholds Missouri's revised execution process
Jul. 17--Missouri's newly implemented lethal-injection plan and the team assembled to carry it out are a step closer to their first test. A federal judge late Tuesday dismissed a challenge to Missouri's execution process filed last year by some of the state's 47 death-row inmates. For now, the ruling by U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. in Kansas City clears the way for the state to resume ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 17, 2008
STEVEN GREENHUT: Supreme Court sends mixed 'freedom' messages
Last week, I argued that the Republican Party deserves to suffer severe electoral losses this November because it has largely abandoned the limited-government philosophy it claims to advocate. Many of us are less-than-thrilled by the prospect of a Democratic president with a solid Democratic congressional majority, but we know that it's better to lose an election than to lose one's soul.
Bellingham Herald - Jul 17, 2008
BRIEF: Federal ruling should let Missouri resume executions
Jul. 16--A federal judge has dismissed a legal challenge to Missouri's lethal injection process, apparently clearing the way for the state to once again resume executions. U.S. District Judge Fernando J. Gaitan Jr. in Kansas City had previously denied a request by the state to dismiss the case brought by a number of men on death row in Missouri. But Gaitan ruled Tuesday that he had reconsidered ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 16, 2008
EDITORIAL: Reform the system: The state Supreme Court's ruling in the Menasha case highlights the need to update the sales tax codes ? and to take politics out of judicial races.
Jul. 17--At its heart, the state Department of Revenue's case against Menasha Corp. always was about fairness. Did Menasha owe sales tax on the software it purchased, or was this non-taxable custom software -- more of a service than a product -- because it required extensive modification? A divided state Supreme Court ruled it was custom software in a 4-3 decision that will cause a major hit to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 17, 2008
Richmond mayor's race close fiscally: Jones, Pantele, Grey on top in fundraising, reports show, followed by Goldman, Williams
Jul. 17--Richmond's race for mayor quickly has turned into a contest between the haves and have-nots. Dwight Clinton Jones, William J. Pantele and Robert J. Grey Jr. each have raised close to or more than $100,000 for their bids for mayor, according to campaign-finance reports released yesterday. Meanwhile, Paul Goldman has brought in $3,500 in donations, followed by Lawrence E.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 17, 2008
At Supreme Court, no one rushes into retirement
WASHINGTON (AP) - John Paul Stevens still plays tennis at 88. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 75, works out regularly in the Supreme Court gym.The oldest two justices - half the court's liberal wing - top the list of those considered likely to retire during the next presidential administration. Despite Stevens' and Ginsburg's apparent vigor, change on the Supreme Court is more likely than not over the next ...
Klew 3 - Jul 17, 2008
Ruiz gets four years in state insurance office corruption case: Former insurance regulator also must pay state $102,000 in restitution, $3,000 fee
Jul. 16--ALBUQUERQUE -- Even as he faces four years in prison, former state deputy insurance superintendent Joe Ruiz of Santa Fe continues to claim he was only following the orders of his former boss, Eric Serna. U.S. District Judge William "Chip" Johnson sentenced Ruiz on Tuesday -- six months after a federal jury convicted him of 30 charges in a scheme through which Ruiz got insurance firms to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 16, 2008
15 of 20 officers to lose vehicles live in suburbs; average pay is $106,000
Jul. 16--Fifteen of the 20 Buffalo police officers who would lose taxpayer-provided take-home vehicles under Mayor Byron W. Brown's cost-cutting plan live in the suburbs, The Buffalo News has learned. One officer makes a 70-mile round-trip trek from a home in Springville each day and drives a city-owned Chevrolet Blazer. What's more, the average salary of the 20 officers is nearly $106,144 when ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 16, 2008
Malaysia's Anwar likely to be bailed
KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian opposition figure Anwar Ibrahim is likely to be released on bail on Wednesday, a police source said, after he was arrested on allegations of sodomy. Anwar's arrest earlier in the day had prompted supporters to warn of massive street protests, setting the stage for a political showdown that could further alarm foreign investors. 'He will probably be released on police bail ...
International Herald Tribune - Jul 16, 2008
EDITORIAL: EPA delays the inevitable on greenhouse gases
Jul. 16--Americans apparently will have to wait for the next president to see any responsible action on regulating greenhouse gases. The Bush administration seems to be crossing its arms, closing its eyes and holding its breath until the bitter end to avoid doing the right thing on climate change. More than a year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court told the Environmental Protection Agency that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 16, 2008
EDITORIAL: Assessment ruling won't serve state well
Jul. 16--Monday's state Supreme Court decision striking down an assessment by the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority was one more nail in the coffin of California's quality of life. Not that the court was unreasonable. The justices were interpreting Proposition 218, as convoluted and mean-spirited an anti-tax law as California voters ever passed. The 1996 initiative aimed to tighten the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 16, 2008
Oakland will pay $2 million settlement in police groping suit
Jul. 16--OAKLAND -- The city will pay $2 million to settle a federal lawsuit brought by 16 Asian-American women who said a former Oakland police officer groped or sexually harassed them, under a deal approved by the City Council on Tuesday. It will be the second payment Oakland has made to settle claims involving former Officer Richard Valerga, who resigned from the department in 2005.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 16, 2008
Court aide hears debate on tax amnesty's legality
Jul. 16--OKLAHOMA CITY -- An Oklahoma City lawyer argued Tuesday that new legislation granting amnesty to "deadbeat taxpayers" is illegal because it forgives penalties that are really taxes. But Guy Hurst, representing the Oklahoma Tax Commission, said the state can forgive penalties and interest because they are not part of the taxes but are assessed as a means to collect those taxes.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 16, 2008
Issue is ripe for ruling, expert says
A battle between ranchers and the state over coal-bed methane water discharges has festered for nearly 10 years in the Powder River Basin. Now the controversy has spilled over into the Wyoming Supreme Court.'I think it's an important issue. If it's not decided in this case, it will have to be decided down the road in another court,' said Reed Benson, a professor at the University of New Mexico's ...
Jackson Hole Star-Tribune - Jul 16, 2008
Sunflower takes fight for coal-fired power plants to court
Jul. 17--TOPEKA -- Because state lawmakers couldn't help, a western Kansas utility has taken its fight to build two new coal-fired power plants to court. Sunflower Electric Power Corp. hopes the Kansas Supreme Court will overturn a state regulator's rejection of its project. But that may be too late to head off another fight in the Legislature next year. A judge in Finney County on Tuesday ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 17, 2008
Federal Court Orders Missouri Department of Social Services to Comply Immediately With Federal Voter Registration Law
Finds Widespread Violations of Rights of Low-Income Persons under The National Voter Registration Act KANSAS CITY, Mo., July 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- United States District Judge Nanette K. Laughrey issued an order yesterday, July 15, 2008, directing the Missouri Department of Social Services immediately to comply with a federal law requiring agencies to provide voter registration ...
PR Newswire - Jul 16, 2008
Widow's appeal against turnpike commissioner denied
Jul. 16--SOMERSET -- The state Supreme Court has denied an appeal filed by the widow of a former Tribune-Democrat editor killed four years ago when his Jeep was hit by a stolen SUV. The high court upheld a Somerset County judge's ruling that absolved J. William Lincoln, a former state senator and member of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, of negligence for leaving his keys in the SUV the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 16, 2008
Collective Brands suffers another legal setback
Jul. 17--Collective Brands Inc., hammered recently by a series of trademark infringement actions, received another blow with American Eagle Outfitters winning a preliminary injunction against the Topeka-based footwear retailer. The injunction granted in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York requires Collective to clearly state in a disclaimer that its American Eagle ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 17, 2008
Even with criminal probe closed, Jobs still faces legal hurdles over Apple stock options
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) _ A criminal probe of Apple Inc.'s co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs over stock options tampering is now over, but the potential legal shadow over him and the company isn't going away just yet.Although Jobs is not being indicted for his role in Apple's backdating of stock options grants, he will likely be called to the stand in at least two other cases.
Newsday - Jul 16, 2008
Stull, Stull & Brody Announces Class Action Lawsuit on Behalf of Investors in Fifth Third Bancorp
Attorney Advertising. Notice is hereby given Attorney Advertising. Notice is hereby given that a class action has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, on behalf of all persons who purchased the securities of Fifth Third Bancorp ("FITB" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: FITB) (NYSE: FTB-PA) (NYSE: FTB/PA) (NYSE: FTB-PC) (NYSE: FTB/PC) from October 19, ...
MarketWire - Jul 16, 2008
Milberg LLP Announces the Filing of Class Action Lawsuit Against MRV Communications, Inc. -- MRVC
Attorney Advertising. Prior Results Do Not Attorney Advertising. Prior Results Do Not Guarantee a Similar Outcome. The law firm of Milberg LLP ("Milberg") announced today that it has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Central District of California against MRV Communications, Inc. ("MRV" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: MRVC) and certain of MRV's officers and directors for ...
MarketWire - Jul 16, 2008
EBay wins ruling against Tiffany in lawsuit over counterfeit goods
Jul. 15--A federal judge Monday came down on the side of eBay, the dominant online marketplace, in an epic battle with one of America's leading luxury brand names, Tiffany. The court handed eBay a crucial victory in a trademark case that could help settle how far an online marketplace need go to prevent the sale of counterfeit goods on its Web site. Tiffany, which has cultivated an image of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
Penalty the same when cops get caught: The state supreme court ruled police, judges and others can't be held to higher standards for DUI.
Jul. 15--Chief Deputy Prosecutor Tim Barker calls it the only crime where someone can honestly say it was a mistake. "You can't say, 'I didn't mean to rob you,'" Barker said. "But you can say, 'I thought I was OK to drive.'" That's why some first-time drunken drivers might qualify for the York County District Attorney's Accelerated Rehabilitative Disposition program.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
Exxon balks at paying interest for oil-spill damages
WASHINGTON _ Exxon Mobil has balked at paying $488 million in interest on punitive damages that plaintiffs say it owes for its role in the 1989 Prince William Sound oil spill in Alaska, saying "there is no good reason" for the Supreme Court to assess interest. Last week, the people who are owed money from the Exxon Valdez lawsuit asked the Supreme Court to make it clear that they should receive ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
Horizontal wells will let BP tap hard-to-reach oil field: LIBERTY: Crews can work from existing drilling pad in Arctic waters, company says.
Jul. 15--Imagine a bent straw made out of steel extending 8 miles long and 2 miles deep, plunging through icy water and miles of undersea rock. That's how the next major oil field in Alaska probably will be developed. BP announced Monday that it will spend $1.5 billion -- drilling the longest wells in the world -- to develop the Liberty oil field under the Beaufort Sea.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
Europeans say trial of bin Laden's alleged chauffeur would harm human rights
WASHINGTON _ Hundreds of European legislators are supporting a man that U.S. officials accuse of being Osama bin Laden's personal driver and bodyguard. In a much-anticipated hearing Thursday morning, attorneys for Yemeni native Salim Hamdan will try to convince a federal judge to postpone Hamdan's trial by military commission. The first-of-its-kind trial is supposed to start next week in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
Viacom allows Google to conceal YouTube usernames in court case
Google to conceal usernames in court case (!self.ord) ord if 0) if 0) More Resources ------------------ Quickstudies Manager's Journal This Week in Print ------------------ ------------------ Research E-mail letters ------------------ Industry - Automotive - Defense/Aerospace - Energy/Utilities - Financial - Health Care - Retail - Transportation - Travel - Manufacturing - Small ...
Computerworld - Jul 15, 2008
BRIEF: Keep the Commandments group pays City of Boise legal fees plus interest
Jul. 15--The City of Boise said Tuesday that Brandi Swindell, Bryan Fischer and Generation Life paid more than $10,000 in attorney fees ordered by Federal Judge Edward J. Lodge in connection to a 2004 lawsuit surrounding the removal of a Ten Commandments monument from Julia Davis Park. The $10,702.55 check covers $10,131 in attorney fees and $571.55 in interest accrued through Tuesday.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
23 troopers file lawsuit against N.J. State Police
Twenty-three black and Hispanic troopers filed a civil rights lawsuit today against the State Police, accusing the agency of routinely discriminating against minority troopers when it comes to promotions, training, special assignments and discipline. Filed in state Superior Court in Middlesex County, the lawsuit alleges the State Police has ignored complaints of racial discrimination dating back ...
Star Ledger - Jul 15, 2008
It's Uncivilised but still in practice
Jul. 15--NEW DELHI -- It seems certain banks have scant regard for the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines and have not learnt any lessons from the Supreme Court's orders against employing goons to recover loans. According to the RBI Guidelines, "In the matter of recovery of loans, the lenders should not resort to undue harassment viz. persistently bothering the borrowers at odd hours, use of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
Domestic Surveillance: Who's listening in?
The following editorial appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Sunday, July 13: ___ With Senate approval and President Bush's signature this week on an overhaul of federal surveillance rules, it's open season again on Americans' privacy rights. Federal agents will have virtual carte blanche to run broad antiterror sweeps on messages and calls to and from this country.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
Court reduces award in lesbian corrections officer's harassment case
Jul. 15--A state appeals court has cut the $850,000 award granted to a Wende Correctional Facility officer who contends she was persistently harassed by coworkers because she is a lesbian. The State Supreme Court's Appellate Division, 3rd Department, ruled that the original award for compensatory damages -- one of the largest of its kind in state history -- was "excessive" and reduced the award ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
Body part claim rejected: Federal judge says coroner acted properly by keeping dead man's heart
Jul. 15--A federal judge has rejected a Daly City woman's claim that the San Mateo County coroner violated her civil rights when he kept her deceased son's heart after an autopsy. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti won't end the case, though, because he declined to rule on three other charges Selina Picon filed against the county and the coroner.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
Response: Federal civil rights lawsuit by parents of Brittany Zimmermann should be dismissed
Jul. 15--A federal civil rights lawsuit filed against Dane County and a former 911 dispatcher by the parents of homicide victim Brittany Zimmermann should be dismissed because the county has no constitutional obligation to protect individuals from the acts of others, a response to the lawsuit states. The response, written as a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, was filed late last month by private ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
BRIEF: Planned Parenthood hearing delayed
Jul. 15--A preliminary hearing in the Planned Parenthood criminal case has been postponed indefinitely in Johnson County District Court. The two-day hearing had been scheduled next week, but both sides have agreed to wait the outcome of an appeal filed by District Attorney Phill Kline, who has asked the Kansas Court of Appeals to review various rulings made in the case thus far.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
California parole board denies release for Manson follower
SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ Maybe it was the 16 rips with the knife on 8 {-month pregnant Sharon Tate. Maybe it was tasting the victim's blood and then using it to write the word "pig" on the front door. Maybe it was telling the woman who begged for mercy that there would be no compassion for her or her unborn baby on a night nearly 40 years gone that defined a quintessential California nightmare.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
As California looks to expand death row, a flap over where to build it
By Randy Dotinga Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor (AXcess News) San Quentin, Calif. - If Methodist pastor Liza Klein had her way, no one would be executed in the US again. But for the moment, she has another goal: keeping California's death row in her own backyard. Despite the estimated $400 million price tag for its expansion, Ms. Klein and other death-penalty opponents want the ...
AXcess News - Jul 15, 2008
Special anti-corruption courts are now imperative - by Femi Okurounmu
She was reported to have opined that the establishment of special courts for corruption cases would assist her commission to be more effective in the discharge of its duties. I am in complete agreement with her. I am one of those who received her appointment with a lot of skepticism, bordering on disgust, given the circumstances under which her predecessor, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu was removed from ...
Nigerian Tribune - Jul 15, 2008
State charges Allen County judge with misconduct
Jul. 15--Allen Superior Court Judge Kenneth Scheibenberger learned this morning he faces charges of judicial misconduct from the Indiana Commission on Judicial Qualifications. In a filing with the Indiana Supreme Court, the commission said Scheibenberger suspended his court session to attend a sentencing hearing in Judge Fran Gull's courtroom. According to the commission, Scheibenberger, while ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
Another skirmish over Omaha's smoking ban
Jul. 15--A judge today repeatedly questioned whether there's more smoke than fire to a pool hall owner's challenge of Omaha's ban on smoking in workplaces. Douglas County District Judge Mark Ashford pointed out that a statewide smoking ban will take effect in June 2009 -- and questioned whether that would essentially make Big John's Billiards' challenge to Omaha's smoking ban moot.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
GOTTA HAVE IT: Toilet paper declares what you think of politicians
Jul. 15--Maybe you're disgusted by what you see in Congress, and think all those lawmakers are skirting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Or you're riled because you think the Supreme Court has a penchant for making, not just interpreting, laws. Perhaps you are simply disgusted overall with everyone and everything in Washington, D.C., and want to wipe your hands clean of the whole darn ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
Justices overturn murder conviction: Ruling: Self-defense should have been considered in fatal shooting in Pelion
Jul. 15--The state's top court Monday reversed the murder conviction of a Pelion man accused of killing his girlfriend in 2001 in Lexington County and hiding her body in Alabama. In a 4-1 ruling, the S.C. Supreme Court said the judge in Michael Light's 2003 trial should have told jurors they could have considered whether Light acted in self-defense. The majority of justices also said trial Judge ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 15, 2008
Law Office of David R. Chase, P.A. Files Two FINRA Arbitration Claims Against Charles Schwab & Co. Seeking Expedited Hearings for the Benefit of Two Elderly YieldPlus Fund Investors
The Law Office of David R. Chase, P.A. The Law Office of David R. Chase, P.A. (the "Firm"), headed by former Securities and Exchange Commission Prosecutor and Special Assistant United States Attorney, David R. Chase, announces that it is has filed two FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) arbitration claims against Charles Schwab & Co. ("Schwab") seeking expedited hearings for the ...
MarketWire - Jul 15, 2008
Sierra Systems Launches Court Case File Management Solution
NACM 2008 Annual Conference, Anaheim California, Booth 211 - July 16, 2008 - NACM 2008 Annual Conference, Anaheim California, Booth 211 - July 16, 2008 - Sierra Systems, a leader in innovative information technology and consulting services, announced the release of its Court Case File Management Solution. The solution is based on Sierra's 14 years of experience serving courts across the US and ...
MarketWire - Jul 15, 2008
Indonesia expresses regret over ETimor atrocities
The wife of a man killed by pro-Indonesia militia cradles her infant daughter as she mourns over her husband's body in May 1999. Indonesia is set to accept the findings of a truth inquiry which blames it for crimes against humanity during East Timor's independence vote in 1999 (AFP/File) Indonesia is expected on Tuesday to accept the findings of a truth inquiry which blames it for crimes against ...
Turkish Press - Jul 15, 2008
Horsetrading & the law
Jul. 16--NEW DELHI -- What is politically correct need not be legally correct as well. This is what former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao said about his government surviving a no-confidence motion in 1993 and the subsequent prosecution of several politicians, including him, in the JMM MPs bribery case. Fifteen years after Rao saved his government by allegedly bribing Opposition MPs, PM Manmohan ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 16, 2008
Attorneys in Microsoft antitrust case to get $1.44 million more
Jul. 14--Attorneys who brought an antitrust suit in Milwaukee County against Microsoft Corp. will get an additional $1.44 million, bringing their total fees to $5.64 million. The lawyers had been awarded $4.2 million for their work on a lawsuit that resulted in a 2006 settlement of $224 million for Wisconsin customers of the software giant. The legal fees award was far less than the $22 million ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
N.C. eager to snuffneighbors' pollution: Court trial begins today in the battle against TVA and its power plants. The N.C. attorney general says the emissions hurt Tar Heel residents.
Jul. 14--The claim, buried in the dry prose of a lawsuit, is in-your-face aggressive: the Tennessee Valley Authority prematurely kills N.C. residents and sickens thousands a year. Pollution drifting from its coal-fired power plants, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper says, makes the nation's largest public power company a public nuisance. Cooper gets his chance to prove it today in a federal court ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
"Black Site" Survivor Relates Horrific Tale: Enforced disappearance and torture at several CIA "black sites"
NEW YORK, Dec 19 (IPS) - As human right lawyers sought to block U.S government efforts to stop a lawsuit against a Boeing subsidiary accused of flying detainees to 'black sites' where they were tortured, a legal advocacy group published the first testimony of a victim of the Central Intelligence Agency's 'enhanced interrogation' programme. In the first-ever report of its kind, the Centre for ...
Global Research - Jul 14, 2008
Court mum on CRAs: Summer recess began Thursday; next round of opinions to be released Aug. 28
Jul. 14--TALLAHASSEE -- The Florida Supreme Court released its last opinions before summer recess on Thursday, and Bay County's challenge of the Parker and Cedar Grove community redevelopment areas was not among the decided cases. Court spokesman Craig Waters said recess will last July 14 through Aug. 15, with the next round of opinions to be released Aug. 28.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
High court will honor Lackey: Judge helped snare Scruggs, other lawyers
Jul. 14--The judge whose cooperation brought down Dickie Scruggs and other corrupt lawyers will be honored by the Supreme Court. Circuit Court Judge Judge Henry L. Lackey of Calhoun City will receive the 2008 Chief Justice Award, the court's highest honor, on Saturday at an awards presentation that concludes the Mississippi Bar's annual convention in Destin, Fla.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
Brutality in police custody
The use of brutal force and third degree methods on suspects and undertrials remains one of the primary weapons of the Indian police. The enforcers of the law are among the major perpetrators of crime against humanity. The torture often results in grievous injuries, even deaths. Indeed, to be imprisoned in India can by itself amount to a death sentence. The number of custodial deaths almost ...
The Statesman - Jul 14, 2008
Greening the Bar
Life and lawyers are intertwined. It is a fact of life, in fact. Members of the Bar protect and defend the welfare and interest of their clients - on pivotal issues involving their rights, livelihood, transactions, to name a few. Because of the intrinsic nature of the lawyer-client relationship, which is based on trust, lawyers are held to a high standard of responsibility and accountability. ...
Philippine Daily Inquirer - Jul 14, 2008
California high court strikes down Santa Clara County open space tax
Jul. 14--The California Supreme Court today struck down a special fee on Santa Clara County homeowners used to pay for open space acquisition, wiping out more than $50 million collected over the past seven years for parks, trails and other services. In a unanimous ruling, the justices found that the 2001 special assessment by the county's Open Space Authority violated Proposition 218, a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
MoneyGram settlement to help fight wire transfer fraud
Missouri is among 44 states and the District of Columbia to reach an agreement with the Minnesota money-transfer company A $1.1 million national consumer awareness program is being funded by an agreement announced July 2 between Minneapolis-based MoneyGram Payment Systems Inc. and several states, including Missouri. According to a news release from Attorney General Jay Nixon, 44 states, including ...
Springfield Business Journal - Jul 14, 2008
Additional Judge Sought In Chicken Litter Lawsuits
The Morning News Local News for Northwest Arkansas By Ron WoodTHE MORNING NEWSFAYETTEVILLE --Attorneys for 138 people in nine lawsuits claiming chicken litter caused cancer and other health problems in Prairie Grove, ranging from autism to webbed toes, want an additional trial judge assigned to the cases so they can be heard more quickly.Defendants are opposed to the measure.The motion, filed ...
The Morning News - Jul 14, 2008
Governments in Wisconsin, Amish clash over religious freedom
Clark County brothers who were cited for not wearing blaze orange clothing, they said, that was against their Amish religion. Proof and Hearsay All about crime, justice and legal affairs in the Milwaukee metro area and Wisconsin. Members of the religious sect noted for their black felt hats, dark trousers, long dresses and bonnets are barred from wearing bright clothing.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Jul 14, 2008
U.S. Mercenary Company Implicated in Mexican Torture Videos
Two videos of a torture-training session with the police force of Len, Guanajuato shocked the Mexican public last week and raised serious questions about human rights under the Calderon offensive against organized crime. For readers with strong stomachs, the videos can be found here. The videos leaked by the local paper El Heraldo de Len hit the media just one day after President Bush signed ...
AlterNet.org - Jul 14, 2008
Credit Rating Agencies Fending Off Lawsuits from Subprime Meltdown
Battered by critics who blame them for helping to foment the U.S. subprime mortgage meltdown, credit raters are now trying to fend off lawsuits -- including fraud claims brought by their own shareholders. Many financial companies, including banks and lenders, have been sued following the housing market bust; but the cases against ratings agencies may be among the most closely watched.
Insurance Journal - Jul 14, 2008
Island woman appeals to high court
GALVESTON In her last legal shot, an island resident is asking the Texas Supreme Court to decide whether the city and Port of Galveston four years ago gave adequate public notice about leasing land to BP Energy for a controversial liquefied natural gas terminal. Nancy Saint-Paul in May petitioned the nine-member Supreme Court to review a civil case that began as an attempt to stop ...
Galveston County Daily News - Jul 15, 2008
Dismantling Democracy, Science And The Public Interest
The genetic engineering industry, in particular Monsanto, which controls 95% of all GM seeds sold worldwide, first tried to by pass India's Biosafety Law when it started field trials without approval of the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee, the statutory body for Biosafety regulation. The rules clearly state - 9(i) Deliberate or unintentional release of genetically engineered organisms / ...
Counter Currents - Jul 15, 2008
Ex-Haitian paramilitary leader on trial
Trial for former Haitian paramilitary leader He's accused of a mortgage fraud scheme after fleeing his country NEW YORK - A former Haitian paramilitary leader once widely feared in his own country was accused at trial Monday of becoming a common white-collar criminal once he fled to the United States. Emmanuel 'Toto' Constant helped hatch a mortgage fraud scheme that cheated lenders out of $1.7 ...
MSNBC - Jul 14, 2008
Court hearing set in dispute over Kan. coal plants
TOPEKA, Kan. The issue for Judge Philip Vieux in Finney County is whether to dismiss lawsuits by , based in Hays, and a Colorado partner, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Inc., against the and Secretary Rod Bremby. Sunflower wants to build the two coal-fired plants outside Holcomb, in Finney County. But in October, Bremby denied the utility an air-quality permit, citing the ...
Wichita Eagle - Jul 14, 2008
John McCain's honesty about computers is coming back to bite him.
John McCain has confessed he doesn't know as much about economics as he should. He has acknowledged that his divorce was his own fault. But it's his admission that he doesn't know how to use a computer that has earned him the most scorn by far. Especially from people who do know how: It's hard to pinpoint, but there's something very unpresidential about online tutorials.
Slate - Jul 14, 2008
'Concerned' gov't to respond to USTR review of labor rights
USTR review of labor rights Immigration Consumer Opinion Entertainment July 14th, 2008'Concerned' gov't to respond to USTR review of labor rightsMANILA, Philippines -- A "concerned" government is preparing an inter-departmental response to the country's remaining "under scrutiny" by the United States Trade Representative (USTR) for possible ...
Asian Journal - Jul 14, 2008
BRIEF: If dacoits rob train, Rlys must pay: SC
Jul. 14--NEW DELHI -- Ruling that failure to provide proper security to passengers during journey amounts to deficiency in service, the Supreme Court has ordered the railways to compensate a couple who lost their luggage in a train dacoity in 1999. A bench of justices BN Aggarwal and GS Singhvi dismissed the appeal of the Centre against an order of the National Consumer Disputes Redressal ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
Appealing rejected patents is costly, time-consuming
By Mike Scott Challenging a patent application that has been initially rejected can be a time-consuming process and attorneys report mixed results. But the potential reward still has attorneys busy working with clients on cases and on attempting to make applications more bulletproof. There is debate as to whether it is harder to successfully challenge a denied patent application today than in ...
Crains Detroit Business - Jul 14, 2008
SPECIAL: Clearing the Air: CAIR Rule Thrown to the Wind
By Karen E. Burchardt, Senior Environmental Engineer, Burns & McDonnell Engineering kburchardt@burnsmcd.com On July 11, 2008, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the EPA's Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) in its entirety. The associated Federal Implementation Plan (FIP) was also vacated. The NOX SIP Call, which was set to expire under CAIR at the end of the current ozone season, will ...
Power Engineering - Jul 14, 2008
The Use of Executive Privilege Must Be Reined In: Problematic Claims of Privilege Regarding the U.S. Attorney Firings and Torture Policies
White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove refused to honor the subpoena of a House subcommittee looking into whether or not wrongful pressure was brought upon U.S. Attorneys in connection with the prosecution of a former Democratic governor of Arkansas. The subcommittee had subpoenaed Rove in May to explore what, if any role, he played in the prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman or in ...
Find Law - Jul 14, 2008
A Green Crossroads for the Supreme Court
John McCain and Barack Obama are clearly divided on a number of issues - the economy, the war in Iraq, health care, abortion rights. But on the environment, it can appear that there's not much difference between the candidates. McCain has strong bona fides on climate change: he became convinced of its dangers well before many of his Senate colleagues, and is on the record for supporting a carbon ...
Time - Jul 15, 2008
Pennsylvania Governor Rendell Becomes Chairman of National Governors Association
Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell today became the new chairman of the National Governors Association and announced that the organization's annual 'Chair's Initiative' will focus on strengthening infrastructure investment. 'It is an honor to serve as NGA's chair,' Governor Rendell said during the NGA's Centennial meeting. 'Out-going chair, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, deserves a ...
Breitbart.com - Jul 14, 2008
Blumenthal: Rell Proposal Illegal
Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has blasted as illegal a proposal from Gov. M. Jodi Rell to include consumer rebates in a plan to control emissions from power plants. Rell responded by saying she was 'disappointed' by the attorney general's 'legalistic view' and said she would keep looking for ways to soften the plan's possible impact on electric rates.
Hartford Courant - Jul 14, 2008
Levy aims to ease Conn. opposition to Islander East
Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy is hoping that a little Long Island hospitality will soften Connecticut's opposition to the Islander East pipeline that would bring more natural gas across that state and the Sound to Levy's constituency. He received acceptances from Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and an array of New York state and local government officials for a regional ...
Newsday - Jul 14, 2008
Cdn-based porn site pays Facebook $500,000 to settle alleged hacking suit
A Canadian Internet porn company has agreed to pay Facebook half a million dollars after it allegedly hacked the popular social networking website's computers. The lawsuit against the numbered Ontario company, which does business online under the name SlickCash, has been settled in a U.S. court. In addition to the $5,000 payout, SlickCash and several people associated with the site also agreed ...
Yahoo! Canada - Jul 14, 2008
Repeal would let out-of-state gays marry in Mass.
Now an effort is gaining momentum to repeal a 1913 state law that has banned most out of state gay couples from getting married. The law says couples cannot be married in Massachusetts if their unions would be illegal in their home states. The Democratic leaders of the House and Senate and Gov. Deval Patrick support a repeal, which could come up for a vote as early as Tuesday in the Senate and ...
News-Times - Jul 14, 2008
Vatana latest politician to skip supreme court verdict
Former public health minister Rakkiat Sukthana was the first national politician in recent history to disappear the day the Supreme Court was to read its ruling against him, in September 2003. Rakkiat was accused of taking a Bt5-million bribe from pharmaceutical companies in exchange for allowing them to sell their products to state hospitals at inflated prices.
The Nation - Thailand - Jul 14, 2008
Ga. Supreme Court rules on death penalty in Whitehead case
Jul. 14--The Georgia Supreme Court said Monday that cop killers are eligible for the death penalty even if they didn't know they were attacking a law enforcement officer at the time. The 5-2 decision stemmed from a local death penalty case and the shooting death of Bibb County Sheriff's Deputy Joseph Whitehead. The state is seeking the death penalty against two local men, Antron Dawayne Fair and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
EDITORIAL: Millionaire protection
Jul. 14--The U.S. Supreme Court hasn't completely gutted the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. Yet the majority's reasoning in striking down the so-called Millionaire's Amendment, a part of the law intended to level the playing field for candidates facing wealthy opponents, provides another sign of a court increasingly skeptical of efforts to blunt the influence of big money in elections.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
Arbitration Works Better Than Lawsuits
Congress is taking up legislation this week that will wipe out arbitration provisions in hundreds of millions of consumer contracts -- for everything from credit-card agreements to cell phones to health-insurance policies, even a contract for the purchase of a kitchen sink. The bill is so sweeping that it wouldn't apply just to contracts consumers may sign in the future.
Wall Street Journal Online - Jul 13, 2008
OPINION: Next case
Jul. 13--Gun-control debate in America is far from over Imagine being awakened at 3:30 a.m. by someone outside your house, someone whose identity and intentions are unknown to you. Imagine that when ordered to identify and show himself, the stranger stays still and silent. Imagine the next-door neighbor's enraged rottweiler charging at you from the bushes as you try to tend to your own injured ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
OPINION: Constitutional reform plan tampers unjustly with court
Jul. 13--Maybe this should be a rule of thumb for judging ballot proposals: When the title reads more like a teenager's text message than a serious proposal for change, be worried. And so it is with Reform Michigan Government Now! (Why didn't they just stick "OMG!" at the end?) This proposal, if it survives legal and technical challenges to make the fall ballot, would be constitutional change by ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
OPINION: Electoral College exam
Jul. 13--Can you pass the voter test? A few weeks ago, I wrote about ideas for improving the way we elect a president. I said we should make the political parties pay for their own primaries, have one national primary, and eliminate the Electoral College. That column really seemed to get people thinking. Several wrote to say that they agree with propositions one and two.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
Receiver a dire fix for ailing prisons: Broken healthcare leads to drastic, costly remedy
Jul. 13--SACRAMENTO -- Moving further into largely uncharted legal territory, the man acting under a federal judge's order to fix California's abysmal prison healthcare system last week committed state taxpayers to spending $2.5 billion. The money would be the first installment on a $7 billion plan to build the new healthcare facilities he believes are necessary.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
Scandals ingrained in state government history
Jul. 13--When state Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer killed himself during a televised news conference in 1987, witnesses were shocked by the bloody ending to a scandal that rocked Pennsylvania's capital. Dwyer, 47, chose a bullet from a .357 Magnum revolver over a prison term on a bribery conviction for accepting a $300,000 kickback on a state contract. While his crime fell far short of fantastic, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
Schwarzenegger slams Bush administration on global warming
Get Our Free Newsletters Via Email CLIMATE SCIENCE by Staff Writers Los Angeles (AFP) July 13, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said the Bush administration's decision to delay a decision on regulating greenhouse gases showed that it did not believe in global warming. Schwarzenegger, in an interview with ABC television broadcast Sunday, said it would have been insincere for the ...
Terra Daily - Jul 14, 2008
Video campaign to curb ragging
Jul. 14--NEW DELHI -- For students, teachers and freshers of Delhi University, the message against ragging might be given through a video this session. Packed with images of youth and fun and backed with statistics on the dark side of ragging, the video has been made by NGO CURE (Coalition to Uproot Ragging from Education). CURE has been working closely with the Raghavan Committee, set up by the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
Woman jailed for filing false rape case
Jul. 14--NEW DELHI -- A woman has been convicted for filing a false rape case against two persons 15 years ago. The Supreme Court found Mahila Vinod Kumar guilty of perjury (misleading the court with false evidence) and refused to accept her defence that she was illiterate. Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice P Sathasivam ruled: "Courts should strive harder to tackle the evil of perjury.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
EDITORIAL: State Court Bungles Porn Ruling
Jul. 14--For years Floridians have benefited from a state Supreme Court that has been level-headed, fair and well-reasoned, with rulings right on the mark far more often than not. The court truly is one of the best in the nation. But Thursday's decision allowing sexual deviants to possess pornography can best be summed up with one word: absurd. The ruling was in the case of a Miami man who ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
'Proposal to merge courts undermines judiciary'
An ANC proposal to merge the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court was yet another attempt to undermine the judiciary, the Democratic Alliance said yesterday. DA justice spokesperson Tertius Delport was reacting to a news report that the 'super court' was one of a number of proposals for restructuring the judiciary under discussion in the ANC. The Sunday Times reported that according to a ...
Cape Times - Jul 14, 2008
Governments in Wisconsin, Amish clash over religious freedom: Collision might be due to growth in municipalities not accustomed to lifestyle
Jul. 14--Among the 600,000-plus hunters heading out for last year's gun-deer season were three Clark County brothers who were cited for not wearing blaze orange -- clothing, they said, that was against their Amish religion. Members of the religious sect noted for their black felt hats, dark trousers, long dresses and bonnets are barred from wearing bright clothing.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
Top jurists seek high-level probe
Jul. 14--NEW DELHI -- The Chief Justice of India should immediately order a high-level probe by a competent investigative agency to examine the truthfulness of charges against 36 judges, alleged to have financially benefited in the Ghaziabad multi-crore provident fund scam, top jurists of the country have said. Making public their views ahead of Monday's crucial hearing in the matter in the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
EDITORIAL: At the OK Corral
Jul. 14--Prior to the recent Supreme Court ruling, Barack Obama said he supported the District of Columbia's ban on individual gun ownership. After the court threw out the law as unconstitutional, Obama said he was glad to see the Second Amendment interpreted as applying to individuals -- not merely to vaguely defined militias. Only a presidential candidate or a Dadaist could reconcile the two ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
BRIEF: If dacoits rob train, Rlys must pay: SC
Jul. 14--NEW DELHI -- Ruling that failure to provide proper security to passengers during journey amounts to deficiency in service, the Supreme Court has ordered the railways to compensate a couple who lost their luggage in a train dacoity in 1999. A bench of justices BN Aggarwal and GS Singhvi dismissed the appeal of the Centre against an order of the National Consumer Disputes Redressal ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 14, 2008
Supreme Court finds history is a matter of opinions
WASHINGTON In 1985, President Reagan's attorney general, Edwin Meese III, criticized the Supreme Court's decisions and called on the justices to decide cases based on the 'original intent' of the Constitution. The justices were wrong to rely on contemporary views of liberty and equality, Meese said; instead, they should rely on the understanding of those concepts in the late 18th century, when ...
Los Angeles Times - Jul 13, 2008
T-shirt trial stretches with complexities
Jul. 13--TOPEKA -- A federal jury must weigh complex legal issues and hundreds of pieces of evidence in a lawsuit pitting Kansas University against a Lawrence T-shirt seller. "Something dangerous is going on here," warned attorney Jim Tilly in his closing statement last week after a seven-day trial. Tilly represents Larry Sinks, owner of Joe-College.com, 734 Mass., and Clark Orth, a T-shirt ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
OPINION: Prince is composed, direct -- and wrong about The N&O
Jul. 13--Seven months ago in this space, I urged Blackwater's principal owner, Erik Prince, to talk with two of our reporters who had been trying to interview him for years. Blackwater is the private security and training company based in northeastern North Carolina. Its guards in Iraq often have been in the news. We've reported extensively on the company, but after four years of trying, we'd ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
Understanding a new way of voting
Jul. 13--Washington voters have a new system this summer to winnow out candidates for the general election. The first "top two primary," on Aug. 19, will pare a long list of partisan and nonpartisan offices. Some races are overflowing with candidates. The governor's race has 10 candidates, although most voters would be hard-pressed to name more than incumbent Chris Gregoire and the man she edged ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
Malpractice suit yields $9 million in damages: Pioneering surgeon failed to see cancer
Jul. 13--A Niagara County jury of six women, including two nurses, has awarded $9 million in a malpractice suit against a pioneering breast cancer surgeon who has spent decades operating in area hospitals. Dr. Nancy J. Stubbe, an Amherst physician, has been ordered to pay damages to the family of a 33-year-old mother of two in what is believed to be among the largest civil lawsuit awards in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
Doctors-insurers confrontation heats up
Jul. 13--Doctors complain of shrinking payments from health insurers, pointing to insurance companies' fat profits and seven-figure CEO salaries. Insurers say doctors provide uneven care, overtreat patients and push up costs for everyone. It's a decades-old confrontation. But it's gotten more heated recently, as insurers squeeze doctors' payments as one way to bring down soaring health care ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
EDITORIAL: A principled stand: League of Women Voters' lawsuit on state voter ID law to be commended
Jul. 13--It must be interesting to be Todd Rokita these days. While the photo identification voter law he keeps calling "exemplary" has managed to disenfranchise a group of elderly nuns, the latest legal challenge to it comes from the non-partisan, roundly respected League of Women Voters in Indiana. Might the secretary of state pause to wonder whether the nation's strictest voter ID law -- ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
Inmate author's sales violate policy
RALEIGH, N.C. _ Victor Martin has been writing since he was a child, but he didn't realize it could be a career until he became a convict. A few years ago, Martin became a published author, writing four novels while lying in his bunk in a state prison in Elizabeth City, N.C.. His books, which feature a high-rolling criminal named Unique, have a following among readers of what is known as "urban ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
Is McCain a maverick, moderate or just a mystery?: Voters work to understand the man unwilling to be bullied into the rank and file
Jul. 13--WASHINGTON -- He goes right, he cuts left, he darts up the middle. Catching John McCain flat-footed in a single spot on the political gridiron is a little like tackling Barry Sanders: It'd be a lot easier if you had any idea where he was going to be. But at a time when self-styled progressives and conservative politicians often seem to follow each other in packs, McCain -- the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
Anatomy of a campaign: Washington's Initiative 1000
Jul. 13--In February 2006, a month after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Oregon Death With Dignity Act, right-to-die activists from Seattle and Portland met at an east Vancouver hotel to lay the groundwork for a Washington initiative modeled on the Oregon law. "Everybody agreed that we needed our friends and colleagues from Oregon," said Dr. Tom Preston, the retired Seattle cardiologist who ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
Candidates' views clash on detainees
For months now, John McCain and Barack Obama have peppered their campaign speeches with pledges to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camps. Both have cast the detention center as harmful to U.S. foreign policy and a source of international alienation. Both say they would move the terrorism suspects to U.S. soil. But delve a little deeper, and that's where the harmony ends.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
Surface irrigation rules moving toward a solution: A committee tries to balance farmers??? needs, obligations to Kansas.
Jul. 13--From the state's point of view, pending rules for Arkansas River basin surface irrigators who improve their systems by installing sprinklers are primarily aimed at preventing depletions to Kansas. For farmers, with long memories of more than 100 years of disputes with Kansas that led to the Arkansas River Compact and a subsequent lawsuit, the rules and their cost seem like more ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
Balance of aging Supreme Court hinges on next president
WASHINGTON - John Paul Stevens still plays tennis at 88. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 75, works out regularly in the Supreme Court gym. The oldest two justices - half the court's liberal wing - top the list of those considered likely to retire during the next presidential administration. Despite Stevens' and Ginsburg's apparent vigor, change on the Supreme Court is more likely than not over the next ...
Newsday - Jul 13, 2008
No rush to retire black robes on Supreme Court
WASHINGTON - John Paul Stevens still plays tennis at 88. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 75, works out regularly in the Supreme Court gym. The oldest two justices - half the court's liberal wing - top the list of those considered likely to retire during the next presidential administration. Despite Stevens' and Ginsburg's apparent vigor, change on the Supreme Court is more likely than not over the next ...
Chicago Daily Herald - Jul 13, 2008
AZ probes complaints vs. Wildcat Mitsubishi: Company lawyer says owners are fixing problems he calls oversights, mistakes
Jul. 13--Selling damaged vehicles. Breaking rules. Calling cops on customers who complain. A Tucson car lot managed by ex-convicts did all those things and now is under state investigation for unlawful business practices. Regulators are probing reports that the dealership sold a wrecked vehicle that was legally unfit to drive, and that staffers repeatedly put inaccurate vehicle information on ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 13, 2008
Lesbian couple sues BlueCross: Married in Canada, school psychologist, spouse say they were denied their rights
Jul. 10--When a Buffalo lesbian couple was denied spousal health care benefits in February following their marriage in Canada two years ago, BlueCross BlueShield denied their human rights guaranteed under state law, a civil liberties group claims in a lawsuit filed Wednesday. The New York Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of Jeanne Kornowicz, a school psychologist in the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Pentagon, judge tries to dissuade detainees from representing themselves
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba _ Reputed al-Qaida kingpin Khalid Sheik Mohammed complained Thursday that he couldn't get a pad of paper to prepare for his capital-crimes court appearance. His nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi, asked a day earlier for access to a law library. The alleged Sept. 11 co-conspirator, a computer engineer, complained to his military judge that he prepared a motion but his ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Christie Brinkley settles divorce case: She gets full custody; Ex-husband Cook gets $2.1 million
Jul. 10--The nasty divorce trial of Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook has ended with the former couple reaching a settlement in which the ex-supermodel gets full custody of their two children. Under terms of the settlement, Cook gets $2.1 million and parenting time while Brinkley gets full custody and keeps all their properties, Brinkley's attorney, Robert Cohen, told the judge Thursday morning ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Videotaping of protesters by B.C. power line corp. legal: privacy office
The BC Transmission Corporation was within its legal rights when it videotaped Tsawwassen residents protesting its plans to construct new power lines through their yards, the Office of the B.C. Information and Privacy Commissioner ruled Thursday. Residents had told CBC News they were troubled by video crews who were taping them after they learned of the practice in early June.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - Jul 10, 2008
Questions abound on casino issue
Jul. 10--WASHINGTON -- So you think a judge can't stand in the way of an Indian tribe's right to open a casino? Don't bet on it. U. S. District Court Judge William M. Skretny this week proved otherwise, in a ruling in a court case that raised as many questions as it answered. What follows is an attempt to answer some of those questions, even though some remain unanswerable: Q.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Drs. McCain and Gramm Put the U.S. Economy on the Couch; Gramm Diagnoses a "Mental Recession" Among U.S. "Whiners"
Drs. McCain and Gramm Put the U.S. Economy on the Couch; Gramm Diagnoses a 'Mental Recession' Among U.S. 'Whiners' Is there a doctor in the house? A top economic adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., -- former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, now vice chair of Swiss banking giant UBS -- tells the Washington Times that the US economy is being weighed down by the belief by Americans that the economy is ...
ABC News - Jul 10, 2008
Casino stays open, Senecas say: Expert on constitutional law hired for expected court battle
Jul. 10--If the Seneca Nation of Indians seems concerned about a federal judge's ruling that it can't legally operate a casino in Buffalo, jeopardizing a $333 million casino now under construction, you wouldn't know it from the nation's reaction Wednesday. Both the Senecas' president and the chairman of their gambling operation said that it was business as usual.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Judge rules he can't stop Seminoles from dealing blackjack
TALLAHASSEE - A federal judge says he doesn't have the authority to stop blackjack and other expanded games at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, rejecting a Pompano racetrack's lawsuit by pointing out legal hurdles anyone would face by fighting the tribe. The decision handed down by U.S. District Judge Stephan Mickle on Wednesday put another twist in the fate of table games at the seven ...
Naples Daily News - Jul 10, 2008
Montreal companies sued for allegedly building settlements in West Bank
What's this By Jonathan Montpetit, The Canadian Press MONTREAL - Two Canadian construction firms are being sued for war crimes by a Palestinian village that claims its land is being swallowed by settlements the companies are helping to build. The West Bank town of Bilin filed a lawsuit in Quebec Superior Court this week seeking $2 million in punitive damages from Montreal-based companies Green ...
Yahoo! Canada - Jul 10, 2008
A look at key parts of House, Senate housing bills
Comparison of major elements of housing relief bills in the Senate and House. They would: _Give the Federal Housing Administration $300 billion in new lending authority and relax standards to provide affordable, fixed-rate mortgages to debt-ridden homeowners. Any losses would be covered by an affordable housing fund drawn from the profits of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored ...
International Herald Tribune - Jul 10, 2008
Rebels with a Lost Cause
Rebels with a Lost Cause. VICKI BEHRINGER movement of property-rights lawyers emerged from the sagebrush in the 1970s to fight a wave of environmental regulations. They are still fighting in courtrooms across the West, but their role remains ambiguous. Bill Jennings, a veteran fisheries activist in Stockton, Calif., remembers the Christmas season of 2004 as "a nightmare." He adds: "It was ...
High Country News - Jul 10, 2008
Senate approves telecom immunity
Sprint is off the hook. After an often bitter debate, the U.S. Senate on Wednesday passed and sent to the White House a bill that would help immunize Sprint — and other phone companies — from lawsuits accusing them of illegally helping conduct terror surveillance after Sept. 11, 2001. President Bush said he would sign the bill, which passed the House in ...
Kansas City Star - Jul 10, 2008
Appeals court upholds acquittals in tax case
The Svea Court of Appeal today upheld the acquittals of all current The Svea Court of Appeal today upheld the acquittals of all current and former Ericsson (NASDAQ: Eric) employees who faced charges of evasion of tax control, filed by the Swedish National Economic Crimes Bureau. Henry Sténson, senior vice president and head of Corporate Communications, Ericsson, says: "We are pleased that ...
MarketWire - Jul 10, 2008
South Korean prosecutors seek 7 years for Lee
Prosecutors asked a South Korean court to sentence former Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee to seven years in prison for tax evasion and other charges, saying the country's powerful business conglomerates should not be immune from the law. Prosecutors also demanded that Lee be fined 350 billion won ($350 million) for the charges that led him to resign as head of Samsung Group, the most prominent of ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Jul 10, 2008
For Obama, McCain, varied paths on women's issues
NEW YORK - It's women's week on the presidential campaign trail, judging from the attention that Barack Obama and John McCain are lavishing on female voters and issues especially important to them.Obama, campaigning here Thursday with former Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, criticized McCain's opposition to an equal-pay Senate bill, his support for conservative-leaning Supreme Court ...
Rhinelander Daily News - Jul 10, 2008
Business Digest: Changes OK'd for Nebraska Beef
Federal officials have approved changes that Nebraska Beef Ltd. proposed after it recalled 5.3 million pounds of beef last week. USDA spokeswoman Amanda Eamich said Thursday that the company's plan satisfies concerns raised after the meat was linked to an E. coli outbreak. At least 41 illnesses in Michigan and Ohio have been tied to Nebraska Beef's products.
Omaha World-Herald - Jul 10, 2008
Districts, not state, must pay teacher funds: AG says benefits approved in 2006 as part of revised finance system are local burden
Jul. 10--AUSTIN -- School districts across the state will have to pick up the $100 million annual cost of benefits related to a teacher pay raise enacted two years ago, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has ruled. Districts had argued that the state should cover the extra payments into the Teacher Retirement System because it was the Legislature that mandated the $2,500 salary hike.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Legal services reform safe in a first Tory Parliament
The Conservative Party has confirmed that it is planning to support radical reform under the Legal Services Act if it gets into power, despite having reservations about key measures. The commitment comes as the party looks increasingly likely to defeat Labour and make it into Government in the next general election. Shadow Justice Minister Henry Bellingham MP told Legal Week: We would not ...
Legal Week - Jul 10, 2008
Colby Cosh celebrates the end of the margarine ban
This week, the government of Quebec has finally removed the last major regulatory restriction on the retail sale of margarine in Canada by allowing it to be coloured yellow. In my career I ve written a number of columns about the ancient, bitter struggle that margarine has faced in the Canadian food market, and there is always a temptation to wax comic about the subject: After all, who ...
National Post - Jul 10, 2008
Marriage licenses were hot in June
Jul. 11--It's been a busy month for the Marin County Clerk's Office. Marriage license applications spiked in June after the state Supreme Court ruling that struck down the statutory ban on same-sex marriages. Marriages surged on June 17, the day the ruling took effect, and several days afterward, reflecting a race to the altar by same-sex couples who wanted to enjoy the same legal rights as ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 11, 2008
Kurdish Official: Iraqi Oil Deals "Illegal"
The rush to sign oil contracts with foreign companies is 'anachronistic' and happening in a legal vacuum, argues Mahmoud Othman. Tools Share and save this post: Also in War on Iraq Nick Turse Robert Dreyfuss Patrick Cockburn Bill Moyers, Michael Winship <span='smalltitle'>More stories by Bassel al-Khateeb War on Iraq RSS Feed Main AlterNet RSS Feed Get AlterNet in your mailbox! The oil ...
AlterNet.org - Jul 10, 2008
DUI O'Shane's future uncertain
HIGH-PROFILE magistrate Pat O'Shane pleaded guilty to drink-driving yesterday but a decision about her position on the bench is unlikely to be made until after she is sentenced. O'Shane was charged with low-range drink-driving after being pulled over by police at Linley Point on March 8. She allegedly returned a blood-alcohol reading of 0.08, but had a lower reading of 0.05 when tested again ...
Daily Telegraph Australia - Jul 10, 2008
Thai government in disarray as foreign minister resigns
Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej's five-month-old government was in disarray Thursday after the foreign minister resigned following a series of bruising court defeats for the cabinet. Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama became the third top official in the ruling People Power Party (PPP) forced out of office in less than 48 hours. The party's deputy leader Yongyut Tiyapairat, who was a former ...
Yahoo! UK and Ireland - Jul 10, 2008
Former envoy to UN faces graft case at Ombudsman
Jul. 10--Criminal and administrative charges were filed before the Office of the Ombudsman against Lauro Baja, the former Philippine permanent representative to the United Nations, for alleged corruption. This case before Ombudsman Merceditas Navarro-Gutierrez is different from the one that was filed in New York recently by Baja's former domestic helper. In a complaint-affidavit, Jaime Jacob, a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Superior court upholds sex-crime conviction
Jul. 10--Three state Superior Court judges have upheld the conviction and sentence of a West Mahanoy Township man who was convicted of sex-related crimes. The three-judge panel ruled county Judge Cyrus Palmer Dolbin properly concluded that Apolinar Ramirez-Briones, 43, of Lost Creek, understood the Miranda warnings given to him in English, and that subsequent statements he made to police were ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Republican lunch: Pioneering Texas Supreme Court justice on the program
Jul. 10--Justice Dale Wainwright, a member of the Supreme Court of Texas, will be the keynote speaker Monday at the Ector County Republican Women's luncheon. In 1999, then Gov. George W. Bush appointed Wainwright to the District Court bench in Harris County. After serving as a district judge for two years, Gov. Rick Perry appointed Wainwright to a temporary commission on the Texas Supreme Court. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Munck Carter Adds Michael A. McCabe to Labor and Employment Section
The Dallas-based technology law firm of Munck The Dallas-based technology law firm of Munck Carter, P.C. is expanding its labor and employment section with the addition of attorney Michael A. McCabe, who joins the firm as a shareholder. Mr. McCabe defends businesses in complex business and employment litigation matters. He is Board Certified in Labor and Employment Law by the Texas Board of ...
MarketWire - Jul 10, 2008
OPINION: Constitutional rights aren't cheap, nor should they be
Jul. 10--Now we know that Texas judges can't deny appointed lawyers to poor defendants who can scrape up enough money to bond out of jail. A June 23 U.S. Supreme Court ruling should put an end to a practice that's persisted in some Texas counties despite a 2001 law designed to expedite the appointment of lawyers for criminal defendants who can't afford their own.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
NBA seeks say in Schultz lawsuit
Jul. 10--The NBA has asked to join the legal fight to keep the former Seattle SuperSonics team in Oklahoma City. The team's former owners signed away their legal right to contest the move to Oklahoma City when they approved a release and indemnification agreement as part of the team's sale in July 2006, league officials say. Because of the release, "former owners are prevented from taking future ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
The Heron's Nest: Shields gunning for city again
Yesterday, Mayor Michael Nutter announced the city would move ahead with enforcement of a new ordinance targeting those those who fail to report a lost or stolen handgun. Those who fail to do so are looking at a fairly stiff fine, a cool $1,900. But not if Shields get his way. This comes despite the recent ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court that recognized the right of citizens to own a gun for ...
Delco Times - Jul 10, 2008
BRIEF: Sex offenders don't have to move, court rules
Jul. 10--LANCASTER, Ohio -- Four convicted sex offenders who are violating state law by living within 1,000 feet of elementary schools don't have to move because they committed their crimes before the law took effect in 2003, a state appeals court ruled. The 5th District Court of Appeals ruling conforms with an Ohio Supreme Court ruling that declared the state's sex-offender residency ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
City drops lead-paint suit: Court rulings elsewhere lead to decision; Ohio will pursue its case
Jul. 10--The city of Columbus has dropped its lawsuit against former lead-paint manufacturers after the Rhode Island Supreme Court last week shot down the legal argument the city was pursuing. Columbus sued Cleveland-based Sherwin-Williams and eight other companies in December 2006 to try to force them to pay to remove lead paint from the city's older homes.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Appeals court hands setback to attorney who sued twin doctors
Jul. 10--A Seattle attorney entrenched in a years-long, acrimonious battle with other attorneys over civil lawsuits he filed against twin doctors was dealt a blow this week by the state Court of Appeals, just a week after another appellate decision came down partially in his favor. A three-judge panel found that a King County Superior Court judge did not err in 2006 when imposing sanctions ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Senate vote backs Bush on wiretaps
Jul. 10--WASHINGTON -- The Senate approved a controversial terrorist surveillance bill Wednesday, which provides retroactive immunity for phone companies that participated in President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. The 69-28 vote was a major victory for Bush and his congressional allies -- including Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch -- who have fought for more than a year to keep the immunity ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Settled: WVU gets $4M: Michigan, Rod will divide bill
Jul. 10--The WVU vs. Rich Rodriguez lawsuit is over, and Rodriguez will pay WVU the full $4 million the university has contended that he owes. By the terms of an agreement that was finalized in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, and approved by the West Virginia University Board of Governors in an emergency board meeting later that morning, WVU will receive $2.5 million by the end of July, with ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
County seeks to settle suit with former prison guard
Jul. 10--SUNBURY -- The Northumberland County Prison Board recommended that the board of commissioners sign off on a settlement with a former prison guard who has a lawsuit pending against eight county leaders for wrongful termination. In what Solicitor Todd Kerstetter characterized as a business decision, the prison board has endorsed the decision of Scottsdale Insurance Co.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Brinkley divorce trial may end in settlement
NEW YORK _ Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook may have finally had enough. Just an hour into their fifth day in court Wednesday, talks of a settlement that would bring a quiet end to their dramatic divorce trial became the focus of attention in a Central Islip courtroom, even if the parties weren't saying so. It began as a 15-minute break requested by both sides at 10 a.m.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 9, 2008
EDITORIAL: Supreme Court ruling on Exxon Valdez case disturbing
Jul. 9--News of the Supreme Court's ruling to lower the punitive damages from $2.5 billion to $500 million in the Exxon Valdez case is alarming. The deadly oil spill in 1989 caused then-unprecedented damage to the ecosystem of the Alaskan coastline. The lucrative commercial fishing industry crashed in the aftermath, buried in oil slicks and dead marine life.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 9, 2008
Dan Walters: Labor law abridged free speech
California politicians often take pride in enacting policies that, as they would say, point the way for others to follow. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in fact, has been beating that drum steadily on the anti-global warming legislation he and Democratic lawmakers enacted, claiming that it will be a trendsetter for the planet. The same kind of 'We're No. 1' pride accompanied the passage of Assembly ...
Sacramento Bee - Jul 9, 2008
EDITORIAL: Now what?: Gitmo ruling left many loose ends
Jul. 9--The kicker to last month's U.S. Supreme Court decision granting civilian habeas corpus rights to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is that the court offered little guidance for the Bush administration as it figures out what to do with 265 prisoners, about half of whom won't go to trial for lack of hard evidence but are too dangerous to release. The court said the military system devised ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 9, 2008
Worthy to ask state Supreme Court to ban 36th District judges
Jul. 9--Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said today she will ask the state Supreme Court to bar 36th District Court judges from presiding over Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's criminal case. The Michigan Court of Appeals has already refused Worthy's request. Worthy has argued that the entire bench should be recused because at least two of the judges may be called as witnesses in the prosecution of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 9, 2008
Senate passes surveillance bill, keeps telecom immunity
The U.S. Senate has voted to extend a controversial U.S. National Security Agency surveillance program that targeted terrorism suspects as well as U.S. residents, and will likely provide legal immunity to telecommunication carriers that participated in the program. The Senate on Wednesday voted 69-28 to approve the bill, which would provide some additional court oversight to the NSA program, ...
ITworld.com - Jul 9, 2008
Attorney-client limits debated: Critics say committee needs to tighten disclosure rules
Jul. 9--The "sunshine committee" reviewing the state's public-disclosure law is moving away from taking sides on the controversial question of how far attorney-client privilege should go. City government advocates such as Kent city attorney Tom Brubaker told the committee during its monthly meeting Tuesday in Olympia that the law is not abused, and the privilege helps him gather data.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 9, 2008
Former envoy to UN faces graft case at Ombudsman
Jul. 10--Criminal and administrative charges were filed before the Office of the Ombudsman against Lauro Baja, the former Philippine permanent representative to the United Nations, for alleged corruption. This case before Ombudsman Merceditas Navarro-Gutierrez is different from the one that was filed in New York recently by Baja's former domestic helper. In a complaint-affidavit, Jaime Jacob, a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
The Case for a Right of Marriage Recognition: Why Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Should Protect Same-Sex Couples Who Change States
Imagine a world where your marital status changed when you moved to a new state. Imagine being denied insurance, medical decision-making authority, or even parental rights by bureaucrats who dismissed your marriage license as if it were some worthless foreign currency. Imagine a world where, with no due process, a state could effectively divorce you against your will. Absurd? Yes.
Find Law - Jul 9, 2008
FTC proposes reversal on 40-year guidance concerning nicotine, tar
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday that it no longer considers reliable a test for tar and nicotine used for more than 40 years and touted by the tobacco industry in marketing 'light' and 'low-tar' cigarettes. The FTC said it may rescind its guidance on tar and nicotine yields that is based on that test. The commission said if the guidance is withdrawn, advertisers ...
Canadian Business Magazine - Jul 9, 2008
UPSC candidates move SC over list
Jul. 10--NEW DELHI -- Twelve successful candidates of the UPSC's Civil Services Examination (CSE)-2007 have approached the Supreme Court in a bid to restrain the Commission from issuing appointment letters to 96 candidates from the Other Backward Category (OBC) in the reserved category even as they have qualified the entrance exam under the general list. The petitioners, also belonging to the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Few Nevada executions
Only 8 percent of criminals sentenced to death in Nevada have been executed in the past 25 years, and almost as many condemned inmates die from natural causes as from execution, a state panel has been told. The statistics were submitted by Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, who argues that the death penalty is far more expensive than keeping an inmate in ...
Sacramento Bee - Jul 9, 2008
The U.S. Constitution
Two hundred and twenty years ago this week, a young nation witnessed a major event in its history. On September 17, 1787, the United States Constitution was signed by members of the Constitutional Committee. The Constitution's introductory phrase, 'We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union...,' is well-known. However, many people think it comes from the ...
Jacksonville Daily News - Jul 10, 2008
Trump attorney targets woman fighting Jones Beach plan
Jul. 9--Donald Trump's court battle to overturn the state's objections to his proposed Jones Beach catering hall and restaurant took a strange turn yesterday when his attorney tried to discredit the project's chief opponent. Attorney Steven Schlesinger argued in State Supreme Court in Nassau County that civic activist Patricia Friedman's motion to be a party in the developer's lawsuit against ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 9, 2008
Florida casino compact denied
Jul. 9--The Florida Supreme Court has ruled Gov. Charlie Crist didn't have the legal authority to enter into a casino compact with the Seminole Tribe and the decision could mean millions to Mississippi Coast casinos. The decision released July 3 hasn't stopped any action at the Seminoles' eight Florida casinos, including the Hard Rock, where table games were introduced June 22.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 9, 2008
Algae a greener biofuel than ethanol?
Chicago Indymedia says: We will delete this news blog; remove the 911 hoax from our server! Cleveland.Indymedia.org says: look at this theme! we can't wait to put American citizens against the wall! Portland.Indymedia.org says: 911 Hoax used to try to post here, but we stopped him. We now screen every post. Every post. NewYork.Indymedia.org says: 911 Hoax posted here just once, and for about two ...
Boston IMC - Jul 9, 2008
Neri as SSS chief bad for 30 million fund members: Arroyo critics
Some lawmakers and a civil society organization on Wednesday opposed Malaca ang s decision to appoint Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Chair Romulo Neri as new Social Security System (SSS) president, following the resignation of Corazon de la Paz. Senator Manuel Mar Roxas II criticized the transfer of Neri to the SSS since he lacks the stock market experience needed in the managing ...
ABS-CBN News - Jul 9, 2008
Norms soon to regulate infertility clinics
The Centre on Wednesday informed the Supreme Court that it would soon frame guidelines to regulate clinics and nursing homes offering Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) to childless couple to beget a child. Additional Solicitor-General (ASG) Gopal Subramaniam indicated this before a Bench consisting of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justices P. Sathasivam and J.M.
The Hindu - Jul 9, 2008
Courageous judges must engage public
Connecticut's judges are often frightened and resentful at the prospect of having to explain what they do, particularly in specific cases. Partly this is because what you don't say won't hurt you at reappointment time. Partly it's because judicial rules and general fairness restrict what judges can say about cases. And partly it's because many judges don't think the public is capable of ...
Journal Inquirer - Jul 10, 2008
Police paid for getting dressed
Santa Rosa's police officers will soon begin getting paid to put on and take off their uniforms, holsters and bulletproof vests during their regular work shifts, after winning the right to be paid overtime for doing it on their own time. In a federal court-directed settlement expected to be formalized next week, the city has agreed to pay 80 officers who sued the city an average of $2,000 each ...
Press Democrat - Jul 9, 2008
Noida hotel land: SC tells Maya not to take action
Jul. 10--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court on Wednesday restrained the Mayawati government from dispossessing land allotted to different companies for constructing hotels in Noida. A bench headed by Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan directed the UP government not to take action against the sanctioned plots that were earmarked for hotels, until the next hearing on July 18.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 10, 2008
Bush administration told to speed processing of Guantanamo inmates
WASHINGTON _ A federal judge handling the appeals of more than 200 Guantanamo detainees vowed Tuesday to hold lawyers' "feet to the fire" to insure that the cases are handled as quickly as possible. In the first hearing held since a Supreme Court decision gave the detainees the right to challenge their imprisonment in court, U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan said he recognized the unprecedented ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
Landmark ruling used to challenge gun case: Schenectady man cites right to bear arms to fight indictment
Jul. 8--A Schenectady man accused of lying to buy a shotgun is seeking dismissal of the charges based on a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in June upholding the right to bear arms. Lamar D. Erwin, 35, of Crane Street, is one of the first to use the ruling to challenge the constitutionality of a federal statute that makes it a felony for a person under a protective order to buy and possess a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
Doc testifies Cook is 'self-destructive': Doc testifies Cook is 'self-destructive'
Jul. 8--Peter Cook's affair with a teenager and expensive Internet pornography habit were driven by a "narcissistic " and "self-destructive" nature that most likely was out of control, but does not necessarily make him a bad father, a forensic psychiatrist testified in a Central Islip courtroom Tuesday. That assessment of former supermodel Christie Brinkley's estranged husband, by Dr.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
State Farm wants Scruggs
Jul. 8--GULFPORT -- State Farm attorneys plan to grill lawyer Dickie Scruggs before he heads to prison. The insurance company has subpoenaed Scruggs and his son, attorney Zach Scruggs, for pretrial testimony July 21 in the Katrina insurance lawsuit McIntosh vs. State Farm. The McIntosh case features dueling damage reports taken from State Farm records by two insurance adjusters, Cori and Kerri ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
White House in climate 'cover up'
A LEADING US Senate Democrat accused the Bush administration today of a 'cover-up' aimed at stopping the Environmental Protection Agency from tackling greenhouse emissions. 'This cover-up is being directed from the White House and the office of the vice president,' said Senator Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Daily Telegraph Australia - Jul 8, 2008
Official: Cheney's office applied pressure on global warming report
WASHINGTON (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney's office pushed for major deletions in congressional testimony on the public health consequences of climate change, fearing the presentation by a leading health official might make it harder to avoid regulating greenhouse gases, a former EPA officials maintains.When six pages were cut from testimony on climate change and public health by the head of ...
KOMO 4 - Jul 9, 2008
FTC Acts to Prevent Tobacco Industry Deception About Tar, Nicotine Levels; Congress Should Go Further by Giving FDA Authority Over Tobacco Products
The following is a statement by Matthew L. Myers, President, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids: The Federal Trade Commission today has taken important action to protect public health by proposing to prohibit tobacco companies from claiming that cigarette tar and nicotine ratings are based on an FTC-approved testing method or that they are endorsed or approved by the FTC.
PR Newswire - Jul 8, 2008
Ohio court: Landlord not liable for tenant dispute
COLUMBUS (AP) A landlord who failed to intervene in a racial dispute between two tenants is not liable for creating a hostile environment, the Ohio Supreme Court said Tuesday. In a 7-0 decision, the high court said that state law prohibits landlords from creating a hostile housing environment through their own harassment, but the law can t be applied when the harassing conduct is done by ...
Lancaster Eagle Gazette - Jul 8, 2008
Hearing is scheduled on BP plea deal: Meanwhile, defense launches in civil trial
Jul. 8--GALVESTON -- A Houston federal judge next week will consider whether she will accept a plea agreement to resolve BP's criminal liability in the deadly 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery. U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal's order scheduling a July 16 hearing on the proposed plea deal came Monday as attorneys for plaintiffs in the latest blast-related civil trial in Galveston rested ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
The Case for Trial Lawyers
at your own peril When you heard the news not long ago that three prominent attorneys who had made their reputations suing corporations had pled guilty to either attempted judicial bribery or a kickback scheme, no doubt Shakespeare's oft-quoted line, 'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers,' came to mind. But what you probably don't realize is that the line, taken in its dramatic ...
San Francisco Business Times - Jul 8, 2008
AP NewsBreak: Groups sue to shield Arctic mammals from drilling policies
PM ET ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Two conservation groups are challenging the Bush administration's recent decision to let oil companies unintentionally harrass or harm polar bears and walruses in the growing pursuit of fossil fuels off the northwestern Alaska coast. The lawsuit was filed today (Tuesday) in U.S. District Court in Anchorage. In it, Pacific Environment and the Center for Biological ...
KTUU - Jul 8, 2008
Meralco executives snubgovt probe of estafa case
Jul. 9--Top executives of the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) snubbed on Tuesday the first preliminary investigation by the Department of Justice of a large-scale estafa case filed against the utility by a consumer group. The group sued for P889 million. Lawyers for Meralco instead asked prosecutors from the Justice department for a postponement supposedly to give them more time to prepare their ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 9, 2008
Idaho fines companies for unlimited faxing
The Idaho Attorney General has won two cases against companies charged with sending unsolicited fax ads to Idaho consumers. Attorney General Lawrence Wasden says the cases involve a travel company and another advertising commercial and residential mortgage loans. Wasden says a settlement against SunStar Travel and Tours requires the Florida company to pay a $15,000 civil penalty for sending 63 ...
Idaho Statesman - Jul 8, 2008
PhoneFusion(TM) Helps Ensure Bankruptcy Attorney Is Available When Clients Need Him Most
Jacob Silver (www.silverbankruptcy.com) Jacob Silver (www.silverbankruptcy.com) has built his reputation by providing sound counsel to individuals and small businesses going through the challenging, emotional process of filing for bankruptcy. With a fast-growing practice, Silver needed a better way to manage all of his daily communications whether he's in the office, at home, at court or on the ...
MarketWire - Jul 8, 2008
Maryland official backpedals on cigars
BALTIMORE, July 8 (UPI) -- Maryland's comptroller says he supports a rule that would outlaw buying cheap cigars one at a time and that a letter from his office opposing it was a mistake. Peter Franchot's aides said he did not see the letter sent to Baltimore officials suggesting the city does not have the power to regulate tobacco, The Baltimore Sun reported Tuesday.
UPI - Jul 8, 2008
EDITORIAL: Legislature holds the dice on Seminole gaming and must roll prudently
Jul. 8--ISSUE: The Florida Supreme Court strikes down the compact. Gov. Charlie Crist rolled snake eyes with the Florida Supreme Court and the Seminole Compact. An even bigger loser may very well be the state of Florida, depending on whether the state will strike a meaningful deal with the tribe or have the federal government impose one. The court's ruling brought clarity to the constitutional ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
Texans' demand for concealed handgun licenses rises
Jul. 8--The jerk of the handgun knocked Pam Denman back a bit. Before recently she had never held a gun -- much less fired one. She's not alone. Mrs. Denman is one of more than 52,000 people in the state who have submitted an application for a first-time concealed handgun license or renewal since the beginning of the year, according to figures from the Texas Department of Public Safety.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
Ultrasound at centre of US state-level abortion debate
Since the 1980s, doctors have used so-called ultrasound imaging to monitor the foetus during pregnancy - checking for possible abnormalities or problems in delivery. The images - also called sonograms - have become so widespread that abortion foes say the technology has fundamentally changed the way people think about abortion. This year, Oklahoma legislators handily overrode Democratic governor ...
Guardian Unlimited - Jul 8, 2008
Power plant opponents plan court battle
Jul. 8--RICHMOND -- Opponents of a new coal-fired power plant in Wise County plan to take their fight to the courts after failing to persuade state regulators to block construction of the project. A coalition of environmental groups said during a news conference Monday that they will file legal challenges to regulatory rulings allowing Dominion Virginia Power to build a 585-megawatt plant on a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
Constitutional history lesson gets post-Fourth boost
Jul. 8--At a time when 5-4 votes by the U.S. Supreme Court seem to be the norm, a 5-4 vote at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 had a profound effect on the emerging America. At a Rotary Club of Aiken presentation on constitutional facts on Monday, members heard about the Great Compromise. Earlier plans on how the government would function favored either the larger states or the smaller ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
BRIEF: Agee sworn in as judge on U.S. appeals court
Jul. 8--Virginia Supreme Court Justice G. Steven Agee has been sworn in as a judge on the U.S. Court Appeals for the 4th Circuit. The U.S. Senate confirmed him May 20 with a 96-0 vote, and he was sworn in last week. Agee is replacing J. Michael Luttig, who resigned in May 2006 to become senior vice president and general counsel at the Boeing Co. Agee, who is a 1977 graduate of the University of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
Justice Kennedy has become the new swing vote
WASHINGTON The most dramatic stories in any field of competitive endeavor are those that recount events that almost never happened. It's the scoreless ballgames that end with a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth that linger in the psyches of winners and losers -- not the 9-3 walkovers. So it is in politics and government. Al Gore's loss to George W.
CourierPostOnline.com - Jul 8, 2008
State may owe millions to local schools: Districts deserved funding to collect student data, court says
Jul. 8--Michigan may have to cough up millions of dollars in additional funding to local school districts because of a state Court of Appeals ruling that says they should have been reimbursed for the cost of keeping and reporting more data required under education reforms enacted in the last decade. In an opinion released Monday, a unanimous three-judge panel in Lansing said state officials -- ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
Dangers Of A Liberal Supreme Court
As far back as Sun Tzu, military strategists have well understood the concept that victory in war does not require the destruction of one's enemy, but merely convincing that enemy that destruction is inevitable if the fight continues. Similarly, in a dictatorship, absolute control is neither necessary nor, in most cases, even possible. All that is needed for the dictator to endure is the ...
The Conservative Voice - Jul 8, 2008
State high court sides with Walgreens
Jul. 8--In a decision that will have a far-reaching impact, the Wisconsin Supreme Court today threw out a common method of assessing property taxes involving the Walgreen Co. Two dozen communities, mostly larger municipalities, have used the assessment method and are involved in either municipal appeals or lawsuits with the drugstore chain. Walgreens lawyers said that the high court decision ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
Bryan case going to trial
Jul. 8--Calhoun and Cleburne counties will have to wait through a trial to settle the question of who may serve as their next presiding family court judge. A Birmingham judge Monday morning denied Ray Bryan's move for an injunction meant to halt the state Republican Party from decertifying his nomination for family court judge. Presiding Jefferson County Circuit Judge J.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
Stiffer sentences
Food and Drug Administration recently won sentencing guideline changes that could increase the chance of prison time for officials in FDA-regulated companies. The U.S. Sentencing Commission has sent to Congress two proposed changes that would be effective Nov. 1 unless the lawmakers object. One expands the scope of conduct warranting an upward departure from a guideline sentence for offenses ...
Daily Business Review - Jul 8, 2008
BRIEF: Akron lawyer's license suspended for year
Jul. 8--Akron defense lawyer Donald L. "Doc" Walker was suspended from practicing law for one year for violations of state disciplinary rules, Ohio Supreme Court officials announced today. The full penalty was for two years, but the high court suspended the second year if he complies with various conditions imposed by the court's Office of Disciplinary Counsel.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
Attorney General McDonnell, Comcast and iKeepSafe Unveil Internet Safety Video Available 'On Demand'
Attorney General Bob McDonnell, Comcast and the Internet Keep Safe Coalition (iKeepSafe) unveiled a new video teaching children and parents about online safety. The feature was debuted during an event at the Boys & Girls Club of Richmond this morning. The video is available free for all Comcast Digital Cable customers in Virginia to access at their convenience, day or night, via Comcast's ...
PR Newswire - Jul 8, 2008
Law Offices of Brodsky & Smith, LLC Announces Expanded Class Period in Class Action Lawsuit Against Wachovia Corp.
Law offices of Brodsky & Smith, LLC Law offices of Brodsky & Smith, LLC announces that a class action lawsuit alleging an expanded class period has been filed on behalf of all persons who purchased the common stock of Wachovia Corp. ("Wachovia" or the "Company") (NYSE: WB) between May 8, 2006 and June 6, 2008. The class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for ...
MarketWire - Jul 8, 2008
Justice Breyer Is Among Victims in Data Breach Caused by File Sharing
Sometime late last year, an employee of a McLean investment firm decided to trade some music, or maybe a movie, with like-minded users of the online file-sharing network LimeWire while using a company computer. In doing so, he inadvertently opened the private files of his firm, Wagner Resource Group, to the public. That exposed the names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers of about 2,000 ...
Washington Post - Jul 9, 2008
Dispute has industry, mineral owners nervous
One name above all others strikes fear into the hearts of Texas oil and gas operators: Garza, or more specifically, the Supreme Court of Texas case No. 05-0466, Coastal Oil & Gas Corp. and Coastal Oil & Gas USA LP v. Garza Energy Trust, et al. The lawsuit stems from a 2005 Hidalgo County dispute in which Garza Energy Trust was granted $14 million for the court s findings that the trust ...
Fort Worth Business Press - Jul 7, 2008
South Korea struggles to incorporate jury system
New system mystifies many South Koreans SUWON, South Korea: When Park Kwang Rual received the jury summons, he wondered what the court could possibly have sent him. 'I tried to remember, 'Did I ever hit someone? Not repay a debt? Was someone suing me?'' said Park, a 41-year-old human resources manager. Others, like Jung Hae Young, 30, did not even notice the summons and left it in a heap of junk ...
International Herald Tribune - Jul 7, 2008
OPINION: Seek common ground in halting gun carnage
Jul. 7--Two sides of the gun issue played themselves out in stark contrast in our region within days. We saw gunfire devastate the family of an 18-year-old Oscar Smith High School graduate, who was found on a Chesapeake lawn. We witnessed the heroic actions of a pizza owner in Virginia Beach who killed a suspected robber, saving himself and his employees. Both incidents followed the Supreme ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 7, 2008
Nebraska agency asks judge to dismiss Medicaid lawsuit
Jul. 7--LINCOLN -- The Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services asked a judge Monday to dismiss a class-action lawsuit that claims the state improperly denied Medicaid coverage to some welfare recipients. The agency contended in Lancaster County District Court that state law authorizes it to cut off both Medicaid and Aid to Dependent Children cash assistance when recipients don't comply ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 7, 2008
We'll go ahead with regularisation: Govt
Jul. 8--NEW DELHI -- With an eye on the forthcoming assembly elections, the Delhi Government on Monday told the Supreme Court that it intended to go ahead with its plan to regularise over 1,600 unauthorised colonies in the Capital. "Delhi Government is ready for issuance of provisional regularisation certificate on the basis of amendment to regulations of the unauthorised colonies," the Sheila ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
Brinkley testifies to being a good mother
NEW YORK _ To the world, she is the former supermodel, but in her home, Christie Brinkley testified Monday in her divorce trial, she was really the Supermom. For Christmas, her $30-million Bridgehampton mansion was transformed into a "wonderland." She made her own birthday cakes, jumped on a snowboard with son Jack, 12, stocked her home with disaster relief kits and always penciled Jack and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 7, 2008
State wants death sentence reinstated in midstate deputy's slaying
Jul. 7--Prosecutors are asking the Georgia Supreme Court to reinstate the conviction and death sentence for a man convicted in the 1998 shooting death of a Laurens County deputy. Prosecutors with the State Attorney General's office are scheduled to argue today that 60-year-old Andrew Howard Brannan should be sentenced to die for killing Laurens County deputy Kyle Dinkheller, 22.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 7, 2008
Prison shuts the book on novelist: Inmate author's sales violate policy
Jul. 7--Victor Martin has been writing since he was a child, but he didn't realize it could be a career until he became a convict. A few years ago, Martin became a published author, writing four novels while lying in his bunk in a state prison in Elizabeth City. His books, which feature a high-rolling criminal named Unique, have a following among readers of what is known as "urban fiction," a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 7, 2008
Rep. Walker resigns on eve of ethics investigation
Jul. 7--Utah Rep. Mark Walker resigned Sunday, on the eve of an ethics investigation into whether he offered his opponent in the state treasurer's race a bribe to drop his bid for the office, but insisted he did nothing wrong. Rather, Walker wrote in a letter to House Speaker Greg Curtis delivered Sunday evening, "I cannot, in good conscience, continue to put my family through the attacks and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 7, 2008
Interpreter key in courtroom proceedings
Jul. 7--Walter "Buddy" Holder seems out of place in the courtroom. The clinically blind man with slightly graying hair, wearing a pale green shirt and a SpongeBob SquarePants tie, is not a lawyer, accused criminal or witness. Still, he plays a critical role in the room. Holder, 62, has been a court interpreter for Cass County for 13 years, he said. He works about 20 hours a week translating for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 7, 2008
Language barrier can hinder the legal process: Many Valley law enforcement officials are bilingual, but court officials say having certified interpreters is the only way to guarantee due process
Jul. 7--The recent case of Jos Lopez Meza appears to be an anomaly, but it raises the question of whether non-English speakers who are accused of crimes are being understood. Meza faced a possible death penalty in connection with his infant son's death. But one of the reasons he may only serve three to 15 years on a manslaughter charge is that court-certified interpreters found that parts of his ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 7, 2008
British mercenary gets 34 years in jail
Mercenary Simon Mann was jailed on Monday for 34 years by a court in Equatorial Guinea for a failed 2004 coup plot in which he said the son of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was also involved. Mann, 56, an Eton-educated former army special forces officer, was sentenced to a prison term of 34 years, four months and three days for conspiring to topple President Teodoro Obiang Nguema ...
Mirror - Jul 7, 2008
Guns may be allowed at Texas colleges
Jul. 7--Texans might soon be able to pack heat on college campuses. That is just one of several proposals that could reach lawmakers next year as they -- and legislators nationwide -- explore broadening some gun laws. "It addresses personal protection," said state Rep. Joe Driver, R-Garland, who heads the House committee that considers gun bills. "People who do things [like the Virginia Tech ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 7, 2008
Coca-Cola settles lawsuit for $137.5 million
ATLANTA - The Coca-Cola Co., the world's largest beverage maker, has agreed to pay $137.5 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit that claimed company officials misrepresented or omitted information in public statements, causing the company's stock price to be inflated.The Atlanta-based company did not admit any wrongdoing in settling the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta, according to ...
MSNBC - Jul 7, 2008
South Korean Cabinet Reshuffled
SEOUL, July 7 (Bernama) -- South Korean President Lee Myung-bak Monday reshuffled the Cabinet, replacing three ministers, a presidential spokesman said. The president replaced the agriculture minister, the education minister and the minister for health and welfare, spokesman Lee Dong-Kwan, was quoted by China's Xinhua news agency, as saying here. The president appointed Ahn Byong-man, a ...
Smart News Network - Jul 7, 2008
Editorial: Lead paint's legacy
The Rhode Island Supreme Court's ruling last week, that the state's public-nuisance laws can't be used to sue paint manufacturers to pay for the cleanup of old lead paint in buildings, could spell the end of similar suits all across the nation. This was the most-watched case of its kind in the country, and the outcome likely will affect decisions of other cities and states, including Columbus and ...
Columbus Dispatch - Jul 7, 2008
BRIEF: Scotia man to get $1.1M payout in lawsuit
Jul. 7--A Scotia man is awaiting a payout of $1.1 million after a state Supreme Court judge ruled last year that a Pennsylvania tool company is responsible for an accident that partially blinded the man. Richard H. VanNorden was injured on Nov. 22, 2003, when he was using an ax made by the Mann Edge Tool Company to split firewood. Van Norden claimed the ax malfunctioned, hitting him in the right ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 7, 2008
Can Reparations for Apartheid Profits be Won in US Courts?
US imperialism's double standards was uttered by Clinton-era deputy treasury secretary Stuart Eizenstat, who a decade ago was the driver of reparations claims against pro-Nazi corporations, assisting plaintiffs to gain $8 billion from European banks and corporations which ripped off Holocaust victims' funds or which were 1930s beneficiaries of slave labor (both Jewish and non-Jewish).
CounterPunch - Jul 7, 2008
Chrysler criticized for time limits on filing sex harassment claims
Second of two parts Chrysler LLC has been at the forefront of imposing time limits on employees for filing legal claims regarding discrimination and harassment that are much shorter than deadlines set by state and federal law, lawyers said.It's something the courts have upheld, but one judge has called 'unconscionable.'To apply for work at Chrysler, applicants must waive the time allowed under ...
The Detroit Free Press - Jul 7, 2008
BRIEF: Court: Mich. schools forced to bear reporting costs
Jul. 7--LANSING -- Michigan state government has been shortchanging local school districts millions of dollars a year by failing to reimburse the cost of enhanced reporting requirements under education reforms enacted in the last decade, the state Court of Appeals ruled today. A unanimous three-judge panel of the court said state officials -- essentially the Legislature and governor -- violated ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 7, 2008
Statement From Freed & Weiss LLC Regarding Title Insurance Companies Facing Class Action Suits Over Charging Premiums in Excess of Filed Rates for Mortgage RefinancingLoading...
The following statement was issued today by the law firm Freed & Weiss LLC: A Detroit federal court refused to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a homeowner who alleged that, when he refinanced his mortgage, he was overcharged for 'title insurance' by Transnation Title Insurance Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of LandAmerica. Ho The Remainder of this Article is Available To Insider ...
Insurance News Net - Jul 7, 2008
Judicial probe sought in Ghaziabad PF scam
Jul. 8--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court on Monday requested the Solicitor General to advise it on a petition seeking a judicial probe into the multi-crore provident fund scam in Ghaziabad, allegedly involving 26 sitting judges from the Allahabad High Court and serving as well as retired judges of the apex court. The petition, filed by former president of the local lawyers' body in Ghaziabad, had ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 8, 2008
Bianchi: Brinkley's ex gave her cash for a car: New demands by ex-model, husband unveiled in divorce trial
Jul. 2--Long before Peter Cook gave Diana Bianchi $300,00 to keep quiet about their adulterous affair, the Bridgehampton architecht gave his young paramour $15,000 cash towards a new car, Bianchi testified in court Wednesday. Cook, whose divorce trial to former supermodel Christie Brinkley opened Wednesday, also paid Bianchi, then 21, "20 to 50 dollars an hour" to work at his office, even though ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 2, 2008
Salient Federal Laws Prohibiting Employment Discrimination
You cannot avoid discrimination. As long as there are people who single out and show prejudice against persons whom they think to be inferior, then discrimination persists. But the government does everything to fight this wrong. The legislature has enacted a number of laws to counteract this problem. The main purpose of these legislations is to put an end to inequality and provide equal ...
Search Articles.net - Jul 2, 2008
Ignorant America: Just How Stupid Are We?
'If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.' -- Thomas Jefferson Just how stupid are we? Pretty stupid, it would seem, when we come across headlines like this: 'Homer Simpson, Yes -- 1st Amendment 'Doh,' Survey Finds' (Associated Press 3/1/06). 'About 1 in 4 Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed ...
AlterNet.org - Jul 2, 2008
The death penalty as a deterrent? Jury is still out
ASSOCIATED PRESSThe Supreme Court Sunstein is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Justin Wolfers is assistant professor of business and public policy at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. This was written for the Washington Post. Although the Supreme Court banned capital punishment for child rape last week, the justices have made it clear that for ...
Cleveland Live - Jul 2, 2008
Albany terror convictions upheld
Jul. 2--ALBANY -- A federal appeals court in Manhattan has unananimously upheld the 2006 convictions of two Muslim immigrants found guilty of aiding a fictitious terror plot. Yassin Aref, 38, and Mohammed Hossain, 53, will continue to serve 15-year prison sentences for planning to launder money from the sale of a shoulder-fired missile, following the ruling by the U.S.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 2, 2008
High court frees judge to rule on BP blast plea deal
Jul. 2--The U.S. Supreme Court today denied a request from victims of the 2005 explosion at BP's Texas City refinery to temporarily block a judge from accepting or rejecting a blast-related criminal plea deal. Last week the victims filed a request that the high court order U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal hold off on ruling on the plea deal so they could ask the Supreme Court to review whether ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 2, 2008
Same-sex marriage foes plead with court
Jul. 2--Supporters of a proposed constitutional amendment that would restore California's ban on gay marriage are urging the state Supreme Court to reject a bid to remove the measure from the November ballot. In a 46-page petition filed Monday, lawyers for the Alliance Defense Fund and Protect Marriage groups argue that the legal challenge to the ballot measure is a "desperate" attempt to "evade ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 2, 2008
Kennedys big stick
The most powerful person in the United States twice flexed his musclelast week, casting the deciding vote in separate landmark Supreme Courtdecisions. Because the court has been divided with four justices wholean left and four who trend right, Anthony Kennedys has become theonly vote that matters. That was evident as the nations highest courtruled that convicted child rapists could not be sent ...
Robesonian - Jul 2, 2008
UnitedHealth cuts 4,000 jobs; settles lawsuit
MINNEAPOLIS _ UnitedHealth Group Inc. will pay $895 million to settle a class-action lawsuit concerning backdated stock options, a move the former Wall Street darling hopes will put an end to a long-simmering scandal so it can focus on turning its struggling business around. The country's biggest health insurer also said Wednesday that it was cutting 4,000 jobs nationally, about 6 percent of its ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 2, 2008
NAACP announces plan to stop racial discrimination in housing market
That effort is a nationwide class-action lawsuit that's been filed against some of the largest mortgage companies in the country. The basis of that lawsuit, according to NAACP, is discrimination in lending. The NAACP claims that at least 17 banks systematically gave higher rates on mortgages to minorities. Not only that, the group claims those banks tacked on higher fees or penalties for things ...
KSL-TV - Jul 2, 2008
County bows out on possible capital cases: Public defender says office lacks funds, lawyers to represent two special-circumstance defendants
Jul. 2--With members of a state justice commission calling for more funding to fix California's "dysfunctional" death penalty system, Monterey County's public defender opted out of two special-circumstance cases Monday because his office could not afford the cost. Tasked with defending one of three defendants charged in the April 11 slaying of Jose Nicholas Zarate, Public Defender Jim Egar chose ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 2, 2008
Lead Ruling Overturned In Companies' Favor
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Rhode Island's Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a first-in-the-nation jury verdict that found three former lead paint companies responsible for creating a public nuisance, rejecting a closely watched case that had been seen as a bellwether for potential lawsuits across the country. The 4-0 decision ends the nearly decade-long court fight and spares the ...
Tampa Tribune - Jul 2, 2008
Michigan AG sues Blue Cross over for-profit deal
The lawsuit filed in Ingham County alleges that nonprofit Blue Cross, based in Detroit, illegally helped the Accident Fund, its for-profit subsidiary in Lansing, purchase a California insurance company in November. 'This is not what a charitable and benevolent institution was set up to do,' Cox said during a news conference, referring to Blue Cross' unique role in Michigan's health system.
Yahoo! Canada - Jul 2, 2008
EDITORIAL: Sex offender law virtually ineffective and unenforcable
Jul. 2--No one in his or her right mind wants Georgia's public threatened by sexual predators. There must be a law to protect residents and their children from those depraved persons who rape or sexually assault victims vulnerable to such attack. There are factors though, that the General Assembly has repeatedly ignored as it enacted and then was forced to retool what is considered one of the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 2, 2008
EDITORIAL: Bill would bring Pa. into 21st century
Jul. 2--State Sen. John N. Wozniak's legislation comes way too late to help Gerald A. Miscovich, but it is a welcome move nevertheless. Wozniak, a Johnstown Democrat, said earlier this month he is drafting legislation that would allow Pennsylvania courts to consider DNA testing in any case in which paternity is an issue. Currently Pennsylvania law concerning paternity is rooted in 16th century ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 2, 2008
Winston-Salem Journal, N.C., Mike Mulhern column: Special Place: Waltrip eager to race at Daytona
Jul. 2--MICHAEL WALTRIP KNOWS -- like few others -- the heartbreak of Daytona International Speedway, as well as the sweet relief that a good run there can bring to a tired NASCAR driver. And Waltrip, now 45 and in his 23rd year on the stock-car tour, needs a good run at Daytona this week more than anyone else in the Sprint Cup series. Life hasn't been great for Waltrip lately.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 2, 2008
Trigger-happy justices will have us all ducking
So everyone has a gun. Lets start with that idea. Everyone has a gun. What will this mean? In the minds of some people - those who think last weeks Supreme Court decision protecting gun ownership was wonderful - it means if you come after me now, I can take you down. The next burglar who tries to rape or kill an innocent party? He gets shot instead. The next lunatic who tries to shoot up a ...
Boston Herald - Jul 2, 2008
New Jersey appeals court upholds Tropicana license denial
ATLANTIC CITY - Tropicana Casino and Resort lost the longest of long shots Tuesday in a legal fight to regain its license. A New Jersey appeals court upheld the state Casino Control Commission's decision last December to strip Tropicana's former owners of the license and put the gaming hall up for sale. Tropicana is being run by a state-appointed conservator while a search continues for a new ...
Press of Atlantic City - Jul 2, 2008
Massey case appealed to US Supreme Court
Harman Mining Co. and its president Hugh Caperton filed an appeal Wednesday with the U.S. Supreme Court over a $76.3 million judgment favoring Massey Energy Co. in a coal contract dispute. The appeal asks the U.S. Supreme Court to consider whether a justice on West Virginia's Supreme Court should have disqualified himself from hearing Massey's appeal of a jury verdict favoring Harman in the ...
Business Week - Jul 2, 2008
Slusser family attorneys want to make $3.4M judgment final: They seek to have court deny law firm's petition requesting ruling reversal.
Jul. 2--WILKES-BARRE -- Attorneys for the Slusser family have asked Luzerne County Court to deny a petition filed by attorneys for Laputka, Bayless, Ecker and Cohn that seeks to overturn a $3.4 million legal malpractice judgment against the law firm. In court papers filed Monday, attorneys Stephen Seach and Jonathan Lang of the Robert Powell law firm said that state law orders the judgment ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 2, 2008
DC v. Heller: Scalia's Decision Will Backfire
After all, here was a jurist whose entire career is supposedly based on scrupulous fidelity to the words of the Founding Fathers, and Scalia had to figure out a way to disregard thirteen of those precious words. Here's how he did it =- and why his decision will eventually come back to haunt conservatives. He starts with the text of the Second Amendment, which says: 'A well regulated Militia, ...
Huffington Post - Jul 2, 2008
'Can you really say that?': Free-speech battles that made Carlin famous still being fought
George Carlin is gone, but the kinds of free-speech conflicts he skewered in his comedic routines live on. And so does the national debate over where First Amendment protections end and government regulation begins on broadcast speech and speech in public. Not all such conflicts directly involve First Amendment consideration - some are more involved with the 'spirit' of free speech than with ...
Tucson Citizen - Jul 2, 2008
Colodny, Fass, Talenfeld, Karlinsky & Abate Shareholders All Named to Super Lawyers Guide
All five Colodny, Fass, Talenfeld, Karlinsky & Abate, All five Colodny, Fass, Talenfeld, Karlinsky & Abate, P.A. shareholders have been selected for inclusion in "Super Lawyers" by Florida Super Lawyer Magazine, an annual publication that recognizes the top attorneys in the State. The list is compiled from peer nominations, in which Florida attorneys are asked to nominate their choice ...
MarketWire - Jul 2, 2008
Govt refuses to probe former CJI, says it has no authority
Jul. 3--NEW DELHI -- The government has refused to probe the allegations of corruption and misconduct against the former Chief Justice of India, YK Sabharwal, saying there was "no specific provision" in the Constitution to look into charges against retired judges. Finally breaking its silence on the issue, the Ministry of Law & Justice has washed its hand off the entire controversy involving ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 3, 2008
Court makes Gatlin a no-go
Justin Gatlin's pursuit of Olympic gold in Beijing is really over now. His fight against the powers that banned him from the games well, that will be more like a marathon than a sprint. The defending Olympic 100-meter champion lost his appeal Thursday in Atlanta to run in the U.S. Olympic track trials and said he will not take the case to the Supreme Court, meaning there are no more back doors ...
Hampton Roads Daily Press - Jul 3, 2008
Rhode Island high court overturns landmark lead paint verdict
PROVIDENCE, R.I. - The Rhode Island Supreme Court overturned a landmark verdict against three former lead paint producers Tuesday, a major setback for communities that want the companies to decontaminate hundreds of thousands of homes and other buildings. The unanimous decision reversed the lone victory to date against the lead paint industry. A jury found Sherwin-Williams Co., NL Industries ...
570News - Jul 1, 2008
Child rapist, murderer Schwab executed
Statement from Vicki Rios-Martinez I am not here to rejoice in a death, nor do I feel the need to justify our presence, as this ending represents a new beginning for us. Seventeen years is way too long to wait for justice, and without justice there is no closure. Closure is the time when we finally can close the door to the past; to the hell we have lived through, and begin recreating our heaven ...
Florida Today - Jul 1, 2008
Grasso Wins Court Fight to Keep Pay
Ending a bitter public fight over whether former New York Stock Exchange Chief Executive Dick Grasso was paid too much, a state appeals court ruled that Mr. Grasso can keep every penny of his $187.5 million multiyear compensation. The 3-to-1 ruling by the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court was a vindication for the relentless Mr. Grasso, who was ousted after details of his ...
Wall Street Journal Online - Jul 1, 2008
'Girls Gone Wild' hit with class-action suit
Jul. 1--PANAMA CITY -- The plaintiffs in a lawsuit against "Girls Gone Wild" say there might be hundreds of underage girls who have been victimized by the video company. Panama City lawyer D. Ross McCloy Jr., along with Chicago attorneys Larry Selander, Wayne Mack, Thomas Dent, Rachael Pontikes and Duane Morris, amended a lawsuit they filed in March into a class-action suit.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 1, 2008
High court hears Khouzam extradition case: Federal officials have attempted to extradite Sameh Khouzam on the basis of a murder charge.
Jul. 1--When you counted his mother, lawyers, friends and supporters from various human rights groups, more than 50 people showed up on behalf of Egyptian national Sameh Khouzam at the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, according to Khouzam's friend Kathleen Lucas. But one person involved in the case who was not present on Monday morning was Khouzam himself.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 1, 2008
Panel finds California death penalty flawed, urges overhaul
Jul. 1--Capital punishment in California is too flawed to be effective and is crippled by an appeals backlog that delays punishment for crimes, a state Senate- appointed panel has concluded. The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice issued an in-depth report on the death penalty Monday, the first official review of the practice since it was reinstated in 1978.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 1, 2008
Florida sues Countrywide, charges loan fraud
The lawsuit seeks financial compensation for Countrywide's victims and, although Bank of America is expected to buy the troubled lending company soon, McCollum said he is confident the former company will have money to pay it. 'We're going to be able to identify many actual damages due,' McCollum said Tuesday at aconference. 'The people most affected are the people at the lower end of the ...
TradingMarkets - Jul 1, 2008
Iraq sues AWB over oil-for-food scandal
MICHELLE GRATTAN AWB has vowed to fight a civil lawsuit brought by the Iraqi Government against it and more than 90 other companies involved in the oil-for-food bribery scandal. The Iraqis are seeking $US10.4 billion ($A10.9 billion) from companies including BNP Paribas, El Paso Corp, Chevron Oil, Siemens, Daimler-Chrysler and Volvo. AWB paid nearly $A300 million in bribes under the program.
Illawarra Mercury - Jul 1, 2008
Panama's Supreme Court overturns pardon of Cuban exile
Panama's Supreme Court overturned Cuban exile militant Luis Posada Carriles' 2004 presidential pardon, a ruling that could eventually land the controversial former CIA operative back in jail. Given current Panamanian President Martin Torrijos' friendly relations with Cuba, Panama is likely to formally request Posada be extradited, according to Posada's Panamanian defense attorney.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 1, 2008
Law Court rules against Swans Island school subsidy policy
Jul. 1--SWANS ISLAND, Maine -- The state supreme court has rejected an appeal filed by a local couple hoping to get the town to pay for their children's education at a Christian school in Trenton. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court, sitting in Portland, issued its unanimous decision against Jason and Priscilla Joyce of Swans Island on Tuesday. The Joyces filed a complaint in Kennebec County ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 1, 2008
SLC attorney hit with $10K sanction: Judge says the lawsuit against Ogden officials was frivolous; lawyer to appeal decision
Jul. 1--A 2nd District judge is sanctioning Salt Lake City civil-rights attorney Brian Barnard for filing what the judge last fall called a frivolous lawsuit that attempted to push Ogden Mayor Matthew Godfrey off the ballot. Barnard said Monday he will appeal Judge Parley Baldwin's $10,000 sanction to the Utah Supreme Court. The judge, he said, "simply made a mistake." Barnard represented ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 1, 2008
Tankleff will not have to face new trial
Jul. 1--State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced yesterday he would not retry Martin Tankleff, falling short of fully exonerating him in the gruesome slayings of his mother and father 20 years ago. In a motion filed yesterday, Cuomo's office said that while there remains "some evidence" that Tankleff, 36, killed Arlene and Seymour Tankleff in their Belle Terre home in 1988, it "is ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 1, 2008
Ahumada: Stand up and say no: Mayor encourages residents to protest border fence agreement
Jul. 1--Mayor Pat M. Ahumada Jr. continued his crusade against a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, urging and pleading with residents to "stand up and say no," to the City Commission and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The City Commission is scheduled today to vote on a condemnation agreement with DHS. Ahumada said at a news conference Monday that the city should not allow entry to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 1, 2008
Seinfeld Lawyer Hits Out At Cook's 'Bogus' Lawsuit
U.S. comic Jerry Seinfield's lawyer has hit out at the suit filed by U.S. chef Missy Chase Lapine - branding the case 'bogus'. Lapine sued Seinfeld's wife Jessica in January , stating her best selling cookbook Deceptively Delicious 'brazenly plagiarised' her own book The Sneaky Chef. Both books describe how to hide healthy ingredients in children's foods. And after hearing of the legal action, ...
IMDB - Jul 1, 2008
The Salt Lake Tribune Robert Kirby column: Kirby: Mother Goose has teeth and she's mean (with video)
Jul. 1--SCIPIO -- Last week, I got into a fight with Mother Goose. Don't believe the fairy tale version. Ma Goose is tough. I'm not. It could have gone either way. I hooked up with Rich Hansen and other folks from the Division of Wildlife Resources. We spent the morning banding geese on Scipio Reservoir. They band the geese to help build a national database to monitor migratory patterns.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 1, 2008
Some clergy encourage weddings outside of churches
SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ Some clergy think churches should divorce themselves from the wedding business. The controversy over same-sex marriage _ along with a growing sense that many couples who marry in churches never return _ has prompted faith leaders to say it's time to reconsider how California couples tie the knot. After the California Supreme Court ruled gay marriage legal, the bishop of the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 1, 2008
Dionne: Conservatives cling to power through courts
The spate of 5-4 conservative decisions during the Supreme Court term just ended should stand as a warning that we may soon revisit the fights of 70 years ago. Yet almost nobody is talking about this danger. To the extent that judges have been a campaign issue in recent elections, the focus has been on a few hot-button issues, notably abortion. After last week's Second Amendment case, perhaps ...
PJStar.com - Jul 1, 2008
EDITORIAL: Court views gun amendment: Decision upholds individual rights but allows reasonable regulation
Jul. 1--The Supreme Court's ruling on guns won't please either side completely in the never-ending debate on gun violence and the Second Amendment, but in this case failure to placate the extremes may be a sign that the court made a sensible ruling. In a nutshell, the court ruled 5-4 that the right to bear arms is an individual right, the amendment's preface about a "well regulated militia" ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 1, 2008
EDITORIAL: Handgun ban violates Constitution
Jul. 1--THE ISSUE Supreme Court's decision on right to bear arms in District of Columbia v. Heller POINTS OF DEBATE The Second Amendment protects an individual right or a collective right that can be exercised only when one is serving in a militia THE STAR'S VIEW This was a landmark decision and decided correctly on almost all counts The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in District of Columbia v. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 1, 2008
Can the President Ignore Congress?
A new lawsuit with the potential to redefine the relationship between the branches of government. | | In the final days of the Supreme Court's term, it is not surprising that other lawsuits are not receiving much attention. However, this past Monday, there was a hearing before District Judge John Bates in a case that could have more far-reaching consequences than any on the Supreme Court's ...
The New Republic Online - Jul 1, 2008
Morris' Book Makes A Strong Case For Defeating Obama
Dick Morris is one of the political masters of our time, so when he shows how to make the case to beat Sen. Barack Obama, we all ought to pay attention. That's exactly what he does in his new best-selling book Fleeced. It is co-authored with Eileen McGann, his wife. (For convenience and brevity, the two authors will be referred to simply as 'Morris.') Mr. Morris believes that Mr.
Philadelphia Bulletin - Jul 1, 2008
Iraqi govt launches legal action against AWB and others
The Iraqi government has launched legal action against AWB Ltd in relation to the Iraq oil-for-food kickbacks scandal, further compounding the grains marketer and agricultural services provider's legal woes. AWS is one of 93 companies included in a civil lawsuit launched by the Iraqi government in the United States that alleges a breach of corruption laws while they participated in the United ...
IndustrySearch - Jul 1, 2008
Lawyer may be disbarred for role in foreclosures
Lawyer may be disbarred for role in foreclosures By SUSAN LATHAM CARR Star-Banner Published: Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 6:30 a.m. Last Modified: Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 5:58 a.m. OCALA - A Florida Bar referee will recommend that Orlando attorney Norman Sanders Moss be permanently disbarred for allegedly stealing money owed his clients, including a Marion County man.Referee Alan A.
StarBanner.com - Jul 1, 2008
French court orders eBay to pay $61 million for sale of counterfeits
Plus: Tech giants form patent group to limit lawsuits; Yahoo tells shareholders Microsoft bid was bad business; National Semi working to boost solar power; Google to unveil cartoons from 'Family Guy' creator Related Links Bogus bag brouhaha: Peddling fake purses and perfume out of the trunk of a beat-up Citroen is bad enough. But the French draw the line when it happens on the Internet.
SiliconValley.com - Jun 30, 2008
4 Iraqis who say they were tortured file lawsuits
DETROIT _ Four Iraqi men who say they were tortured in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq filed federal lawsuits Monday in four cities against U.S. military contractors and their employees. A suit was filed in Detroit on behalf of Mohammed Abdwaihed Towfek Al-Taee, 39, an Iraqi taxi driver who says he was wrongly imprisoned, tortured by U.S. contractors, and then released without any charges.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 30, 2008
Southern Nevada business brokers form trade group
Association claims out-of-state rivals skirting local law Should selling a business located in leased premises be considered a real estate transaction? That might sound like the theme for a yawn-inducing law review article, but it played a pivotal role in forming the new Nevada Business Brokers Association. While speakers at the initial general membership meeting on June 19 talked about the ...
Las Vegas Business Press - Jun 30, 2008
Don't depend on Congress for fuel relief. Buy a bike.
Wonder why your gas prices keep rising, and help seems nowhere on the way? Consider these headlines from press releases that crossed my e-mail path Wednesday: From House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio: 'With gas prices soaring, Dem plan for political cover collapses as Americans seek real energy reforms.' From Idaho First District Rep. Bill Sali, following Boehner's theme: 'Sali calls ...
Idaho Statesman - Jun 30, 2008
Sources: Businessman wouldn't wear wire in probe of waste pact
DETROIT -- A Detroit businessman, who was the local partner on a city of Detroit waste contract that is under federal investigation, rebuffed a request from the FBI to cooperate with the investigation by wearing a hidden electronic surveillance device, persons familiar with the case said. Rayford W. Jackson, whose company received a minority share of a multimillion-dollar contract awarded to ...
Detroit News - Jun 30, 2008
New Oversight of Supreme Court Needed
(AXcess News) Omaha - My old boss, U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, one of the few non-lawyers on the House Judiciary Committee, used to tell me about how Congress has the power to regulate the federal courts. 'Constitutionally, we could reduce the Supreme Court to the Chief Justice sitting in his chambers at a card table if we wanted to,' he would say. I thought of that unused congressional ...
AXcess News - Jun 30, 2008
Court upholds Honda's role in dismissal
Human resource departments across the country dodged a bullet after the Supreme Court of Canada struck down a $100,000 punitive damage award yesterday against Honda Canada Inc. over the way it fired an employee suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome. In a 7-2 decision, Justice Michel Bastarache, writing for the majority of the court, said Honda's conduct in dismissing Kevin Keays, a data entry ...
National Post - Jun 30, 2008
Settlement reached in suit over UA electrocution death
Jun. 30--The Ohio Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by the widow of a contractor electrocuted at the University of Akron seven years ago because the case has been settled. Tammy Young and the university have reached a mediated settlement on the wrongful death of electrician Doug Young, 35, of Wadsworth, who was killed while trying to restore power to a UA building under construction in May ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 30, 2008
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Tom Jicha column: Boca man blew whistle on George Carlin
Jun. 30--George Carlin made himself a comedic genius. A man made Carlin a part of history. John Douglas, a Boca resident since 1978, is the citizen who filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission in 1975 that ultimately led to a landmark Supreme Court decision, the one that codified Carlin's "seven words you can never say on TV and radio." It was nothing personal against ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 30, 2008
SC bans further shipment of non-Basmati rice
Jul. 1--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court on Monday banned further shipment of non-Basmati rice. A bench of Justices Altamas Kabir and G.S. Singhvi issued notices to various rice exporters on the plea of the Central Government, challenging an Andhra Pradesh High Court order permitting certain companies to export non-Basmati rice. The bench also stayed the proceedings before the Andhra Pradesh High ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jul 1, 2008
Banking industry nightmare awaits in ruling to rescind adjustable-rate mortgages
(Reuters)-A lawsuit filed by a Wisconsin couple against their mortgage lender could have major implications for banks should a U.S. appeals court agree that borrowers can cancel their loans en masse when their lenders violate a federal lending disclosure law. The case began like hundreds of others filed since the U.S. housing boom spawned a rise in sales of adjustable rate loans.
Financial Week - Jun 30, 2008
Malaysia Anwar files suit from embassy refuge
Anwar said he feared for his life when he fled to Turkey's embassy at the weekend in a political drama that has echoes of the country's worst political crisis 10 years ago. Malaysia's Foreign Minister Rais Yatim, who complained that Turkey was interfering in Malaysia's internal affairs, said the Turkish embassy would ask Anwar to leave as soon as possible. 'The ambassador will try to get Anwar ...
Mirror - Jun 30, 2008
When a gallon of gas is not exactly a gallon
Class-action suit says we re getting cheated when high temperatures expand the fuel Chris Morris Reader poll Who, if anyone, should pay the rumored $2 billion cost for temperature-adjusted gasoline pump technology? Return to story Big Oil Retailers Big Oil and the retailers Consumers All of the above No one. Keep the status quo or See results without voting Sun Archives Gas 'peakers' set to ...
Las Vegas Sun - Jun 30, 2008
Organic Trade Association Challenges Ohio's New Dairy Labeling Rule in Federal Court
COLUMBUS, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Organic Trade Association (OTA) today filed a legal complaint against Ohio's Department of Agriculture, challenging as unconstitutional an "emergency" rule seeking to prevent labeling that tells a consumer whether the cows were treated with rBST, the synthetic growth hormone manufactured and sold by Monsanto under the brand Posilac.
Yahoo! Canada - Jun 30, 2008
New Abu Ghraib Torture Lawsuits Target Military Contractors in U.S. Courts, According to Legal Team for Former Detainees
Four former Abu Ghraib detainees who were wrongly imprisoned, tortured and later released without charge are suing two U.S. military contractor corporations and three individual contractors, according to four separate lawsuits being filed today by their U.S. legal team. The defendants are CACI International Inc. (NYSE: CAI) and CACI Premier Technology, Inc., of Arlington, Va.; L-3 Services Inc., ...
Sun Herald - Jun 30, 2008
July brings bumper crop of new laws as fiscal years start in 46 states
WASHINGTON _ As of July 1, Colorado gamblers who are deadbeat parents will see their winnings diverted to pay unpaid child support, drivers in California and Washington can no longer use hand-held cell phones in transit and people who attend animal fights in Virginia risk felony charges. This is a sampling of the hundreds of new laws that take effect July 1, the beginning of the fiscal year for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 30, 2008
Nebraska's anti-bias commission regains federal funding
Jun. 30--LINCOLN -- With its federal funding to be restored Tuesday, the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission is resuming investigations of alleged housing discrimination. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development cut off funding in April after Attorney General Jon Bruning refused to file a lawsuit in a discrimination incident involving illegal immigrants.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 30, 2008
Young Man With Severe Disabilities Wins Right to Services From State Enabling Him to Live At Home
Equip for Equality Obtains Federal Injunction Against the State for Violation of the ADA's Integration Mandate CHICAGO, June 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following two years of federal court litigation under the ADA's 'integration mandate,' Equip for Equality has obtained a permanent injunction to enable its client, David Grooms, to receive services he needs to remain in his home.
Houston Chronicle - Jun 30, 2008
Broward County balks at paying high rent for public defenders' offices
Jun. 30--A new, obscure state agency that helps represent the poor in court has rented offices on posh Las Olas Boulevard and wants Broward County taxpayers to pick up the $416,000- a-year tab. County commissioners, forced to reduce services to provide property tax relief, refuse to pay the rent and ordered their attorneys to join other counties in a lawsuit.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 30, 2008
Gun ruling lets Obama off the hook
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- After months of claiming insufficient information to express an opinion on the District of Columbia gun law, Barack Obama noted with apparent approval Thursday that the Supreme Court ruled the 32-year ban on handguns 'went too far.' But what would he have said had the high court's 5-4 majority gone the other way and affirmed the law? Obama's strategists can only thank swing ...
Chicago Sun-Times - Jun 30, 2008
EDITORIAL: Court's decision moves gun fight to Congress: With cities' options limited, lawmakers need to face up to limiting the gun trade
Jun. 30--A sharply divided Supreme Court has settled the issue for now. The Second Amendment to the Constitution does confer upon individuals the right to bear arms. In the wake of the ruling, big-city mayors across the country are expressing alarm that their gun-control ordinances will be set aside, unleashing a new wave of urban gun violence. That may be an exaggeration.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 30, 2008
EDITORIAL: Supreme Court ruling on guns still allows reasonable restrictions
Jun. 30--For all the chest-thumping taking place among gun advocates, last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling doesn't mark a huge change in the nation's approach toward ownership of firearms. Americans generally agree that citizens who qualify for permits should be able to keep handguns in their homes. A 5-4 opinion overturning a restrictive Washington, D.C., gun law affirms that right.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 30, 2008
EDITORIAL: A punitive ruling
Jun. 30--After almost 20 years of legal battles over the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Supreme Court last week slashed the punitive damages imposed on Exxon Mobil to $500 million from $2.5 billion. In a 5-3 ruling, the justices limited the amount of punitive damages to the amount of actual damages. Justice David H. Souter cited studies showing that under federal maritime law, punitive damages were ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 30, 2008
Natural Health Trends Corp. Pursues Legal Actions Against Company Founder
Natural Health Trends Corp. (NASDAQ Among other things, the lawsuit alleges attempts by Mr. LaCore and his company to induce employees, distributors and vendors to breach contractual agreements and to disclose confidential information. It also accuses Mr. LaCore of deliberately naming his latest network marketing project and product using Natural Health Trend's stock ticker symbol for the ...
Market Wire - Jun 30, 2008
DA, defense optimistic as Clark jury continues deliberations
Jun. 30--BEDFORD -- The Dauphin County jury will return this morning to resume deliberations in the capital murder case of Joseph Clark, 49, of Everett. The witnesses in the high-profile case stemming from the 2000 kidnapping and murder of Holly Notestine wrapped up Friday with the defense concluding its testimony. The prosecution also presented a handful of witnesses as rebuttal to defense ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 30, 2008
Massey Energy Co. Agrees to Noteworthy Corporate Governance Improvements in Environmental Compliance and Worker Safety; Shareholder Derivative Settlement Approved by West Virginia Court
Business Editors; Legal Writers 595 words MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. Plaintiffs' litigation firm Motley Rice LLC today announces court approval of a shareholder derivative settlement with Massey Energy Company (NYSE: MEE). Institutional shareholder Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust (Manville Trust) commenced this action aiming to improve the company's policies and procedures in the areas of ...
CMD First Source - Jun 30, 2008
Letter: Top officials at U.S. Sugar 'freedom-fighting heroes'
Few people know that Bob Buker, the chief executive officer of U.S. Sugar, has fought for years to limit taxes and restore property rights for all Floridians. He poured millions into a Florida petition drive that resulted in two tax-limitation measures being added to the state constitution, and a landmark property rights law passed by the Legislature. Today, because of Bob Buker and U.S. ...
Jupiter Courier - Jun 29, 2008
U.S. money-for-the-blind ruling a remarkable legacy from one woman
He thinks of her every time he plucks a new $5 bill from his wallet and sees the large purple numeral emblazoned in the corner. It reminds him of how he used to sort her money: $1 bills in one envelope, fives and tens in others. And of course he thought of her last month when a federal appeals court ruled on a case that could result in the redesign of the entire U.S. currency.
570News - Jun 29, 2008
White House Fights To Edit EPA Document Outlining GHG Regs
WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The White House is fighting an intense private battle with officials at the Environmental Protection Agency to prevent the publication of a document that could become the legal roadmap for regulation of greenhouse gas emissions across the U.S. economy, according to people close to the matter. Senior White House officials are eager to prevent the original document from ...
CattleNetwork.com - Jun 29, 2008
Don't depend on Congress for fuel relief. Buy a bike.
Wonder why your gas prices keep rising, and help seems nowhere on the way? Consider these headlines from press releases that crossed my e-mail path Wednesday: From House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio: 'With gas prices soaring, Dem plan for political cover collapses as Americans seek real energy reforms.' From Idaho First District Rep. Bill Sali, following Boehner's theme: 'Sali calls ...
Idaho Statesman - Jun 30, 2008
High-profile projects in limbo
A celebrity chef was planning the menus, brides were negotiating room rates and 250 staffers were on the payroll. But four months before Hotel Monroe was scheduled to open, its lender went bankrupt. Now it could be at least a year before the 150-room luxury hotel is complete, says developer Grace Communities. advertisement It's unclear what the future holds for the hotel and an entertainment ...
Arizona Republic - Jun 30, 2008
Cowboy culture among chopper pilots: report
A culture of poor safety standards and risk taking exists in the army's elite helicopter squadron, the final report into a fatal Black Hawk crash off Fiji has found. Captain Mark Bingley and SAS Trooper Joshua Porter were killed when the helicopter slammed into the deck of troop carrier HMAS Kanimbla and plunged into the sea during military exercises on November 29, 2006.
Canberra Times - Jun 29, 2008
Steve Rosenbaum: Guns and Gas
Guns, or more specifically gun ownership, has moved front and center with the Supreme Court's latest decision. This shouldn't come as any surprise. Wayne LaPierre, the Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association basked in the win - saying: 'I consider this the opening salvo in a step-by-step process of providing relief for law-abiding Americans everywhere that have been deprived ...
Huffington Post - Jun 29, 2008
Supreme Court shoots down D.C. gun ban
WASHINGTON _ A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Constitution protects an individual's right to bear arms, while leaving room for governments to regulate gun ownership. By 5-4, the court struck down the District of Columbia's strict gun ban as an infringement on fundamental rights. The court's historic ruling reinterprets the Second Amendment for the first time in nearly 70 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 26, 2008
Victims, law firms to get much less in Exxon Valdez case
Jun. 26--The grueling legal and environmental odyssey for Alaska fishermen and the Minneapolis law firm of Faegre & Benson came to a climatic conclusion Wednesday when the U.S. Supreme Court sliced punitive damages from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill to $507 million -- a tenth of what a jury awarded 14 years ago. Under Wednesday's ruling, Alaska plaintiffs will get about $15,000 each in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 26, 2008
Former Valdez captain noncommittal on court's ruling on damages
Jun. 26--With the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday bringing attention back to one of the world's worst oil spills by slashing a $2.5-billion punitive damages award in the Alaskan disaster, former Exxon Valdez Capt. Joseph J. Hazelwood, of Huntington, was philosophical. Speaking about the years since the 1989 accident where the Valdez ran aground in Alaska and dumped 11 million gallons of oil, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 26, 2008
House votes to expand ADA law
NATION DIGEST WASHINGTON House votes to expand disability law People who take medicine to control epilepsy, diabetes or cancer or use prosthetic limbs or hearing aids could use the Americans With Disabilities Act to fight workplace discrimination under legislation the House passed Wednesday. Lawmakers said the Supreme Court has limited the ADA's reach since it was signed into law by the first ...
Austin American Statesman - Jun 26, 2008
Gun Ban Decision Likely to Spark New Court Battles
WASHINGTON NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre told FOX News moments after the court struck down the 32-year-old ban on loaded weapons inside the homes of residents in the nation's capital that his group is targeting other localities that have blanket prohibitions on gun ownership. 'It's a great day,' LaPierre said. 'We're going to make sure this freedom is carried out.
FOXNews.com - Jun 26, 2008
Second Amendment Supreme Court Ruling Matches With Public Opinion From The Harris Poll
The United States Supreme Court today reversed Washington, D.C.'s ban on handguns, ruling that the Second Amendment does protect an individual's right to own a handgun. The Harris Poll finds that by a margin of over two to one, U.S. adults agree with the Supreme Court and believe that the Second Amendment supports an individual's right to bear arms. These are the results of a nationwide Harris ...
Macro World Investor - Jun 26, 2008
Judge's ruling mixed in CSX suit
Jun. 26--LEWISBURG -- A Greenbrier County judge Wednesday ruled against Paul Ratchford, the former president and CEO of The Greenbrier who filed a motion for partial summary judgment in his ongoing $50 million lawsuit against CSX Corp. However, Circuit Judge Joseph P. Pomponio Jr. clearly stated there was no West Virginia case law backing either side, and Ratchford's lawyer said an appeal to the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 26, 2008
NFL: Walker suspect in court
Accused faces multiple felony counts, including kidnapping, robbery The Associated Press A man accused of robbing and beating Oakland Raiders receiver Javon Walker told a judge Wednesday that police pressured his girlfriend to press domestic violence charges against him before he was arrested in the Walker case. ''My fiance, she was forced by the police, because of the other matter, to go forward ...
Salt Lake Tribune - Jun 26, 2008
Home loan aid programs could be cut in housing bill
Nonprofit groups are battling with the Bush administration over whether to kill programs that allow homebuyers without the money for a down payment to get funds from sellers that are channeled through charities. Legislation being debated in the Senate this week eliminates nonprofit down-payment assistance programs, which have surged in popularity over the past decade.
San Francisco Chronicle - Jun 26, 2008
Rural deputy pay low despite big duties, dangers
Grundy County sheriff's deputy Shane Tate, a father of five, was making $10.50 an hour when he was gunned down in the line of duty. Deputies are the law in most unincorporated areas across the country, escorting prisoners, acting as courtroom bailiffs, riding patrol and investigating crime. Yet those in rural counties typically make a fraction of what state troopers and city police officers ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Jun 26, 2008
Young South Florida Leukemia Patient Represented by Hannon & Boyers Sues Makers of Contaminated Heparin, Saline
A 20-year-old leukemia patient who suffered a severe bacterial infection after receiving contaminated heparin and saline solutions that were subsequently recalled by the Food and Drug Administration has filed a lawsuit today against the manufacturer and distributors of these products in state court in Palm Beach County. The suit seeks unspecified damages in excess of $100,000.
Houston Chronicle - Jun 26, 2008
Wary justices confront school funding: Don't ask court to do Legislature's job, Toal warns
Jun. 26--Does state government have a constitutional obligation to provide extra academic aid to students living in poverty to ensure they receive the same "minimally adequate" education as peers in wealthier communities? The question now rests with the S.C. Supreme Court, which spent Wednesday afternoon sorting through the perplexing issue of school funding, how much is fair and what role, if ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 26, 2008
Town can't ban smoking, attorney says
An attorney for Bert's Bar argued Wednesday before the state Supreme Court that the town of Sullivan's Island does not have the authority to ban smoking in the workplace. Bert's Bar attorney Paul Dominick said that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, through the state Department of Labor, regulates workplace smoking. Justice Donald Beatty questioned Dominick's assertion.
Tobacco.org - Jun 26, 2008
Obama: Bitter rivalry behind us: Democrat expects help from Clintons
Jun. 26--At least in public, Sen. Barack Obama says all the attacks and nasty remarks from a grueling and often contentious 16-month primary campaign have been forgotten. "I want her campaigning as much as she can," the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said Wednesday in Chicago, when asked about his former rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton. "She, I think, inspired millions of people," he ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 26, 2008
Taxpayers may foot bill on defaulted airline loan
Jun. 26--Tulsa property taxpayers may end up paying $7.1 million to the Bank of Oklahoma to settle a lawsuit connected to a loan default by the defunct Great Plains Airline. The City Council is set to vote on the settlement Thursday. If it is approved, the $7.1 million will be paid in full out of the city's sinking fund and then be recouped with a three-year increase in property taxes, said city ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 26, 2008
How home break-in turned fatal in Tulsa
Jun. 26--TULSA -- For English teacher and former high school coach John Kastner, it was the unthinkable: You're lying peacefully next to your wife when you awake to a stranger in your home -- a stranger armed with your own handgun. There's a struggle and multiple shots ring out. One hits you in the hand -- and one leaves your children without a mother. Kastner, 50, told police a young man broke ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 26, 2008
Supreme Court tosses out death penalty for child rapists
Jun. 26--When Texas' leading politicians called loudly for the death penalty for repeat child rapists last year, they knew there was a good chance the U.S. Supreme Court might find the provision unconstitutional. Legal experts told them so -- repeatedly. And on Wednesday the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision in a Louisiana case, did just that, ruling that "the death penalty is not a proportional ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 26, 2008
Supreme Court drastically cuts payouts for plaintiffs in Exxon Valdez oil spill
Jun. 26--Hopes of fishermen throughout Washington and Alaska were sunk Wednesday when the Supreme Court slashed the amount of punitive damages that Exxon must pay for the epic Exxon Valdez oil spill nearly two decades ago. The high court, in a 5-3 decision, found that punitive damages could not be larger than the compensatory damages for actual losses from the spill, which totaled $507.5 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 26, 2008
Supreme Court rejects death penalty for child rape
WASHINGTON _ A closely divided Supreme Court on Wednesday prohibited states from executing those who rape children but don't kill their victims, retaining limits on the death penalty that have been in place for more than 30 years. In a 5-4 decision, the court concluded that Louisiana had violated the Eighth Amendment in making the rape of a child younger than 12 a capital offense.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 25, 2008
Supreme Court slashes punitive award in Exxon Valdez oil spill
WASHINGTON _ The Supreme Court on Wednesday dashed the hopes of more than 32,000 fishermen and Alaska Natives who've been waiting for nearly 20 years to hear whether Exxon Mobil Corp. must pay billions in punitive damages for its role in the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill. In a victory for corporations seeking to limit big-dollar lawsuits, the court decided 5-3 to reduce the $2.5 billion punitive ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 25, 2008
Homeland Security wins a major fence round before the Supreme Court.
The Bush administration scored a big victory this week in its quest to fast track construction of a border fence, but the government is not out of the woods or courts yet. The Supreme Court Monday refused to hear a case against Homeland Security by the Sierra Club and Friends of Wildlife over a two-mile swath of Arizona land that the groups said would be harmed by the fence s ...
Star-Telegram - Jun 25, 2008
Woman subpoenaed in Christie Brinkley divorce case: Woman subpoenaed in Christie Brinkley divorce case
Jun. 25--The young woman at the center of Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook's steamy divorce trial has been subpoenaed to testify and may do so as the trial starts next week -- despite a $300,000 gag order she agreed to last year, several sources close to the case confirmed yesterday. Diana Bianchi, 20, is expected to take the stand and face cross-examination in a Central Islip courtroom that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 25, 2008
Complaint targets Bethel judge: CUMMINGS: He's accused of passing note to testifying trooper.
Jun. 25--A state District Court judge in Bethel is accused of improperly communicating with a witness testifying in his courtroom, according to a complaint released Tuesday by the Alaska Judicial Conduct Commission. Judge Dennis Cummings, a former Anchorage prosecutor appointed to the bench in 2006, is accused of passing a note to an Alaska State Trooper during a break in a domestic violence ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 25, 2008
Judge to rule on 'guns at work' in mid-July
TALLAHASSEE -- A skeptical federal judge took shots Wednesday at both sides of a new Florida law permitting gun owners to keep weapons locked in their cars while at work, ruefully warning that it may misfire in some 'stupid' ways. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle said it will be mid-July before he rules on a request by business organizations for a preliminary injunction against the law, which ...
Florida Today - Jun 25, 2008
EDITORIAL: Issues unchanged in new challenge to voter-ID law: Supreme Court is not likely to hear League of Women Voters' case.
Jun. 25--The League of Women Voters isn't taking yes for an answer. It is suing Indiana over the voter-ID law, undeterred by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the state could require them. "This is a challenge under Indiana's constitution," said Karen Celestino-Horseman, an attorney representing the league. "It has different language and is interpreted in different ways" from the federal laws ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 25, 2008
EPA bigwig quits over greenhouse gas delay
WASHINGTON (AP) - A high-level resignation at the Environmental Protection Agency over greenhouse gases. Associate Deputy Administrator Jason Burnett says he quit June 9th because he feels no more progress will be made on greenhouse gases during the current administration. Burnett says it became clear to him that it's been decided to leave the challenges for the next administration.
Wood TV - Jun 25, 2008
Calif. attorney general sues Countrywide Financial
Countrywide Financial Corp. is accused of using misleading advertising and other unfair business practices to trick borrowers into taking on risky home loans they didn't fully understand, in a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the California attorney general's office. The lawsuit - filed on the same day Countrywide shareholders were scheduled to vote on the company's takeover by Bank of America Corp.
Sacramento Bee - Jun 25, 2008
Workers' rights boosted by US Supreme Court
The this year made a number of key rulings on workplace discrimination which, unusually for the conservative court, mostly favored workers over their bosses. Last week, the US high court ruled in favor of several workers in a high-profile age discrimination lawsuit. In a 7-1 decision, the court said an employer bore the burden of explaining its reasons for laying off some two dozen workers -- ...
Yahoo! Canada - Jun 25, 2008
Court ruling limits tainted site cleanups: "Significant threats" must be eliminated, state judge says
Jun. 25--ALBANY -- State cleanups of contaminated business sites must eliminate "significant threats" to health but are not required to leave them spotless, a state judge has ruled. In December 2006, state officials tried to interpret New York's 1979 Superfund law so that cleanup of sites would leave the locations in the condition they were in prior to contamination.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 25, 2008
After two decades in prison, man will receive DNA testing
Jun. 25--The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered DNA testing for a man convicted of raping a guest at a downtown Kansas City hotel in 1984. More than two decades into his 160-year prison sentence, Huntley Ruff won the right to have evidence in the case tested to back up his long-standing claim of innocence. Ruff, who worked in the hotel kitchen, was identified by the victim as her ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 25, 2008
Native Essence Herb Company Sues FTC
TAOS, N.M.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--For the first time, the Federal Trade Commission is being sued over the use of history. A New Mexico herb company says the First Amendment gives it the right to tell customers the historical use of herbs in treating serious diseases. The FTC says this violates its guidelines. Now the issue is headed to court. Native Essence Herb Company, and its owners Mark and ...
Business Wire - Jun 25, 2008
Nightmares for landlords
Current South African legislation indicates that 1.2 million landlords of rented domestic properties are facing serious financial risks from defaulting tenants, including lost rent and costly and complicated legal procedures when eviction is necessary or tenants abscond. "People who own rentable second homes have taken a positive quantum leap in their financial empowerment process but defaulting ...
IAfrica.com - Jun 25, 2008
Disappointment runs deep in Alaskan fishing town
CORDOVA, Alaska _ In a fishing town hit as hard as anywhere by the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the reaction Wednesday to the Supreme Court ruling from disappointment to resignation to disgust. Many boats in the harbor were out fishing, but some were still in town because of the closure of the famous Copper River fishery. Terry Buchholz, 60, was standing near the harbormaster's office.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 25, 2008
EDITORIAL: George Carlin: a wry observer of humanity
Jun. 25--George Carlin: A wry observer of humanity Considering how much he abused his body with drugs and alcohol, it's a wonder counterculture comedian George Carlin was still around to die Sunday evening at the age of 71. But survive he did, sliding from the "button-down" comedy of the late 1950s to lead the parade of brilliant and/or successful comedians who followed.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 25, 2008
3 new appeals judges have varied backgrounds: Gov. Tim Pawlenty's appointees include a former law firm colleague, a Ramsey County judge and a Duluth attorney who has never sat on the bench.
Jun. 25--Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Tuesday appointed three people to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, including one who was a colleague at his former Minneapolis law firm. The three new judges, one of whom has not sat on the bench before, will fill vacancies created by two retirements and the promotion of Christopher Dietzen from the appellate bench to the Minnesota Supreme Court.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 25, 2008
$100,000-a-year employee embezzles $600,000 to shop; gets 1-3 years
Jun. 25--Karen A. Ruhland, the former bookkeeper for a Buffalo job agency, was ordered Tuesday to spend the next one to three years in prison for stealing almost $600,000 from the company to pay off her personal credit card debts. State Supreme Court Justice Russell P. Buscaglia rebuked Ruhland for stealing the money from SPS Temporaries to pay for personal expenses, noting she did not have ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 25, 2008
OPINION: Children should not have children
Jun. 25--Polygamists in Texas believe one man plus many wives equals heavenly glory. In California, Adam and Steve and Eve and Louise are tying the knot thanks to the state's supreme court claiming it's OK. See, this is how we're doing family these days. And apparently jobs are so scarce in this recessed economy that young gals in Gloucester, Mass., have given up on climbing the corporate ladder ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 25, 2008
Justices will decide sonar fight
WASHINGTON The Supreme Court agreed Monday to the Bush administrations request that it review a dispute between environmentalists and the Navy about whether training exercises off the Southern California coast endanger whales, dolphins and other marine mammals. At the same time, it turned down a petition from environmentalists and members of Congress that it stop the administration from waiving ...
Tacoma News Tribune - Jun 24, 2008
Kansas homes remain safe from court judgments
Jun. 24--From the time it entered the union in 1861, Kansas has had a constitutionally enshrined homestead exemption, barring creditors from forcing the sale of a family's home. That means that court judgments, which typically attach to real estate, don't attach to the family homestead. That's been the law since 1869, when the Kansas Supreme Court ruled to that effect in a case called Morris v. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 24, 2008
Homeland Security wins a major fence round before the Supreme Court.
The Bush administration scored a big victory this week in its quest to fast track construction of a border fence, but the government is not out of the woods or courts yet. The Supreme Court Monday refused to hear a case against Homeland Security by the Sierra Club and Friends of Wildlife over a two-mile swath of Arizona land that the groups said would be harmed by the fence s ...
Star-Telegram - Jun 25, 2008
Obama Kept Law Review Balanced
Barack Obama's election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990 gave him his first moment of national fame, a powerful intellectual credential and a sweet book deal. It was also his first electoral victory, won in part by convincing the conservative minority of law students that he would treat them fairly. While Obama's title and his election have become well-known parts ...
KPLC TV - Jun 24, 2008
Advocates to fight fence construction: Environmental groups disappointed by Supreme Court's decision
Jun. 24--The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a case Monday calling into question the Bush administration's right to waive environmental laws to build a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border. Environmental groups were hopeful that their legal challenge would halt construction of 700 miles of fence in the U.S. Southwest, or at least allow environmental agencies to have more input.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 24, 2008
Ecuadorean Immigrants Sue Bakery Owners, Alleging Mistreatment
Jun. 24--NEW HAVEN -- -- An extended family of Ecuadorean immigrants, who worked for years in the back room of an Italian bakery in New Haven, has filed a federal lawsuit alleging members were cheated out of overtime wages, sexually harassed and threatened with deportation if they complained. Now living at an undisclosed location, family members have come out of the shadows to share their ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 24, 2008
Odyssey into identity theft
PUBLIC INVESTIGATOR: TAKING TIPS, CHASING LEADS, SOLVING PROBLEMS For years, Robert Guenterberg wondered why he had a hard time getting credit. A home loan. A Chase Bank card. A line of credit to buy a Ford truck. The Wisconsin man was denied them all but had no idea why. In March 2007, a call from a collection agency tipped him off. Two men in Illinois had stolen his identity.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Jun 24, 2008
EDITORIAL: Compromising on privacy
Jun. 24--The Senate this week is expected to give final passage to an overhaul of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The bill restores some measure of the privacy protections that the Bush administration trashed -- even as it helps cover up the manner in which the administration trashed them. Missouri's Sen. Christopher S. "Kit" Bond, the ranking Republican on the Senate ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 24, 2008
BRIEF: Supreme Court has yet to release Exxon verdict
Jun. 24--The U.S. Supreme Court still hasn't released a decision on the Exxon Valdez case. The court announced rulings on several other cases Monday, but the Exxon case remains pending. A decision is due before the end of the Supreme Court term, which is expected this week. The Supreme Court gives no hint of its decisions until they're released. The court said it will release its next rulings ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 24, 2008
Obama Asked to Drop Eric Holder From Veep Selection Committee Because of Role in Health Care Task Force Cover-Up
The National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a plaintiff in the successful 1993 lawsuit to open the meetings and records of Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care task force, today asked Barack Obama to dismiss Eric Holder from his Vice-Presidential selection committee. According to NLPC President Peter Flaherty, 'Holder is not ethically qualified to serve on the Vice-Presidential selection ...
The Business Journal Phoenix - Jun 24, 2008
DuPont Files Appeal with West Virginia Supreme Court on Spelter Lawsuit Decision
WILMINGTON, Del., June 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- DuPont (NYSE: DD) today filed an appeal with the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia following October's verdict in the Spelter, W.Va., zinc smelter class action lawsuit. The following statement is to be attributed to DuPont General Counsel Stacey J. Mobley: 'We believe there were many errors that deprived DuPont of a fair trial.
Macro World Investor - Jun 24, 2008
Preacher's lawsuit against Miami U. revived
Jun. 24--A federal appeals court has given an evangelical preacher's lawsuit against Miami University in Oxford new life, saying a lower court erred when it dismissed his case after he was kicked off the campus in 2002. The preacher, James G. Gilles, has locked horns with universities across the country that have barred him from preaching his confrontational sermons, which some describe as ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 24, 2008
McCain veep helper is discreet lawyer
The choice for John McCains running mate is such a mystery that few people even know who is helping in that search. The Republican is leaning on a consummate behind-the-scenes player in Washington _ attorney Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr. _ for this maximum-discretion, minimal-disclosure assignment. In Culvahouse, a one-time White House counsel to President Reagan, McCain gets someone whose work ...
MyMotherLode.com - Jun 24, 2008
Wexford Homes Announces New Floor Plans and Pricing at Stonebridge Woods
Wexford Homes, a division of Wexford Wexford Homes, a division of Wexford Development, LLC and a developer of residential and commercial properties, announced today the addition of two new models to its collection of single-family estate homes at Stonebridge Woods in Homer Glen, Ill. The new models, developed with the same luxury features as the existing models, have been created to make homes ...
MarketWire - Jun 24, 2008
Your views: A healthy dialogue
Readers express a variety of opinions in their letters to FLORIDA TODAY. Once again pro-life groups are using misinformation and hysteria to scare the uninformed into believing that the birth control pill is 'chemical abortion.' The blatant disregard of Jim Sedlak of the American Life League for both medical and legal facts is astounding. This group will not rest until all birth control is ...
Florida Today - Jun 24, 2008
Notice to All Investors of the Evergreen Ultra Short Opportunities Fund From the Securities Law Firm of Klayman & Toskes
The Securities Law Firm of Klayman & Toskes, The Securities Law Firm of Klayman & Toskes, www.nasd-law.com, announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of purchasers of the Evergreen Ultra Short Opportunities Fund ("Evergreen Fund" or "the Fund") (NASDAQ: EUBAX) (NASDAQ: EUBBX) (NASDAQ: EUBCX) and (NASDAQ: EUBIX). The class action lawsuit was filed in the United ...
MarketWire - Jun 24, 2008
The Buffalo News, N.Y., Jeff Simon column: Jeff Simon: Carlin was comedy's verbal virtuoso
Jun. 24--I took George Carlin for granted for most of his 40-year career. So did you, I'll bet. So did most people. Comedians, thank heaven, are not most people. In Jerry Seinfeld's documentary "Comedian," it was obvious from all the backstage talk that they worshipped Carlin. When the Comedy Central TV network made its au courant list of 100 Greatest Stand-up Comedians, Carlin came in No.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 24, 2008
4 US parents file federal lawsuit against companies over use of chemical in baby bottles
The complaint filed last week in U.S. District Court alleges the companies knew that a chemical known as bisphenol A was associated with health problems but didn't disclose the risk. It cites scientific studies that conclude BPA, as the chemical is also known, seeps from bottles and sippy-cups into liquid. Seeking to ease public concerns about any health hazards, a federal health official told a ...
International Herald Tribune - Jun 19, 2008
Nursing home patient rights erode
Families sign away rights to sue WASHINGTON - William Kurth fractured his left hip and leg and contracted numerous pressure ulcers during his final months of life in a Wisconsin nursing home. When his family attempted to sue for negligence, a judge dismissed the case because Kurth's wife had agreed, as part of her husband's admission, to have all complaints go through an arbitrator.
Sunday Gazette-Mail - Jun 19, 2008
No insanity defense: Murder trial for Richard C. Curran begins June 16
Jun. 6--SUNBURY -- Richard C. Curran will not be allowed to use an insanity defense during his upcoming homicide trial in Northumberland County Court for the 2005 shooting of his estranged wife. Testimony about his mental state may be used to try to avoid the death penalty if he is convicted. District Attorney Anthony Rosini argued Thursday that diminished capacity by an irresistible impulse is ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 6, 2008
Mariposa nonprofit takes over some duties of A Woman's Place
Jun. 7--A Mariposa County nonprofit has been awarded a state grant to provide rape crisis counseling in Merced County beginning July 1. Mountain Crisis Services, founded 18 years ago, will take over some of the responsibilities handled by A Woman's Place, which is set to close June 30. Its Merced division will be called Valley Crisis Center. "We're coming down the hill, not because it's a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 7, 2008
French Fry Case Officer Quits
Jun. 7--CLEARWATER -- The Clearwater police officer who arrested a 76-year-old woman on charges she blocked the drive-through lane at a McDonald's was cleared of wrongdoing in that case, but later resigned while under investigation in an unrelated matter. Officer Matthew Parco resigned May 20 after he and a police union representative looked at a case in which Parco was accused of acting ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 7, 2008
Supreme Court's caseload slows: Analysis of state Supreme Court action finds a decline over eight years.
Jun. 8--OKLAHOMA CITY -- The number of appeals and court actions at the Oklahoma Supreme Court have declined significantly in eight years because of the chilling effect of legislative reforms and due to mediated lawsuits, court officials said. The Tulsa World examined eight years of Supreme Court filings, opinions and settlement conferences from records obtained by the Open Records Act.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Concerns arise over SRS files' validity
Jun. 8--For years, some families have complained that court documents filed by social workers that result in children being removed from the home have contained false or fabricated information. Now, some say they have proof. The head of the state's child welfare agency was recorded in a meeting with a family advocacy group saying that Sedgwick County prosecutors have "bullied" social workers ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Fault or No-Fault Divorces
A divorce is the termination of a marriage by legal action, requiring a petition or complaint for divorce (or dissolution in some states) by one party. There are two types of divorce, the fault (or at-fault) divorce and no-fault divorce. Under a no-fault divorce system the dissolution of a marriage does not require an allegation or proof of fault of either party to be shown.
Marketing Article Bank - Jun 9, 2008
EDITORIAL: Loyal justices
Jun. 19--Alex Arshinkoff offered a revealing assessment in the wake of the Ohio Supreme Court this week ordering the appointment of Brian Daley to the Summit County Board of Elections. The county Republican Party chairman told Jim Carney, a Beacon Journal staff writer: "The party is thrilled that there is order in the universe again and we are able to have two loyal Republicans on the board of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 19, 2008
Financier Who Stole From Retirees Given Prison Term of 5 to 15 Years
The Long Island, N.Y., financial adviser who stole the life savings of dozens of retirees, including a blind retired Manhattan firefighter, told a Nassau County judge Tuesday before his sentencing that his plan while in prison is to 'never stop helping [the victims] as best I can.' Peter J. Dawson, 51, who pleaded guilty last year to charges of stealing more than $11 million from investors, ...
Yahoo! Canada - Jun 19, 2008
Analysis: McCain challenges Obama on terrorism
WASHINGTON Republican John McCain paints Democratic rival Barack Obama as naive on foreign policy, weak on national security and, now, soft on terrorism. Sound familiar? It should. President Bush successfully used that line of argument in 2004 against Democrat John Kerry. Republicans sought to do the same in the 2006 congressional elections but failed; Democrats won control of the House and ...
Grand Island Independent - Jun 19, 2008
Ruling comes in same-sex custody case: Va. Supreme Court says state must enforce order from Vt. on women's child
Jun. 7--A Vermont child-custody order in a failed civil union must be enforced in Virginia even though same-sex marriages are barred here, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled yesterday. It appears, however, that the unusual, high-profile and long-running legal battles surrounding 6-year-old Isabella are not over. Isabella was born to Lisa Miller-Jenkins, now Lisa Miller, after she was artificially ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 7, 2008
Johnson & Johnson, Red Cross end symbol dispute
NEW YORK - Johnson & Johnson and the American Red Cross have resolved a lawsuit over the use of their shared red-and-white symbol. The deal was announced Tuesday. It comes after a federal judge tossed out most of health-products maker Johnson & Johnson's lawsuit, upholding the right of Red Cross to use the emblem. The judge said the group also had leeway to use the logo to promote itself and ...
Tennessean - Jun 18, 2008
Easing of laws that led to detainee abuse hatched in secret
WASHINGTON _ The framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantanamo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan wasn't the product of American military policy or the fault of a few rogue soldiers. It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 18, 2008
DNC wants McCain investigated (AP)
WASHINGTON - Democratic Party officials plan to file a new lawsuit to compel federal regulators to investigate whether Sen. John McCain violated election laws by withdrawing from public financing. The Democratic National Committee announced Tuesday it will sue next week in U.S. District Court. It will ask the court to order the Federal Election Commission to examine, within 30 days, the legality ...
Yahoo! - Jun 18, 2008
Ohio homeowners need a hand
CLEVELAND (AP) -- Congress must come together on a government rescue package to resolve the nation's foreclosure crisis, which has hit Ohio particularly hard, a leading House Democrat said Monday. U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who chairs the subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity, told an audience at Cleveland State University that she hopes the House can negotiate a foreclosure ...
CNN Money - Jun 18, 2008
EDITORIAL: Branching out: Retired justice's project will help students learn about legal system
Jun. 18--Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and two universities are developing a free online resource for teachers to help students understand the judicial branch. Tools that can demystify this branch of the nation's three divisions of government are sorely needed. Polls through the years have shown that Americans lack a basic understanding of court systems and the role of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 18, 2008
Patients signing away right to sue nursing homes
WASHINGTON Patients hoping to get into nursing homes increasingly are signing away their rights to sue over poor care. That's a problem, a number of lawmakers say, and they're pushing legislation to make such agreements unenforceable. The nursing homes say the arbitration arrangements that many families agree to actually lead to dispute resolutions that are more fair than court cases.
Business Week - Jun 18, 2008
Minnesota judicial hopeful challenges state campaign rules: Attorney criticizes fundraising limits
Jun. 18--Even as the new state Supreme Court chief justice said Tuesday that he fears more "nasty" judicial elections in Minnesota's future, a Golden Valley man was in court trying to further loosen limits on judicial campaigning. Chief Justice Eric J. Magnuson said in a speech in Duluth that he favored a system of judges' elections that would avoid what he called "well-heeled special interests ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 18, 2008
EDITORIAL: Hold town hall meetings: Voters would benefit greatly from chance to question candidates
Jun. 18--John McCain locked up the Republican presidential nomination so long ago that he's had plenty of time to think about how the general election campaign ought to be conducted -- and how he can reclaim some of the spotlight that's been directed at the longer Democratic campaign. McCain had challenged Democratic nominee Barack Obama to join him in a series of 10 town hall meetings to be ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 18, 2008
Prosecutor faces new charges: STATE BAR JUDGE TO WEIGH WHETHER TO INCLUDE MISCONDUCT CASE IN CURRENT HEARING
Jun. 18--The state agency that disciplines lawyers has brought new charges against Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Benjamin Field, following a state appellate court decision to reverse a case last month based on the veteran prosecutor's misconduct. The state bar action, filed against Field last week, adds to the challenge Field already faces in contesting state bar charges that he ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 18, 2008
Former Robins attorney drops firing appeal
Jun. 18--ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE -- Dee Dial, a former Robins Air Force Base attorney fired last year, has dropped her appeal to the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. A judge from the agency's Atlanta regional office was scheduled to hear her case Tuesday morning at the Houston County Courthouse. The appeal apparently was withdrawn during the weekend. The move suggests that Dial and the Air ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 18, 2008
Connetquot teen on plot to harm students: 'I'm sorry'
Jun. 18--The Holbrook teen who admitted to conspiring to harm students and staff at Connetquot High School apologized for his actions Wednesday after he was sentenced to 5 years of probation. Accompanied by his priest outside the courtroom, Michael McDonough, 17, said he learned his lesson after the July 2007 plot that prosecutors said was masterminded by a younger boy.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 18, 2008
Hollinger Inc.: Closing of Court-Approved Settlement with Significant Secured Creditor and Sun-Times Media Group
Hollinger Inc. (the "Company") (TSX: HLG.C)(TSX: HLG.PR.B) announced today the closing of its previously announced court-approved settlement (the "Settlement") with Davidson Kempner Management LLC and certain of its affiliates and Sun-Times Media Group, Inc. ("Sun-Times"). As described below, the closing involved the implementation of certain aspects of the Settlement.
MarketWire - Jun 18, 2008
Saxena White P.A. Files a Shareholder Suit Against Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
Notice is hereby given that Saxena White Notice is hereby given that Saxena White P.A. has filed suit on behalf of shareholders of Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc. ("Lehman Brothers" or the "Company") (NYSE: LEH) in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The complaint seeks damages for violations of federal securities laws on behalf of all investors who purchased ...
MarketWire - Jun 18, 2008
Smoking no longer allowed in Omaha bars, restaurants or workplaces
The city of Omaha's smoking ban - the full version - is in effect as of today. 'It's in effect now,' Deputy City Attorney Tom Mumgaard said Tuesday afternoon. 'Smoking isn't allowed.' A Douglas County district judge ensured that when he obeyed the Nebraska Supreme Court and overturned an order that upheld the city's exemptions to bars and restaurants that offered keno and to places like ...
Omaha World-Herald - Jun 18, 2008
Irish voters veto EU treatyDUBLIN, Ireland - It took years to negotiate, weighs in at 260 pages, is virtually unreadable _ and now could be a dead letter.Politics (top)McCain slams Supreme Court on terrorist detaineesWASHINGTON - Republican president
DUBLIN, Ireland - It took years to negotiate, weighs in at 260 pages, is virtually unreadable _ and now could be a dead letter. Counting begins in Dublin, Ireland, Friday, June, 13, 2008 following voting on the Lisbon Referendum. The fate of the European Union's Lisbon treaty was in peril on Friday as counting began in an Irish referendum after reports of a muted turnout left the outcome in ...
Auburn Citizen - Jun 17, 2008
Texas death row inmate set to die for Plano murders after appeal denied
Jun. 17--The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied an appeal Monday afternoon from death row inmate Charles Dean Hood, who said his sentence should be set aside because there were rumors the judge in his case was romantically involved with the district attorney. Judges denied the appeal on procedural grounds, not the merit of the issue, without dissent, saying it was an abuse of the system ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 17, 2008
Court right on Guantanamo
For the third time in five years, the U.S. Supreme Court has checked the power of the state to hold its enemies indefinitely, at will. The 5-4 ruling Thursday recognizing that terror detainees have the right of habeas corpus is a reaffirmation of the idea that even in wartime, the individual has rights under law that even the government may not abrogate. It was a bad day for the Bush ...
Montana Standard - Jun 17, 2008
Monroe County Sen. Pat Browne, R-16, is sponsoring an important and humane bill to ban live pigeon shoots.
Yes, sad to say, under the guise of 'sport' target practice, some people still arrange for delivery of hundreds of live, captive birds, which are released and then shot by 'sport' shooters. Why a clay pigeon wouldn't do just as well is hard to fathom. A unanimous Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision ended the infamous annual Labor Day pigeon shoots in Hegins, in Schuylkill County, by authorizing ...
Pocono Record - Jun 17, 2008
Sudbury man pleads guilty to bilking investors of $1.6M
BOSTON - A Sudbury man has pleaded guilty to raising at least $1.6 million for a fictitious real estate investment fund and spending most of the money on himself. Stephen Hochberg pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston on Friday to wire fraud and securities fraud. The 60-year-old faces as many as 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine. Investigators say Hochberg solicited seven investors to ...
Boston Herald - Jun 17, 2008
Southern Baptists continue to resist public school concerns
AMMessengers at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis approved a resolution supporting a ballot initiative in California that will define marriage as only between one man and one woman; however, an amendment that would have called on Christians in the state to remove their children from public schools was soundly defeated. Recently, California's Supreme Court ruled ...
One News Now - Jun 17, 2008
Promising too much brings political perils
Steven B. Larsen turned out to be a double-edged political sword.He was precisely what needed at the Public Service Commission: smart, experienced, tough and unlikely to get cozy with the businesses he was regulating.He was in the job, politically speaking, to knock down energy costs borne by Maryland consumers. In his campaign, Mr. O'Malley had seemed to promise such a reduction.If anyone ...
Baltimore Sun - Jun 17, 2008
Landmark legacy
NORFOLK -- The decision to put Landmark Communications up for sale this year thrust the diversified media company into a position its chairman shrinks from himself: directly in the spotlight. It's been a decade since Frank Batten Jr. succeeded his fabled father as chairman of Landmark, whose holdings now include The Weather Channel; Dominion Enterprises, a Norfolk-based information and marketing ...
Roanoke Times - Jun 17, 2008
NASCAR officials accused of exposing themselves
Tim Knox and Bud Moore have been placed on indefinite administrative paid leave. NASCAR will not reveal the identities of the officials sent home Friday from Kentucky Speedway, but a person familiar with the investigation confirmed to AP on Saturday that Knox and Moore were suspended. The person requested anonymity because NASCAR's investigation is ongoing.
Shawano Online - Jun 17, 2008
Juvenile courts unsure how to deal with dangerous teens incompetent for trial
The 17-year-old with a slash of a scar between his eyebrows frustrates Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Judge Thomas F. O'Malley. The teen leveled a silver handgun, robbing a woman gardening in her yard, drivers delivering milk and chips, police say. Others, like the man pumping gas, he threatened with a pipe. But in the detention center, without a weapon or adults urging him on, he was prey.
Cleveland Live - Jun 16, 2008
Federal jurists urge high court to hear firefighters' bias suit
Jun. 16--NEW HAVEN -- In what observers describe as a highly unusual development, six judges from a polarized 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals have urged the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a reverse discrimination lawsuit filed by 20 city firefighters, calling the unchartered legal questions it raises of potential national significance. The case involves 19 white firefighters and one Hispanic ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 16, 2008
Lacson, Arroyo swap charges on witness handling
By Gil C. Cabacungan Jr. Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 06:29:00 06/13/2008 MANILA, Philippines Two of the Senate s self-styled graft busters Panfilo Lacson and Joker Arroyo traded barbs over the bullying of witnesses and guests invited to the chamber s hearings. Lacson said Arroyo must have been looking in the mirror when the latter accused him and other senators of harassing ...
Philippine Daily Inquirer - Jun 16, 2008
Convoy pours into Pakistani capital to back judges
Pakistani demonstrators shout slogans against Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf during a protest in Lahore, Pakistan, Thursday, June 12, 2008. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said Thursday that it was his mission to restore judges ousted by the Pakistani president, as he joined lawyers planning to swarm the capital to pressure its shaky government. AP Photo ISLAMABAD, Pakistan Tens of ...
Modesto Bee - Jun 16, 2008
Judge halts Levy plan to reduce highway patrol officers
Jun. 16--Suffolk County Highway Patrol officers won't have to take their boots off just yet. Justice Melvyn Tannenbaum issued a temporary restraining order in State Supreme Court, preventing the county from transferring 13 Highway Patrol officers from the Long Island Expressway and Sunrise Highway starting at 12:01 a.m. today, county officials said. The judge also ordered the county to formally ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 16, 2008
BRIEF: Judge rules against KU's Collins in civil suit
Jun. 16--A Douglas County District Court judge ruled this morning in favor of a woman who filed a civil lawsuit against Kansas basketball player Sherron Collins over an alleged May 2007 assault in an elevator. The woman was awarded damages in excess of $75,000 by Judge Jack Murphy. The woman's lawyer asked for summary judgment because Collins had not filed a response to the suit since May 14, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 16, 2008
Three Companies To Build New 'Peaking' Power Plants
Three power companies, including a partnership with United Illuminating, have been tentatively chosen by state regulators to build new 'peaking' power plants alongside existing plants in Bridgeport, Milford and New Haven. The new plants, two of which are expected to be operational by 2010, will together generate nearly 700 megawatts, enough electricity to power between 525,000 and 700,000 typical ...
Hartford Courant - Jun 16, 2008
Guantanamo prisoners can sue in U.S. courts, Supreme Court rules
WASHINGTON _ A sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Guantanamo Bay detainees can challenge their extended imprisonment in federal court, and struck down as inadequate an alternative review system that Congress set up. Repudiating a key tenet of the Bush administration's war-on-terrorism policy, the court's 5-4 majority concluded that foreigners held at the U.S.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 12, 2008
Legal issue affects timings of gay weddings
Now that California's highest court has held that two men may be legally married starting later this month, friends want to know when the Los Angeles couple plan to take their relationship to the next level. The answer: Not any time soon. The problem is a citizen referendum on the November ballot that would overturn the state Supreme Court's landmark decision that denying gay couples the right ...
Journal-Gazette - Jun 12, 2008
Q&A on California gay marriage
So the California Supreme Court has ruled in favor of gay marriage in California. What now? Gay couples, county clerks and advocates on both sides of the issue have been sorting out how this whole thing is going to work. Here are a few answers: Q: When can gay couples legally wed? A: June 17. ___ Q: What's required? A: All that's required of straight couples: A valid ID proving you're both 18 or ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 12, 2008
First execution since September carried out
Jun. 12--The first execution in Texas since the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case challenging lethal injection in September was carried out Wednesday after an appeals process which ended less than an hour before. Karl Eugene Chamberlain, who received the death penalty for the 1991 rape and murder of Felecia Prechtl, was given the lethal injection at 6:21 p.m.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 12, 2008
Text of Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech
Text of Hillary Rodham Clinton's speech Saturday at the National Building Museum, where she suspended her presidential campaign, as transcribed by CQ Transcriptions. Thank you very, very much. Well, this isn't exactly the party I'd planned, but I sure like the company. And I want to start today by saying how grateful I am to all of you, to everyone who poured your hearts and your hopes into this ...
Minneapolis Star Tribune - Jun 12, 2008
Legal issue affects timings of gay weddings
Drew Snyder and William Ballentine had a commitment ceremony with all the trimmings four years ago, the closest they could get to a wedding at the time. Now that California's highest court has held that two men may be legally married starting later this month, friends want to know when the Los Angeles couple plan to take their relationship to the next level. The answer: Not any time soon.
Buffalo News - Jun 12, 2008
Commercial Connection: Florida's 'judicial foreclosure' policy requires lawsuit be filed by lender
A few weeks ago in this column, I discussed some of the alternatives to foreclosures, such as short sales and deeds in lieu of foreclosure. But what happens if a borrower simply cannot or will not pay his or her mortgage, and he or she cannot work out a short sale or a deed in lieu of foreclosure? Remember that lenders don't want to have to foreclose. They are not in the business of owning ...
News-Press.com - Jun 12, 2008
A power play in San Antonio
In April, City Auditor Pete Gonzales thought he was going to get a pat on the back. Instead, what he did so angered his bosses that he found himself fighting for his job. His bad deed? Gonzales proposed to audit San Antonio's playground safety inspection program. Checking how well the city was doing that job on its 114 playgrounds, he argued, would keep kids safe and protect the government and ...
MySanAntonio - Jun 12, 2008
Denver, Colorado more than a conventional choice
Denver Greetings, superdelegates, standard delegates, compromised Floridians, miffed Michiganders, would-be VPs and all-access VIPs. As you and the other Democrats convene here Aug. 25 to formally choose a presidential candidate at last, you will be wined, dined, wooed, spun, schmoozed, queried, denounced and perhaps bamboozled by all manner of unreliable operatives, members of the press and, of ...
Los Angeles Times - Jun 12, 2008
Grapevine denies accusations in family's wrongful-death suit
Jun. 12--Grapevine has disputed accusations in a lawsuit that its police and jail officers caused the death of Eric Lawrence Grotz after he was placed in the city jail overnight in 2006. The city also filed papers to move the case from state court to federal court. Grotz's family filed the suit in a state district court on May 9. The suit alleged that the city and its personnel caused Grotz's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 12, 2008
The colour purple
The debate over transgenic crops continues to rage as India s first GM food crop, brinjal, gets ready for release. Meena Menon There was no barrier around the whole field and I visited the field five times, which should not have been allowed, said Selvam. R. Selvam, president of the Erode District Organic Farmers Federation Photo: K. Ananthan To modify or not: Very little debate on ...
The Hindu - Jun 12, 2008
Taiwan's Acer settles patent infringement cases with Hewlett-Packard
TAIPEI, Taiwan-Taiwan's Acer Inc. said Monday it has settled its yearlong patent infringement battle with rival Hewlett-Packard of the United States. In a statement the company said the details of the agreement with the American computer giant were 'confidential.' Acer said the agreement 'resolves all claims asserted in three federal court lawsuits and two United States International Trade ...
Calibre Macro World - Jun 12, 2008
Law leaves homeowner a victim again
PORTSMOUTH More than two years ago, a devastating fire its flames visible miles away gutted the home of Leslie Gurski. Asleep when sparks ignited, Gurski escaped unharmed with just a minute to spare. But the nightmare of the blaze set the stage for a different kind of ordeal. In rebuilding the house, Gurski found herself squeezed between a contractor who left the job unfinished and his ...
Providence Journal - Jun 12, 2008
Tax-grabbers must be stopped before they devastate America's thriving e-commerce
ALEXANDRIA, Va. _ New York's attempt to force Amazon.com to collect sales taxes on purchases shipped to in-state residents has opened a new chapter in government's obsession with squeezing ever-more revenues from the Internet. Just as if you were at the cash register, an Internet-based seller can charge you sales tax when you buy from a firm that has a physical presence in your own state _ such ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 12, 2008
Will records on permits affect casino plans?
Jun. 12--A Philadelphia Regional Port Authority discovery this month of records more than a quarter-century old may help answer a nagging legal question about a riverfront casino. SugarHouse, the proposed Fishtown casino, and Mayor Nutter's staff had agreed on one thing: Nobody could find records of the city granting a developer a license to build on state-owned riverfront "riparian lands" after ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 12, 2008
Zoran Corporation Announces Preliminary Approval of Derivative Litigation Settlement
Zoran Corporation (NASDAQ: ZRAN) today Zoran Corporation (NASDAQ: ZRAN) today announced that the U.S. District Court has granted preliminary approval of an agreement to settle a previously-disclosed shareholder derivative action relating to the company's historical stock option practices. The settlement is subject to final court approval. Notice of the settlement will be sent to shareholders, ...
MarketWire - Jun 12, 2008
Town, energy giant reach pipeline deal
Buckeye officials are smoothing out a once adversarial relationship with Houston-based Transwestern Pipeline Co., which plans to lay miles of natural-gas pipeline through the town's planned northern housing communities and desert landscape. The town agreed to drop its court challenge to the federally approved pipeline project in exchange for enhanced safety measures in the pipeline's construction ...
Arizona Republic - Jun 12, 2008
The turban verdict
The eleven judges of Turkey's supreme court met Thursday behind closed doors to make their decision on constitutional compatibility of a set of amendments the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) legislated in the national charter with the help of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in hopes of paving the way to the lifting of the ban in universities for turban the Islamist headgear ...
Turkish Daily - Jun 11, 2008
9/11 Suspects Arraigned at Guantanamo
The alleged mastermind of the September 11 attacks and four alleged co-conspirators were arraigned on terrorism and murder charges Thursday at a military hearing on the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The men could face the death penalty. VOA's Al Pessin is there and filed this report. Wearing traditional white outfits, the men charged with planning, financing and facilitating the ...
Turkish Weekly - Jun 11, 2008
Company's RICO Case Can Proceed Against Union Waging Corporate Campaign, Judge Says
Refusing to dismiss a civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act ('RICO') suit against the United Food and Commercial Workers ('UFCW'), a federal judge in Virginia has held that the plaintiff company adequately alleged extortion and a 'pattern of racketeering activities' in its complaint against the union and other defendants. Smithfield Foods, Inc. v.
Jackson Lewis - Jun 11, 2008
Analysts more optimistic on Moody's following investor day, agreement with NY attorney general
NEW YORK (AP) - Several analysts said they were more optimistic on Moody's Corp. after the credit ratings agency's investor day, particularly following its settlement with New York's attorney general over its business practices. Goldman Sachs analyst Peter Appert said Moody's management seemed confident in its business over the long term, but remained cautious on the state of the current credit ...
Canadian Business Magazine - Jun 11, 2008
BC Supreme Court asked for injunction against power line protestors
TSAWWASSEN (NEWS1130) - The courts are being asked to control protests by some Tsawwassen homeowners who oppose a controversial powerline project. The BC Transmission Corporation is seeking a court injunction against homeowners trying to block construction. The company says it's asking the BC Supreme Court to stop people from denying access to their properties and preventing work from taking ...
News 1130 - Jun 11, 2008
Chinese Parents Organize, Seeking Justice: Many Ignore Pressure From Government to Move On After Quake
XIANG'ER, China -- Undaunted by new pressure from the Chinese government, grieving parents are beginning to mount organized efforts to seek redress for the collapse of schools during last month's earthquake. One parent has contacted the family members of about 1,000 students who died May 12 when an estimated 7,000 classrooms crumbled in the quake, often while nearby buildings remained standing.
Washington Post - Jun 11, 2008
1 in 10 home loans in crisis
Foreclosures spiked almost 11 percent in Southwest Ohio during the first three months of the year, and they continue to climb in Northern Kentucky, new local data show. Meanwhile, the number of Americans at risk for losing their homes rose to the highest level in almost three decades during the first quarter, according to a national report released Thursday. Almost 1 in 10 U.S.
Cincinnati Enquirer - Jun 11, 2008
Calif. marriage license issuers brace for barrage of applicants
SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ The rift over gay marriage is as wide as can be and authorities hope both sides will keep their distance next week to head off trouble when same-sex couples are legally allowed to wed. Sacramento County is expecting a record number of couples at least 93 to seek marriage licenses Tuesday when the county for the first time begins issuing same-sex marriage licenses.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 11, 2008
Spotlight on Alzheimer's
In recent testimony before Congress, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor focused a welcome spotlight on Alzheimer's disease. As the huge cohort of Baby Boomers ages, the illness promises to present a growing challenge to the U.S. health-care system. Alzheimer's, which afflicts sufferers with dementia, grows more common with age. Nearly one in two people over 85 has the disease; by ...
Red Orbit - Jun 11, 2008
Fremont Wraps Up Sale of Mortgage Servicing Business
Brea-based Fremont General Corp. has closed on the sale of its last mortgage servicing rights, the company said Tuesday.The company sold the business for $12.2 billion to Litton Loan Servicing LP, a Delaware-based affiliate of investment bank Goldman & Sachs. The deal includes all rights to service the loans and collect money.Fremont General is the holding company for Fremont Investment & Loan, ...
Orange County Business Journal - Jun 11, 2008
Adviser Says McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps
John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team. In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr.
RINF.com - Jun 11, 2008
P-D, other media join suit against Blunt
Jun. 11--JEFFERSON CITY -- The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and two other news organizations filed legal papers today seeking access to Gov. Matt Blunt's e-mails. The media outlets asked a Cole County judge for permission to join a lawsuit filed last month by a special investigative team. That suit contends that last fall, Blunt's top aides ordered state employees to destroy e-mails that are public ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 11, 2008
Stepchild suing ABC over beating recorded for TV: Stepchild suing ABC over beating recorded for TV
Jun. 11--ELIZABETHTOWN -- Litigation against ABC Inc. has raised a defense based on First Amendment rights. Kyle Nelson, 20, is suing the television network and its parent, Walt Disney Co., for failure to rescue her from harm and invasion of privacy, among other claims, after a "Primetime" segment aired showing her being beaten by her stepfather. The footage was taken with several remote video ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 11, 2008
Residents need to stand together against government
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), until now being secretly negotiated, would turn the Internet into a virtual police state. The part that is most concerning is the authority being placed in the police to make the determination of infringement. If a copied movie is on your laptop, how can it be proven that you didn't copy it from the DVD you legally purchased? Products that ...
St. Albert Gazette - Jun 11, 2008
Banks vs. Consumers (Guess Who Wins)
What if a judge solicited cases from big corporations by offering them a business-friendly venue in which to pursue consumers who are behind on their bills? What if the judge tried to make this pitch more appealing by teaming up with the corporations' outside lawyers? And what if the same corporations helped pay the judge's salary? It would, of course, amount to a conflict of interest and cast ...
Business Week - Jun 11, 2008
EDITORIAL: Without the possibility
Jun. 11--Gov. Timothy M. Kaine was well within his authority Monday to commute Percy Walton's death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Kaine is personally opposed to capital punishment for religious reasons. But since taking office, he as allowed five executions to proceed. That kind of record underscores Kaine's campaign promise to follow a law he doesn't support.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 11, 2008
What Hillary did right.
Idaho puts a felon on the ballot with Clinton and Obama. Bruce Reed posted May 6, 2008 The Democratic case for why McCain should pick Romney. Bruce Reed posted April 21, 2008 Larry Craig reveals that he'd decided to leave long before he decided not to. Bruce Reed posted April 10, 2008 featured advertiser links Book Marriott's breakfast deal now with Visa >> T-Shirts , Custom Jerseys, ...
Slate - Jun 11, 2008
Ten sue over citizenship delays
South Florida Business Journal The Florida Immigration Advocacy Center filed a lawsuit Wednesday that accuses the federal government of 'extraordinary delays' in judging citizenship applications. Filed on behalf of 10 permanent residents in South Florida, the suit says federal law requires a decision within three months of the naturalization interview, but claims the plaintiffs have been waiting ...
Charlotte Business Journal - Jun 11, 2008
Debt threatens to KO Holyfield
Metro > Fayette Former boxing champ has heavyweight financial problems The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Though he no longer earns the kind of money that allowed him to build a 109-room mansion in Fairburn, boxing icon Evander Holyfield remains determined to live like a heavyweight. 'Sometimes people don't want to hear the facts,' said Holyfield's former accountant, Sam Gainer, who was fired by ...
Atlanta Journal And Constitution - Jun 11, 2008
UnitedHealth officials knew of backdating, filing shows: CalPERS attempts to strengthen its lawsuit through memos, e-mails and testimony of UHG executives that judge made public.
Jun. 11--As top UnitedHealth Group executives were compensated with favorably priced stock options, there was concern at lower levels in the company going back years about the appropriateness of the practice, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday. The documents assert that former Chief Executive Dr. William McGuire was warned as early as 1991 by an in-house lawyer "that possible ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 11, 2008
Killer's push for new trial stallsQUEENSBURY - Heath B. Russell's chances of a third trial in the 2002 killing of Lake Luzerne resident Dorothy Finelli got slimmer Friday after a judge ruled against him during a strange hearing that focused on the ac
QUEENSBURY - Heath B. Russell's chances of a third trial in the 2002 killing of Lake Luzerne resident Dorothy Finelli got slimmer Friday after a judge ruled against him during a strange hearing that focused on the accuracy of the court transcript from his second trial.Russell, looking appreciably older and stockier than during his last trial, was in Warren County Court as Judge Stan Pritzker ...
Post Star - Jun 11, 2008
Peoria opposes route for APS power line
Peoria sent a message loud and clear Tuesday to Arizona Public Service: The Carefree Highway alignment is off-limits for a proposed power-line route. The seven-member City Council unanimously adopted a resolution opposing APS' preferred route, which would run through the northern part of the tony 7,100-acre Vistancia community. The city instead wants the overhead high-voltage lines three miles ...
Arizona Republic - Jun 11, 2008
Cooley Advises Hancock Fabrics, Inc. in Bankruptcy Filing
Hancock Fabrics, Inc., a specialty retailer of Hancock Fabrics, Inc., a specialty retailer of fashion and home decorating textiles, sewing accessories and needlecraft supplies, announced it has filed a Plan of Reorganization (Plan) under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The filing has the support of its creditors and equity ...
MarketWire - Jun 11, 2008
Brazil's Lula announces new Amazon protection
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, under pressure over his stewardship of the Amazon rainforest, unveiled plans on Thursday to create three protected reserves covering an area the size of the U.S. state of Vermont. In a speech marking World Environment Day, Lula said the steps aimed at combating a spike in deforestation would take time to work, and foreigners did ...
Reuters - Jun 10, 2008
Barack Obama's "Salmon Chase" problem- Don't Choose Hillary for VP
The differences between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are many, aside from their sex. If there were a historical relationship that was at all similar, it would not be too much of a stretch to refer to the relationship of Abraham Lincoln and Salmon Chase. Both sets of people were political enemies, both campaigned against each other, both had different economic and social backgrounds, and both ...
Capitol Hill Blue - Jun 10, 2008
State moves to help those in danger of foreclosure
An Assembly panel released a measure today that would create a roughly $30 million fund aimed at helping those facing foreclosure because of the problems in the subprime mortgage market. 'The subprime mortgage foreclosure crisis is real. It's happening everywhere, and it demands your immediate attention,' Staci Berger, of the Community Development Network of New Jersey, told members of the ...
CourierPostOnline.com - Jun 10, 2008
Taser inquiry sifting dozens of complaints
VANCOUVER -- Germain Quesnel sat in an RCMP cell for an hour, believing he was having a heart attack.He had just received two blasts from a police taser to his chest because Staff Sergeant Lorne Malkoske said he wouldn't move away from the cell door. Mr. Quesnel, who had had two previous heart attacks, asked for his nitroglycerin medication but officers believed he was just trying to get out of ...
Globe and Mail - Jun 10, 2008
Haitians march against kidnappings
PM) PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) Thousands of protesters, bearing photographs of victims and with fists thrust in the air, marched through the capital to demand Haitian officials crack down on a kidnapping scourge that has terrorized the Caribbean country. Well-dressed Haitians from the hills above Port-au-Prince and lawmakers were among more than 2,000 demonstrators who walked to the Justice ...
Fresno Bee - Jun 10, 2008
The visually impaired challenge voting process
Staff Reporter VISUALLY impaired registered voters yesterday filed an urgent constitutional challenge in the Supreme Court over the electoral requirement that they should be assisted in marking and casting their ballots by employees of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) or police officers in next month's presidential run-off poll and any future elections in Zimbabwe.
Financial Gazette - Jun 10, 2008
Court rules Calif. inmate transfers are legal
Court rules Calif. inmate transfers are legal Associated Press Published: Jun 04, 200821:15 EST SACRAMENTO, Calif. It's legal for California to send thousands of inmates to out-of-state private prisons to ease prison crowding, a state appeals court said Wednesday in a ruling that reverses a lower-court decision. The Third District Appellate Court in Sacramento said Gov.
AP via Lancaster Online - Jun 10, 2008
Judge blasts proposed judicial code changes
District judge Bill Graves: He says the proposal aims 'to have homosexuality treated as normal and natural as heterosexuality' and that 'Studies have shown that is detrimental to children.' Last Modified: 6/5/2008 3:19 AM He says they promote a 'homosexual agenda.' OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) A judge says new anti-discrimination language proposed for the state's Code of Judicial Conduct is not proper ...
Tulsa World - Jun 10, 2008
Ex-Kilpatrick bodyguard sues over job change Detroit: Claim by cop called ridiculous
Jun. 10--A former bodyguard for Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick filed a whistle-blower lawsuit Monday against the mayor and the city, claiming he was harassed and intimidated during his tenure on the security detail and told by supervisors to keep quiet during an investigation into allegations of wrongdoing by the mayor and his inner circle. Officer Tony Davis, who now works in the department's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 10, 2008
My View: Constitution is worth fighting for
No one stands more gallantly than the person who stands in defense of the United States Constitution. The U.S. Constitution is the most important legal document ever written. It is not only the governing basis for the population of America (300 million), but since its inception 221 years ago, more than 100 countries around the world have used it as a model for their own constitutions.
Saginaw News - Jun 10, 2008
11 conspired to steal homes, state charges
When a man visited Katherine Washington Williams about five years ago, she thought he could save her home of 40 years from foreclosure. But instead of helping her with delinquent mortgage payments, the man put her house in a friend's name and took out about $30,000 in equity, according to a lawsuit filed last week by the Texas Attorney General's Office. 'He was the guy helping me with ...
Houston Chronicle - Jun 10, 2008
UPDATE 1-Settlement reached in Cablevision lawsuit
(Recasts; adds Cablevision statement, details on lawsuit) NEW YORK, June 5 (Reuters) - Cablevision Systems Corp (CVC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Thursday agreed to settle an investor lawsuit over its stock options award practices in a pact worth $34.4 million, with a group of 16 individual defendants paying about two-thirds of the settlement. A group of individuals, including Cablevision ...
Reuters - Jun 10, 2008
High court hears arguments for new trial in Vick slaying: The ruling could end almost 2 1/2 years of legal wrangling over alleged juror bias since a man was convicted of the 2005 killing the St. Paul police officer.
Jun. 10--Is Harry J. Evans entitled to a new trial in the May 2005 slaying of a St. Paul police officer because of an alleged racist remark made by a juror who helped decide his fate? Defense attorney Lydia Villalva Lijo argued Monday morning before five Minnesota Supreme Court justices that he is, partly because prosecutors had improper contact with the juror before a hearing called to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 10, 2008
Court rejects district's appeal of ruling by arbitrator on teacher grievances
Jun. 10--The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court on Monday rebuffed the Buffalo School District's appeal of an August 2006 arbitration decision. The appeal of an order by State Supreme Court Justice Diane Y. Devlin concerned a decision by School Superintendent James A. Williams not to hear the final stage of a grievance prior to going to arbitration, as required by the Buffalo Teachers ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 10, 2008
Ravenstahl vetoes limits on political contributions
Jun. 10--Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl on Monday vetoed a City Council ordinance that sought to limit the size of political contributions to city candidates. "The ordinance before me today is fraught with problems," Ravenstahl wrote in a four-page message to council members. "It provides an unfair competitive advantage for the wealthy and will have a chilling effect on the labor movement." ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 10, 2008
Women realize Bush's policies cannot continue
To the Editor: As a white woman over 50 - OK over 60 - I will proudly cast my vote in November for Barack Obama. I fervently hope that women and men will look at our country, understand that we cannot afford another four years of George Bush's policies. The future of the United States is at stake. Seven of the nine Supreme Court Justices were chosen by Republican presidents.
Tennessean - Jun 10, 2008
Nyaga Owner Hits At Barclays Over Accounts
(Business Daily/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX News Network) -- Mr Patrick Gakiavih, the owner of collapsed Nyaga Stockbrokers, has moved to court to defend himself against charges of stealing more than Sh523 million from his clients. Not only is the stockbroker charged with embezzling clients' money, he is also accused of carrying out unauthorised transactions on his clients' behalf - a ...
Macro World Investor - Jun 10, 2008
Former nursing home exec is put on probation
Mark Neil Ferris: He was accused of taking money from two patients' trust-fund accounts and using it to benefit someone else. The judge ordered him to pay $2,064.45 to cover the costs of the state's investigation. Last Modified: 6/4/2008 3:03 AM A former administrator of a Tulsa nursing home received a two-year deferred sentence Tuesday on two felony counts of financial exploitation by a ...
Tulsa World - Jun 10, 2008
Lakers, Celtics ready to renew rivalry
Nearing Super Bowl-like proportions, the buildup has included black-and-white footage from the 1960s - images of Red Auerbach puffing a victory cigar, Bill Russell swatting away a shot and Jerry West rising for a jumper. We've revisited the 1980s, taken back to those days of Ronald Reagan, bad haircuts and short shorts by Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, the icons whose meetings on the court defined ...
Grand Forks Herald - Jun 10, 2008
Holzer Holzer & Fistel, LLC Files a Shareholder Class Action Lawsuit on Behalf of Purchasers of Fidelity Ultra-Short Bond Fund (NASDAQ: FUSFX)
Holzer Holzer & Fistel, LLC announces that it Holzer Holzer & Fistel, LLC announces that it has filed a class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts on behalf of purchasers of the Fidelity Ultra-Short Bond Fund (the "Fund") (NASDAQ: FUSFX) who purchased the Fund between June 6, 2005 and June 5, 2008 (the "Class Period").
MarketWire - Jun 10, 2008
New Jersey Supreme Court dismisses medical monitoring suit filed by Vioxx plaintiffs against Merck - Update
(RTTNews) - In yet another addition to the protracted legal saga associated with drug maker Merck & Co., Inc.'s (MRK | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating) withdrawn painkiller Vioxx, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Vioxx users who suffered no known personal injury could not sue the company to pay for electrocardiograms and follow-up consultations with cardiologists.
TradingMarkets - Jun 9, 2008
Court rules Calif. inmate transfers are legal
The Third District Appellate Court in Sacramento said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who authorized the transfers, has broad powers to proclaim a state of emergency 'when a condition of extreme peril to the safety of persons and property exists,' and that the situation in California's prisons met that standard. Transferring 8,000 inmates is a key part of the state's effort to control prison ...
San Jose Mercury News - Jun 9, 2008
Ex-chief justice under corruption panel scanner
Jun. 9--NEW DELHI -- In a development unprecedented in the country's judicial history, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), the government's anti-corruption watchdog, has forwarded a set of complaints with allegations of corruption and misconduct against former Chief Justice of India YK Sabharwal to the government for further action. "A bunch of complaints filed by a group called Campaign for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 9, 2008
Icahn says Yahoo 'sabotaged' Microsoft bid
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn stepped up his criticism Wednesday of Yahoo, saying its board and top management sabotaged a takeover bid from Microsoft to the detriment of shareholders. In a statement released after details emerged from a shareholder lawsuit, Icahn said the 'best chance' for the struggling Internet giant would be to replace the current board and chief executive Jerry Yang to ...
Yahoo! News Australia - Jun 9, 2008
EDITORIAL: Clean judicial campaigns? Take the pledge, please
Jun. 9--Here's hoping that this is the last you'll hear about the Washington Committee for Ethical Judicial Campaigns. Nothing against the group. It's an impressive bunch of civic-minded folks who seem genuinely concerned about preserving the dignity and integrity of the state judiciary. We just wish they weren't needed. Heck, even they wish they weren't needed.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 9, 2008
Supreme Court Rules in Quanta Patent Case; IP Expert From Wolf Greenfield Can Comment
The U.S. Supreme Court today issued a key patent The U.S. Supreme Court today issued a key patent law ruling in Quanta Computer v. LG Electronics, overturning the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The decision, a victory for Quanta, limits the ability of patent owners to control how customers or licensees use the patented technology. "The Supreme Court had long held that the initial ...
MarketWire - Jun 9, 2008
Icahn says Yahoo 'sabotaged' Microsoft bid
A Yahoo sign in New York's Times Square, in April 2008. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn stepped up his criticism Wednesday of Yahoo, saying its board and top management sabotaged a takeover bid from Microsoft to the detriment of shareholders. (AFP//File) Billionaire investor Carl Icahn stepped up his criticism Wednesday of Yahoo, saying its board and top management sabotaged a takeover bid from ...
Turkish Press - Jun 9, 2008
Sex offender issue revisited: West Haven wants opinion on legality of proposed ordinance
Jun. 9--WEST HAVEN -- Corporation Counsel Peter Barrett is taking a second look at the constitutionality of a proposed law so sweeping it would ban registered sex offenders from walking on a public beach or strolling through a local park. Mayor John M. Picard said the city just wants to get a formal legal opinion on the law before moving forward. "You don't want to violate anyone's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 9, 2008
Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints must be accountable
Questions re: the FLDS: If the children taken by the Texas authorities did not have birth certificates how are children at the compound tracked? If no one knows a child has been born then no one knows when the child has died....or how. If the prophet has the authority to take women and children from one family and place them in another then he could take a child from a home stating he was giving ...
Rocky Mountain News - Jun 9, 2008
Now sober, the infamous pot-smoking judge' helps others with their addictions
DETROIT _ He remembers the beginning of the end, the long walk home from work that Halloween evening, the longest two blocks of his life. "Our neighborhood is a Norman Rockwell painting," Tom Gilbert says. "We've got front porches and kids and dogs and sidewalks. It's America, and everybody is getting ready for Halloween, and we're going to have 500 kids at our door, and Marsha loves Halloween ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 9, 2008
Law professor wants to use courts to fight global warming (110)
University of Oregon law professor Mary Wood has found a new use for the old legal doctrine of the public trust: Suing the government to force action on climate change. Law professor wants to use courts to fight global warming Corvallis Gazette-Times EUGENE University of Oregon law professor Mary Wood is tired of waiting for government officials to take action on global warming.
Albany Democrat-Herald - Jun 9, 2008
Critics say disabled access bill is too broad, too weak
Jun. 9--On one side are disabled Californians, who can't believe businesses still deny them access. On the other are angry business owners, who loathe the lawsuits spawned by a doorway too narrow, a toilet too high, a ramp too steep. After years of failed efforts, the Legislature is attempting again to bridge the divide with a proposal to curb lawsuits while improving public access for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 9, 2008
How the candidates compare on issues
Jun. 9--THE ECONOMY: McCain: Reduce the federal corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent and raise the federal personal exemption for each dependent from $3,500 to $7,000. Advocates a one-year pause in growth in federal discretionary spending. Obama: Inject $75 billion into the economy through tax cuts and spending. Workers and their families would receive an immediate $250 tax cut, and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 9, 2008
Bangor native to head Supreme Court society
Jun. 9--PORTLAND, Maine -- Bangor native Ralph I. Lancaster Jr. has been elected president of the U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society in Washington, D.C. The society, a private nonprofit organization, is dedicated to the collection and preservation of the history of the court. The society conducts education programs, supports historical research, and publishes books, journals and electronic ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 9, 2008
Did bigotry convict Evans?: High court will consider juror bias in Vick murder trial
Jun. 9--ST. PAUL -- Did an allegedly bigoted juror rob Harry Evans of a fair trial? The Minnesota Supreme Court will hear arguments today on that question. It's one that has dogged the case for nearly 18 months, since a Ramsey County jury convicted Evans, now 35, of killing St. Paul police Sgt. Gerald Vick in an alley near Erick's Bar in St. Paul. Shortly after the trial began in January 2006, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 9, 2008
Califonria water shortage worst in decades, official says
Over the years, the Los Angeles River has been redrawn, clad in concrete, tainted with chemicals, invaded by countless Hollywood car chases, dismissed as a glorified storm drain. Now comes the latest slap. The city's river can't even float enough boats to qualify as a full-fledged navigable waterway, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. River advocates are outraged.
Los Angeles Times - Jun 9, 2008
Mizkan buys portion of Imperial Brands business
South Florida Business Journal Related News Privacy policy won't protect firms from legal sanctions [South Florida] Merger and acquisition deals may spark controversy, lawsuits [South Florida] Gunster Yoakley attorney named to climate action group [South Florida] Imperial Brands has sold its vinegar and cooking wine business to Japan-based Mizkan for $30 million, said law firm Gunster Yoakley ...
Biz Journals - Jun 9, 2008
Brower Piven Encourages Investors Who Have Losses in Excess of $100,000 From Investment in Healthways, Inc. to Inquire About the Lead Plaintiff Position in Securities Fraud Class Action Lawsuit Before the August 4, 2008 Lead Plaintiff Deadline
Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation announces that a class action lawsuit has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee on behalf of purchasers of the common stock of Healthways, Inc. ("Healthways" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: HWAY) between October 17, 2007 and February 26, 2008, inclusive (the "Class ...
MarketWire - Jun 9, 2008
INVESTOR ALERT: KGS Notifies Franklin Bank Corp. Shareholders That They Have Until August 5, 2008 to File Lead Plaintiff Application in Securities Fraud Class Action Lawsuit -- FBTX
Kahn Gauthier Swick, LLC ("KGS") reminds Kahn Gauthier Swick, LLC ("KGS") reminds shareholders that August 5, 2008 is the deadline to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities fraud class action pending in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, on behalf of shareholders who purchased the common stock of Franklin Bank Corp.
MarketWire - Jun 9, 2008
Holzer Holzer & Fistel, LLC Files a Shareholder Class Action Lawsuit on Behalf of Purchasers of Healthways, Inc. Common Stock Between October 17, 2007 and February 26, 2008 -- HWAY
Holzer Holzer & Fistel, LLC announces that it Holzer Holzer & Fistel, LLC announces that it has filed a class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee on behalf of purchasers of Healthways, Inc. ("Healthways" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: HWAY) common stock during the period between October 17, 2007 and February 26, 2008, inclusive (the "Class ...
MarketWire - Jun 9, 2008
Shalov Stone Bonner & Rocco LLP Reminds Investors That the Franklin Bank Corp. Securities Fraud Class Action Was Brought on Behalf of Both Common and Preferred Shareholders
On June 6, 2008, the law firm of Shalov Stone On June 6, 2008, the law firm of Shalov Stone Bonner & Rocco LLP filed a securities fraud class action on behalf of all investors who purchased or otherwise acquired the common or preferred stock of Franklin Bank Corp. (NASDAQ: FBTX) (AMEX: FBK-P), in the period between October 29, 2007, and May 1, 2008, inclusive (the "Class Period").
MarketWire - Jun 9, 2008
EDITORIAL: Malpractice victims out of luck in Virginia: An arbitrary cap on damages means some patients won't even be able to recover their actual losses.
Jun. 8--Virginia's cap on malpractice damages is unconscionable and unfair, and it will become ever more so when it tops out at $2 million on July 1. That $2 million is for all damages -- medical expenses and lost income as well as pain and suffering, and other non-economic damages. With rising medical expenses, that cap will impact more victims of malpractice.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Property taxes increase by 52.5% since 2001 in U.S.
Jun. 8--The National Taxpayers Union reports that state and local property tax collections increased nationwide by 52.25 percent over almost a seven-year period -- from $256.8 billion in 2001 to $391.6 billion by the third quarter of 2007. "All the other major categories of tax revenue ... haven't increased anywhere near that amount," said Pete Sepp, a spokesman for the taxpayers union.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Debt collectors pushing to get their day in court: More aggressive strategies fill court dockets, result in mistaken identities
Jun. 8--Cook County Circuit Court has been turned into a frenetic debt collections machine, a reflection of easy credit gone sour and a collections industry determined to get paid. More than 119,000 civil lawsuits against alleged debtors are clogging courtrooms, and at least half will result in judgments that debt collectors will use to dock wages, seize bank accounts and file liens against ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Locked in limbo: Minnesota commits a greater proportion of sex offenders to treatment lock-ups after prison than any other state. No one has been released, costs are mounting, and questions are increasing.
Jun. 8--MOOSE LAKE -- In the 14 years since Minnesota's Sexually Dangerous Persons Act cleared the way for the state to detain hundreds of paroled sex offenders in prison-like treatment centers, just 24 men have met what has proved to be the only acceptable standard for release. They died. "We would say, 'Another one completed treatment,'" said Andrew Babcock, a former guard and counselor in the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
A long-standing, thorny issue for Minnesota and the courts: Scrutiny of sex-offender commitment dates back nearly 70 years.
Jun. 8--A Minnesota case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1940 was the first to test the legality of committing sex offenders to mental institutions. In Pearson vs. Probate Court of Ramsey County, the court upheld Minnesota's 1939 Psychopathic Personality statute, which the state went on to use infrequently to confine exposers, window-peepers and other mostly nonviolent offenders for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Judge bans use of the word rape' at trial
KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ It's the only way Tory Bowen knows to honestly describe what happened to her. She was raped. But a judge prohibited her from uttering the word "rape" in front of a jury. The term "sexual assault" also was taboo, and Bowen could not refer to herself as a victim or use the word "assailant" to describe the man who allegedly raped her. The defendant's presumption of innocence and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Markets face high stakes to match across-the-border beer sales
Jun. 8--Beer on supermarket and convenience store shelves and liquor sold in privately owned stores in Pennsylvania? Not yet. Efforts by Sheetz Inc. and Wegmans Food Markets Inc. to sell beer in some stores could be the harbinger for Pennsylvanians thirsting for convenience when they shop for beer, wine and booze. But those efforts face continued resistance from industry and trade groups.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Judge rejects State Farm affiliate's sanctions against policyholders victimized by Hurricane Katrina
GULFPORT, Miss. _ Policyholders are casualties in a battle that has pitted State Farm and one of its vendors, E.A. Renfroe, against the Scruggs Katrina Group of attorneys, U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. wrote in an eight-page opinion filed this week. Senter issued the opinion and an accompanying order that denies Renfroe's motion for sanctions against SKG and policyholders for filing ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
iGate isn't only 'villain' hiring foreign high-tech workers
Jun. 9--A local high-tech company has put a Pittsburgh face on a national debate about hiring foreign workers. Computer consulting firm iGate Corp. of Findlay paid the Justice Department $45,000 in April to settle charges it discriminated against U.S. workers by posting online job ads seeking foreigners with special visas. The fine for favoring holders of H-1B visas, which go primarily to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 9, 2008
State is leader in marriage debate: On eve of legalization, efforts gear up for fall ballots here, in Florida.
Jun. 8--Spouses for life. The pronouncement couldn't be simpler. Yet, when the words are uttered in county buildings throughout California beginning next week, they will ring across the country as a rallying cry in the pitched fight over gay marriage. Each side is marshaling forces, in California as well as Florida. The battles will culminate at the ballot box on Election Day in November, when ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Child support committee meets Friday
Jun. 8--MONTGOMERY -- Some divorced parents have questions about whether proposed changes to state child-support policies and guidelines would affect their child-support agreements. Others wonder how or if the state's rules on child support would apply to families that include adopted children. They also question the state's position on child support for children born before or after a divorced ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Pakistani families force girls to marry to stem tribal feuds
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan _ It began with an errant dog, and it's now culminated with the forced betrothal of 15 little girls, some of them as young as three, as compensation in a case of tribal feuding in a remote part of Pakistan. It's thought that around 20 people have died in the bitter quarrel, and the marriage offer of the girls is meant to end the bloodletting.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Village fears Judum threat
Jun. 9--RAIPUR -- Tribals in Chhattisgarh would not have expected that voicing their troubles would make their lives more difficult. The 2000-odd inhabitants of Chintalnar village in Dantewada district have allegedly been threatened by the civil militia, Salwa Judum, after they spoke candidly to a visiting National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) team about their struggle to live.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 9, 2008
Ex-chief justice under corruption panel scanner
Jun. 9--NEW DELHI -- In a development unprecedented in the country's judicial history, the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), the government's anti-corruption watchdog, has forwarded a set of complaints with allegations of corruption and misconduct against former Chief Justice of India YK Sabharwal to the government for further action. "A bunch of complaints filed by a group called Campaign for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 9, 2008
Setting the stage for the Tony Awards
Jun. 8--It's Tony Awards time again. And once more the "fabulous invalid," as Broadway has been called for eons, has mustered the strength to line up an array of performances and shows worthy of a standing ovation. Next Sunday evening, the Tony medallions will be presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League in a nationally televised ceremony at Radio City Music Hall.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
EDITORIAL: Court's integrity proposal
Jun. 8--The weaknesses of Texas' much-maligned criminal justice system will be getting an examination from the very court that has endured -- and deserved -- much of the maligning: the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The court was right last week to announce its own "integrity unit." Breakdowns in justice have been documented at an embarrassing level in Texas, highlighted by Dallas County's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Diocese rules on gay unions: Albany Episcopal resolution affirms defense of traditional marriage; critics call measure divisive and discriminatory
Jun. 8--SPECULATOR -- The conservative-led Episcopal Diocese of Albany staked out a firm defense of traditional marriage on Saturday, a move that comes as gay unions have gained new ground in California and New York. The hundreds of clergy and lay delegates who converged for their annual convention in this lakeside Adirondack community resoundingly approved a resolution that lays down this rule: ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Boston Herald Margery Eagan column: Time's come, gone for Clintons
Jun. 8--Think about it. The Clintons burst onto the national scene in 1991. Some of you were in grade school. Some of you were newlyweds with little children. Between then and now you've finished college. Or the children are grown and gone. Maybe you've grown old yourself watching the endless drama -- from other women to impeachment to the endlessly analyzed Clinton machinations to yesterday. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Took on Jerry Lewis: Advocate for the disabled didn't like tactics of annual telethon
Jun. 8--CHARLESTON S.C. -- Harriet McBryde Johnson, a civil and disability rights attorney who drew national attention by protesting the annual Jerry Lewis muscular dystrophy telethon, has died. She was 50. Ms. Johnson, who suffered from congenital neuromuscular disease, died in her sleep early Wednesday. The cause of death has not been determined, said her father, David Johnson. Ms.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Illegal Immigration: Graduates become more vulnerable to deportation
Jun. 8--It's date night and Mayte, dolled up in American Eagle jeans and a senior class T-shirt, walks with her boyfriend toward the movie theater. The two glance at the marquee, confer, then opt for the action flick "Rambo." To a bystander, it seems another easygoing outing for a young couple. Yet as she draws nearer to the ticket counter, anxiousness envelops the girl, whose baby face belies ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Race issue may prove tricky for McCain campaign
Jun. 8--WASHINGTON -- Now that Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination, Republican John McCain faces the unprecedented, and tricky, task of building a campaign against the first black presidential candidate of a major party in a general election campaign. A key test may come in how McCain and groups supporting him treat Obama's former pastor, the Rev.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Supreme Court's caseload slows: Analysis of state Supreme Court action finds a decline over eight years.
Jun. 8--OKLAHOMA CITY -- The number of appeals and court actions at the Oklahoma Supreme Court have declined significantly in eight years because of the chilling effect of legislative reforms and due to mediated lawsuits, court officials said. The Tulsa World examined eight years of Supreme Court filings, opinions and settlement conferences from records obtained by the Open Records Act.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Supreme Court upholds West Des Moines man's lesser enticement charge
Jun. 8--WATERLOO -- The Iowa Supreme Court Friday sided with a West Des Moines man who had his conviction for enticement of a minor reduced to a lesser charge. Eric Hansen, who was 23 at the time, was arrested in May 2006 after he arranged to meet someone he thought was a 15-year-old girl at the Wal-Mart in Cedar Falls. The girl turned out to be a Cedar Falls police officer.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Roanoke Valley judge up for Va. Supreme Court: Clifford Weckstein has been endorsed by one bar association, but a political snare may complicate the appointment process.
Jun. 8--Clifford Weckstein, the Roanoke Valley's most senior circuit court judge, is in the running for a seat on the Virginia Supreme Court. Weckstein was endorsed Friday by the Salem/Roanoke County Bar Association for a vacancy on the high court created by Justice Steven Agee's recent appointment to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Appointed by the General Assembly in 1987, Weckstein ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
WAWONA'S WOES: The 30-plus-acre Adventist camp has peacefully co-existed with neighbors for 79 years ... until now.
Jun. 8--WAWONA -- To renovate their beloved mountain camp, Seventh-day Adventists have faced a struggle that might test anyone's faith -- 15 years of planning to satisfy neighbors, the National Park Service and Mariposa County. Now another battle looms -- some neighbors have filed suit. The neighbors worry that the planned improvements will turn Camp Wawona into a sprawling resort that will ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
Airboat operators target Lake Toho night ban
Jun. 8--KISSIMMEE As Florida airboaters crank up fundraising to fight a nighttime ban they say essentially ends chances of successfully hunting alligators on Lake Tohopekaliga, state game officials have issued six more supplemental permits for taking alligators on the lake this season. A computer glitch at third-party vendor Outdoor Central of Missouri on the opening day of alligator permit ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
After a mistrial in January, Everett man again faces charges in Notestine slaying
Jun. 8--BEDFORD -- Deja vu permeated the Bedford County Courthouse last week as sheriff's deputies, court personnel and district attorney staff prepared to travel out of county to pick a jury for a man charged with an eight-year-old kidnapping and murder. They will be traveling today to Dauphin County, which was chosen by the state Supreme Court to provide the jury for Joseph W.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 8, 2008
After autopsy, relatives have no rights to body parts, court rules
Jun. 5--Relatives of people who die and undergo autopsies have no right to the brains or other organs that are removed from the body during the process, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled today. The court's 6-1 decision likely will head off a class-action suit by hundreds of family members of dead Ohioans who claimed the right to organs, tissue and blood from their loved ones' bodies.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Va. high court revisits spam case: Convicted spammer is challenging law as being unconstitutionally broad
Jun. 5--One of the world's worst spammers argued yesterday that he is entitled to challenge Virginia's tough, 2003 Anti-Spam Act as an unconstitutional violation of free speech rights. In a 4-3 ruling in February, the Supreme Court of Virginia upheld Jeremy D. Jaynes' 2004 Loudoun County convictions for violating the act, the first felony spam convictions in the country.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
EDITORIAL: Fair trials: Terrorism detainees' cases should be heard in civilian courts
Jun. 5--The pending trials of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are fraught with potential problems. Many legal observers believe that the system of trials by military commission is stacked in the government's favor. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule sometime this month on the legality of the proceedings for detainees. The first trials aren't expected until after the Supreme ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Spate of exonerations prompts a search for answers
Jun. 5--In reaction to the growing number of exonerations across the state, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals announced Wednesday that it is creating a Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit to investigate and address weaknesses in the criminal justice system. "This is a call to action to address the growing concerns with our criminal justice system," said Court of Criminal Appeals Judge ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Appeals court allows GPS tracking by cops
Jun. 5--ALBANY -- Police are not required to obtain a warrant before placing GPS tracking devices outside the vehicles of potential suspects, a state appeals court ruled today. In a 4-1 ruling, the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court found it constitutional to place the devices on vehicles so long as they remain in public view. The decision came down as the mid-level court upheld the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Defense rests in DuPont trial
Jun. 5--The defense in the DuPont trial concluded its case Wednesday afternoon in Jones County Circuit Court in Laurel. The jury is expected to begin deliberations on the case Thursday. The jury is hearing the case of a Bay St. Louis man who claims chemicals released from the plant caused him to have a rare form of cancer. The Mississippi Supreme Court, citing cumulative errors, overturned a $14 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Inmate files federal lawsuit over civil rights
Jun. 5--An Aiken man in jail awaiting trial on an number of charges has filed a federal lawsuit against the Aiken County detention center, claiming his civil rights are being "trampled upon." John Henry Allen Jr., 41, is awaiting trial on lewd act against a minor, assault and firearms charges. He claims he is being housed in an illegal manner and is demanding to be released from the "maximum ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Court rules lawyer must pay legal bill of gay group
Jun. 6--By a 4-3 vote, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said in a decision released Thursday that a lawyer who brought a frivolous lawsuit against a gay rights organization will have to pay the organization's court costs. Before being appealed, the court cost for Action Wisconsin was about $87,000. Tamara Packard, a lawyer for Action Wisconsin, said she would ask for the costs of the appeal to be ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 6, 2008
EDITORIAL: 'Loser Pays' would open records
Jun. 5--North Carolina legislators have an opportunity to level the playing field and hold public officials' accountable for keeping public records open to the taxpayers who pay for them and, by rights, own them. This opportunity comes in the form of a bill from Sen. David Hoyle, D-Gaston, that makes government agencies that illegally conceal public records liable for the legal fees of citizens ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Sections of 1804 halted by judge: The ruling temporarily prevents two measures of the new law from taking effect.
Jun. 5--A federal judge on Wednesday halted one of the final implementations of House Bill 1804, Oklahoma's new immigration law aimed at decreasing the use of illegal workers while addressing other immigration concerns. U.S. District Judge Robin Cauthron granted a preliminary injunction in a case that has pitted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several Oklahoma chambers against the state.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Feds want dismissal of Cherokee County lawsuit involving casino
Jun. 5--COLUMBUS, Kan. -- A lawyer for the federal government has filed a motion to dismiss Cherokee County's lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior stemming from the Quapaw Tribe's new casino. David Cooper, the attorney representing Cherokee County on gambling issues, said no hearing has been set on the government motion. The county's lawsuit, filed in February in U.S.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Now that she's no longer running for president, here are some possible career options for Hillary Rodham Clinton
Now that she's no longer running for president, here are some possible career options for Hillary Rodham Clinton: _VICE PRESIDENT PROS: Her popularity with white lunch-bucket voters, Hispanics and women gives Obama better chances at winning states like Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Florida and Texas. CONS: Many in Obama's camp think she's the embodiment of Beltway malaise, plus the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Long wait in Lupas' juvenile court
Jun. 5--Luzerne County Judge David Lupas' first day on the juvenile court bench lasted into the evening Wednesday, as a renewed attention to detail and defendants' rights took precedence over expediency. Lupas took over the juvenile court duties for President Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., who stepped aside last week amid allegations that he rushed hundreds of defendants through the system ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
RFK killed 40 years ago today: Supporters say Kennedy had changed from hard-core law-and-order man to candidate for Vietnam peace and advocate for poor people.
Jun. 5--For Robert F. Kennedy's supporters, his assassination 40 years ago today was the end of a dream. For America, it was the continuation of a nightmare. Kennedy had just won the California primary, the biggest coup of the 1968 Democratic primary season, and things looked shaky for his main rivals, Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy and unpopular Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
EDITORIAL: Child protection: A Texas court's contention that a few cases of underage sex doesn't justify removal of all children from a religious sect's ranch raises some troubling questions.
Jun. 5--Child welfare laws in most states express a significant preference for keeping children in their homes or in the custody of biological family members, if at all possible. There are times, however, when returning children to a questionable family situation clearly is not in their best interests. It remains to be seen whether Texas officials have done the right thing by ordering about 400 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
There's only a little sign of life at the sect ranch: Trucks, gardens are idle with few FLDS residents
Jun. 5--ELDORADO -- Three-year-old Anne Jessop sat on a pink-and-purple tricycle while 7-year-old brother Ephraim perched himself on a dolly, their heads together in whispered fun. Nearby, another brother, 5-year-old Russell, rode a bike. But Zachery, a 9-year-old brother, leaned quietly against a wall outside the woodshop, his wary eyes cast on yet another group of strangers visiting the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Texas Gov. Rick Perry defends state's seizure of polygamist sect's kids
Jun. 6--Gov. Rick Perry, accepting personal blame if Texas "stepped across some legal line," strongly defended today its sweep of all youngsters from a polygamist sect's ranch. "I still think that the state of Texas has an obligation to young women who are forced into marriage and underage sex -- to protect them. That's my bottom line on this," Mr. Perry said during a visit to France.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 6, 2008
OPINION: Pulling apart families only creates harm
Jun. 5--It's awfully hard to stand up for parents' rights when the parents in question don't appear to exercise parental responsibilities or keep children safe from abuse. Still, the Texas state Supreme Court got it right this week when it sent 400-plus children who were removed from a polygamist compound in Texas back to their parents. Pictures of young children embracing mothers are convincing ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Law used in area native's murder arrest challenged
Jun. 5--A Clarks Summit native is at the center of a case in New Hampshire that may set a legal precedent and upend a year-old state law. Darryll Bifano, 37, a resident of Glendale, N.H., was indicted in April on second-degree murder counts in the beating death of his friend, Stephen Grodske, 56, of Laconia, N.H. Mr. Bifano is a 1988 graduate of Abington Heights High School and a 1993 graduate ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Two bars challenge fines over smoking
Jun. 5--After refusing to pay their last smoking-ban fines, the operators of the Loyal Order of Moose, at 1970 Schrock Rd., and Jack's Corner Pub, at 2480 Summit St., had their say before the city yesterday. Both chose to have hearings. Eric Nordman, an examiner hired by the city, will recommend action to the Board of Health, which will make the final ruling on whether the fines stand.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Minor without driving licence has right to accident relief: Court
Jun. 6--NEW DELHI -- A minor injured in an accident cannot be denied compensation solely on the ground that he did not have a driving licence, the Supreme Court has said. In a ruling of far-reaching consequence, a Bench headed by Justice SB Sinha said that the only question for deciding contributory negligence to deny or reduce compensation to such a minor is whether he/she was driving in a rash ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 6, 2008
OPINION: The growing threat to the republic
Jun. 5--We're getting closer to Ben Franklin's forecast of the future of the American system of government all the time, and Tuesday's decision by voters regarding California Propositions 98 and 99 moved us one step nearer fulfillment of his prediction. Both propositions were aimed at government's eminent domain powers, which were vastly enlarged by the United States Supreme Court when it ruled, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Six moves to block judicial testimony in Kline case
Jun. 5--TOPEKA -- Kansas Attorney General Stephen Six wants to prevent Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline from calling a judge as a witness in his prosecution of Planned Parenthood. Six's office filed a motion this week with the Kansas Supreme Court asking the court to stop Kline from intervening in a case about Shawnee County District Judge Richard Anderson's access to abortion ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Three Bloomington seniors barred from graduation over Confederate flag prank: Three Bloomington Kennedy seniors were kept from their graduation after bringing Confederate flags to school.
Jun. 5--Three high school seniors were barred from Bloomington Kennedy High School's graduation ceremony Wednesday night at Target Center because of what the school district called a prank involving Confederate flags. Rick Kaufman, a spokesman for the Bloomington School District, said three male students brought the flags onto school property Tuesday morning.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Immigration measure hits snag
Jun. 5--OKLAHOMA CITY -- State Rep. Randy Terrill's controversial immigration law, House Bill 1804, hit a brick wall late Wednesday afternoon, after a U.S. District Court judge postponed enforcement of part of the measure. Western U.S. District Judge Robin J. Cauthron issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting enforcement of certain provisions of HB 1804. Those provisions -- the bill's private ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
EDITORIAL: Defeat of Proposition 98 should settle eminent domain issue
Jun. 5--It's all over. At least we hope so. After two defeats, attempts to use fear of eminent domain to bamboozle voters into approving sweeping agendas to cripple government action should end in California. But don't count on it. Even after the defeat of Proposition 90 in 2006 and a 61 percent to 39 percent defeat of Proposition 98 on Tuesday, proponents are insisting that legislators must do ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
The Buffalo News, N.Y., Rod Watson column
Jun. 5--When Sam Cooke sang what became the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement, "A Change Is Gonna Come," it portended sweeping social progress that played out over the next half-century. Barack Obama's ascendancy to the top of the Democratic Party ticket is the penultimate step in that American journey. Yet in listening to African-Americans today, it's as if they feel more ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Crowded prisons get reprieve
Jun. 5--California corrections officials, faced with a continued prison overcrowding crisis, got themselves a little more time and space Wednesday when an appellate court ruled they could keep sending inmates out of state. The decision by a three-judge panel of California's 3rd District Court of Appeal overturned last year's ruling by a Sacramento judge that the transfers were illegal and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
OPINION: When the nominating process damages the candidates
Jun. 5--With the close of a long and winding primary season, the temptation for Democrats will be to celebrate the product (a presumptive nominee, Barack Obama) and forget about the process. They shouldn't. Even if Hillary Clinton says it's OK to begin the campaign against John McCain immediately, Democrats should not lose sight of how they have made their nominating process a lot more difficult ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Ad pact's effects worry some
Jun. 5--A citizens committee formed to discourage unfair ads and campaign tactics in state judicial campaigns could have unwanted effects on free speech, an Olympia lawyer said this week. The group calling itself the Washington Committee for Ethical Judicial Campaigns wants judicial candidates to sign pledges promising not to campaign in a way that harms the public's faith in the judiciary.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Bar to kids' citizenship ruled illegal: Supreme Court opens door to unwed foreign moms' children
Jun. 5--In a ruling sure to affect thousands of others born out of wedlock to non-Japanese mothers, the Supreme Court on Wednesday granted 10 children of Filipino women the right to Japanese nationality. Saying it led to unreasonable discrimination, 12 of the 15 justices on the top court's grand bench ruled unconstitutional a provision in the Nationality Law that states that such children can ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Supreme Court swings good and bad
The following editorial appeared in the Miami Herald on Thursday, June 5: ___ When it comes to protecting workers who complain about discrimination from retaliation by their bosses, the U.S. Supreme Court really gets it. However, with cases involving actual workplace discrimination, protection from this court's majority is, at best, a dicey proposition. Here's why we say this: In two cases last ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
It's final: No lighting up at clubs: Members-only establishments get no relief from state smoking ban
Jun. 5--Veterans halls and other members-only clubs will be no-smoking zones despite Gov. Ted Strickland's quest to exempt them from the statewide smoking ban. The Ohio Supreme Court yesterday extinguished the clubs' last legal attempt to get out from under the law that bans smoking at restaurants, bars and nearly all other public buildings. Without comment, the state's highest court let stand ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Ohio Supreme Court will not halt Seneca County courthouse demolition
Jun. 5--TIFFIN -- The Ohio Supreme Court will not stop the demolition of Seneca County's 1884 courthouse. The court yesterday denied a motion for a temporary injunction that would have prevented the commissioners from proceeding with demolition while an appeal is before the court. The court issued its decision without comment, and none of the justices dissented.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Sentry Select Commodities Income Trust (TSX: SSJ.UN) Announces Ontario Court of Appeal Decision Regarding Annual Redemption
Sentry Select Capital Corp. ("Sentry Select") announces that the Court of Appeal for Ontario has dismissed Sentry Select's appeal from the judgment of Justice James M. Spence of the Superior Court of Justice dated June 15, 2007, which ruled that Sentry Select Commodities Income Trust (the "Trust")(TSX: SSJ.UN) should have paid out an additional $0.435 per unit to two unitholders who redeemed ...
MarketWire - Jun 5, 2008
Aurora Platinum Exploration Inc. Shareholders Approve Plan of Arrangement
Aurora Platinum Exploration (OTCBB: AUPXF), Aurora Platinum Exploration (OTCBB: AUPXF), formerly Aurora Metals (BVI) Limited ("Aurora"), announced today that at the special meeting of its common shareholders today (the "Meeting"), 97% of the votes cast by the Aurora Shareholders voting in person or by proxy at the Meeting were voted in favour of the special resolution approving the previously ...
MarketWire - Jun 5, 2008
Stull, Stull & Brody Announces Class Action on Behalf of Shareholders of Walgreen Co.
Attorney Advertising. Notice is hereby given Attorney Advertising. Notice is hereby given that a class action has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on behalf of purchasers of the common stock of Walgreen Co. ("Walgreen" or the "Company") (NYSE: WAG) between June 25, 2007 and November 29, 2007 (the "Class Period").
MarketWire - Jun 5, 2008
BRIEF: Fairmount lauds Supreme Court decision saying casinos must share revenue with tracks
Jun. 5--COLLINSVILLE -- Operators of Fairmount Park are pleased with the Illinois Supreme Court's ruling that the state's richest casinos must share revenue with state horse tracks. The decision, announced this morning, ruled in favor of a 2006 state a law charging the state's top-grossing casinos with a 3 percent surcharge over two years on boats with receipts over $200 million.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Godwin Pappas & Ronquillo Managing Partner Named Chairman of Dallas Judicial Nominating Commission
Attorney Marcos Ronquillo, managing partner of Attorney Marcos Ronquillo, managing partner of Godwin Pappas & Ronquillo PC, has been appointed chairman of the City of Dallas' 16-member Judicial Nominating Commission. Mr. Ronquillo was nominated to the commission by Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert. The mayor and other members of the Dallas City Council each appoint one person to the commission, ...
MarketWire - Jun 5, 2008
Ex-grocer defends award: Va. Supreme Court hears Supervalu's appeal of jury decision for Johnson
Jun. 5--Lawyers for former Richmond supermarket owner Jonathan F. "Johnny" Johnson appeared before the Supreme Court of Virginia yesterday to defend a $19 million lawsuit award. "I represent a Richmond grocer who was driven out of business," L. Steven Emmert, one of Johnson's lawyers, told the justices yesterday. Johnson went from a bag boy to the head of his own Community Pride supermarket ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Gay couples can set the date
Jun. 5--The wait is over for everyone from wedding planners to local clerks -- and thousands of gay and lesbian couples across California. The California Supreme Court on Wednesday removed any lingering legal doubts about whether same-sex couples can marry in California beginning June 17, setting the stage for a rush of gay nuptials that morning. Kristin and Jean Rivers, who'd planned to marry ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
BRIEF: Court reverses Lacey man's conviction for pot-grow operation
Jun. 5--The state Supreme Court today reversed the case of a Lacey man convicted on two counts of manufacturing a controlled substance. The court ruled evidence obtained in a search of the home Jason Eisfeldt was renting Aug. 5, 2003, was inadmissiable because police were not granted proper permission. A repairman saw what he believed to be the remains of a marijuana grow operation in a Lacey ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Millard board to seek review of ruling
Jun. 5--The Millard school board violated Nebraska's open meetings laws when it voted in closed session to fire a teacher, the Nebraska Court of Appeals has ruled. The school district will ask for a review of last week's decision, either through an appeal to the Nebraska Supreme Court or a rehearing with the appeals court. For now, though, Millard attorney Duncan Young said he would recommend ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
BRIEF: Youngwood loses appeal in prevailing wage case
Jun. 5--The state Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that milling public roads constitutes reconstruction and requires workers to be paid prevailing wage rates. The decision is a setback for tiny Youngwood Borough in Westmoreland County, which appealed a decision by Commonwealth Court which ruled that removing asphalt by using a milling machine is construction work, not maintenance. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
California high court clears way for same-sex marriages to start June 17
The California Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected a bid to freeze last month's ruling legalizing gay marriage, paving the way for same-sex couples to begin walking down the aisle as soon as June 17. Moving swiftly to remove legal uncertainty, the court turned away a request from gay marriage foes to stay the ruling until after the November election, when voters will consider a ballot measure ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 4, 2008
Lupas to hear challenges to juvenile court rulings today
Jun. 4--Amy Swartley left a Luzerne County courtroom in tears last September after the county's president judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., sentenced her 14-year-old son, Phillip, to an indefinite term at Glen Mills, a residential school for troubled boys located outside of Philadelphia. Phillip, a slender boy, barely 5 feet tall and less than 100 pounds, admitted his crime before being shackled ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 4, 2008
Ohio Supreme Court declines to hear appeal for smoking ban exemptions
Jun. 4--COLUMBUS -- Most private clubs like Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion, and Elks must remain off-limits to smokers because of a decision Wednesday by the Ohio Supreme Court. The high court refused to hear the Ohio Department of Health's appeal of last year's lower court ruling that struck down the department's attempt to write an exemption for some clubs into the statewide ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 4, 2008
Ciavarella-Powell friendship jeopardizes verdict
Jun. 4--A $3.4 million legal malpractice verdict in Luzerne County President Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr.'s courtroom should be overturned because the judge failed to reveal his business ties to the winning law firm in the case, according to a motion filed Tuesday in county court. At the beginning of the February jury trial, in response to questions from a defense attorney, Ciavarella denied ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 4, 2008
State's high court to rule on unpaid sewer bills
Jun. 4--The Indiana Supreme Court will make the final ruling in a lawsuit filed that challenges Jeffersonville's right to collect renters' unpaid sewer bills from their landlords. Pinnacle Properties Development Group LLC sued the city's Sanitary Sewer Board in December 2005, after numerous tenants' unpaid bills were transferred into the company's name when the bills were 60 or more days past ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 4, 2008
Texas' top criminal court creates unit to study justice system
Jun. 4--In reaction to the growing number of wrongful convictions uncovered across the state, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals announced Wednesday that it is creating a Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit to investigate and address weaknesses in the criminal justice system. Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Barbara Hervey said the 12-member unit will include members of the Texas ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 4, 2008
Walgreens Pays $35 Million, Settles Pharmacist-Whistleblower Qui Tam Drug Switching Allegations
Third National Pharmacy Settles Drug Switching Allegations; $120 Million Total Recovered For Federal and State Taxpayers This complete Settlement News Release is available at http://www.PharmacyFraudSettlement.com CHICAGO, June 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Walgreens today became the third national pharmacy to settle drug switching allegations exposed by a ...
PR Newswire - Jun 4, 2008
Juvenile parolee rights suit settled
Jun. 4--Inmates rights lawyers and the state settled a lawsuit today that will grant juveniles parolee rights already extended to adults. Under terms of the federal court stipulation, youthful offenders will have the right to a lawyer during parole revocation proceedings, to a probable cause hearing 13 days from the time a hold was placed on them, and to a full revocation hearing within 35 days. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 4, 2008
Hunter who shot piebald may inspire change
Jun. 4--INDIAN RIVER -- John Ingersoll had no idea that shooting a rare "piebald" deer would lead to years of battles with state wildlife officials and some of his neighbors. The Indian River resident's case is the catalyst for a proposed change in Michigan hunting laws that would remove protection for albino and other genetically mutated all-white deer. The Natural Resources Commission will ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 4, 2008
OPINION: When the nominating process damages the candidates
Jun. 5--With the close of a long and winding primary season, the temptation for Democrats will be to celebrate the product (a presumptive nominee, Barack Obama) and forget about the process. They shouldn't. Even if Hillary Clinton says it's OK to begin the campaign against John McCain immediately, Democrats should not lose sight of how they have made their nominating process a lot more difficult ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Texas Democrats have big tasks at convention
Jun. 5--AUSTIN -- When Texas Democrats start arriving in Austin today for their much-anticipated state convention this weekend -- the first major Democratic gathering in the country after the presidential primaries -- they have two distinct goals: -- Harness the explosive energy from the presidential race to turn the tide on state and local races that they hope to win back from Republicans.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
OPINION: Will this be your poison?
Jun. 5--Today is World Environment Day. Tell that to SC Sarin, a resident of Delhi's Okhla area, and he will give you a wry smile. For him, June 5 is one of those days when everyone will walk and talk green but it will be business as usual. The reason for Mr Sarin's cynicism is not far to seek: he and his neighbours are fighting a battle against the Municipal Corporation of Delhi's (MCD) decision ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 5, 2008
Percy Walton execution set for Tuesday
Jun. 4--Convicted killer Percy Lavar Walton is set to be put to death Tuesday and the Virginia Department of Corrections says preparations for the execution are already under way. "That's a realistic date for us as far as the Department of Corrections is concerned," said Larry Traylor, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections. A spokesman for Gov. Timothy M.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 4, 2008
Ex-Jamestown police officer takes misdemeanor plea
Jun. 4--A former Jamestown police officer offered an Alford Plea on Tuesday to a single misdemeanor charge of official misconduct relating to an alleged February 2004 on-the-job incident involving a woman he stopped, according to the special prosecutor in Chautauqua County. Michael J. Watson was advised by State Supreme Court Justice Richard C. Kloch that he would not be sentenced to jail in the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 4, 2008
Deane clarifies immigration policy
Jun. 4--Black, brown, white or otherwise--no matter the skin tone or ethnic background, if you're arrested in Prince William County, your immigration status will be checked. That's the enforcement intent of police, as explained by police Chief Charlie T. Deane in a press conference Tuesday, just minutes after he presented a brief immigration policy update to supervisors at the McCoart ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 4, 2008
Arrest, acquittal drives Rammell: Senate candidate stops in Twin Falls
Jun. 4--As an independent vying for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Larry Craig, Rex Rammell shares at least one common experience with the retiring senator: an embarrassing public arrest. Rammell, 47, said his 2006 arrest by local authorities in eastern Idaho violated the spirit of America, and was ultimately an impetus for his Senate run. Craig's infamous bathroom arrest, however, was ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 4, 2008
CASA* Issued the Following Press Release Regarding Seven Former Secretaries of Health Demanding Congress Correct Serious Flaw in Proposed Bill and Ban Menthol-Flavored Cigarettes
CASA* Issued the Following Press Release CASA* Issued the Following Press Release Regarding Seven Former Secretaries of Health Demanding Congress Correct Serious Flaw in Proposed Bill and Ban Menthol-Flavored Cigarettes. Seven former Secretaries of Health, Education, and Welfare and Health and Human Services -- Joseph A. Califano, Jr. (1977-1979), Louis W. Sullivan, M.D.
MarketWire - Jun 4, 2008
'Unsung heroes' of Fla. government recognized with Davis Awards
The movies have the Oscars, TV the Emmys, Broadway the Tonys and Tallahassee has the Prudential Davis Productivity Awards to annually honor stellar performances by state employees. State employees didn't get pay raises, and some of their jobs may soon be in jeopardy. But at the Civic Center on Tuesday night, the top brass of state government and leaders in the business community turned out to ...
Florida Today - Jun 4, 2008
Joplin council to move ahead with pension-fund rescue
Jun. 4--Members of Joplin's Police and Firemen's Pension Fund have voted in favor of a provision to change benefits for new employees to try to avert a lawsuit against city taxpayers over the plan's funding level. An advisory vote was taken during May, with firefighters, police officers and retirees voting 126-24 in favor of changing the plan. The City Council on Monday night gave the city's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 4, 2008
Supreme Court limits money laundering law
WASHINGTON Hiding $81,000 in cash under the floorboard of a car and driving toward Mexico is not enough to prove the driver was guilty of money laundering, the Supreme Court ruled Monday. Instead, the court said, prosecutors must also prove the driver was traveling to Mexico for the purpose of hiding the true source of the funds. This was one of a pair of decisions handed down Monday that could ...
KWBP - Jun 3, 2008
LI woman sues over in-flight peanuts
Jun. 3--Tehmina Haque, an East Setauket ophthalmologist, boarded American Airlines Flight 133 with more than the usual flying jitters last April when she walked onto the plane with her 4-year-old son, Ryahn, who is allergic to a common flight-time snack: peanuts. Haque claims in a lawsuit that she was assured several times -- from the day she booked the flight in February to the moment she ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 3, 2008
Fight over feeding tube reminiscent of Schiavo case
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.-A Florida woman put on a feeding tube after she had a stroke is at the center of a court case that is similar to the lengthy legal dispute over the fate of Terri Schiavo. Karen Weber, 57, has been periodically in a nursing home and a hospital in Okeechobee since her December stroke. Much like the Schiavo case, Weber's husband and mother cannot agree how alert she is and ...
Macro World Investor - Jun 3, 2008
Hyundai chief handed 3-year suspended sentence
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's high court on Tuesday gave Hyundai Motor Group chief Chung Mong-koo a suspended three-year sentence for fraud, duplicating an earlier ruling and keeping him out of jail despite pressure to crack down hard on corruption at the country's top firms. The ruling could fan a long-running debate on the powerful and controversial 'chaebol', the family-run conglomerates ...
Reuters India - Jun 3, 2008
Calgary bucks trend of litigators in law firms
CALGARY Calgary's crawling with litigators. They make up almost half of Bennett Jones, the city's heftiest law firm however you wish to define heft. They're thick on the ground at virtually every indigenous Calgary firm: Burnet Duckworth & Palmer, Macleod Dixon, Fraser Milner Casgrain, Borden Ladner Gervais the list goes on. The legal powerhouses of Bay Street will tell you this ...
Globe and Mail - Jun 3, 2008
BRIEF: Ex-legal partner of Pawlenty's joins high court as its leader
Jun. 3--TODAY: The swearing-in of Eric Magnuson as Minnesota's next chief justice marks the first time since the 1930s that someone other than a current or former Supreme Court associate justice has led the high court. Magnuson's swearing-in is scheduled for 3 p.m. today at Landmark Center in St. Paul. HIS SELECTION: Magnuson, 57, was appointed in March by Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 3, 2008
Shareholder lawsuit claims Yahoo derailed Microsoft bid
Yahoo has lost a battle to keep information about its operations confidential after a judge decided to unseal documents filed by shareholders suing the company over its handling of Microsoft's . Delaware Chancery Court Judge William Chandler ruled on Monday that the court shouldn't keep documents such as the plaintiff's complaint under seal, despite Yahoo's arguments to the contrary.
ITworld.com - Jun 3, 2008
Does the Second Amendment Provide the Right to Bear Arms? U.S. Adults Think So
ROCHESTER, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In anticipation of the U.S. Supreme Court decision concerning the Second Amendment expected at some point this month, finds that by a margin of over two to one, more U.S. adults believe that the Second Amendment supports an individual's right to bear arms. Furthermore, the survey also finds that more of the U.S. public continues to favor stricter gun control. ...
Yahoo! Canada - Jun 3, 2008
Sharper Image Closing All Stores
Ionic Breeze Suit Drives Sharper Image into Bankruptcy Air Purifiers Under Scrutiny Again Air Cleaners of Doubtful Value Ionizing Air Cleaners Can Cause Problems Sharper Image Loses First Amendment Case Against Consumers Union --- Complaints Oreck EcoQuest Alpine Upscale retailer Sharper Image is closing all of its retail stores and liquidating $50 million in ...
Consumer Affairs - Jun 3, 2008
Lawsuit alleges bias at H&R Block, Option One
KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ Massachusetts' attorney general Tuesday accused H&R Block Inc. and its former Option One Mortgage Corp. subsidiary of discriminating against black and Latino borrowers as it made allegedly predatory loans to them. Block, based in Kansas City, had not seen a copy of the lawsuit late Tuesday and could not comment, company spokeswoman Nancy Mays said.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 3, 2008
TSX runs ahead on tech, base metals; NY weak despite Bernanke reassurance
TORONTO - Higher technology and base metals stocks helped the Toronto stock market to a modest advance late Tuesday morning. New York markets found it tough to make gains stick as investors took in some surprisingly good economic data, an assessment from U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke that the second half of the year should bring 'somewhat better economic conditions' and General ...
News 1130 - Jun 3, 2008
No appeal in campaign-finance ruling
Jun. 3--State Attorney General Tom Corbett has quietly surrendered in a legal dispute that undermines Pennsylvania's ban on corporate campaign contributions. In a U.S. District Court filing yesterday, Corbett agreed not to appeal a federal judge's ruling that a nonprofit corporation in Virginia acted legally in spending $1.2 million to promote a candidate for the state Supreme Court, Maureen ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 3, 2008
Drugs Used in Lethal Injections Criticized for Inflicting Severe Pain
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court s April ruling that Kentucky s use of lethal injection for executions does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment, states that had been holding off on executions are moving forward, using the same three-drug cocktail that had been challenged in Kentucky. The Kentucky case, Baze v. Rees, narrowly focused on the constitutionality of the three-drug ...
Nurse.com - Jun 3, 2008
Price tag in polygamist case: $7 million
The $7 million includes removing the kids, then returning them to their families The figure doesn't include $500,000 in costs incurred by local governments High court ruled that state didn't have enough evidence to support abuse allegations CNN (CNN) -- Removing 460 children from a polygamist sect compound and then reuniting them with their families will cost Texas $7 million, according to the ...
CNN - Jun 3, 2008
Smithfield plaintiffs want partial consolidation of cases
Jun. 3--Missouri residents suing Smithfield Foods Inc. over the stench from hog farms have asked a court to partially consolidate the cases, overturning its earlier decision. The request filed by the lawyers representing about 275 plaintiffs cites in part a document made public on April 24 by The Kansas City Star that was sent inadvertently in an e-mail. That document, also sent to Smithfield's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 3, 2008
Gov't to draft amendment to Landlords and Tenants Law, post it online
Jun. 3--AMMAN -- Prime Minister Nader Dahabi on Tuesday said the government will draft an amendment to the controversial Landlords and Tenants Law and post it on the web as part of a national dialogue on the sensitive issue, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported yesterday. He made the remarks at a meeting attended by Senate President Zeid Rifai, Lower House Speaker Abdul Hadi Majali, and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 3, 2008
Joseph A. Califano Jr.: Time to give Lyndon Johnson his due
John Edwards made reducing poverty a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. Yet he never mentioned Lyndon Johnson, the first -- and only -- president to declare war on poverty and sharply reduce it. Recounting the achievements of Democratic presidents, Barack Obama cites Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy -- but not LBJ, the president responsible for the laws that gave him (and ...
Capital Times - Jun 3, 2008
Integration is no longer Seattle school district's top priority
Jun. 3--When it came to voluntary school-integration efforts in the late 1970s, Seattle Public Schools was at the forefront. In 1978, Seattle became the first large urban district in the nation to undertake a desegregation plan without a court order to do so. Today, however, Seattle district leaders appear resigned to living with the resegregation that's occurred over the past three decades. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 3, 2008
Distribution Management Services, Inc. ("DMGS") Update on Company's Argentina Mining Operation
Distribution Management Services, Inc. Distribution Management Services, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: DMGS) announced today that the Company has received a favorable ruling for a judgment of specific performance from the recent court case in Florida with regards to protecting the Company's ownership claims to the Argentina Mining Operations. The Company has heretofore employed legal counsel in Argentina ...
MarketWire - Jun 3, 2008
Insulet Announces Development Agreement for the First Non-Diabetes Drug Delivery Application for the OmniPod System
BEDFORD, Mass., June 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Insulet Corporation (Nasdaq: PODD), a leader in wearable insulin pump technology with its OmniPod(R) Insulin Management System, today announced an agreement with Ferring Pharmaceuticals, of Saint Prex, Switzerland, to develop the OmniPod System for the delivery of a Ferring drug. This is Insulet's first development agreement for a non-diabetes drug ...
Calibre Macro World - Jun 3, 2008
Moving Ga. border would dry up tourism in 2 towns
COPPERHILL, Tenn. Patrons at Patrick's Pub and Grill drink their beer in Tennessee, but a walk to the restroom in the same building takes them across the state line to a dry county in Georgia. But as Georgia eyes a longshot bid to move its state line north to the Tennessee River in pursuit of water for drought-stricken Atlanta, residents fear this Appalachian tourist town and its bars would be ...
Polkonline/News Chief - Jun 3, 2008
Compensation for dead lawyer's wife
Jun. 3--NEW DELHI -- The Uttar Pradesh Government on Monday told the Supreme Court that it would give monetary compensation and consider offering a job to the wife of advocate Shrikant Awasthi, who died in judicial custody last month after being sent to jail for contempt of court by the Allahabad High Court. During the hearing of a PIL seeking action against those involved in Awasthi's custodial ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 3, 2008
Gay marriage measure qualifies for November ballot
Jun. 3--California voters will have a chance to overturn the recent state Supreme Court decision to legalize gay marriage just five months from now, as the secretary of state certified a measure to define marriage as "between a man and a woman" for the November ballot. Proponents of the measure submitted more than 1.1 million signatures to qualify for the general election ballot.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 3, 2008
McGuire defense: I'm a doctor, not an accountant: The former UnitedHealth CEO's defense: He was a doctor, not a lawyer or an accountant.
Jun. 3--A stock-option scandal cost Dr. William McGuire one of the top health care jobs in the nation. Now he says he was simply following the questionable advice of his top legal and financial advisers. McGuire's lawyers are expected to argue later this month that the former CEO of UnitedHealth Group relied on others to assess the legality and appropriateness of backdated stock options granted ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 3, 2008
Ex-NYSE chief's pay battle goes back to court
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The future of the long-running legal battle over former New York Stock Exchange chairman Richard Grasso's $187.5 million compensation package will be weighed by the state's highest court on Tuesday. In arguments before the New York Court of Appeals in Albany, lawyers for the ex-exchange boss will argue that his pay was fair and he should be allowed to keep it.
Yahoo! Canada - Jun 2, 2008
Case could test N.J.'s layoff-warning law
After 21 years of driving a truck for Jevic Transportation Inc., the end for Harry Whitworth was swift. The Delanco company abruptly shut down May 19 and laid off Whitworth, 58, along with more than 1,000 other workers, ending their health insurance with only a few hours' notice. His thoughts went to his wife, Marsha, who would learn that afternoon that the cancer in her lymph nodes had grown. ...
Philadelphia Inquirer - Jun 2, 2008
Corrections confirms its execution team is in place
Jun. 2--ST. LOUIS -- Missouri appears ready to resume executions for the first time in nearly three years. The Missouri Supreme Court said late Friday it will set dates for two men in "due course" while the Department of Corrections confirmed Monday for the first time that its execution team is in place. "Our execution team is in place and we're ready to go," Corrections spokesman Brian ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 2, 2008
Medical records proposes passes
Link : Examples of marketing materials received by Albertson's Pharmacy Customers A drug company stands to benefit from proposed state legislation that could invalidate a class-action invasion of privacy lawsuit against it. The bill, introduced by state Sen. Ron Calderon, D-Montebello, passed through the Senate on Thursday. It allows pharmacies to partner with drug companies to send out letters ...
Pasadena Star News - Jun 2, 2008
Federal appeals court slates nursing home case for July 8
NEW ORLEANS - A federal appeals court is scheduled to hear arguments in a lawsuit brought by a Brandon nursing home that contends its insurer has no legal grounds to back out of defending it in a wrongful death case. The insurer, Certain Underwriters at Lloyd's of London, contends that once an employee of the nursing home staff pleaded guilty in the death of a patient, it had no obligation to ...
Clarion-Ledger - Jun 2, 2008
Antitrust: A Not-So-Rough Ride
Subscribe to BusinessWeek A fresh round of merger and acquisition headlines has brought home a clear point: Many U.S. industries are consolidating. With the prospect of fewer, and more powerful, players in many sectors, shouldn't antitrust alarm bells be going off in Washington? The 'deal flow,' as financial pros like to call it, is regaining momentum after a brief credit crunch-induced hiatus. ...
WBAL Channel - Jun 2, 2008
GENERAL ASSEMBLYTime running out for new laws: Lawmakers prepare for governor's vetoes in last week of session
Jun. 2--State lawmakers, entering the final week of the session Tuesday, are taking stock of the year's successes and defeats and prepping to tackle Gov. Mark Sanford's vetoes. "For all of the bickering and fighting and naysayers, I think we're going to look back and realize we've had a good session," said Rep. Jim Merrill, House Majority Leader. Those Republican triumphs include an immigration ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 2, 2008
A lifetime of law: Spear is oldest member of Bay bar
Jun. 2--PANAMA CITY -- Mercer Spear can be forgiven for not being able to recall exactly why he became a lawyer 73 years ago. Sitting down with a reporter in the Panama City home he has lived in for 58 years, Spear, who will turn 99 in July and is Bay County's oldest bar member, remembered his days as a boy in Apalachicola and being drawn to the courthouse and trials.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 2, 2008
Supreme Court justice talks at Rotary
Jun. 2--Missouri's newest Supreme Court judge was in Sedalia on a mission to educate Monday. Saying she herself was "still learning the ropes," Judge Patricia Breckenridge spoke to about 70 Sedalia Rotarians on the state's justice system at a lunch meeting at the Best Western State Fair Inn. Breckenridge said educating people on the inner workings of the justice system is an important role.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 2, 2008
EchoStar Sues TiVo in Effort to Buy Time
Apparently EchoStar (DISH) has been losing customers over the fact that their recent loss to TiVo (TIVO) in an appeals court has people thinking that they will have to turn off their DVRs. Dish has appealed their recent loss all the way to the Supreme Court, but I seriously doubt that the Supreme Court is going to hear their case. Last ditch desperation from a company trying to buy time.
Seeking Alpha - Jun 2, 2008
County attorney says State Bar's complaints politically motivated: Thomas claims group is leading organized campaign
Jun. 2--The first letter appeared at the eighth-floor office of Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas in October. It was the kind of letter no lawyer likes to get. "Information concerning your professional conduct has come to the attention of the State Bar," it said. "A copy of the information is enclosed." What followed was a mishmash of newspaper articles, court documents and letters between ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Jun 2, 2008
Nalco Announces Price Increase to the Paper Industry in North America
(PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Nalco Company (NYSE:NLC - News), the leading provider of integrated water treatment and process improvement services, chemicals and equipment programs for industrial and institutional applications, is implementing an additional price increase to the Paper industry in North America, effective July 1, 2008. Nalco will also implement price increases in other regions of the world. ...
PrimeNewswire via Yahoo! - Jun 2, 2008
King & Spalding Adds 13 Lawyers to Its Nationally Ranked Healthcare Practice
In a major expansion of its In a major expansion of its nationally recognized healthcare practice, King & Spalding announced today the arrival of a group of 13 healthcare lawyers, including six partners, to the firm's Houston and Washington, D.C., offices. Joining King & Spalding as partners are Dennis M. Barry, Christopher L. Keough and Joseph E. Lynch in Washington, D.C., and Gary W. ...
MarketWire - Jun 2, 2008
What's in a name? If it's HomeBanc, confusion
At a time of turmoil in the home mortgage industry, what more could add to the morass of bankruptcy, merger and confusion? Within the glass and concrete valleys of the Rocky Point office complexes in Tampa, there are the ashes of two different HomeBanc mortgage lenders, and a third living on with resurrected branding. The story begins with the original HomeBanc, an Atlanta company that, at its ...
St. Petersburg Times - Jun 2, 2008
The Problem With Conservatism Is Conservatism
George Packer's New Yorker piece, 'The Fall of Conservatism,' and the reactions to it among leading thinkers on the right leave little doubt that the patient under scrutiny is indeed gravely ill. But the wide assortment of sometimes contradictory diagnoses and cures suggested by various despondent conservatives in Packer's article and elsewhere all seem to miss the central problem: The main idea ...
American Prospect - Jun 2, 2008
W.Va. appeals refusals may reveal judicial gap
By LAWRENCE MESSINA CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) -- The state Supreme Court has supplied ammo to the ongoing battle over West Virginia's business climate and judicial system by refusing last month to accept appeals of a pair of civil verdicts together worth more than $664 million. But parties on both sides of those debates question whether either case fits neatly into the narrative that casts the ...
Daily News-Record - Jun 1, 2008
Law professor wants to use courts to fight global warming
University of Oregon law professor Mary Wood has found a new use for the old legal doctrine of the public trust: Suing the government to force action on climate change. Corvallis Gazette-Times EUGENE University of Oregon law professor Mary Wood is tired of waiting for government officials to take action on global warming. So she s devised a new legal tool to hurry them up.
Albany Democrat-Herald - Jun 1, 2008
After raid, other polygamists fearful
The Arizona Republic CENTENNIAL PARK - Like many polygamous residents along the Arizona Strip, Marvin Dockstader is adding to his house, more than doubling its size to make room for wives and children. He admits being nervous about the future. Authorities in Texas rounded up members of a polygamous sect in April, taking custody of more than 400 children. The Senate majority leader called for ...
Arizona Republic - Jun 1, 2008
Prince William officers given choice to check immigration status
Congress weighs more funding for jailing of illegal immigrants 36 days ago: Silver Spring jobs firm pleads guilty to immigration fraud 57 days ago: Use money transfers to stop illegal immigrants 64 days ago: $2B plan would let feds track illegals in prison 94 days ago: The City to publicize its status as sanctuary for illegal immigrants 120 days ago: Lawmakers seek to study economic impact of ...
Examiner-WashingtonDC - Jun 1, 2008
Playbook: 'This is Barack's party now'
TUESDAY LOOKAHEAD -- Obama at his avail in Aberdeen, S.D., last evening: We are getting close to the number that will give us the nomination. And if we ve hit that number on Tuesday night we will announce that and I think even if we don't, this is the end of the primary season. And I think it's very important for us to pivot and focus on the clear contrast that will exist between Democrats ...
The Politico - Jun 1, 2008
Many of LA river's tributaries could lose protections
The Los Angeles River has been lined in concrete, sullied with chemicals, the scene of many a movie car chase and dismissed as a glorified storm drain. Now comes another indignity: The river no longer qualifies as a full-fledged navigable waterway, according to a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers draft ruling. Advocates for the river disagree and worry the designation could weaken federal protections ...
Sacramento Bee - Jun 1, 2008
Vioxx ruling: No two-fers for plaintiffs
For Merck, every little bit helps. For plaintiffs lawyers, not so good. With the June 30 deadline fast approaching for plaintiffs to join the $4.85 billion settlement of Vioxx claims, the company was spared about $13 million in two lawsuits by an Appellate Division ruling last week. Along the way, the court in McDarby v. Merck & Co. made some law that plaintiffs personal injury attorneys are ...
New Jersey Lawyer Online - Jun 1, 2008
Whither Article 6 of the constitution?
Dr Faqir Hussain A major challenge facing the nation is the prevalence of the culture of impunity with regard to a most heinous crime i.e. high treason. The offence is created by the country's supreme law i.e. the Constitution (Art 6) and is punishable with death or imprisonment for life under the High Treason (Punishment) Act 1973. Neither the perpetrator of the crime nor his aids/collaborators ...
The News International - Jun 1, 2008
Consumers win in TransUnion credit reporting settlement
More than 160 million Americans would be able to learn their all-important credit scores at no charge -- and with no strings attached -- under a settlement by credit reporting giant TransUnion Corp. of a long-running class-action lawsuit. The agreement would entitle consumers to at least six months of a TransUnion monitoring service, giving them access to the latest information in their credit ...
Pittsburgh Tribune Review - Jun 1, 2008
Polar bear legal fight likely, oil industry says
JUNEAU, Alaska - The lawyers aren't clearing their calendars just yet, but the oil industry is bracing for some courtroom battles to maintain its stake in Alaska's oil-rich fields now that the Interior Department has listed polar bears as a threatened species.About 15 percent of the nation's oil is being produced in Alaska, and soaring prices for the commodity are pushing companies to look ...
Missoulian - Jun 1, 2008
Immigration raid spurs calls for action vs. owners
After the biggest immigration raid in U.S. history, hundreds of workers have been sentenced but not one company official as yet faces any charges something critics say is typical of a federal government that is tough on employees but easy on owners. Worker advocates and lawmakers say the fact that nearly 400 workers were arrested in the May 12 raid at the Agriprocessors Inc.
San Francisco Chronicle - Jun 1, 2008
Iraq cites problems with US security pact
BAGHDAD - Iraq's chief spokesman acknowledged differences with the United States over a proposed long-term security agreement and pledged on Sunday that the government will protect Iraqi sovereignty in ongoing talks with the Americans.Australia became the latest member of the U.S.-led coalition to pull combat soldiers from Iraq, fulfilling an election promise that helped sweep Prime Minister ...
Rhinelander Daily News - Jun 1, 2008
Hearing set on fees for switching carriers
WASHINGTON A planned federal hearing on penalties that cell phone users pay for canceling their contracts early may be expanded to include a discussion of similar fees for ending cable and Internet services ahead of schedule, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission said in an interview. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said the June 12 hearing on early- termination fees will be ...
Buffalo News - Jun 1, 2008
What Did the Democrats Decide to Do About Florida and Michigan?
Everyone leads with the Democratic Party deciding it will seat all Florida and Michigan delegates at the party's convention this August, but it will grant those delegates only half a vote each. The decision nets Clinton 24 total votes at the convention and increases the number of votes needed to win the nomination to 2,118. To varying degrees, all the papers say the compromise is too little, too ...
Slate Magazine - Jun 1, 2008
N.C. needs property protection
This summer, North Carolinians will learn whether the state Senate cares more about citizens or about protecting the government s power to abuse eminent domain. In May 2007, the House overwhelmingly took the side of citizens by passing a constitutional amendment to protect against eminent domain abuse. The vote was 104-15 in favor of the amendment. Now it s the Senate s turn to support ...
Fayetteville Online - Jun 1, 2008
Courtroom A
Attorneys came to court with a workable plan. The mothers' lawyers agreed. The state attorneys agreed. Other attorneys seemed to find it workable. Some 450 FLDS children would begin the journey home on Monday as long as their parents agreed to: Sign affidavits affirming parentage Be photographed with their children Not let their children travel out of Texas for 90 days Take parenting classes, ...
Salt Lake Tribune - Jun 1, 2008
Texas Supreme Court rules children should be returned to polygamist families
AUSTIN _ In a stinging rebuke to the agency charged with protecting youngsters, the Texas Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that Child Protective Services overreached its authority when it seized more than 460 youngsters from a polygamist outpost near Eldorado last month. The much-awaited ruling chides the agency for failing to pursue less drastic remedies to ensure that the children at the YFZ ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 29, 2008
New York to recognize out-of-state gay marriage
Same-sex marriages legally performed elsewhere will be recognized in New York in response to a state court ruling this year, Gov. David Paterson's spokeswoman said Wednesday.State agencies, including those governing insurance and health care, must immediately change policies and regulations to make sure 'spouse,' 'husband' and 'wife' are clearly understood to include gay couples, according to a ...
Newsday - May 29, 2008
Fox News employee sues over workplace bedbug bites
NEW YORK - A Fox News employee sued the landlord of her company's office building on Thursday, claiming she got bedbug bites at work. Jane Clark, a satellite feed coordinator, says in a lawsuit filed Thursday in Manhattan's state Supreme Court that she picked up the bugs in the mid-Manhattan tower that houses the New York Post and the Fox News Channel. Clark, 37, says the critter encounter last ...
Canoe Money - May 30, 2008
Texas A&M officials can't claim immunity in bonfire case, court says
May 29--Texas A&M administrators, although acting in the course and scope of their jobs, can be sued individually for the events leading up to the 1999 collapse of the 59-foot-tall bonfire stack that killed 12 people and injured 27 others, a state appeals court ruled. The 10th Court of Appeals in Waco affirmed a district court ruling that clears the way for the case to go to trial in Brazos ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 29, 2008
N.J., Texas courts reverse verdicts in Vioxx cases
NEWARK, N.J. - Appeals courts in New Jersey and Texas on Thursday scrapped verdicts against the drugmaker Merck & Co. Inc. stemming from some of the earliest trials involving its once popular painkiller Vioxx. A Texas court reversed a $26 million verdict against the drug company stemming from the first trial. The court found no evidence that Robert Ernst suffered a fatal heart problem from a ...
Yahoo! News - May 29, 2008
With gas prices soaring, oil industry rife with more lawsuits than ever centering on trade secrets
Labor and employment attorneys say higher gasoline prices are leading to hotter competition among domestic oil and gas companies, which are aggressively going after each other's top talent. Consequently, lawyers say lawsuits are bubbling up, particularly in Texas, as companies claim their top-notch workers are unlawfully being swiped by rivals, either for their talent, their secrets or both.
Daily Business Review - May 29, 2008
Disabled inmates subjected to shocking conditions in Los Angeles County jails, advocates say
For several hours, as he waited to get booked for petty theft at the Los Angeles County Jail in October, Peter Johnson told deputies he needed to go to the restroom.Although other inmates were free to use the facilities, Johnson -- a paraplegic -- was told there were none in the area equipped to accommodate the physically disabled. Guards, he said, seemed indifferent to his plight, telling him he ...
Los Angeles Times - May 29, 2008
Group threatens to sue state over Canada lynx
May 29--A wildlife advocacy group is renewing legal threats against the state of Maine, claiming rules enacted last year to prevent accidental trapping of Canada lynx have failed to protect the threatened wildcats. The Wildlife Alliance of Maine notified state officials on Wednesday that it plans to file suit in federal court within 60 days unless additional steps are taken to protect the lynx. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 29, 2008
Court revives Halliburton suit
NATION DIGEST LOUISIANA Court revives Halliburton lawsuit NEW ORLEANS A federal appeals court has revived lawsuits against military contractors filed by relatives of civilian truck drivers killed in Iraq. Truckers and their families sued Halliburton and its former subsidiary, KBR Inc., over a deadly ambush on April 9, 2004, that killed six KBR drivers and wounded others.
Austin American Statesman - May 29, 2008
Prez cancels Manali visit
Manali today was cancelled. Mandi, May 29 IPH minister Ravinder Ravi today said the government would construct the lift drinking water scheme for the Tungasigarh in Chachiot and would complete it within a year. In all IPH schemes worth Rs 10 crore are underway in the Chachiot in the current year, he added. Hamirpur, May 29 State vice-president of the Himachal Pradesh Congress Committee (HPCC) ...
The Tribune - May 29, 2008
Fear of crime brings gates to some communities
Open access gate at the Foote Homes off Vance is directly across the street from the Clayborne public housing that is another gated community. It sometimes begins with a spate of burglaries, or lately, even strange cars driving through a neighborhood. Then the telephone rings at Automatic Gates Construction Co. in Bartlett, or another firm like it. Residents want to explore whether their ...
Commercial Appeal - May 29, 2008
Judge won't overturn decision not to allow witness to testify in Planned Parenthood case
A Topeka judge again was prohibited from testifying in the criminal case against Planned Parenthood in Overland Park. Johnson County District Court Judge Stephen Tatum declined Tuesday to overturn a Kansas Supreme Court ruling not allowing Shawnee County District Court Judge Richard Anderson from testifying. 'I don't tell the (Kansas) Supreme Court what to do,' he said.
Olathe News - May 29, 2008
Tories set nomination process for new Supreme Court judge
OTTAWA - MPs from all parties will have a role in deciding the next appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper will still get the final say under a nomination process adopted by the Conservative government. It also appears that lawyers, judges and members of the general public, while also being included in the process, could have more limited input than they did ...
Q97.5 EZ Rock - May 29, 2008
Ridley Inc.: Quebec Court Approves Settlement Agreement in BSE Class Action Lawsuits
In a decision released May 28 the Quebec Superior Court approved the settlement agreement entered into by Ridley Inc. (TSX: RCL) and the representative plaintiffs in the BSE class action lawsuits. While affecting only the Quebec lawsuit, the Quebec court's order is a significant step toward final resolution of the pending BSE cases against Ridley. In a decision released May 28 the Quebec ...
MarketWire - May 29, 2008
Bradbury eyes future reforms after loss
May 29--Idaho judges are known for getting appointed and then sticking on the bench without facing challengers at the next election. That trend was nearly bucked Tuesday night when incumbent Supreme Court Justice Joel Horton barely withstood a challenge from 2nd District Judge John Bradbury by a fraction of a percentage point. His narrow loss shows Idahoans want change in their court system, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 29, 2008
Holzer Holzer & Fistel, LLC Announces That a Shareholder Class Action Has Been Filed Against Downey Financial Corporation (NYSE: DSL)
A shareholder class action lawsuit has been filed in the United States District Court for the Central District of California against Downey Financial Corporation ('Downey ' or the 'Company') (NYSE: DSL) and certain of its officers and directors on behalf of purchasers of Downey common stock, who purchased or sold between October 16, 2006 and March 14, 2008, inclusive (the 'Class Period').
Earthtimes.org - May 29, 2008
Clutch Group CEO: Subprime Shines Light on Legal Outsourcing
The idea that companies or law firms would turn to legal outsourcing providers for help during busy season seems foreign to many. But Abhi Shah, chief executive officer of legal services provider the Clutch Group, says the subprime crisis is shining a new light on the outsourcing of legal services. Whether it's corporate in-house counsel defending a company against a class action lawsuit or law ...
DSNews.com - May 29, 2008
Scouts sue city to stay in $1 HQ
May 28--Mayor Nutter said yesterday that he found it "astounding" that the Philadelphia Boy Scouts chapter would "have the audacity" to sue the city. The local chapter sued the city in federal court late Friday to prevent being evicted from its city-owned headquarters or being charged $200,000 a year in rent. The local Boy Scouts chapter -- known as the Cradle of Liberty Council, Inc.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 28, 2008
Tories set nomination process for new Supreme Court judge
OTTAWA - MPs from all parties will have a role in deciding the next appointment to the Supreme Court of Canada, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper will still get the final say under a nomination process adopted by the Conservative government. It also appears that lawyers, judges and members of the general public, while also being included in the process, could have more limited input than they did ...
Globe and Mail - May 28, 2008
Ex-wife must support man's lifestyle: High court backs $2,000 a month in divorce case
May 28--A Walworth County woman will have to pay her ex-husband $2,000 a month for the next 10 years, even though he earns $85,000 a year, so that he can continue living the opulent lifestyle the couple shared when they were married, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled. According to court records: Tony and Rose Steinmann of Delavan were married in 1994 and divorced a decade later.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 28, 2008
Pakistan's Sharif wants Musharraf ousted and tried
Pakistan's Sharif wants Musharraf ousted and tried By ASIF SHAHZAD Associated Press Writer LAHORE, Pakistan A Pakistani leader stepped up the pressure on President Pervez Musharraf Wednesday, branding him a "traitor" and claiming that the ruling coalition had agreed to oust the former army strongman. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif leads the second-largest party in a coalition that took power ...
Marshall News Messenger - May 28, 2008
How should districts handle teachers who go wild on the Web?
Posted by: Editor Jay Gene Policinski First Ammendment Center Free expression is an essential guarantee of the First Amendment the freedom to speak and write as we will, without censorship by the government. But the freedom to express one s self doesn t necessarily provide a buffer against the reaction to what is said or written. For public employees like schoolteachers, that s ...
Kanabec County Times Online - May 28, 2008
School Voucher Plan Faces Challenge From Teachers
May 28--TALLAHASSEE -- Even as they fretted over billions of dollars in budget cuts, state lawmakers voted this spring to spend $27 million to help more poor children attend private schools. A handful of Democrats as well as Republicans voted for the bill, and with relatively little debate. But that calm may have only prefaced a coming political storm over what could be a historic comeback for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 28, 2008
The Libertarian Dark Horse: An Exclusive Interview with Ron Paul
Ron Paul? asked many Americans over the course of the past year. The 70 year old, Texas Congressmans name and face adorned web pages, blogs, email spams, posters and pamphlets throughout the nation. Out of nowhere, the Republican Presidential candidate appeared on television for the Primary debates giving blunt, hard hitting, no nonsense answers and lacerating jabs.
CounterPunch - May 28, 2008
Lesbian couple denied infertility treatment take case to California Supreme Court
May 28--Just two weeks after finding California's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, the state Supreme Court today found itself thrust back into a legal conflict over gay rights. This time, the justices were tackling a collision between religious freedoms and strict state and federal anti-discrimination laws in a case involving a doctor's right to deny infertility treatment to a gay ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 28, 2008
Same-sex marriage foes seek stay of court ruling: They say it should be put on hold for November vote to amend state constitution.
May 28--Saying the voters have already expressed their view, opponents of same-sex marriage asked the state Supreme Court on Thursday to stay last week's decision overturning the state's ban on such marriages. The Alliance Defense Fund, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based group opposing gay marriage, joined with other opponents in asking the court to stay its decision until voters have a chance to cast ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 28, 2008
California sets June 17 as first day to issue gay couples marriage licenses
SACRAMENTO, Calif. _ Gay couples in California can start making their wedding plans for June 17. Following through on a landmark state Supreme Court decision, a state agency on Wednesday tentatively set that date as the first day counties can begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. But the directive issued by the state Department of Public Health could still be changed.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 28, 2008
Supreme Court OKs lawsuits on retaliation in race, age cases
May 28 WASHINGTON (AP) - An unexpected blend of liberal and conservative Supreme Court justices gave workers more leeway Tuesday to sue when they face retaliation after complaining about discrimination in the workplace. In two employment cases, one involving race and the other age, the court took an expansive view of workers' rights and avoided the narrow, ideology-based decisions that marked its ...
Bennington Banner - May 28, 2008
A Slice of Mafia With Your Sparkling Water?
For those who insist that New York's Mafia is mainly a relic of the bad old past, consider this: The day job of the man currently alleged to be the acting boss of the Gambino crime family is top salesman for the city's largest distributor of healthy and cutting-edge beverages. That thirst-quenching bottle of Glaceau Vitamin Water you plucked out of the deli cooler? That glass of sparkling ...
Village Voice - May 28, 2008
Health, Environmental Groups Enforce the Clean Air Act to Protect Americans from Smog
EPA Science Advisor: 'Willful ignorance triumphed over sound science' in setting standards Washington, DC, May 26, 2008 -- Health and environmental advocates are filing suit today challenging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's refusal to adopt stronger ozone standards urged by its own scientists. The public interest law firm Earthjustice is filing the lawsuit on behalf of the American ...
YubaNet - May 28, 2008
Can Hillary Readjust to the Senate?
The day after the Florida recount was brought to an abrupt end in 2000 by the Supreme Court, Connecticut Senator and former vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman was back at work in the Senate. 'It was very important to me to come right back to work, I think it was my nature, but I think it was a lot of people's nature,' Lieberman said, standing just off the Senate floor last week as his ...
Time - May 28, 2008
Wright: The Spymaster (2008)
Last May, the director of National Intelligence, a soft-spoken South Carolinian named Mike McConnell, learned that three U.S. soldiers had been captured by Sunni insurgents in central Iraq. As a search team of six thousand American and Iraqi forces combed through Babil Province, analysts at the National Security Agency, in Fort Meade, Maryland, began examining communications traffic in Iraq, ...
New Yorker - May 28, 2008
PATON: Icon World accused of oil deal fraud
Sales representatives of Icon World Corp. cold-called prospective investors from boiler rooms in Colorado Springs. Their pitch was a familiar one: Strike it rich in the oil and gas sector. Icon and its Sunco Resources unit persuaded people in Colorado and in other states to write checks for more than $1 million, saying the money would be used to develop oil and gas wells, regulators said.
Rocky Mountain News - May 28, 2008
Khan Resources Reaffirms Offer for Western Prospector Group
Khan Resources Inc. (TSX: KRI) today responded to the Directors' Circular issued by Western Prospector Group Ltd. on May 27, 2008 which recommended rejection of the offer to purchase 100% of the common shares of Western Prospector by Khan Resources (the "Offer"). Khan Resources Inc. (TSX: KRI) today responded to the Directors' Circular issued by Western Prospector Group Ltd.
MarketWire - May 28, 2008
The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va., Ed Jones column
May 28--They're not on the front lines of combat, like those we honored this Memorial Day weekend. But Toni Locy and Daniel Deng Bul, who visited Virginia over the weekend, are fighting for fundamental principles. Locy is the former USA Today reporter who's facing the prospect of $5,000-a-day fines, and even imprisonment, for keeping the public informed. Deng is the new Episcopal archbishop of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 28, 2008
Supreme Court gives workers protection from retaliation
WASHINGTON To the surprise of civil rights advocates, the Supreme Court on Tuesday strengthened workplace anti-discrimination laws, ruling that employees who say they were punished for complaining of bias can sue for damages.In a pair of decisions, the court concluded that claims of retaliation were covered by long-standing civil rights laws, even though this kind of discrimination was not ...
Los Angeles Times - May 28, 2008
Google says Viacom's YouTube lawsuit theatens exchange of info on the Net
Viacom's lawsuit theatens exchange of info on the Net (!self.ord) ord if 0) if 0) More Resources ------------------ Quickstudies Manager's Journal This Week in Print ------------------ ------------------ Research E-mail letters ------------------ Industry - Automotive - Defense/Aerospace - Energy/Utilities - Financial - Health Care - Retail - Transportation - Travel - Manufacturing - ...
Computerworld - May 27, 2008
Court OKs suits on retaliation in race, age cases
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An unexpected blend of liberal and conservative Supreme Court justices gave workers more leeway Tuesday to sue when they face retaliation after complaining about discrimination in the workplace. In two employment cases, one involving race and the other, age, the court took an expansive view of workers' rights and avoided the narrow, ideology-based decisions that marked its ...
Galveston County Daily News - May 27, 2008
Anti-Bias Laws Cover Retaliation Claims, U.S. Supreme Court Rules
Employees who complain of racial bias in the workplace and then face retaliation can sue under a post-Civil War-era law barring discrimination, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday. In a second similar decision, the high court ruled that a provision of the federal law barring age discrimination prohibits retaliation against a federal government employee who complains of bias.
Insurance Journal - May 27, 2008
FLDS custody case: Torn-up families antsy
May 27--SAN ANGELO, Texas -- Hearing her three children cry out for her, even listening to them squabble, are the sweetest sounds in the world to this mother. Seven weeks after being forced apart, Lori Jessop has her family together again -- husband, Joseph S. Jessop Sr., and children Ziana, 4, Joeson, 2, and J.R., 1. But will it last? As the Jessops settled into a temporary home this weekend, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 27, 2008
Supreme Court will not hear appeal from former Illinois governor
CHICAGO _ The U.S. Supreme Court turned down an appeal bid Tuesday by former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who is serving a 6 {-year sentence for fraud, racketeering and other corruption convictions. The nation's highest court gave no comment about why it declined to hear the case, but the decision ends Ryan's legal battle to clear his name and be freed from prison.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 27, 2008
Hillary Clinton --Please Exit, with Dignity, June 4
Katrina vanden Heuvel on 05/26/2008 @ 10:00pm about how a 'cover up ' is hurting Hillary Clinton's chances of becoming the Democratic nominee. This is a man who has trampled on his spouse's voice every time, in this campaign, that she's found it. The women of The Nation are the first to deplore the sexism in media commentary this primary season, but a 'cover up'? Hillary Clinton started this ...
The Nation - May 27, 2008
Clearwater public housing site cleared for new uses
At a 40-acre site that used to be an old public housing project, Jacqueline Rivera and Robert Aude of the Clearwater Housing Authority plan the mixed-use, mixed-income Parkview Village. [JOSEPH GARNETT JR. | Times] CLEARWATER The sprawling 40 acres on Drew Street near McMullen-Booth Road sit empty at the moment. In a few years, though, the former site of the Jasmine Courts public housing ...
St. Petersburg Times - May 27, 2008
County paying for Wilenchik's defense in New Times suit: Taxpayers picking up legal tab at rate of $175 per hour
May 27--In midsummer last year, private attorney Dennis Wilenchik was hired by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office for the sole purpose of investigating and possibly bringing criminal charges against one of the Valley's largest newspapers, the Phoenix New Times. By October, however, the now-infamous case was in shambles and Wilenchik was publicly fired by County Attorney Andrew Thomas for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 27, 2008
Think Twice About Efforts to Make 'Green Building' the Law of the Land in New Jersey, Says Veteran Attorney
More than a dozen bills working their way through the New Jersey Legislature aim to make green building the law the of the land in the Garden State. But, codifying the fast-growing and, so far, entirely voluntary trend toward eco-friendly buildings could lead to unforeseen consequences for all parties involved, warned James A. Kosch, a veteran environmental attorney in LeClairRyan's Newark-based ...
PR Newswire - May 27, 2008
Justice Department Announces Settlement With the National Association of Realtors
The Department of Justice announced today that it has reached a proposed settlement with the National Association of Realtors (NAR) that requires NAR to allow Internet-based residential real estate brokers to compete with traditional brokers. The Department said the settlement will enhance competition in the real estate brokerage industry, resulting in more choice, better service, and lower ...
PR Newswire - May 27, 2008
Shattering maple bats raise concerns
CHICAGO _ Every baseball player seems to have a story about a close call with the game's newest nemesis, the airborne bat barrel. "Second game of the year in Cleveland," White Sox reliever Matt Thornton recalled. "I threw the pitch, snapped the bat in half. The ball was coming toward me and the bat was coming too. I went to field the ball and the head of the bat actually went into my glove.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 27, 2008
Firm's unlikely client: Bin Laden's ex-driver
With corporate clients such as The Boeing Co. and more than a third of a billion dollars in annual revenue, it might seem odd that lawyers from the Seattle firm of Perkins Coie would find themselves defending a dirt-poor Yemeni tribesman with a fourth-grade education. But the tribesman is Osama bin Laden's former driver. And defending him, the lawyers say, means checking the power of the ...
Seattle Post Intelligencer - May 27, 2008
The era of big Clintons is soon over
WASHINGTON -- There's been a Clinton running for the White House or living in it for approximately forever. Bill, it could be said, was born to run. Running became Hillary's destiny, too. One quarter of Americans have never known life without a Clinton trying for or having the presidency. Millions have gone from diapers to diplomas in the time of the Clintons.
Seattle Post Intelligencer - May 27, 2008
Miriam cries 'blackmail': She says enemies using ABS-CBN to hit back at her
May 27--An irate Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago on Monday called on the Energy Regulatory Commission to order the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) to show cause why it should not immediately give the refunds to consumers as ordered by the Supreme Court. She also wants Meralco to announce immediately a cap on system losses lower than the existing 9.5 percent. Santiago, chairman of the Joint ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 27, 2008
Arguments over elevating Sen. Clinton to the Supreme Court-and why the courts should not be a "third house" of Congress.
The Supreme Court today held 7-2 that a black former employee of Cracker Barrel can go ahead and sue the company for retaliation, based on his allegations that it fired him for complaining about racial discrimination. A few months ago, I thought that the case might come out the other way and serve as a vehicle for the court's conservatives to rein in employment-discrimination law.
Slate - May 27, 2008
TSX seen rising on banks, oil firms
TORONTO (Reuters) - Toronto's main stock market index was seen opening higher on Tuesday as firm oil prices prop up the influential energy sector, and ahead of the start of the reporting period for the big banks. The push from U.S. crude oil, which is once again flirting with record highs, should bode well for the Toronto market, said Ian Nakamoto, director of research at MacDougall, MacDougall ...
Windsor Star - May 27, 2008
MEXICO: CONGRESS DEBATES CONSTITUTIONALITY OF OIL REFORMS
(IPS/GIN) -- Elusive concepts of nationalism and sovereignty have taken center stage in a Mexican congressional debate over the government's proposals to reform PEMEX, the state oil company. The debate has focused largely on the oft-amended constitution of 1917. Left-wing opposition politicians and a number of academics say the constitution, promulgated after a revolution that cost 1 million ...
Calibre Macro World - May 27, 2008
BRIEF: High court orders hearing in horse abuse case
May 27--The state's top court ruled this morning a Hopkins family that ran a horse-trading business are entitled to a hearing to determine whether 56 horses authorities contended were mistreated should be returned to them. Colie Martin Jr. and his son, Colie Martin III, were convicted by a Richland County jury in 2004 in connection with the maltreatment of four horses but were acquitted on 56 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 27, 2008
In the spirit of the Constitution, a veto
The Minnesota Subprime Borrower Relief Act of 2008 passed the state House and Senate last week. According to Reps. Ellen Anderson and Jim Davnie, it could rescue 12,000 'foreclosure victims.' They challenge Gov. Tim Pawlenty to sign the bill: 'This is a time for courageous leadership.' Fortunately, Pawlenty has leadership to look to: Leadership is adhering to constitutional principle even during ...
TwinCities.com - May 27, 2008
High Court in Crist's Hands
Help Us Decide Florida's Best Dining Restaurant Editor Chris Sherman needs your help to sort out this year s Golden Spoon awards. Share your favorite spot or a new restaurant you like. SOUTHWEST FLORIDA: April's housing activity presented a cautiously optimistic picture in Southwest Florida: Sales are stabilizing as home sellers cut prices to entice buyers.
Florida Trend - May 27, 2008
If only Schultz could sue away his blunders
SEATTLE _ If Howard Schultz pulls off this legal miracle, then he should invest in a new venture: redemptive litigation. How about a magic lawsuit to erase your biggest mistakes? It could be bigger than the Clorox Bleach Pen. Call it the Sue Away. That's what Schultz hopes to do, sue away the day he sold the Sonics to the Oklahoma Raiders for $350 million. This past week, after news of Schultz's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 27, 2008
Divorced NRI parents in SC over US visit of minor daughter
May 28--NEW DELHI -- A divorced American couple of Indian origin is fighting a legal battle in India over custody of their minor daughter. The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked the mother to produce the child before it on June 4 to find out if the daughter wanted to be with the mother or the father. "The child is suffering... Have you taken the wish of the child into account? That has to be ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 28, 2008
New Yorker at center of Olmert scandal boasts long history as fundraiser
Morris Talansky, the wealthy Long Island businessman at the center of a corruption scandal that threatens to bring down Israel's prime minister, is an ordained Orthodox rabbi, a man with a deep sense of faith, a strong bond with his native Israel and a zealous regard for his investments, according to court documents and several business associates of Talansky.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 27, 2008
YouTube: Viacom challenge threatens Internet freedom
No comments posted. Normal Size Increase font Size NEW YORK - A $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit over YouTube's ability to keep copyrighted material off its popular video-sharing site threatens how hundreds of millions of people exchange all kinds of information on the Internet, owner Google Inc. said. Clinton promises war on diabetes among Native American youths (114) Family of man ...
Rapid City Journal - May 26, 2008
Bad hair job leads to legal odyssey
A woman who said she had to have her head shaved after getting a bad dye job from a local hair salon will finally have her day in court. The woman, Vjerana Harasic, said she's already spent more than $10,000 on the case, educated herself in the law, and took nine months off from her job as a computer system analyst, all to fight for her case. And that, she says, is the problem.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - May 26, 2008
N.L. cabinet minister backs away from possible lawsuit against feds, Quebec
ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Newfoundland and Labrador's natural resources minister backpedalled from her own statement Monday that the province was considering suing Ottawa and Quebec over the highly contentious Upper Churchill Falls hydro project agreement. Kathy Dunderdale held a news conference earlier in the day to reveal how much the government has spent in preparation of the Lower Churchill ...
KBS Radio - May 26, 2008
Selective prosecution allegations under investigation
The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is now investigating allegations of selective prosecution in cases involving Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr. and former prominent trial lawyer Paul Minor, who both have maintained their prosecutions were politically motivated. 'This really is a major step for the office to investigate its own prosecutors in the ...
Hattiesburg American - May 26, 2008
Alan Dershowitz Speaks
A wide-ranging interview on the pressing issues facing the Jewish people today. As is the case with most men of principle, especially lawyers, Alan Dershowitz cannot avoid controversy or criticism. He's been called America's 'most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer,' 'the best-known criminal lawyer in the world' and 'the top lawyer of last resort,' having taken up the causes of defendants as ...
Aish - May 26, 2008
ETHIOPIAN SUPREME COURT SENTENCES FORMER RULER MENGISTU TO DEATH
AFTER PROSECUTION APPEALS LIFE TERM Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved Share: Next Article: Russia shot down Georgian spy plane-UN Also on Reuters powered by Sphere Featured Broker sponsored link Editor's Choice A selection of our best photos from the past 24 hours. View Slideshow US:Potato king J.R. Simplot, U.S. fry innovator, dies Politics:Hillary Clinton seeks boost in Puerto Rico ...
Reuters - May 26, 2008
Terminally ill patients want quicker access to experimental drugs
WASHINGTON At the end of March, doctors told Anna Tomalis to stop the chemotherapy because it was no longer working, to go home and enjoy what time was left. But the 12-year-old wanted no part of it. Choosing to continue the fight, she and her parents discovered 10 to 15 experimental drugs that have shown promise in treating Anna's rare form of liver cancer.
South Carolina Enquirer-Herald - May 26, 2008
Friend and foe: E-mail in the workplace
It used to be that the mildly offensive 'joke of the day' e-mail sent by a colleague gave human resources professionals and company lawyers the biggest headaches. That was then. Now e-mail is creating big new legal land mines for companies. It's not just the potential for litigation when someone sends an offensive e-mail. Every angry customer, frustrated competitor and spurned employee now knows ...
Mass High Tech - May 26, 2008
Ark. company wants to put legal squeeze on Smucker
BENTONVILLE, Ark. The suit by MACK-RAY Inc., filed in Marshall, Texas, alleges the Orrville, Ohio-based company known for its jams and jellies entered into a nondisclosure agreement over talking about a food spreader. The suit alleges the companies met in October 2003 for MACK-RAY to show its full range of prototypes and designs, but struck no business deal.
Fort Mills Times - May 26, 2008
Crime 'rising' with household costs
THE mounting cost of living may be encouraging people to turn to crime in order to pay the bills. Rising petrol and grocery prices, along with increasing mortgage rates, might have caused people to take when they cannot afford to buy, experts have told NEWS.com.au. NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research director Don Weatherburn said it had been established that low levels of consumer ...
Brisbane Courier-Mail - May 26, 2008
Fight for South Texas fortune renewed with ruling
Texas News from The Associated Press The Associated Press Published May 25, 2008 CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas - The case of an elderly Corpus Christi woman seeking to prove she is the unrecognized daughter John G. Kenedy and heir to a South Texas fortune got a boost with a ruling by the 13th Court of Appeals.The appellate court overturned a state district judge's ruling that had blocked Ann Fernandez's ...
Paris News - May 26, 2008
Brower Piven Encourages Investors Who Have Losses in Excess of $100,000 From Investment in TRM Corporation to Inquire About the Lead Plaintiff Position in Securities Fraud Class Action Lawsuit
Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation announces that a class action lawsuit has been commenced in the United States District Court for the for the District of Oregon on behalf of purchasers of TRM Corporation ("TRM" or the "Company") (OTCBB: TRMM) common stock during the period between March 16, 2006 and May 22, 2007 (the "Class Period").
MarketWire - May 26, 2008
Court order many of sect's children returned to their parents
AUSTIN, Texas _ A Texas state appeals court ordered many though perhaps not all of a polygamist sect's children returned to their parents Thursday, saying Texas failed to prove they were in physical jeopardy and urgently needed to be separated from their families. The mere existence of a belief system that may condone polygamy and "spiritual marriages" involving underage girls is not by itself ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 22, 2008
WA court: Police pat-downs can't be based on odd behavior
May 22--The state Supreme Court has thrown out the 2005 methamphetamine conviction of an Olympia man, ruling that police had no right to frisk him just because he was apparently intoxicated and acting nervous in a public building. The unanimous court overturned decision by a Thurston County judge and the state Court of Appeals, both of which had found Lt. Don Stevens of the Tumwater Police ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 22, 2008
China clarifies defense lawyers' role in capital cases
BEIJING, May 22 (Xinhua) -- China's Supreme Court and Ministry of Justice have jointly issued regulations on the protection of defense lawyers' roles in capital cases to ensure that defendants' legal rights were upheld. 'This is another important regulatory document since the Supreme People's Court took back the power of death penalty reviews,' an official with the Supreme Court said.
Xinhua News Agency - May 22, 2008
Embarrassed House passes farm bill again, just to be safe
WASHINGTON _ Congress bungled its big farm bill finale, forcing embarrassed lawmakers on Thursday to pass the whole thing all over again less than a day after the House overrode President Bush's veto. Golfers call this a mulligan, a do-over. Growers might prefer another term, like ludicrous. In a bizarre twist that left farm bill skeptics steaming, the House on Thursday was forced to approve ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 22, 2008
Biz break: Page says Google-Yahoo deal can clear antitrust wall
But he discounted the idea that an advertising deal between Google and Yahoo - one the two companies are now exploring - would present any potential antitrust problems. Page said a successful Microsoft-Yahoo deal would have closed 'a lot of things that are really important ... like instant messaging.' Microsoft had sought to buy Yahoo for $47.5 billion as a way to counter Google's dominance in ...
San Jose Mercury News - May 22, 2008
Net Neutrality Heats Up in the U.S. and Canada
Some ISPs are very much against regulation. So are some politicians. It appears that the ISPs say there is no problem. My thought is that regulation seems to come after the abuse is obvious. Should we wait for the abuse? Is it here now? Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) noted, To whatever degree people were alleging that this was a solution [regulation] in search of a problem, it has found its ...
Business Communications Review - May 22, 2008
EDITORIAL: Dying over drug politics
May 22--The conflict over state and federal medical marijuana laws must be resolved. California and 12 other states now allow the use of medical marijuana, yet the federal government does not. That means sick people with authorization from their doctors to use marijuana are still in legal jeopardy, that California employers can fire workers who use marijuana recommended by a physician, and that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 22, 2008
Ethanol turmoil a real threat to some companies
Poll: half of Minnesotans OK with Delta/NWA merger 05/21/2008 MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- A new poll says half of Minnesota adults think Delta Air Lines' acquisition of Northwest Airlines should be allowed to happen, while only a third say the federal government should block the merger. Fifty percent of those surveyed for the Star Tribune Minnesota Poll said the merger should be permitted, while 32 ...
KXLT - May 22, 2008
Residency fight likely headed to state Supreme Court
A state appeals court Thursday ruled Cleveland can keep its law that requires employees to live in the city. The decision is likely one of a handful headed to the Ohio Supreme Court for a ruling on an issue that has angered city workers for years. The Supreme Court already has agreed to hear arguments on residency laws in Akron and Lima. City officials hailed the decision by the 8th District ...
Cleveland Live - May 22, 2008
Maine publisher sues Amazon
'It's not fair. It's wrong. It's oppressive,' said BookLocker owner Angela Hoy, who described a phone call in which an Amazon representative warned her to abide by the new rule regarding on-demand printers or else. 'My personal feeling was that they were blackmailing me.' Her lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Bangor, contends Amazon's actions violate antitrust laws by using its market ...
Portland Press Herald - May 22, 2008
High court squelches damage claim for fly in water bottle
Jim Brown, THE CANADIAN PRESS OTTAWA - The country's top court has swatted down a $300,000 damage award to a man who says he became depressed, anxious, obsessive and phobic about flies after finding a dead insect in his bottled water. The Supreme Court of Canada, in a 9-0 judgment Thursday, agreed that Martin Mustapha, a hair stylist from Windsor, Ont., suffered real psychological harm as a ...
Am1220.ca - May 22, 2008
Inflation concerns, oil push US stocks sharply lower
Reuters NEW YORK - Stocks slid on Tuesday after oil prices jumped above $129 a barrel and a key inflation gauge rose more than expected, adding to mounting concerns about US consumers' discretionary spending power. Weak quarterly results and outlooks from discount retailer Target Corp and home improvement chain Home Depot Inc further underscored how consumers are struggling as gasoline prices ...
ABS-CBN News - May 22, 2008
Protecting Polar Bears Must Include Mitigating Global Warming, Group Argues
Following a three-year legal battle to protect the polar bear from extinction due to global warming, three environmental groups won protection for the species with the announcement today that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is listing the polar bear as a federally threatened species. The decision was issued in response to a 2005 scientific petition from the Center for Biological ...
Science Daily - May 22, 2008
Council decides to stay out of Whitefish's doughnut suit
Columbia Falls has decided it will stay out of the City of Whitefish's lawsuit against Flathead County. The Columbia Falls City Council on Monday decided it would rather renegotiate its interlocal agreement with the County than enter the legal fight. 'I love a fight, but you have to pick the right fight,' councilman Mike Shepard said. 'If they (the County) want to negotiate with us, we should ...
Hungry Horse News - May 22, 2008
Advocacy group wants to forestall foreclosures
Utahns in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure have a new resource designed to help them hang on to their properties. The national advocacy organization, ACORN, recently received $7.8 million in federal grant money to help homeowners who are struggling to pay their mortgages. Among other initiatives, this has led to the creation of foreclosure hot lines, 866-672-2676 or 801-532-2225.
Salt Lake Tribune - May 22, 2008
Court rules for DOE, finds flaws in Initiative 297
May 22--The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has sided with the Department of Energy, finding legal flaws in the Hanford waste initiative passed by voters in 2004. The initiative, intended to bar DOE from sending more waste to Hanford until waste already there is cleaned up, has never been implemented because of the legal challenges. Wednesday a panel of the circuit court upheld a ruling made ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 22, 2008
Women ski jumpers file lawsuit
Share: VANCOUVER - A group of women ski jumpers has sued the Vancouver organizing committee for the 2010 Winter Olympics, saying that being excluded from the Games is a violation of their rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The lawsuit, filed in B.C. Supreme Court Wednesday, says the failure to include a women's ski jumping event in the Games is discriminatory and based on ...
Winnipeg Sun - May 22, 2008
Miners, financials float TSX
Financial and mining stocks gave some lift to the Toronto market late this morning but the main index was squeezed by a big slide in BCE Inc. as the proposed takeover of the telecom giant hit serious trouble. New York markets were higher following two days of steep declines as oil prices continued to trade in record territory while traders took in another helping of dismal housing sector news.
Toronto Star Online - May 22, 2008
Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP Announces Filing of Class Action Suit Against AIG and Certain of Its Senior Officers and Directors
NEW YORK, NY -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 05/22/08 -- Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP ('BLB&G') today announced that it filed a class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of its client Jacksonville Police and Fire Pension Fund ('Jacksonville Police & Fire') and purchasers of the securities of American International Group, ...
Houston Chronicle - May 22, 2008
Print blind-friendly money, court says
May 21--Mickey Prahin, who is blind, keeps her one-dollar bills flat. She folds her fives in half one way, her tens in half the other way. She folds twenties twice. It is impossible for Prahin and many other visually impaired people to tell the difference between bills without such a system. And even then, they need help figuring out which bills to fold which way.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 21, 2008
Virginia late-term abortion ban remains unconstitutional
A federal appeals court has once again struck down Virginia's ban on late-term abortions, setting up a likely legal challenge. A panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond on Tuesday ruled 2-1 that Virginia's 2003 'Partial Birth Infanticide Act' is unconstitutional because its restrictions impose 'an undue burden on a woman's right to obtain an abortion.' The appeals court ...
Virginian Pilot - May 21, 2008
Court revives don't ask, don't tell' suit
SEATTLE _ A federal appeals court has reinstated a lawsuit filed by a former Air Force major who was discharged because she is gay. A three-member panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a Seattle trial judge to review the lawsuit filed by Maj. Margaret Witt using a higher standard of scrutiny than simply the fact that she was a lesbian in violation of the military doctrine known ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 21, 2008
The McLawsuit: The Fast-Food Industry And Legal Accountability For Obesity
Health Affairs, 22, no. 6 (2003): 207-216 doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.22.6.207 2003 by Project HOPE New Online This Article Submit a response to this article Citing Articles Google Scholar Related Collections Health Tracking Michelle M. Mello, Eric B. Rimm and David M. Studdert Recent litigation brought by a group of overweight children against the McDonald s Corporation that seeks compensation ...
Health Affairs - May 21, 2008
LendingTree sued over data breach
At least two lawsuits have been filed against LendingTree in response to a data breach that occurred between October 2006 and early 2008. The breach reportedly was caused by former employees who shared passwords with mortgage lenders, providing access to loan and personal information of customers. A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in New York last Friday alleges that LendingTree, a mortgage ...
SC Magazine - May 21, 2008
Merck to pay $58 million to settle Vioxx ad claims / FDA will vet new TV commercials for firm's drugs
Merck & Co. has agreed to pay $58 million as part of a multistate settlement of allegations that its ads for the once-popular painkiller Vioxx deceptively played down the health risks. The agreement announced Tuesday also calls for Merck to submit all new TV commercials for its drugs to the Food and Drug Administration for review before they can be aired. Another provision of the settlement bars ...
San Francisco Chronicle - May 21, 2008
Planned Parenthood hearing delayed until July
May 21--A Johnson County judge today delayed until July a key hearing in the criminal case against Planned Parenthood and its clinic in Overland Park. The two-day preliminary hearing had been scheduled for next week, but Planned Parenthood wanted a delay until after the Kansas Supreme Court decides whether District Attorney Phill Kline has legal possession of the abortion records he plans to use ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 21, 2008
Self-governance revisited
May 21--WASHINGTON -- Shortfalls in congressional appropriations for federal Indian agencies again moved front and center at a May 13 Senate Committee on Indian Affairs hearing. And Interior Department associate deputy secretary for Indian affairs James Cason has testified at recent hearings on tribal energy production and on the federal recognition process that Interior's self-governance office ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 21, 2008
How TV can reflect society's tolerance
If you want a sense of the kind of open-mindedness you can see on network TV these days, ABC's "Brothers & Sisters" is a good place to start. It ended its season this month with a commitment ceremony between two gay men, but that's only part of it. "Brothers & Sisters" also features _ unironically and as complete human beings _ a conservative Republican senator who opposes gay marriage and his ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 21, 2008
Clinton invokes ghosts of Florida recount (AFP)
Hillary Clinton Wednesday invoked Democratic nightmares of the 2000 Florida presidential recount to demand the revival of two voided primaries vital to her fast-fading White House hopes. But Democratic front-runner Senator Barack Obama declared he was already on the cusp of the nomination, as he traded blows in the latest foreign policy flare-up of an evolving general election battle with ...
Yahoo! - May 21, 2008
Court deals convicted killer another setback
May 21--The convicted killer of a Kansas City teenager lost another round Tuesday in his long battle to avoid Missouri's execution chamber. The Missouri Supreme Court voted 7-0 to deny Michael Taylor's bid to re-open his previously ruled on post-conviction appeal. Tuesday's decision by the Supreme Court upheld the earlier ruling of a Jackson County judge who ruled that Taylor was not "abandoned" ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 21, 2008
Graves, Robertson removed from whistle-blower suit
May 21--A federal judge in Mississippi has removed two high-profile Missouri lawyers from a whistle-blower lawsuit involving State Farm Insurance and Hurricane Katrina. Senior District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. said that former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves and former Missouri Supreme Court Chief Justice Chip Robertson "should have known" that their clients -- sisters Cori and Kerri Rigsby -- had ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 21, 2008
Sanctions threatened over suit involving slots, pay raises
May 21--HARRISBURG -- Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald Castille said Tuesday a lawsuit filed in federal court by the League of Women Voters "slanders the entire Supreme Court" and the attorney filing it could face disciplinary action. In an unusual action, Castille issued a statement calling the league's lawsuit -- which claims certain anonymous lawmakers allege a link between the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 21, 2008
Boycott campaign to be relaunched next month
May 21--AMMAN -- The furore over a Danish newspaper's republication of offensive caricatures and a Dutch anti-Islamic film is far from over as boycott campaigners continue to pursue legal measures and importers of Danish goods suffer financial losses. Meanwhile, the "Messenger of Allah Unites Us" campaign has added Dutch products and companies to its list and announced it will relaunch its ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 21, 2008
Judicial field gets bit more crowded: Democratic county judge contests GOP incumbent seeking new state Supreme Court term
May 21--TROY -- County Judge Patrick J. McGrath announced his candidacy for state Supreme Court on the courthouse steps Tuesday, raising the possibility of a contentious judicial nominating season this fall. McGrath, 55, a Democrat and former prosecutor whose judicial career began in Troy Police Court in 1985, is seeking to unseat Justice Anthony J. Carpinello, a Republican who has held the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 21, 2008
Star Tribune, Minneapolis, Katherine Kersten column: California ruling hijacks middle ground on marriage
May 21--The debate over same-sex marriage has roiled for over a decade. On one side are people who believe that marriage is properly limited to one man and one woman. On the other are those who argue that lack of access to marriage is unfair to gay couples, because it deprives them of benefits that flow from the marriage certificate, such as survivor rights, hospital visitation and insurance ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 21, 2008
Texas justice's wife pleads not guilty in fire
The wife of Texas Supreme Court Justice David Medina pleaded not guilty Tuesday to burning down the couple's suburban Houston home last summer. Francisca Medina entered the plea during her first court appearance since being indicted last month. Her husband accompanied her. She did not comment, but her husband told reporters later: 'My wife is innocent.' 'I look forward to victory,' David Medina ...
Bradenton Herald - May 21, 2008
Global Internet Freedom: Corporate Responsibility and the Rule of Law
Testimony to the US Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law Written Testimony of Arvind Ganesan Director, Business and Human Rights Program, Human Rights Watch Related Material Thematic Page Tuesday, May 20, 2008 Mr. Chairman: I welcome the opportunity to speak on the important matter of global internet freedom. I would also like to thank Senator Coburn, the ranking ...
Human Rights Watch - May 21, 2008
Prosecutor grills Fieger
May 21--A federal prosecutor grilled Geoffrey Fieger for nearly an hour today, but couldn't get the controversial lawyer to admit he did anything wrong in reimbursing employees for contributing to John Edwards' 2004 presidential campaign. By the time Fieger's testimony had ended for the day, jurors were looking at the clock as though they wanted to leave. "I don't think he scored any points," ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 21, 2008
Lawmakers seeking answers about soaring fuel prices
A driver stands in front of a pump before fueling up his car at a gas station where prices have gone over $4 per gallon May 19, 2008 in Douglaston, in the borough of Queens, New York City. According to the AAA Daily Fuel Gauge Report, fuel prices are up 30 cents from last month's average and are now at the highest recorded price. Long Island is one of the most expensive places for fuel, with the ...
WCPO - May 21, 2008
The blind in North Texas size up ruling on money
May 21--Like many blind people, Rochelle Clark has her own method of distinguishing the George Washingtons from the Abraham Lincolns, Alexander Hamiltons and Andrew Jacksons in her wallet. The Garland resident folds them -- again and again. She folds her $5 bills in half. She folds her $10 bills from top to bottom. The $20 bills get extra treatment, folded from top to bottom and in half.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 21, 2008
BRIEF: Schwarzenegger sees economic boost in gay marriage ruling
May 20--Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hopes gay marriage will become an economic boon in California. In the wake of the state Supreme Court's recent legalization of gay marriage, the Republican governor said Tuesday in San Francisco he wants gay couples to flock to California for wedded bliss. "You know, I'm wishing everyone good luck with their marriages and I hope that California's economy is ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 20, 2008
18-year-olds granted gun rights: State Supreme Court rules the age for possession should be lowered
May 20--Youths ages 18 through 20 can possess handguns legally under a state Supreme Court ruling issued Monday. The unanimous decision mirrors a new state law that took effect last month. The five-member high court said the old law violated the state constitution, which grants full legal rights to everyone who is at least 18 -- with the exception of alcohol purchases.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 20, 2008
Texas justice's wife pleads not guilty in fire
HOUSTON (AP) -- The wife of Texas Supreme Court Justice David Medina pleaded not guilty Tuesday to burning down the couple's suburban Houston home last summer. Francisca Medina entered the plea during her first court appearance since being indicted last month. Her husband accompanied her. She did not comment, but her husband told reporters later: 'My wife is innocent.' 'I look forward to ...
Denton Record-Chronicle - May 20, 2008
John McCain's least favorite issue
Social and religious conservatives, many of whom have been gloomy about the GOP's '08 electoral prospects, perked up big time when they learned last Thursday that the California Supreme Court had upheld the constitutionality of gay marriage. They were, of course, outraged. But in a sense their hearts were gladdened, because they think they have been handed the magic-bullet issue that will boost ...
Philadelphia Inquirer - May 20, 2008
Cisco denies aiding internet repression in China
A Cisco Systems Inc. executive told a U.S. Senate subcommittee Tuesday that comments in an internal document about China's goal to 'combat' a religious group did not reflect the company's views on censorship. The PowerPoint presentation, which described China's technology status, included a slide that referred to goals to stop network-related crimes, guarantee the security and services of a ...
CBC - May 20, 2008
US House Panel Seeks Contempt Order Against EPA Chief Johnson
WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- A U.S. House committee said Tuesday that it will vote on Thursday to issue a contempt order against the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Stephen Johnson. The move is the latest salvo in a Democratic battle against the Bush administration's management of the EPA. Lawmakers are particularly incensed at a series of environmental policy interventions the White ...
Morningstar.com - May 20, 2008
Stun-gun maker sharpens marketing, ups sales
For a time, marketing Taser's stun guns appeared as appealing as getting jolted by one of them. Taser International Inc.'s name makes headlines seemingly every time someone dies after being struck by one of its devices. Executives have battled numerous product-liability and wrongful-injury lawsuits. Some domestic and foreign governments even have outlawed the use of the devices.
Arizona Republic - May 20, 2008
Is Kilpatrick's removal the best option?
Why is Gov. Jennifer Granholm hiding behind a judicial wait and see attitude and refusing to invoke her constitutional powers of removing Kwame Kilpatrick for misconduct in office? Granholm's inaction is a sheer dereliction of her duties. Others are acting within their powers. The Detroit City Council requested Kilpatrick to resign for his blatant violation of the Detroit City Charter, while ...
Detroit News - May 20, 2008
State special interest groups skirt voter-approved spending caps
SACRAMENTO - Corporations, labor unions, Indian tribes and other special interests have sharply increased their campaign spending in California by skirting voter-approved contribution limits and plowing their money into independent expenditures. The Fair Political Practices Commission said Tuesday that $88 million had gone to independent campaigns for and against state candidates between 2001 and ...
Los Angeles Daily News - May 20, 2008
Congress move towards Opec legal challenge
Washington overcame a significant obstacle yesterday in its attempt to sue Opec for behaving as an oil cartel and keeping the price of fuel artificially high. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation to bring a lawsuit against Opec members because they have collectively set the price of oil and limited oil supplies. The price of oil is at an all-time high of about $129 a ...
The Times - May 20, 2008
UGA faces claim over sewage sludge research
Months after a federal judge said the city of Augusta used 'fudged' data to show that spreading sewage sludge on dairy pastures is safe, the University of Georgia faces a separate lawsuit in Athens over the safety of the sludge applications. Former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency scientist David Lewis, along with two Augusta area dairy farmers, say UGA scientists used false data in research ...
OnlineAthens - May 20, 2008
Medvedev declares war on corruption plan, puts emphasis on courts
By Itar-Tass World Service writer Lyudmila Alexandrova Just as he promised throughout his election campaign, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has declared a crusade against corruption and for a far better judicial system. Both are Russia's sore spots. On Monday he signed into law a decree on measures to resist corruption, envisaging creation of a special council under the president to fight ...
Itar Tass - May 20, 2008
Woman lost house and didn't know it after unpaid dental bill
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Capri Ramos has been making payments on her home for more than 10 years, but it turns out she doesn't own it. It was sold in 1996 -- after she failed to pay a $68 dental bill. 'I was young, brand-new married and kids, just bought a house and wasn't really aware of everything going on,' said Ramos, 41. A collection agency, North American Recovery, sued Ramos in 1995 over ...
KSL-TV - May 20, 2008
Court challenge looms for B.C. support services...
VANCOUVER - A Vancouver-area father has turned to the courts in a last-ditch effort to prevent his developmentally disabled teenage son with a history of severely pathological behaviour from being cut off government support services because the youth's IQ is too high. It's the second case of its kind in British Columbia in recent years. But advocates with the BC Association for Community Living ...
Abbotsford Times - May 20, 2008
UK high street banks finance biofuel destruction in Latin America
As responsible investors are urged to do their research, during National Ethical Investment Week, a new report from Friends of the Earth reveals that UK banks are funding rapid expansion of biofuel production in Latin America, leading to large scale deforestation, human rights abuses and rising food prices. Biofuels are being are being touted as a solution to climate change, but don t bank on ...
New Consumer - May 20, 2008
Police use Taser on S. Frankel: His 'erratic behavior' triggers three police stunnings early Sunday morning.
May 20--A former attorney with a history of cocaine use was charged after going on a rampage where he used a sword to smash into his York Township home, destroyed his child's toys and assaulted two York Area Regional Police officers who were forced to stun him three times with a Taser, police said. Stephen M. Frankel, 36, of the 2100 block of Bayberry Court is being held in York County Prison on ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 20, 2008
Alzheimer's group makes Houston face the facts
May 20--If you notice billboards springing up around town that give you pause, they probably have more to do with hard, cold numbers than scantily clad models. One reads, "Ten million baby boomers will have Alzheimer's." Another says, "Alzheimer's affects one out of three families." From now through April, 212 billboards bearing those statistics and others will be placed around the city.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 20, 2008
Ban on plant struck down: Baltimore County LNG rules exceeded authority, court rules
May 20--A federal appeals court has struck down a Baltimore County law seen as giving opponents of a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal on Sparrows Point their best chance of stopping the project. Eastern Baltimore County community activists and elected officials who have been fighting the LNG terminal since it was proposed more than two years ago by AES Corp.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 20, 2008
S.Korea demands 6-year jail term for Hyundai head
SEOUL, May 20 (Reuters) - South Korea's prosecutors on Tuesday demanded a six-year jail term for Chung Mong-koo, the chairman of Hyundai Motor Group (005380.KS: Quote, Profile, Research), the world's sixth-largest auto maker for fraud and embezzlement. Last month, the country's Supreme Court overturned a suspended three-year jail sentence, saying some of an appeal court's orders were unlawful, ...
Reuters - May 20, 2008
Bangladesh citizenship right divides Biharis
Urdu-speaking Biharis have lived in 66 squalid camps in Bangladesh since the former East Pakistan emerged as an independent country in 1971. 'We endured a lot of pain at the camps. Now it is going to be over, we are Bangladeshis and will have equal rights,' said 27-year-old Fatema Begum. Crammed into the camps with poor sanitation, power supply and no healthcare or education, the refugees had ...
Express India - May 20, 2008
High Court Reinstates Conviction in Millennium Plot
Justices Reject Ninth Circuit's Interpretation of Statute on Carrying Explosives A federal law making it a felony to carry an explosive while committing another felony applies without regard to the relationship between the explosive and the underlying crime, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The justices overturned a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that could have resulted in a ...
Metropolitan News-Enterprise - May 20, 2008
GSIS, Meralco trade barbs: President forms group to look at lowering rates
May 21--The word war between the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) and the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) continued during a Cabinet meeting in Bohol on Tuesday. GSIS President Winston Garcia said Meralco could reduce power cost by 6 centavos to P3 per kilowatt-hour, should the power distributor stop its "abusive measures." Meralco officials fired back, saying the high power rate charged ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 21, 2008
Campaign: Racial lines grow more pronounced
The Register-Mail in Galesburg, Ill., on Democrat Barack Obama's presidential campaign and race on May 11: As Barack Obama gets closer to becoming the first black candidate to receive a major party nomination for president, America's racial lines grow more pronounced. Obama's effort to keep his race from being a campaign issue has failed. From Bill Clinton's dismissal of Obama as another Jesse ...
Arizona Daily Sun - May 20, 2008
Adult Products Store Vows Federal Court Fight Against Berlin
May 20--BERLIN -- -- Very Intimate Pleasures of Berlin LLC, an adult sex toy, video and "romance shop" that lost another legal battle Monday to open a store in Berlin, now plans to pursue its case in federal court. Daniel Silver, VIP's lawyer, said he was disappointed in the opinion the state Supreme Court issued Monday, affirming the right of town officials to restrict the location of sexually ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 20, 2008
Supreme Court upholds anti-child porn law
WASHINGTON _ The Supreme Court upheld a strict federal anti-pornography law Monday, ruling that criminalizing the "promotion" of child pornography does not stifle free speech. The court, in a 7-2 decision, rejected suggestions that Congress, in seeking to stamp out child abuse, had gone too far by making it a federal crime to advertise or promote child pornography.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 19, 2008
Justices rule against man in terrorism case (AP)
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court on Monday ruled against an Algerian convicted of conspiring to detonate explosives at Los Angeles International Airport during the millenium holiday travel rush. In its 8-1 decision, the court upheld Ahmed Ressam's conviction on an explosives charge, one of nine convictions that resulted in a 22-year prison sentence. At issue was whether Ressam should be convicted ...
Yahoo! - May 19, 2008
Appeal Court set to hear Ontario ban on farm unions violates worker rights
TORONTO - Farm workers barred from unionizing are set to tell Ontario's highest court that the ban violates their rights and should be thrown out as unconstitutional. In an age of factory farms, they say, workers should be able to bargain collectively. 'They need that right so that they can be like other employees in this province and have an effect on the formulation of their working ...
CJFW - May 19, 2008
Supreme court maintains municipal bond tax breaks
(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that cities and states can keep offering special tax breaks on their municipal bonds, a decision that preserves a top incentive for investors in the $2.5 trillion municipal bond market. The 7-2 high-court ruling reversed a Kentucky appeals court decision that said it was unconstitutional for the state to grant tax breaks on interest from bonds ...
Reuters - May 19, 2008
Court to delve into a minor's right to refuse treatment
By the age of 14, a Winnipeg girl known as A.C. felt that she had the right to prevent doctors from running roughshod over her religious beliefs and forcing a blood transfusion on her. I will not violate Jehovah God's command to abstain from blood, she said at the time. I have dedicated my life to Him. Turning my back on God, who made my life possible, is not a compromise I am willing to make. ...
Globe and Mail - May 19, 2008
Suit: Former justice struck slots deal
May 19--HARRISBURG -- The League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania filed a federal lawsuit Monday alleging that former Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ralph J. Cappy negotiated a ruling in favor of legalized gambling in the state in exchange for legislative approval for a judicial pay raise. The suit in U.S. Middle District Court cites unnamed legislators as providing information that former Chief ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 19, 2008
Showing the big cheese who's the boss
Unika Hypolite clenches his fist as though he's about to punch his boss in the face. Instead he charges Damon Lau's midsection, hoists him over his shoulder and slams him to the ground. He's acting out every downtrodden office drone's fantasy: the boss smackdown. But instead of a pink slip and a police record, Mr. Hypolite gets a high-five and a big grin from Mr. Lau.
Globe and Mail - May 19, 2008
OPINION: Ruling step back for Michigan
May 19--What do our laws say about our values as a society? How do we construct the world we desire through legislation and judicial processes? Last week, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that state universities cannot offer health coverage to the partners of gay employees. In making this judgment, the court upheld the 2004 amendment to the state constitution where Michigan voters declared gay ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 19, 2008
Joel Stein: Make mine marijuana
Sometimes I can't believe how Californian California is. Women walk around half-naked, waiters call patrons 'dude,' and medical marijuana is legal. But I wondered just how legal. Could anyone buy it? Even me, who doesn't have cancer, AIDS, arthritis, glaucoma or even any previous pot-smoking experience? Medical marijuana isn't really legalin 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court said federal anti-drug ...
Chicago Tribune - May 19, 2008
EPA climate rule at least a year away
WASHINGTON - A decision on whether carbon dioxide endangers public health as a greenhouse gas will probably be made by the next administration, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday.EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said 'as a practical matter' he would not expect the complex regulation to be completed in less than a year, leaving a final rule to his successor.Johnson has ...
Post Star - May 19, 2008
Abortion Rights Group Split by Endorsement of Obama
With the clock running down on a long-fought primary, NARAL Pro-Choice America leaders sent state affiliates reeling by endorsing Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois. It was seen as a gratuitous slap in the face to a longtime ally, and it sparked a fear even closer to home: that the move will alienate donors loyal to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. Many on this week's conference call were ...
WBAY Green Bay - May 19, 2008
Sebelius vetoes bill requiring voters to show photo ID
May 19--TOPEKA -- A bill requiring Kansas voters to show photo identification in 2010 elections was vetoed today by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. The measure -- HB 2019 -- was similar to a measure she threatened to veto during last year's legislative session. Last year's measure failed, but this year's version passed through the efforts of the Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 19, 2008
Black-on-white bias at the core of lawsuit that keeps festering
May 19--In the late 1990s, the sting of racial discrimination drove Mark A. Pasternak out of a job he enjoyed, working for New York State as a mentor to troubled youths. The South Buffalo man said a black boss harassed him for years, calling him "stupid white boy," "Polack" and other unpleasant names, which caused him sleepless nights and a psychiatric stress disorder.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 19, 2008
Bush administration's environmental team on losing streak in courts
May 19--Federal courts appear to have done what relentless green lobbying could not in more than seven years: rein in what critics call a de facto deregulation of the environment by President Bush's administration. The courts by and large have rejected Bush's bid to significantly rewrite America's bedrock conservation laws, particularly the Clean Air Act. The latest rejection came last week when ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 19, 2008
Patterson's wait for vindication may be long
May 19--AUSTIN -- Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson has said that gun prohibitions in national parks are unconstitutional, and that the U.S. Supreme Court will likely lend credence to that view when it eventually rules in an upcoming gun case. But constitutional law scholars said last week that if Patterson is waiting for clear vindication from the country's top court, he may be waiting ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 19, 2008
Woman fights to keep her Glendale home initially seized for $68
Capri Ramos refuses to believe she lost her home 13 years ago over a $68 dental bill. She still lives there. She still pays the mortgage. But a court ruling earlier this month may boot Ramos and her family from the tax-subsidized home she claims was taken without her knowledge. It all started with baby-teeth cavities that landed Ramos' daughter in the dentist's chair in 1995.
Salt Lake Tribune - May 19, 2008
Court case could affect coastal growth
SAVANNAH - A legal fight over whether the law protecting Georgia marshlands can extend to residential developments on dry land is headed to the state Supreme Court, which could set a precedent imposing tougher standards on construction near salt marshes along Georgia's 100-mile coast. The court will hear arguments today in a dispute between environmentalists and the developer of Cumberland ...
OnlineAthens - May 19, 2008
Boston Herald Hotline column: Miley accused of naked theft
May 19--Miley Cyrus' naked back has some controversial company. Los Angeles-based rock band Lustra is accusing the "Hannah Montana" teen idol of ripping off their song "Scott Doesn't Know," which was featured in the largely forgotten 2004 Matt Damon film, "Eurotrip." The allegations come after the general public got oh-so-offended by Annie Liebowitz's photos of Cyrus' 15-year-old bare shoulder ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 19, 2008
Defense: Victim asked to be chained to engine block
Posted: 1:27 PM- he attorney for a man accused of chaining his girlfriend to an engine block in his West Valley City apartment today argued she asked to be tethered as a 'show of her devotion.' 'It was a bizarre and unusual arrangement,' said Jason Poppleton in court, but 'there was no kidnapping.' In fact, the second-degree felony kidnapping charge was dismissed last month against Fernando ...
Salt Lake Tribune - May 19, 2008
Meeting to be held on gas, oil exploration leases
FRANKLINVILLE Landowners thinking about signing on the dotted line for gas or oil exploration leases are invited to attend an informational meeting at 7:30 p. m. Wednesday in the auditorium of Franklinville High School, 31 N. Main St. (Route 16). Several presentations will provide information to help make decisions. Attorney David Colligan of Watson and Bennett will speak, along with Mike ...
Buffalo News - May 19, 2008
Banks Terms Imperil Deal to Buy Out Bell Canada
The $51.8 billion takeover of Bell Canada, the largest leveraged buyout ever proposed, appeared to be in trouble over the weekend as the Wall Street banks that committed to finance the deal sought to renegotiate the lending terms, people on both sides of the transaction said on Sunday. The deal for Bell Canada, Canada s largest telecommunications company, is the latest buyout to run into ...
Hendersonville Times News - May 19, 2008
Lawmakers pass bill to block foreclosures
Rewarding irresponsible people is not a way to encourage responsibilty What encouragement is there for those that have been responsible in thier choices? If this bill does not get veto'ed, you are punishing read more the responsible people, which is or should be the majority. I would also bet that a large portion of those with homes in foreclosure have two brand new vehicles, most of the ...
Minneapolis Star Tribune - May 18, 2008
Scandal may rain lawsuits on state: Findings of harassment in Dann's office could open legal floodgates, experts say
May 18--An internal investigation's finding that a "hostile work environment" existed in former Attorney General Marc Dann's office essentially means the state found itself guilty of sexual harassment. Now, it appears that admission by Dann's aides could open the spigot for lawsuits from not only the two women whose allegations led to the downfall of Dann and three top administrators, but also ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 18, 2008
OPINION: Justice's dissent was about pace, not issue
May 18--Carol Corrigan is like a lot of Californians. She thinks same-sex couples deserve the same rights as heterosexual partners who marry, and she supports the domestic-partner laws that gave gays most of those rights. If she were asked to vote on the issue of gay marriage on the ballot, Corrigan says, she would probably choose to legalize it. But she did not think it was the place of the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 18, 2008
EDITORIAL: With basic rights on the line, the court had to act on gay marriage question
May 18--For Californians who traditionally have been allowed to marry under California's laws and constitution, Thursday's California Supreme Court ruling on who may marry changes nothing at all. For churches, too, nothing changes. Just as some churches recognize divorce and others don't, churches can continue to decide for themselves which marriages they will recognize.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 18, 2008
State Supreme Court sure gets active
The 5-2 ruling on health benefits by the Michigan Supreme Court should send a shiver down the spines of those who say they worry about activist judges and government interference in private lives. The court took a questionable amendment to the Michigan Constitution banning gay marriage and ran with it, warping it into a justification to deny health care benefits to the families of gay and lesbian ...
Livingston Daily.com - May 18, 2008
EDITORIAL: Motown flip-flop has sexy subtext
May 18--Talk about an inexplicable policy change. Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick last week told city employees that their text messages are considered private -- even if city money is used to pay for the phones or BlackBerrys used to send the messages. The Detroit News reported Thursday that this was an abrupt reversal from a previous Kilpatrick order to his staff that all electronic ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 18, 2008
GSIS chief peeved at Arroyo-Lopez meet
MANILA, Philippines-He is willing to put his head on the chopping block if that is the price of dismantling the Lopez family's control over Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) and lowering power rates for consumers. Winston Garcia, president and general manager of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), made this statement Sunday as Malacaang backpedaled on its earlier statement that President ...
Philippine Daily Inquirer - May 18, 2008
EDITORIAL: It looks like another case for Audit Man
May 18--Looking for an action hero to save the day? May's latest movies serve up some hot prospects: Iron Man, Prince Caspian and Indiana Jones. However, they can't help fix what plagues state government. Neither, so far, have the governor or top legislative leaders. Who's left to save the day in Illinois? Why, Audit Man, of course. We speak of Auditor General William Holland, whose office keeps ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 18, 2008
How true federalism can save Nigeria from more confusion, by Gov. Fashola
Today,as Lagos State governor, Fashola has raised the stakes. If staff in the Lagos State governor s office thought Fashola was a workaholic during Tinubu s tenure, they now have an even sterner overseer in the incumbent. In this interview session with Vanguard s Dele Sobowale, Jide Ajani, Adeleke Adeseri and Olasunkanmi Akoni, Governor Fashola explains why Lagosians have to bear with his ...
Vanguard - May 18, 2008
What is a FedEx driver?: An independent contractor? Employee? Lawsuit seeks answer
AM May 18--A key part of the FedEx Ground business model -- using independent contractors rather than employees to deliver the goods -- is under increasing pressure from courts and regulators, with Wisconsin drivers involved in the attack. The small-package delivery wing of transportation giant FedEx Corp. faces dozens of pending lawsuits and tax and administrative proceedings claiming that ...
Calibre Macro World - May 18, 2008
Elder Law: Latest word from the IRS of interest to most seniors
Last week, I wrote about giving back early Social Security benefits in exchange for larger benefits at regular retirement age, the two-year period for the surviving spouse to sell their residence for the full $500,000 exclusion from gain, mortgage relief debt forgiveness only on a principal residence for 2007 through 2009, adequate documentation of your charitable gifts, and the availability of ...
News-Press.com - May 18, 2008
Tennessee lawmakers must clear hurdles to adjourn
May 18--NASHVILLE -- Tennessee lawmakers hope to finish their annual session this week, acting on Gov. Phil Bredesen's proposed budget cuts and a voluntary buyout package for employees and resolving an impasse over lottery surpluses. Tossed into the mix is a potential Senate battle over extending the life of a panel that recommends judicial appointments for the governor, and lawmakers said they ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 18, 2008
'Show Me' injustice
THE 15TH Amendment to the Constitution guarantees all citizens the right to vote. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibits 'denial or abridgment of the right to vote.' But it's OK with Missouri lawmakers if some citizens are denied that right as long as the electoral process is made safe from the hordes of illegal immigrants they would like the public to believe are conspiring to control American ...
Toledoblade.com - May 18, 2008
For poor-quality water, you can sue MCD
May 19--NEW DELHI -- Next time you catch a water-borne disease like jaundice or cholera, you can drag the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) or the New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) to the consumer court for supplying poor quality drinking water. "A consumer has the right to be informed about the quality, quantity, purity of goods including water or services which are rendered by the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 19, 2008
Pakistani society awaits consumer rights culture
KarachiOne of the reasons behind the growing poverty and price hike in Pakistan is the apathetic attitude of the ruling quarters regarding safeguarding the consumer rights. In our society, the price of almost every commodity is on the run, because the policymakers are least concerned with the issues of the masses. Instead of protecting the rights of the poor masses, here both national and ...
The News International - May 18, 2008
Donald Trump sues Ramat Gan developer: Crescent Heights sold the Elite lot, slated for the Trump Tower, to Azorim.
May 18--The Trump Organization, owned by Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit in the Manhattan Supreme Court against Crescent Heights Diamond, owned by Sonny Kahan. Trump says that Kahan licensed the name "Trump Plaza" for a 70-story residential and commercial tower it planned in Ramat Gan. Trump was to get a 25 percent cut on each unit sold, plus other royalties on what would have been Israel's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 18, 2008
EDITORIAL: Risk, reward and the incredible value in rule of law
May 18--Even in difficult times, many of us Americans take a lot for granted about our country. There's some good in that -- it suggests our system of self-governance is rooted in firm ground, and that it's mostly working. But complacency also carries great risk -- because the social institutions, mechanisms and principles they're built on didn't just emerge magically from the mist, wholly ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 18, 2008
Landlord racks up over 200 violations
PUBLIC INVESTIGATOR: TAKING TIPS, CHASING LEADS, SOLVING PROBLEMS George Sessler considers himself the victim. The owner of at least 20 rental properties - most on the northwest side of the city - he typically leases to lower-income people who often trash his units and stiff him on rent, he says. Others, however, including a social services agency and some of his tenants, say he makes a living ...
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - May 18, 2008
Yar'Adua: I'll Quit if I Lose at S'Court
Fears of a possible constitutional crisis if the 2007 presidential election was annulled by the Supreme Court were allayed yesterday by President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua.The president told AFP, a news agency, at the weekend that he would quit power if the Supreme Court annuls his election.Alhaji Atiku Abubakar and Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, presidential candidates of Action Congress (AC) and All ...
This Day Online - May 18, 2008
Hostage murder case resurfaces in civil court: Parents of Sarah Positano, KSU student who was killed in 2005 standoff, file $150 million wrongful death suit
May 18--RAVENNA -- One of the most gruesome murder cases in Portage County history returns to the courtroom on Monday with a legal skirmish in the wrongful death lawsuit filed by the parents of slain Kent State University student Sarah Positano. Portage Common Pleas Judge John A. Enlow will hold a hearing at 11 a.m. to discuss the case schedule with the lawyers, the deadlines for filing motions ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 18, 2008
$150 million battle to keep The Secret
Ms Byrne has been working overtime to repel the negativity emanating from a series of lawsuits over her huge money-spinning life guide. The Secret, based on the 'law of attraction', promises unlimited happiness, love, health and prosperity to those who adhere to its philosophy. The bitter falling out with Mr Heriot being played out in the American and Australian judicial systems is the latest in ...
Brisbane Times - May 18, 2008
Dennis Quaid details nightmare of drug mix-up with his newborn twins at US hearing
WASHINGTON-Actor Dennis Quaid told the U.S. Congress on Wednesday of a harrowing, near-fatal drug mix-up in which his newborn twins were administered 1,000 times the normal dose of a blood thinner. The 54-year-old actor said his family's brush with tragedy underscores the need to hold pharmaceutical companies accountable through lawsuits, a remedy that is becoming increasingly problematic for ...
Calibre Macro World - May 15, 2008
Suit greenlighted by appeal wraps up with settlement: The state supreme court said a hotel has a duty to keep its guests safe.
May 15--Ryan Taboada and his family checked into a Roanoke hotel on March 27, 2003. When he went outside to get his luggage, a man shot him eight times and stole his van with his 3-year-old daughter still inside. This week, a Roanoke judge signed an order dismissing the $3 million lawsuit Taboada filed against the owners of Holiday Inn Express on Gainsboro Road, saying the two sides "have ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
State bans Allstate, nine affiliates from selling new policies
May 15--Allstate Insurance Co. and nine of its affiliates were temporarily banned by the state insurance commissioner from selling new insurance policies in Florida. The suspension followed a ruling issued Wednesday by the First District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee denying Allstate's request for another hearing in its court case with the state over property insurance prices.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Inmate appeals on lethal injection: He asks court to allow his lawsuit on how Va. performs executions
May 15--Death-row inmate Christopher Scott Emmett asked the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday to restore his lawsuit challenging the way Virginia conducts lethal injections. Emmett says U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson erred when he tossed out his case last year before it came to trial. Emmett wants the state to use only the first of three drugs now injected via intravenous lines -- ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Clear Channel Communications Announces Settlement of Litigation and Amended Merger Agreement with Private Equity Group Co-Sponsored by Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. and Bain Capital Partners, LLC
Shareholders Now Offered $36.00 Per Share in Cash in Deal Valued at $17.9 Billion Shareholders May Still Elect to Invest in New Corporation Formed to Acquire Clear Channel Board of Directors Unanimously Approves Settlement of Litigation and Amended Merger Agreement New Special Meeting of Shareholders to Be Held SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Clear Channel Communications, Inc.
Business Wire via Yahoo! - May 15, 2008
Death penalty documentary drives pleas for more scrutiny
May 15--Rep. Rick Glazier and others called on leaders across the country Wednesday to scrutinize the death penalty and its application to help prevent executing innocent inmates. Glazier, a Cumberland Democrat, spoke in the legislative auditorium as part of a panel that included legal scholars, a filmmaker, a minister and a Chicago Tribune investigative journalist.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
BRIEF: News Tribune seeks quick ruling on plea for documents on judge
May 15--After striking out with the state Supreme Court, The News Tribune has asked the state Court of Appeals to speed up its review of a case involving Federal Way Municipal Court Judge Michael Morgan. The newspaper filed the motion Tuesday after the Supreme Court denied The News Tribune's request to take up and decide the Morgan case in an expedited manner.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Polar bears added to list of threatened species
May 15--The Bush administration added polar bears to the list of threatened species because of fast-melting sea ice but took steps to ensure the decision would do nothing to slow greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the dizzying loss of Arctic habitat. It was the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's first addition to the list of threatened and endangered species in two years and one of the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Lawyers pressured Nickels to say Seattle won't miss the Sonics
May 15--Lawyers for Sonics owners tried to get Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels during a deposition last month to admit that the team's departure would have little impact on the city -- and would even have the benefit of improving traffic around KeyArena. In a further sign of an apparent legal strategy of downplaying the Sonics' importance, the team's lead local attorney, Brad Keller, repeatedly asked ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Kern attacks gay-rights groups over planned event
May 15--OKLAHOMA CITY -- State Rep. Sally Kern renewed her criticism on Wednesday of "radical homosexual rights groups" that are planning a national day on Thursday to promote their civil rights in the workplace. Kern, R-Oklahoma City, said Oklahomans who support traditional families need to get more involved in policy fights "or we will cede the victory to groups seeking special rights based on ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Senate sets hearing on GMA's 'secret visit': Palace confirms that President Arroyo had meeting with ZTE officials in 2006
May 15--The Senate blue-ribbon committee has set a hearing for the new witness in the national broadband scandal, who has photos of President Gloria Arroyo's "secret visit" to ZTE headquarters in Shenzhen, China six months before she witnessed the signing of the firm's $329-million contract for the scandal-plagued project. Malacanang confirmed Wednesday that President Arroyo met with officials ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
EDITORIAL: Jelac meets en banc
May 16--ONE good that comes from the Judiciary, Executive and Legislative Advisory Consultative Council (Jelac) is that the Supreme Court gets the full attention of Congress for the monies, judges and personnel badly needed by the courts. Malacanang last year invited the Supreme Court to join the Legislative Executive Development Advisory Council (Ledac) whose main function is to prepare, review ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 16, 2008
EDITORIAL: Palm Beach County jurists show judges are human, too
May 15--No, judges aren't mean A game show-like format for an educational program sponsored by the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office brought teens and state judges eye-to-eye recently for a learning and fun experience. One of the kids in the event said she thought the judges, including the outgoing and incoming chief justices of Florida's Supreme Court, would be "mean." She learned they ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Blumenthal Appeals No Child Left Behind Suit Dismissal
May 15--Attorney General Richard Blumenthal on Wednesday appealed a federal judge's dismissal of the state's lawsuit challenging the No Child Left Behind Act, pledging to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. The lawsuit, filed in 2005, challenged the way the 2002 school reform law is funded. Blumenthal argued that the law imposes costs on the state and towns that violate the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Jay Ambrose: China, Russia protect brutal Myanmar junta
May. 13, 2008 re: 'Melanie Scarborough: Colorblind government a joke' Examiner Reader said: Melanie Scarborough: Colorblind government a joke 2008-05-12 07:00:00.0 shows an apalling lack of research. First, none of the organizations are anything but membership organizations - they are not federally funded. Second, when they put on training they are just as any other vendor - ...
Examiner-WashingtonDC - May 15, 2008
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro: Nation's Largest Title and Escrow Companies Accused of Bilking Consumers
Today a group of consumers filed a series of class-action lawsuits against the nation's largest title and escrow companies, claiming they engaged in a series of schemes and deceptions designed to bilk customers out of millions of dollars in excessive fees, among other allegations. The companies named in the suit are Fidelity National Title Company, First American Title Insurance Company (NYSE: ...
Calibre Macro World - May 15, 2008
Gas exploration rules fuel lawsuit: Company contends Nockamixon Twp.'s restrictions are illegal.
May 15--The Michigan company hoping to extract natural gas from deep beneath Nockamixon Township has filed a lawsuit asking Bucks County Court to pre-empt two township ordinances that restrict gas and oil exploration. The suit, filed by Arbor Resources and three related legal entities, seeks an injunction prohibiting the township from enforcing the ordinances, which put a variety of regulations ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Legislation would cut six St. Louis circuit judge positions
May 15--JEFFERSON CITY -- St. Louis judges, already buried in a backlog of criminal cases, are holding their breath this week as the Missouri Legislature considers a proposal to eliminate six of their jobs. The measure, which would add two associate judges in St. Louis County, was spurred by a recent workload study of Missouri trial judges. Researchers found that courthouses in growing areas ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
State court rules Dallas chief should be reinstated to post
May 15--Commonwealth Court judges on Wednesday issued a ruling upholding a Luzerne County Court order to reinstate Dallas Borough's police chief and give him back pay and benefits possibly amounting to approximately $250,000. Borough officials appealed Luzerne County President Judge Michael Conahan's Aug. 8, 2007, ruling that upheld arbitrator Thomas G. McConnell Jr.'s April 26, 2007, decision ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Protesters say RNC route is problematic, time frame is unfair: Police say they've struck a difficult balance, but marchers say they want to be seen in prime time.
May 15--St. Paul police have mapped out the long-awaited route that war protesters will be expected to use to march on the Republican National Convention Sept. 1: a 2-mile trek the city contends strikes the "difficult balance" between security and free-speech rights. With marchers passing within 300 feet of the convention site at the Xcel Energy Center, Deputy Chief Matt Bostrom said Wednesday, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
ABCP plan opponents assail lack of authority
TORONTO (Reuters) - The judge overseeing a massive restructuring plan for Canada's nonbank asset-backed commercial paper market doesn't have the jurisdiction to give banks immunity from lawsuits, a lawyer told a court hearing on Tuesday. A sticking point in the $32 billion court-approved restructuring plan is that it prevents corporate noteholders from suing the banks and brokerages that sold ...
Calgary Herald - May 15, 2008
Financial incentives suit still in works
May 15--DURHAM -- Attorneys this week were still preparing the pros and cons of a novel financial-incentives lawsuit, which alleges that Durham County unconstitutionally offered an electronics company up to $100,000 to lure it here from the Raleigh area. The chief executive officer of Nitronex Corp. provided a sworn deposition to the lawyer for the Raleigh-based plaintiff, the Institute for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Blumenthal Sues Two Travel Companies
Consumer Watchdog: George Gombossy Article tools E-mail Print Reprints Text size: Attorney General Richard Blumenthal has filed a civil suit against two Rocky Hill travel companies that charged as much as $9,000 for memberships that promised, but failed to deliver, great savings on exotic trips. Blumenthal filed the lawsuit on behalf of Department of Consumer Protection Commissioner Jerry Farrell ...
Hartford Courant - May 15, 2008
Byrd wants city to pay for lawsuit
May 15--BRADENTON -- Councilman Harold Byrd Jr. wants the city to reimburse him for legal fees he's paid to fight a lawsuit filed against him and the city's canvassing board. Byrd made the request at Wednesday's City Council meeting, saying he shouldn't have to pay nearly $10,000 in legal fees for an ongoing case that centers around a city election. "I'd like to formally request some financial ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Man posing as lawyer ordered to repay customers
May 14--April Delledonne and Richard Hipp thought they would be married by now. But four years after hiring a Lindenhurst legal service to handle Delledonne's divorce, the Levittown couple still hasn't walked down the aisle. That's why Hipp was pleased yesterday when Arthur Chisolm Jr., 61, was ordered to close the business after he did not contest state charges that he practiced law without a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 14, 2008
June 5 arraignment set for alleged 9-11 conspirators
MIAMI _ The chief judge of the Guantanamo Bay war court has set June 5 for the first court appearances of reputed 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators. The judge, Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, notified military defense attorneys by e-mail Wednesday afternoon that he would preside over the case himself. He scheduled arraignment of the five men at the U.S.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 14, 2008
Judge rules for teen: Holmes School Board violated student's right to free speech
May 14--PANAMA CITY -- Heather Gillman can wear her T-shirts. U.S. District Judge Richard Smoak decided Tuesday the Holmes County School Board violated Gillman's right to free speech in November and ordered the board to alert students in writing that they are allowed to express their support for the equal treatment of gays in an appropriate and non-disruptive way.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 14, 2008
Plea for Alzheimer's funds: Former Justice O'Connor shares her family's story
May 15--WASHINGTON -- Sandra Day O'Connor has said little publicly about the disease that has robbed her husband of his memory. On Wednesday, the former Supreme Court justice broke her silence, sharing her family's personal story with Congress in an attempt to focus its attention on Alzheimer's disease. About 5.2 million Americans live with the brain disorder, a number that is expected to grow ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Bishop's 1978 letter in priest abuse case revealed: Missive says DA agreed to keep case out of court
May 15--Newly filed court documents provide details involving a meeting between then-prosecutor David Prosser and the bishop of the Green Bay Catholic diocese regarding a sexual abuse investigation against a priest in 1978 that could raise more questions about Prosser's closeness to the church. The new documents, including a letter from then-Green Bay Bishop Aloysius J.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Child support lawsuit against Bears' Briggs close to settlement
Chicago Bears linebacker Lance Briggs may be close to settling a child support lawsuit that the mother of his 8-month-old daughter filed against him last year, lawyers for both sides said Wednesday. But the case continues to provide legal fireworks. The lawyer for Brittini Tribbett, the mother of Briggs' child, said Wednesday he thinks Briggs was not truthful at a deposition about four months ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 14, 2008
Lawsuit claims negligence in balcony's collapse
May 14--A man who fell three stories from a Port Royal balcony in February filed a lawsuit Wednesday claiming that the building's contractor, engineer, architect and landlord were negligent by allowing the accident to occur. On Feb. 12, Donald Witfield, 72, of Montgomery, N.Y., fell 22 feet after the balcony of a Paris Avenue townhouse collapsed under him. The home Witfield was renting is part ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 14, 2008
Hollinger Reaches Settlement With Significant Secured Creditor and Sun-Times Media Group
Hollinger Inc. ("Hollinger") (TSX: HLG.C)(TSX: HLG.PR.B) announced today that it has entered into a term sheet (the "Settlement") with Davidson Kempner Management LLC and certain of its affiliates (collectively, "DK") and Sun-Times Media Group, Inc. ("Sun-Times"). DK is the holder of approximately 42% of the outstanding principal amount of Hollinger's secured notes (the "Notes") issued pursuant ...
MarketWire - May 14, 2008
IBM Attorney to Moderate Panel on Peer Reviewed Patent Examination Process
At the American Intellectual Property Law At the American Intellectual Property Law Association's Spring meeting being held in Houston, Texas, IBM's Associate General Council of Intellectual Property Law, Manny Schecter, will moderate a panel on the Peer-to-Patent project; a historic effort to improve patent quality by opening the examination process to community review.
MarketWire - May 14, 2008
EDITORIAL: Kaine makes it hard to say no on roads
May 14--THE VALUE of Gov. Tim Kaine's new transportation plan lies less in its particulars than in its author's willingness to find a consensus among lawmakers, commuters and taxpayers, Republican and Democrat, House and Senate, Southside and Peninsula. He has stitched together a package of familiar tax increases and policy proposals that lawmakers either approved last year or expressed a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 14, 2008
Atlanta: Gov. Perdue signs border talks resolution
May 14--Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue this afternoon signed a resolution from the General Assembly that urges him to negotiate with Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen for a re-examination of the Georgia-Tennessee state line. "He supports the intent and looks forward to having the conversation," said Marshall Guest, spokesman for Gov. Perdue. The resolution claims the border was incorrectly marked in a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 14, 2008
Protest causes a stir: Students upset over juvie case
May 14--HANOVER TWP. -- About a dozen teenagers upset over the handling of their friend's case in juvenile court showed their displeasure by wearing "Free Kev" T-shirts to school on Tuesday. The protest in support of 17-year-old Kevin Williamson was short-lived, however, after a Hanover Area High School official ordered the teens to remove the shirts or face suspension.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 14, 2008
Family of New Year's shooting victim files wrongful-death suit
May 14--The family of Abebe Isaac, who died a week after being shot New Year's Day, has filed a lawsuit against the officer accused of firing the fatal shots, the city and another partygoer at the East Germantown house where it happened. The wrongful-death suit, filed last month in Common Pleas Court, names as defendants Police Officer George Marko, the City of Philadelphia and Dontate Mitchell, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 14, 2008
Ground floor shops in DDA flats permitted
May 15--NEW DELHI -- It's raining sops for Delhi's residents in an election year. Succumbing to pressure from the traders' lobby, the union urban development ministry has decided to regularise all existing commercial establishments on the ground floor of DDA flats located in mixed land use stretches. However, commercial activity will not be allowed in upcoming DDA flats.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Students of failed helicopter school sue lender
May 14--When Silver State Helicopters flight training school in El Cajon suddenly shut its doors and filed for bankruptcy in February, it left dozens of students owing loans, some totaling nearly $70,000, for classes they hadn't completed. Now a Bay Area law firm has filed a proposed class-action suit against Cleveland-based KeyBank seeking to bar the financial institution from collecting on the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 14, 2008
Calcutta HC stays OBC quota at PG level, Centre to appeal
May 15--KOLKATA -- Calcutta High Court on Wednesday stayed the union HRD ministry's memorandum on 27 per cent OBC quota in postgraduate courses in centrally run institutions. The interim order means that IIMs, IITs and all central institutions offering postgraduate courses will not be able to go ahead with the quota in these courses. The Centre is likely to move the Supreme Court against the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Senate sets hearing on GMA's 'secret visit': Palace confirms that President Arroyo had meeting with ZTE officials in 2006
May 15--The Senate blue-ribbon committee has set a hearing for the new witness in the national broadband scandal, who has photos of President Gloria Arroyo's "secret visit" to ZTE headquarters in Shenzhen, China six months before she witnessed the signing of the firm's $329-million contract for the scandal-plagued project. Malacanang confirmed Wednesday that President Arroyo met with officials ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Bar council gets SC nod for survey
May 15--NEW DELHI -- The Bar Council of India can now go ahead with its controversial nationwide "confidential survey" among lawyers on judicial corruption, appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and High Courts and certain other issues confronting the judiciary. A three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan refused to entertain a petition seeking to restrain the BCI ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 15, 2008
Did the Pentagon drop charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani because he was tortured?
Jack's recent post suggests a good task for science-fiction authors who write counterfactual histories eliminate the Supreme Court's power to strike down statutes as unconstitutional and rerun history. No Brown v. Board of Education and no Dred Scott v. Sandford. No Roe v. Wade and no United States v. Morrison. No Gideon v. Wainwright and no Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States.
Slate - May 13, 2008
Payday Lawsuit Back in Court: Woman harassed by collectors claims firm's demand for arbitration over trial was unfair
The loan collectors wanted their money, and it seemed to Laura Cordova that nothing she said or did could make them understand she was doing the best she could to pay them back, that she was ill, that she could lose her job -- and thus her best chance of paying them back -- if they didn't stop calling. 'I felt scared,' the Las Vegas, N.M., social worker said.
Calibre Macro World - May 13, 2008
Craigslist countersues eBay: BITTER FEUD BETWEEN BAY AREA COMPANIES HEATS UP
May 13--Battling back in a different courtroom on its home turf, Craigslist on Tuesday sued its part owner eBay, accusing the San Jose-base online auction giant of false advertising, trademark infringement, "phishing attacks" and "unfair and unlawful competition." The lawsuit, filed in Superior Court in San Francisco, represents an escalation in a bitter feud between the pioneer of free online ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 13, 2008
EDITORIAL: It's rough on the Internet, and rules keep changing: When the law finally catches up, some might be surprised.
May 13--SOMEBODY -- we don't know who yet, and that is the point -- created a phony profile of Ronacalli High School Dean of Students Tim Puntarelli for the Facebook social networking Web site. The profile, to say the least, was unflattering. The fake Puntarelli was even contacting students, writing things no educator should say to young people, things that have gotten educators in legal trouble. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 13, 2008
Kaine pitches highway program GOV. KAINE'S ROADS PLAN: Gov. Tim Kaine presents proposals to raise money for transportation maintenance and improvements; sets special legislative session for next month
May 13--RICHMOND -- Gov. Tim Kaine unveiled a transportation plan yesterday that would raise about $1 billion a year for roads. His proposal requires increasing the sales tax on cars, boosting the annual vehicle registration fee, increasing a tax on home sales and applying an extra sales tax in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. Lawmakers will take up the proposal in a special session Kaine is ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 13, 2008
High court race offers contrast: Bradbury takes on appointee Horton
May 13--BOISE -- Idaho's May 27 election is not just the primary election -- it's also the final say on the nonpartisan contest for the Idaho Supreme Court. Two seats on the high court are up for a vote this year, and one is a contested race, between recently appointed Justice Joel Horton and court-reform advocate and state District Judge John Bradbury of Lewiston.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 13, 2008
House hears from police critics in Sean Bell case
May 13--A congressional committee yesterday heard civil rights crusaders, academics and frustrated Sean Bell supporters demand a massive overhaul to police departments in New York and nationwide to end excessive force deaths. "This is not a New York matter anymore -- it is international," said Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which held a public forum on ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 13, 2008
Sprints WiMax venture under attack
May 13--An Illinois wireless company is seeking a court order to block Sprint Nextel's new $14.5 billion WiMax spinoff venture. The company iPCS, a smaller carrier that sells Sprint service over its own network, said in its lawsuit that Sprint intends to offer new high-speed wireless services that would compete unfairly against iPCS. The company already has been successful in another lawsuit ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 13, 2008
Clear Channel, banks, buyers in settlement talks
SAN ANTONIO (AP) Clear Channel Communications Inc. and its prospective buyers are talking with banks to try to settle a dispute over whether the banks must fund promised loans for the $19.5 billion takeover, the radio and outdoor advertising company said Monday. Clear Channel shares jumped $2.87, or 9.6 percent, to $32.87. The company and its private equity buyers, Bain Capital and Thomas H.
Fresno Bee - May 13, 2008
Another Supreme Outrage
Washington, DC (scoop.co.nz via APJ) They wear their robes but leave the hoods off, the polite justices of the Supreme Court. They write decisions then issue them in a formal setting, behind the columns of a capitol monument, with a history that confers a dignity not deserved. The Court embodies the dilemma of our modern culture. The most awful acts are committed with bland justification by ...
American Politics - May 13, 2008
Justice for sale in Texas?
We all expect our courts to offer a fair and impartial trial. It is, after all, one of the basic demands we make of our society in America. But are the scales of justice in Texas tipping against you and instead, in favor of big corporation? Whats worse, experts say you may be paying the price with lower safety standards. Jose Herrera liked working at the CITGO refinery, sometimes spending 80 ...
KHOU - May 13, 2008
McCain and the 'Unitary Executive'
To put the matter differently, if a President McCain replaces one of the moderate justices with another Samuel Alito as McCain has vowed to do then Justice Department lawyer John Yoos extreme vision of an all-powerful Executive could well become the new law of the land. On May 6 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, during a speech aimed at appeasing conservatives, McCain promised to appoint justices ...
Consortium News - May 13, 2008
EDITORIAL: ... And wine shipments are a problem, too
May 13--There is no shortage of illustrations of how badly things go when the commonwealth persists in a business that is better left to the private sector, alcohol sales. Consider the matter of how to handle the transaction between buyers who want sellers to send wine to their homes. The problem arose because Pennsylvania used to let in-state wineries ship directly to customers who lived in- ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 13, 2008
Scandal clouds W.Va. court race as 3 states vote
Photos of West Virginias top jurist vacationing with the chief executive of a massive coal producer have transformed an otherwise run-of-the-mill election into that states most closely watched race, while voters in two other states prepared to cast ballots on key congressional seats. In right-leaning Nebraskas Senate primary, Democrats were battling for the right to take on the GOP to replace ...
MyMotherLode.com - May 13, 2008
Broker sentenced for mortgage fraud
A Springdale mortgage broker was sentenced to 15 months in prison Monday for his role in a mortgage-fraud scheme that cost lenders more than $2 million. Jay Sullivan, former owner of Airline Union's Mortgage Co., pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court earlier this year to mail fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors say he conspired with Troy Clements, owner of American Funding, to falsify ...
Cincinnati Enquirer - May 13, 2008
Charter service challenging wrongful death suit
SANDPOINT The family of an Illinois woman who was seriously injured after a fishing trip on Lake Pend Oreille has filed a wrongful death suit against the charter service. Counsel for Diamond Charters in Hope contend the allegations are baseless and a vigorous defense is in the works. Attorneys representing the husband and daughter of Marie C. Masliotti allege the woman died of a leg injury she ...
Bonner County Daily Bee - May 13, 2008
BRIEF: Kentucky Supreme Court elects chief justice
May 12--The Kentucky Supreme Court elected Justice John B. Minton on Monday to be the next chief justice. Minton, 56, from Bowling Green, will replace outgoing Chief Justice Joseph Lambert, who is retiring on June 27. Minton has been on the court since July 2006, and was previously a state Court of Appeals judge from November 2003 to July 2006. "I am honored by the vote of my colleagues," Minton ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 12, 2008
Saudi Takeover of GE Plastics Flies Under Radar
Middle East, by market value, would be acquiring a division of the world's second-largest corporation, by market value, and based in the United States, could not have been any less publicized. But in the world of corporate governance, the largest transaction ever completed in the Persian Gulf, seemingly trumps all laws of reason. However, there is little precedence established for a foreign ...
Elites TV - May 12, 2008
Longtime judge receives state award
May 12--Mon, May 12 2008 Circuit Court Judge Billy J. Landrum has been named the recipient of the 2008 Justice Achievement Award presented by the Mississippi Association of Court Administrators. Landrum, who has served the citizens of the 18th Circuit Court and County Court for 34 years, is the senior judge of the state. He has the longest tenure of all the judges in the state still seated on ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 12, 2008
Ron Paul on the new Libertarian Party candidate.
Libertarian Party. The first name that pops to mind is . Republicans fear a repeat of 2000, with Barr siphoning votes from (although it's also possible he'd ). Others wonder how Barr's candidacy will play with supporters. The Republican, who has slowed his candidacy to a crawl in recent months-but hasn't dropped out!-has come under pressure to make a third-party run for the presidency.
Slate - May 12, 2008
Online extra: Commentary: What to do when marriage ruling is announced
Oscar De La O, Maya Harris, Delores A. Jacobs, Lorri L. Jean, Kate Kendell, Geoffrey Kors, and Andy Wong The clock is ticking down on the California Supreme Court's ruling on whether same-sex couples can marry. The court heard oral arguments on March 4 and can issue a decision between now and June 2. Meanwhile, anti-gay groups aren't waiting on the decision to mobilize.
Bay Area Reporter - May 12, 2008
AG's record as lawyer scrutinized
Attorney General Marc Dann, the self-styled scourge of predatory lenders, made a rare personal appearance Jan. 24 in a Cincinnati courtroom to test-drive a legal strategy intended to slow foreclosure actions. According to the magistrate who heard the case, Dann crashed the strategy into a wall. In an unusually pointed ruling, Magistrate Michael Bachman wrote that Dann was 'using this court to ...
Columbus Dispatch - May 12, 2008
U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit Deals Important Blow to Cigarette Industry's Preemption Defense in "Light" Litigation.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Edward L. Sweda Mark Gottlieb (617) 373-2026 e-mail to media[at]tplp.org (use @sign) September 4, 2007 U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT REVERSES THE DISMISSAL OF A LIGHT CIGARETTE LAWSUIT FROM MAINE; RULING BRIGHTENS PROSPECTS FOR SIMILAR LAWSUIT IN MASSACHUSETTS The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on August 31 issued a comprehensive, 68-page ...
Tobacco Control Resource Center - May 12, 2008
Hiding the money
Two 2008 initiatives financed by mysterious sources of cash PIERRE Thirty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations couldn't be barred from contributing to ballot issue campaigns. Now that decision has become an open door for non-residents to spread their political views in South Dakota, by trying to pass new laws through two ballot initiatives that will be up for statewide votes ...
Black Hills Pioneer - May 12, 2008
John Boehner: Follow the money trail to see why Dem Congress shields trial lawyers
May. 9, 2008 re: 'Timothy Carney: Big Government churns out more Democrats' Examiner Reader said: All major , big cities run by democrats are sinking big time start in Philadelphia, and go from there. 2 agree | 2 disagree Vote on this comment: I agree or I disagree 12:31 PM MST on Sat., May. 3, 2008 re: 'Roger Severino: Legalizing gay marriage will spark lawsuits against churches' Examiner Reader ...
Examiner - May 12, 2008
Couple's Lotto dispute headed for court
Diggdel.icio.us AIM reprint print email Some husbands shower their wives with gifts when they win the Lotto. Arnim Ramdass kept the good news to himself. And when Donna Campbell found out on her own, her husband went AWOL, leaving the former beauty queen emotionally drained and financially desperate. So she sued. Campbell v. Ramdass, the lawsuit, comes to a Miami-Dade courtroom this week.
Miami Herald - May 12, 2008
TALES: Justice Department shut down Port Arthur elections
May 12--Candidates vying for six Port Arthur City Council seats Saturday included a diverse mix of white, black and Hispanic. Women were in the race, too. But 30 years ago, the spring City Council elections were halted days before Election Day, when the U.S. Department of Justice objected to the city's plan to redraw district boundaries, according to The Enterprise archives.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 12, 2008
Migrant Workers at Bottom of Food Chain Face Abuse, Growing Economic Disparity
The recent story in the New York Times about the loot taken home last year by hedge fund managers provides us with the starkest - and most obscene - evidence yet about the growing disparity between the rich and the poor in our country. Topping the list was John Paulson, the founder of Paulson & Company. His payday: $3.7 billion. Let's compare that to the pay and benefits of those at the bottom ...
Southern Poverty Law Center - May 12, 2008
Should paint makers pay?
Lawsuits filed by Columbus and others seek billions for widespread cleanup | THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH When she was 2, Ladeja Ross tested positive for lead poisoning. Lead was removed from her home, and now, at age 5, she has a low lead level. But many other Ohio children aren't getting the lead-poisoning tests that the law requires. Story, Page G2 Renee Sauer | Dispatch photos ...
Columbus Dispatch - May 12, 2008
Gov't turns once more to Gaza gas field: Israel Corp. denies talks to buy a BG Group stake in the natural gas concession.
AM May 11--The government's policy regarding the purchase of natural gas from the natural gas reserves of BG Group plc (NYSE: BRG: LSE: BG) located offshore from Gaza is continuing to zigzag. Sources inform 'Globes' that the ministerial committee for legislation is due to discuss today an amendment to the Natural Gas Law to allow the state or a government company to market and sell natural gas.
Macro World Investor - May 12, 2008
SoCal grape grower settles suit for $500,000
A grape grower in the Coachella Valley agreed to pay nearly $500,000 to farmworkers who claimed they were denied breaks and forced to taste unwashed grapes. More than 1,000 workers from the 2001 and 2002 harvests could share in the settlement signed by Richard Bagdasarian Inc. The company also will pay about $100,000 in legal costs. The company did not acknowledge wrongdoing in the settlement, ...
Sacramento Bee - May 12, 2008
Solomon Announces Patent Case Decision
DANBURY, Conn., May 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Solomon Technologies, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: SOLM) today announced that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC generally affirmed the previously announced decision in the case of Solomon Technologies versus the Toyota Motor Corporation, and certain of its affiliates. The decision was rendered by a three judge panel of ...
PR Newswire - May 12, 2008
Missouri legislators look for common ground as session enters final week
The list of bills still considered in play is shorter than in recent years, but it still includes several hot-button issues, ranging from immigration and property taxation to campaign finance and voter identification requirements. Both chambers will spend significant time hammering out compromises, including the final touches on agricultural tax breaks and a utility bill that helps Aquila ...
Kansas City Star - May 12, 2008
Group urges court to okay ABCP restructuring plan
(Reuters) - The group spearheading a C$32 billion ($31.7 billion) restructuring plan for Canada's nonbank asset-backed commercial paper market said in court on Monday that overwhelming approval should be enough to see the plan through. The plan still needs the approval of Ontario Superior Court Judge Colin Campbell, who will hear challenges from those who oppose the plan during a two-day sanction ...
Reuters - May 12, 2008
From the ground up
Anti-crime program builds communityBy DANI McCLAINdmcclain@journalsentinel.comPosted: Oct. 20, 2007 A new crime-fighting initiative in Milwaukee Police District 5 is expected to unite the three C's - community, clergy and cops - to help reduce gun violence and open-air drug markets on a large stretch of the north side. The plan, called the Common Ground approach, has produced results in such ...
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - May 12, 2008
HILLARY IS RIGHT: BUST OPEC!
Hillary Clinton is having a really bad week, what with Tim Russert, George McGovern, and assorted other political experts finally saying, after her worse-than-expected showing in North Carolina and Indiana, that a Clinton nomination is no longer plausible. Before Hillary departs the stage, though, I would like to defend her against NOPEC nay-sayers. Clinton has been getting a lot of criticism, ...
New York Post - May 12, 2008
Loaded for Bear
In late January, Jim Sims, the president and CEO of the Western Business Roundtable, an industry trade group that represents mining and energy interests, told his colleagues to prepare for the worst: The polar bear was almost certain to receive 'threatened' status under the Endangered Species Act. 'The negative implications of this to business and industry [are] breathtaking,' he wrote in an ...
Mother Jones - May 12, 2008
Brower Piven Informs Investors That They Have Only Until May 16, 2008 to Move for Appointment as Lead Plaintiff in NeuroMetrix, Inc. Class Action Lawsuit
Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation announces that shareholders of NeuroMetrix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NURO) ("NeuroMetrix" or the "Company") who purchased shares of NeuroMetrix between October 27, 2005 and March 6, 2007, inclusive (the "Class Period") have only until May 16, 2008 to move for appointment as Lead Plaintiff in a securities class action lawsuit ...
MarketWire - May 12, 2008
Tim O'Hare wins Farmers Branch mayor's race, but hardline anti-immigration candidates fail in other cities
May 11--Tim O'Hare, who made a name leading Farmers Branch's efforts to drive out illegal immigrants, was elected mayor of the Dallas County suburb Saturday. Meanwhile, incumbent mayors and city council members beat challengers who wanted more immigration enforcement in Irving -- where campaigns were highly heated and often personal. Carrollton Mayor Becky Miller, beset by questions about her ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 11, 2008
Middle school students suspended for not standing during Pledge of Allegiance
MINNEAPOLIS _ Three small-town eighth-graders in Minnesota were suspended by their principal for not standing Thursday morning for the Pledge of Allegiance, violating a district policy that the principal now says may soon be reworded to protect free speech rights. "My son wasn't being defiant against America," said Kim Dahl, mother of one of the students, Brandt, who attends ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 11, 2008
EDITORIAL: Speaking in code
May 11--Many conservatives still burn at the thought of John McCain joining the Gang of 14. He did so in 2005, the bipartisan group of senators ending a dangerous stalemate over the confirmation of federal judges. The result protected the right of the minority to filibuster and opened the way to John Roberts and Samuel Alito sitting on the Supreme Court, a classic Capitol Hill compromise.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 11, 2008
ACLU opposes towns' sign fees: Residents of Silver Lake, Bath pay a $5 deposit for each election display
May 11--The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio has put two Summit County communities on notice for making residents pay a fee to display political signs. Silver Lake and Bath Township require $5 deposit fees for each sign residents want to display. "It's a violation of the First Amendment," said attorney Jeff Gamso, legal director of the ACLU of Ohio, which is based in Cleveland.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 11, 2008
Apple offers store credits in iPod suit settlement
SAN FRANCISCO Apple Inc. has agreed to settle a pair of class-action lawsuits in Canada alleging it misled customers about the staying power of their iPods, the latest courtroom truce over the dwindling battery life of early generations of the device. According to a court document, the Cupertino-based company is offering credits for its online store of about $44.75 to people who live in ...
Register-Guard - May 11, 2008
Gov't turns once more to Gaza gas field: Israel Corp. denies talks to buy a BG Group stake in the natural gas concession.
May 11--The government's policy regarding the purchase of natural gas from the natural gas reserves of BG Group plc (NYSE: BRG: LSE: BG) located offshore from Gaza is continuing to zigzag. Sources inform "Globes" that the ministerial committee for legislation is due to discuss today an amendment to the Natural Gas Law to allow the state or a government company to market and sell natural gas.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 11, 2008
Choosing the Best Umbrella Policy: Case Study
This is the third and final part of my series on comparing personal umbrella policies. The premise for all three articles is the importance to the personal risk management process of knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the umbrella policies you have access to. In , I introduced you to many common liability exposures not covered by primary auto and homeowners polices, and the four-step ...
IRMI - May 11, 2008
Pakistan's constitutional shenanigans
INVOKING the non-existent powers of the army chief last November under a declaration of emergency rule, Pervez Musharraf dismissed sixty high court judges and implanted the dismissal order in the constitution as an amendment. The order/amendment reads: 'A Judge including the Chief Justice, of the Supreme Court, a High Court or Federal Shariat Court who had, not been given or taken oath under the ...
Bangladesh Daily Star - May 11, 2008
EDITORIAL: State Supreme Court was right about drink specials
May 11--A Wisconsin Supreme Court decision might be helpful in the fight against binge drinking and alcohol abuse. A few years ago, Madison city regulators threatened to crack down on late-night drinking specials in the bars around the University of Wisconsin campus. To avoid a city crackdown, some Madison bar owners got together and decided to voluntarily eliminate their drink specials on ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 11, 2008
Olmert to appeal early testimony decision: "Ma'ariv" claimed Olmert aide Uri Messer said, "I gave Olmert envelopes full of cash."
May 11--"IDF Radio" (Galei Zahal) reports that the attorneys of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last night decided to appeal to the Supreme Court the decision of the Jerusalem District Court to allow law enforcement agencies to collect early testimony from US businessman Morris Talansky, who is a key witness against Olmert. The attorneys said that, so long as the Israel Police investigation against ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 11, 2008
Randall Lee Smith remains a mystery
KYLE GREEN The Roanoke TimesThis was the home of Randall Lee Smith, who was suspected in the shootings at a campsite off Lions Den Road near Dismal Creek, just more than two miles from Wapiti Shelter, where Smith committed an infamous double murder in May 1981.PEARISBURG -- Disturbed loner. Harmless liar. Confused. Cunning. Killer. Who was Randall Lee Smith? The decades of mystery surrounding ...
Roanoke Times - May 12, 2008
Wild hogs a hot topic in Pennsylvania
May 11--There's no evidence that Pennsylvania Game Commissioners are considering nuclear weapons to get rid of Pennsylvania's feral hogs. They seem willing to try just about anything else, though. Free-roaming feral hogs are an invasive species, and a harmful one at that. They compete with native wildlife like deer, bears and turkeys for food, destroy habitat when rooting for food and eat fawns. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 11, 2008
Uma Thurman sues Lancome in advertising dispute
NEW YORK Uma Thurman responded to French cosmetics giant Lancome's lawsuit against her with one of her own Friday, taking their contract dispute over the use of her name and face in an advertising campaign to federal court. The 'Kill Bill' star said in her lawsuit that Lancome Parfums et Beaute & Cie boosted its worldwide sales and enhanced its 'prestige, stature and bargaining power' by helping ...
AccessAtlanta - May 11, 2008
Khan Resources Announces Offer for Western Prospector
Khan Resources Inc. (TSX: KRI) announced today that it will make an offer to acquire all of the outstanding common shares of Western Prospector Group Ltd. (TSX VENTURE: WNP) in order to consolidate its position in the Saddle Hills district of Mongolia and achieve significant synergies from the joint development of Khan Resources' Dornod uranium deposit and Western Prospector's Gurvanbulag uranium ...
MarketWire - May 11, 2008
Ejected homeowner 'vindicated' by appeals court ruling in her favor
May 8--For one year, Alice Krengel lived at the Dorothy Day homeless shelter in St. Paul, banned from her West St. Paul home by a district court. After a series of public-nuisance violations, city officials had obtained an injunction to keep Krengel away. She's been back home now for 10 months, but on Tuesday the Minnesota Court of Appeals overturned the lower court's decision, concluding she ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 8, 2008
EDITORIAL: Clinton can't win
Hillary Rodham Clinton has run a long and admirable campaign for president of the United States. The prospect of her presidency has energized voters, particularly but not exclusively women, and offered working people a champion for their cause in this time of economic malaise. She has demonstrated resolve and character. And yet, she has lost. We do not venture that observation because we're ...
Los Angeles Times - May 8, 2008
Teach about judiciary, O'Connor urges: Retired justice says public is becoming cynical about courts
May 8--Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor urged more than 700 members of the legal and business community Wednesday afternoon to help educate the public about the need for an accountable and independent judiciary. Speaking at the Midwest Airlines Center at the 150th anniversary luncheon of the Milwaukee Bar Association, the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court decried the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 8, 2008
Talking out of school: Public blogs, private problems
Free expression is an essential guarantee of the First Amendment the freedom to speak and write as we will, without censorship by the government. But the freedom to express oneself doesn t necessarily provide a buffer against the reaction to what is said or written. For public employees like schoolteachers, that s increasingly an issue in the Internet Age, when off-campus postings easily ...
Northeast Herald - May 8, 2008
Glitches mar debut of Guantnamo war court
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- The Pentagon tested its new $12 million war court complex Wednesday with the arraignment of an alleged al Qaeda propagandist -- and the state-of-the-art facility was plagued by technical tribulations. Audio was at times inaudible in the soundproofed observers gallery. The video feed froze in the media room, leaving the judge in freeze-frame for several moments, ...
Miami Herald - May 8, 2008
Dan Rather files amended lawsuit against CBS over his firing
Dan Rather files amended lawsuit against CBS over his firingBy SAMUEL MAULL Thursday, May 8, 2008Dan Rather has filed an amended lawsuit against CBS that says other TV networks refused to hire him because of the damage executives at his former company did to his reputation after a disputed 2004 report on President Bush.Rather's lawyer, Martin R. Gold, said new papers were filed because a judge ...
Town Hall - May 8, 2008
Did contributions influence court ruling?
Texas Supreme Court decision in favor of Houston home-builder raises questions More Opinion SHARE THIS STORY STORY TOOLS The most emailed stories in the last 3 days Carroll principal: Elizondo not reassigned (57) Two suspects caught after shots fired Wednesday night (40) Police: Man assaults wife, smashes vehicle into dune (35) Mom says her son falsely confessed to murder (26) '07 Carroll grad ...
Corpus Christi Caller-Times - May 8, 2008
Ark. court: Cancer claim against poultry firms can proceed
LITTLE ROCK (AP) - Arkansas poultry producers are again the targets of a lawsuit claiming the chicken litter they used caused a man's leukemia. The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday overturned a lower-court ruling from two years ago and found Michael Green and his parents presented sufficient evidence to pursue their case against Tyson Foods Inc., George's Farms Inc., Peterson Farms Inc., and ...
Sharewatch - May 8, 2008
Out-of-State Marriages OK For Now
In a cryptically worded one-sentence order issued on May 6, the New York Court of Appeals, the state's highest, declined, for the time being at least, to review a February 1 appellate court ruling out of Rochester that a lesbian couple, Patricia Martinez and Lisa Ann Golden, who married in Canada in 2004 are entitled to legal recognition of that marriage by Monroe Community College, Martinez's ...
Gay City News - May 8, 2008
Ottawa to review Kearl again: lawyer
CALGARY - The federal Cabinet will have to conduct a new review of the environmental impact of Imperial Oil Ltd.' s Kearl oilsands project before re-issuing a key water permit, a lawyer for the federal justice department said yesterday. Kirt Lambrecht said the Department of Fisheries and Oceans pulled the plug on the permit, which governs management of fish habitat, after a federal court ordered ...
Financial Post - May 8, 2008
The Attributes of Los Angeles Lawyers
There are several subjective misconceptions regarding the role of lawyers in society. Many conceived that a lawyer only deals matters of law at all times. There were also suspicions that lawyers are expert in the unfamiliar underground world of red tape in government. To some, they unfavorably settle that lawyers are the creator of trouble that aggravated issues.
Search Articles.net - May 8, 2008
AP IMPACT: An islands tax haven for US defense contractor
When the Pentagon announced an obscure California company had won a lucrative military contract, no one mentioned any plans for a Caribbean outpost _ a tropical shell the company quickly created that allowed it to duck millions in taxes and deflect U.S. lawsuits. Its legal, at least for now. Contractors large and small have been heading offshore to shield piles of taxpayer dollars, according to ...
MyMotherLode.com - May 8, 2008
Feds 'pursuing' Dougherty
Federal prosecutors said in a court filing yesterday that they are 'pursuing an ongoing investigation' of electricians-union honcho John Dougherty, who they said is a 'subject' of a criminal investigation. As a result, they said, a federal judge should not grant him immunity to testify in the upcoming trial of electrical contractor Donald 'Gus' Dougherty Jr. Assistant U.S.
Philadelphia Inquirer - May 8, 2008
The Obama campaign softens on the Florida/Michigan question.
Now that Barack Obama has all but secured the Democratic nomination, his campaign appears to be softening a bit when it comes to Michigan and Florida. Today, the Michigan Democratic Party settled on its final proposal for divvying up the state s delegates: Clinton gets 69 delegates, Obama gets 59. (That s about half-way between a 50-50 split and the state s Jan.
Slate - May 8, 2008
Six Steps to Ease the Pain of an Audit
April 15 is long gone, but now is a good time to plan for next tax season. Avoiding an audit may be impossible, especially since the Internal Revenue Service has stepped up scrutiny of companies with assets of less than $250 million. But receiving an IRS letter should not spell the end of your business. Here are six steps experts say you should take to make the experience less painful.
TheStreet.com - May 8, 2008
Lawsuits over losses in U.S. mortgage market could hit a wall
Finding someone to sue over losses in the U.S. mortgage market and the credit crisis is easy. Winning in court, lawyers say, will be hard. Shareholders in big financial firms have accused UBS, Merrill Lynch, MBIA and Morgan Stanley, among others, of trying to hide their home loan problems, which later led to declines in their stock prices. Institutional investors have sued investment firms, ...
International Herald Tribune - May 8, 2008
BRIEF: Sacramento skycaps join in suit over wages
May 8--US Airways skycaps at Sacramento International Airport are part of a class-action lawsuit that alleges the airline, based in Tempe, Ariz., and its contractor have violated federal minimum wage law. The suit, filed April 11 in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, claims US Airway's year-old $2 curbside luggage check-in fee drastically cut into skycaps' tips, leaving some earning less than ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 8, 2008
BRIEF: Good news in poll year: Cong
May 9--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court order asking the Centre to consider an archaeological survey to ascertain whether the Ram Setu can was an ancient monument and to consider pushing the venture through other alignments came as a relief to the Congress. "It gives us time in an election year," said a party leader. Officially, though, the Congress said it would not comment on a court decision.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 9, 2008
Clinton cares about Oregon, and she has the compact to prove it
In 2006, President Bush allowed the expiration of the county payments law, a 100-year-old federal obligation that provides desperately needed funds for our rural communities. In 2005, he and Vice President Dick Cheney pushed through an energy bill that stripped Oregon's right to determine whether and where to site liquefied natural gas terminals and lines. And in 2001, the Bush Justice ...
Register-Guard - May 8, 2008
Nuclear option: Congress should settle waste debate
Just when we thought importing radioactive waste from Italy was out, EnergySolutions tries to pull it back in. The Utah-based disposal firm has asked the U.S. District Court in Utah to determine if the eight-state Northwest Interstate Compact on Low-Level Radioactive Waste Management has the power to regulate the source of waste dumped at the company's facility at Clive.
Salt Lake Tribune - May 8, 2008
Ramadoss gets a dose of judicial treatment: BJP
'It is a judicial treatment for the unhealthy attitude of the Health Minister,' BJP Vice President Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said. 'From the very beginning, the Health Minister has been acting in an unhealthy manner. The passage of the AIIMS Amendment Act was politically motivated and to satisfy his ego,' he said. Naqvi alleged that Ramadoss even made the Parliament to pass the bill which damaged the ...
Express India - May 8, 2008
Game Commission Removes Protection on Feral Swine
First step in effort toward eradication of invasive species 'We are maintaining protection on feral swine in Butler, Bedford and Cambria counties to facilitate trapping by the U.S. and Pennsylvania departments of Agriculture,' Roe said. 'Trapping is the most effective way to remove feral swine from the wild, because it limits their dispersal into new areas. If funding is not available for ...
Macro World Investor - May 8, 2008
This Nation Is An Island
Japan's insularity is becoming a drag on its economy and threatening its future. To understand Japan's economic milieu, you could do worse than to look at the current battle between famed British hedge-fund manager Christopher Hohn and the Japanese government. In January, Hohn, an activist investor who runs the London-based Children's Investment Fund, decided to double its stake in J-Power, ...
MSN UK - May 8, 2008
The spread of autonomous lawnmowers.
The point of the robot, it seems, is to take the physical risks formerly taken by its human owner. Any guns that might previously have been stuck in his face now have to be pointed at his tank instead, which doesn't have quite the same effect. There's no report of the tank having been shot, but, as the story says, it has taken its share of rocks and bricks. That's fine.
Slate - May 8, 2008
Murderer put to death: William Earl Lynd first man to die by lethal injection in 8 months
May 7--Convicted killer William Earl Lynd had no last words Tuesday evening for the brutal 1988 Berrien County murder of Virginia "Ginger" Moore. Asked by Warden Hilton Hall if he wished to make a final statement, Lynd said, "Nope." Asked if he wished to have a prayer offered on his behalf, Lynd said, "no." Fifteen minutes later, Lynd was silenced forever as he was pronounced dead by lethal ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 7, 2008
New York governor wants to tax tribal cigarette sales
May 7--ALBANY, N.Y -- New York Gov. David Paterson, just a few weeks after taking office, is already thinking about collecting sales taxes on cigarettes sold by tribes. It's a path many of his predecessors have unsuccessfully pursued, and several tribal leaders predict Paterson, too, will likely face challenges. In a late April appearance on a Syracuse radio station, Paterson said the state's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 7, 2008
Dann could be 1st nonjudge to be impeached
May 7--COLUMBUS -- Attorney General Marc Dann has not been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one, but that may not stop Ohio lawmakers from proceeding with plans to impeach him if he remains firm in his refusal to resign. Ohio lawmakers presided over several impeachments during the state's infancy and none alleged a criminal violation, including the sole case that resulted in a Senate ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 7, 2008
Bankruptcy: Generation gap extends to handling of financial woes
From Lansing State Journal Share this article: The stress of a home foreclosure or bankruptcy filing at any age is often a life-changing event. Yet, financial problems are treated differently by different generations. More often, bankruptcy is something I see happening to people who have reached their retirement years. It is not that unusual to see couples ages 65 and older who have worked for ...
Lansing State Journal - May 7, 2008
Defense industry tax havens under fire
WASHINGTON - When the Pentagon announced an obscure California company had won a lucrative military contract, no one mentioned any plans for a Caribbean outpost - a tropical shell the company quickly created that allowed it to duck millions in taxes and deflect U.S. lawsuits. It's legal, at least for now. Contractors large and small have been heading offshore to shield piles of taxpayer dollars, ...
MSNBC - May 7, 2008
The Clinton family tableaux.
Emily, you are right that the Clinton family tableaux at each of these speeches has proven a sort of still life in public social anguish but given that it s historically been the task of the presidential wife to look like a medicated groupie in a good suit, maybe it s fair to say that Bill was doing a decent male impression of just that last night. Filed under: Barack Obama, Hillary ...
Slate Magazine - May 7, 2008
Two issues in move vs Lopezes
MANILA, Philippines-In the fight of the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo against the Lopezes on the rates of Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), I think the public, which has long suffered steep power rates, would be sympathetic to the administration. The public perception is that there are a lot of hidden costs being loaded into the very complicated customer's bill by the power ...
Philippine Daily Inquirer - May 7, 2008
AP IMPACT: An islands tax haven for US defense contractor
WASHINGTON -- When the Pentagon announced an obscure California company had won a lucrative military contract, no one mentioned any plans for a Caribbean outpost - a tropical shell the company quickly created that allowed it to duck millions in taxes and deflect U.S. lawsuits. It's legal, at least for now. Contractors large and small have been heading offshore to shield piles of taxpayer ...
Miami Herald - May 7, 2008
Showdown In The Oval Office
The battle over President Truman's decision to recognize Israel Special to the Jewish Week Note: From the first chapter of Counsel to the President, the memoirs of Clark Clifford with Richard Holbrooke, published in 1991, telling the dramatic inside story of how young Clifford 'took on' Secretary of State George C. Marshall, perhaps the most admired man in America, over Israel.
The Jewish Week - May 7, 2008
Clinton's Best Oil Idea
Poor Hillary. It must be tough trying to pass yourself off as a working-class, beer-drinking populist who refuses to kowtow to elite opinion or put her lot in with economists when, deep down, you're still that same solid middle-class kid who went to Ivy League schools, made partner at a corporate law firm, speculated in hog futures and real estate development, reveled at Renaissance Weekends, ...
Washington Post - May 7, 2008
Candidates for state's high court say public's faith shaken
HUNTINGTON -- While on the campaign trail for a seat for the state's highest court, candidates say they are learning voters have trust issues. Recent scandals and perceived conflicts of interest are at the top of citizens' lists of things to correct when two justices are elected to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals in November. One justice at the center of recent controversy must first ...
Herald Dispatch - May 7, 2008
Georgian's execution ends moratorium
JACKSON, Ga. A Georgia man who killed his live-in girlfriend was executed yesterday, the first inmate put to death since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injections. William Earl Lynd was pronounced dead at 4:51 p.m. PDT. The execution came less than an hour after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected efforts to block it. California and other states that use lethal ...
SignOn San Diego - May 7, 2008
The Obama Bubble Agenda
Obama phenomenon has been likened to that of cults, celebrity groupies and Messiah worshipers. But what were actually witnessing is ObamaMania (as in tulip mania), the third and final bubble orchestrated and financed by the wonderful Wall Street folks who brought us the first two: the Nasdaq/tech bubble and a subprime-mortgage-in-every-pot bubble. To understand why Wall Street desperately needs ...
CounterPunch - May 7, 2008
Wave of Lawsuits Over Losses Could Hit a Wall
Finding someone to sue over losses in the mortgage market and the credit crisis is easy. Winning in court, lawyers say, will be hard. Shareholders in big financial firms have accused UBS, Merrill Lynch, MBIA and Morgan Stanley, among others, of trying to hide their home loan problems, which later led to declines in their stock prices. Institutional investors have sued investment firms, including ...
New York Times - May 7, 2008
No end to foreclosure boom
As bad as the housing crisis is in the United States, thanks to loan defaults and foreclosures from unpaid subprime mortgages, national housing and neighborhood activists expect it to get far worse. Meeting at the Duke Energy Center downtown today, more than 350 housing activists heard a panel of national experts, including bankers, housing advocates and government regulators, detail how hundreds ...
Cincinnati Enquirer - May 7, 2008
Oil Giants to Settle Water Suit
Some of the nations largest oil companies have agreed to pay about $423 million in cash to settle a lawsuit brought by more than a hundred public water providers, claiming water contamination from a popular gasoline additive. The terms of the settlement were submitted for approval in the federal court for the Southern District of New York. Under the terms of the deal, the companies also agreed ...
New York Times - May 7, 2008
EDITORIAL: Bad prosecutors should face prison
May 6--Craig Watkins has had a few misses amid many hits in his first term as Dallas County district attorney, but it's hard to argue with his there-oughta-be-a-law sentiment on prosecutorial misconduct. Mr. Watkins has pushed as hard to free the innocent as he has to convict the guilty. In that spirit, he now wants Texas to increase punishments -- up to and including prison time -- for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 6, 2008
I-35W victims bill heads to governor: House, Senate OK two-tier $38M plan
May 6--For months, survivors of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse have followed every legislative twist and turn on a bill for a fund to compensate them for their losses, and much of the time their expressions have been solemn, even grim. On Monday, their faces broke into grins, and they exchanged hugs and handshakes after the House and Senate passed a bill by wide margins.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 6, 2008
Why no one opposed the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act.
Mildred Loving, who along with her husband Richard, was a plaintiff in the 1967 case of Loving v. Virginia, passed away on May 2nd. Her obituary is here. In Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court held that laws banning interracial marriage violated the Equal Protection Clause both because they violated principles of racial equality and because they abridged a fundamental right to marry.
Slate - May 6, 2008
With no photo IDs, nuns denied ballots in Indiana
WASHINGTON _ At least 10 retired nuns in South Bend, Ind., were barred from voting in Tuesday's Indiana Democratic primary election because they lacked photo IDs required under a state law that the Supreme Court upheld last week. John Borkowski, a South Bend lawyer volunteering as an election watchdog for the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said several of the retired nuns had been ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 6, 2008
Free speech takes a hit with ruling
THE ISSUEU.S. Court of Appeals upholds the state's tax-supported campaign financing system for Supreme Court justices and justices on the N.C. Court of Appeals POINTS OF DEBATEThe fund provides dollars for appellate judicial campaigns to candidates who agree to spending limits; The candidates who accept the offer are at an advantage THE STAR'S VIEWThe system uses the power of government to ...
Shelby Star - May 6, 2008
McCain vows to appoint judges like Alito and Roberts
WASHINGTON _ Sen. John McCain sought to burnish his conservative credentials Tuesday with a broadside against "the common and systematic abuse of our federal courts by the people we entrust with judicial power" and a promise of "better judges" in the mold of Supreme Court justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. In a speech on his judicial philosophy delivered in a chapel on the campus of Wake ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 6, 2008
Uma Thurmans Pursuer Is Found Guilty of Stalking
Jack Jordan, a graduate turned drifter who lived in his car, was found guilty on Tuesday of stalking the actress Uma Thurman, the star of edgy, violent movies like Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction. He was also found guilty of one count of second-degree aggravated harassment, but was acquitted of two additional counts of second-degree aggravated harassment. During the jury trial in State Supreme Court ...
New York Times - May 6, 2008
Opponents call for end to fish farms
Vancouver - Some of the most vociferous critics of fish farming on the West Coast say they will ask a B.C. court to prevent the provincial government from renewing leases on existing fish farms. Biologist Alexandra Morton said she and an association of gillnetters, the Vessels Owners Association and the Wilderness Tourism Association filed a petition Tuesday in B.C. Supreme Court.
Globe and Mail - May 6, 2008
School district settles with 8th molestation victim for $500,000
May 6--The Beaufort County Board of Education voted Tuesday to settle a lawsuit with the eighth victim of convicted child molester and former teacher Philip Underwood-Sheppard for more than $500,000. The board voted 9-0 to pay $563,500 out of the school district's budget, which will not require a tax increase. Reading from a prepared statement at a school board meeting, board Chairman Fred ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 6, 2008
Inmates exposed to 'superbug,' lawsuits say
Lonnie Napier says he was infected with the flesh-eating bacteria at the Laurel County Detention Center, and that his wound grew so gangrenous that a portion of his scrotum had to be removed. Martel Chapman said she was infected in the Hardin County jail after being forced to share a cell with women who had draining sores and boils.Scott Wooler said he caught it in the Hickman County Detention ...
Louisville Courier-Journal - May 6, 2008
Kentucky Speedway appeal labels NASCAR as 'monopolist'
Kentucky Speedway has filed legal arguments in its appeal of a federal court's January ruling to throw out its antitrust claims against NASCAR. The threshold issue as the District Court saw it was whether NASCAR's Nextel Cup stock car racing series (formerly Winston Cup, and now Sprint Cup) constitutes a distinct 'relevant market' for the purposes of federal antitrust law.
East Bay Business Journal - May 6, 2008
Pants Update: Pants Man Sues City
Pearson, who has been keeping to himself since losing both his lawsuit against Custom Cleaners and his job last year, has emerged from his Northeast home to demand a cool million from the city that pushed him out of a job last fall. You may recall that in the pants case, Pearson styled himself as the 'private attorney general' representing all of the people of the District of Columbia in the ...
Washington Post - May 6, 2008
Obama wins N.C. primary, Clinton leads in Indiana
Obama wins NC, says near nomination; Clinton leads Indiana 55 mins ago: Obama wins NC, says nomination close; Clinton leads Indiana 1 hr 49 ago: Obama wins NC Democratic primary; Clinton leads in Indiana 3 hrs ago: Obama wins in North Carolina, but trails Clinton in Indiana 4 hrs ago: Obama wins North Carolina primary 4 hrs ago: Clinton leads in Indiana, battles Obama in North Carolina 5 hrs ago: ...
Examiner-LasVegas - May 6, 2008
Utah high court may settle Draper route
Draper resident Jennifer Schaerer poses for a portrait on her back porch. With plans for commuter rail, she thinks a TRAX extension is redundant. DRAPER - This city has long been enmeshed in a heavy light-rail controversy, but the state's high court could finally put the issue back on track toward resolution Tuesday. At issue: TRAX currently dead ends in Sandy at 10000 South, and the Utah ...
Salt Lake Tribune - May 6, 2008
What's a democratic vote worth in theocratic Iran?
Real change can result from elections in Iran as long as there is a homegrown democratic heart beating within the theocratic republic. But for how long will that be the case? Iran may not be a liberal democracy but it is certainly a far cry from those fake democratic republics that littered the world before 1989. A representative democracy grafted onto a theocracy, the Islamic Republic is a ...
Lebanon Daily Star - May 6, 2008
North Carolina case claims financial calamity from Bayer drug
RALEIGH - North Carolina could become a battleground in the fight over Bayer Corp.'s embattled bleeding-control drug Trasylol, but for a different reason than safety. A lawsuit filed April 11 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina claims no physical injury from the drug. Instead, plaintiff Jerry Saine of Catawba County claims he suffered 'economic injury' ...
Business Journal of Milwaukee - May 6, 2008
Sioux urged to take Hills payment
Attorney seeks Native people willing to accept lawsuit settlement As a young Lakota man, Gary Montana's elders told him about the Black Hills. (153) Tribal constitution election declared null and void (147) It's official: Abortion ban to be on the ballot (141) Daschle comes to Hills to support Obama (112) Police officer, student collide at Sturgis intersection (90) $150,000 Mortgage for ...
Rapid City Journal - May 6, 2008
New twist to old issue of 'taking' of property
SACRAMENTO Dueling initiatives on the statewide ballot June 3 are being framed as a showdown over government's power to seize private property, but the outcome could turn on the underlying issue of rent control. Both campaigns play up iconic images to sway voters, pitting the mom-and-pop shopkeeper forced to sell by a city hungry for more tax receipts against the fixed-income senior citizen ...
SignOn San Diego - May 6, 2008
Kelly prosecutors bear heavy burden: Alleged victim's lack of cooperation cited
May 5--As jury selection begins later this week in the R. Kelly child pornography trial, the high-profile case will be missing a key component of most criminal prosecutions: A victim. The 41-year-old singer, whose real name is Robert Kelly, faces charges stemming from a 15-minute videotape that authorities say was made with a girl as young as 13 sometime between Jan. 1, 1998, and Nov.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Congress asked to spare condemned killer by enforcing treaty
WASHINGTON _ Texas death-row inmate Jose Ernesto Medellin, the central figure in an international dispute over U.S. treaty obligations, has been sentenced to die on Aug. 5, but the Mexican citizen's attorneys sought congressional intervention to stall the execution. District Judge Caprice Cosper of Houston set the execution date for Medellin, who has been on death row for nearly 15 years for the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Clemens story takes yet another twist with apologetic statement
NEW YORK _ It played out like a movie script, kicking off like a secret-agent flick and concluding like the biopic of a religious leader. Roger Clemens awoke in his Houston-area home a year ago this morning, boarded a plane to New York with his agent Randy Hendricks and sneaked into Yankee Stadium. During the seventh-inning stretch of that day's Yankees-Mariners game, venerable Stadium ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
In the footsteps of Lincoln
May 5--Abraham Lincoln grew from frontiersman to president of the United States in the mid-section of Illinois. He held his first public office as postmaster in New Salem, where he became a lawyer. He rode the vast 8th Judicial Circuit that stretched from the Illinois River to the Indiana border until it was carved into smaller pieces -- in a move engineered by Lincoln the lobbyist.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Music marketing is in throes of digital transformation
May 5--TAMPA -- If the MP3 was a shot across the music industry's bow, Radiohead's "In Rainbows" may have been the torpedo that sank the ship. The English art-rock quintet initially released its latest album as a pay-what-you-want download. The set-your-own-price angle captured the most headlines, but the secondary story was more important. As the old TV pitch used to go, Radiohead cut out the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Thunder Valley officials mystified by wrongful death lawsuit
May 5--Thunder Valley Casino officials are angered that the casino is being sued in connection to the murder of a woman in 2005. The wrongful death lawsuit was filed by the family of Christie Wilson, the 27-year-old Sacramento woman who was last seen leaving the Lincoln casino in October 2005 with the man later convicted of her murder. Mario Flavio Garcia is serving a sentence of 59 years to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
An unfair plays against fair pay
Lilly Ledbetter worked in a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden, Ala., for 19 years before she received some valuable information from an anonymous tipster: She learned that she was making $6,500 less than the lowest-paid guy who had her job. She did what anybody might do. She sued. She was in for a surprise. So were a lot of civil rights experts.
Detroit News - May 5, 2008
Court mulls death for child rapists: Ruling could affect Bonifay trial
May 5--Christopher Powers asked for the death penalty for his lengthy sexual abuse of an 11-year-old boy. The U.S. Supreme Court could make that a possibility. The high court justices are contemplating a return to a system of death sentences for people convicted of raping children. Two weeks ago, the court heard oral arguments in the case of Patrick Kennedy, who is opposing his death sentence ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
EDITORIAL: Free speech takes a hit with ruling
May 5--THE ISSUE U.S. Court of Appeals upholds the state's tax-supported campaign financing system for Supreme Court justices and justices on the N.C. Court of Appeals POINTS OF DEBATE The fund provides dollars for appellate judicial campaigns to candidates who agree to spending limits; The candidates who accept the offer are at an advantage THE STAR'S VIEW The system uses the power of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
BRIEF: Supreme Court: HomeGold witnesses can testify
May 5--The S.C. Supreme Court today has reversed a lower court ruling that had barred five former company leaders from testifying against former HomeGold Financial chairman John Sterling. The witnesses are key to the state's case because they have testified in previous trials that Sterling, a Greenville venture capitalist, misled them about HomeGold's declining financial health -- a charge ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Boy Scouts push for new relevance
HOUSTON _ The scene on a recent weekend at Camp Strake, a Boy Scout overnight camp in the woods north of Houston, looked ageless and familiar: A group of teenage scouts, their tan uniforms neatly buttoned as they emerged from their tents, lined up eagerly to watch several fathers demonstrate skeet shooting. But this was not a scouting tableau as Norman Rockwell might have pictured it.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
EDITORIAL: Shoddy workmanship: Give Texas homeowners better tools to force irresponsible builders to fix construction defects
May 5--The mounting numbers of unresolved complaints make increasingly clear that the Texas Residential Construction Commission Act, passed in the 2003 Legislature, has become for buyers of poorly constructed homes the nightmare many feared it would. Adding insult to this injurious legislation is how the law is falsely touted as an aide to homeowners stuck in shoddily built houses.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Supreme Court's Web site includes new features
May 5--Mon, May 05 2008 -- Staff Report In conjunction with the commemoration of Law Day, the Illinois Supreme Court has announced a new feature on its Web site to help increase awareness about how Illinois government operates and the interrelationship among the three branches. The materials, available on the Web site at a new "Student Learning Center," are designed for middle school pupils but ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
BJP weighs 'options' against Speaker move
May 5--DELHI -- Amid indications of a fresh round of confrontation between the Opposition and Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, senior NDA leaders are to discuss on Monday ways to show their disapproval of his act of referring the cases of 32 MPs, all from the Opposition and BSP, to the privileges committee for their "unruly behaviour" when they were protesting against a serious issue like ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Supreme battling: Justice Horton seeks first win after joining high court last year
May 5--Idaho Supreme Court Justice Joel Horton -- who was appointed to the bench last September by Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter -- disagrees with nearly all of the fiery contentions made by his opponent in an upcoming election. It's not that Horton, for example, rejects the principles behind 2nd District Judge John Bradbury's calls for overhauling the district courts.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Big day in court for open space tax: $56 MILLION TIED UP IN LONG LEGAL BATTLE
May 5--Over the past seven years, Santa Clara County's open space agency has collected more than $50 million from property owners as part of Silicon Valley's quest to preserve land and stem the unrelenting pressures of development. But the money has just been sitting there, a tantalizing, untapped reservoir of funding during a time when most government agencies are tapped out.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Suit seeks to prevent rate cut for health care providers
May 5--Doctors, hospitals and health care providers filed a class-action lawsuit Monday seeking to block the state from cutting payments to them for treating the poor. The lawsuit argues that an upcoming 10 percent rate cut to Medi-Cal -- the state-run health insurance program serving 6.5 million low-income residents -- will exacerbate a shortage of doctors, dentists and pharmacists willing to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Yahoo! Shareholders to File Amended Complaint in Pending Class Action; Will Seek Redress for Yahoo Board Thwarting Microsoft's Merger Proposal Announces Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP
Two public pension funds represented by Two public pension funds represented by Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann LLP and Bouchard Margules & Friedlander, P.A., the Court-appointed Co-Lead Counsel for the proposed class of all Yahoo!, Inc. ("Yahoo") (NASDAQ: YHOO) shareholders, will pursue their consolidated class action lawsuit against Jerry Yang and the other members of the Yahoo ...
MarketWire - May 5, 2008
Rising to the top: Highly regarded
May 5--C EDAR RAPIDS -- State Appellate Judge David Baker of Cedar Rapids is known as an avid golfer, bowler and fan of the Grateful Dead. He competes in many ugly golf and bowling shirt contests and confesses his attendance at Dead concerts is in the double digits. But his real passion is the law. His other interests take a back seat to his lifelong aspiration of being appointed to the Iowa ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Ping lashes at Alan over ZTE comments
May 5--SEN. Panfilo Lacson on Sunday rapped Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano for declaring that he would come out with a report on the aborted $329-million national broadband network (NBN) scandal even before members of the Senate blue ribbon committee could meet and discuss the matter. "The procedure I know is that a committee will meet to discuss a report, but there has been no such meeting.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Public inquiry into Taser use begins on Monday
A public inquiry into the use of the controversial Taser in B.C. begins Monday. Headed by retired B.C. Supreme Court judge Thomas Braidwood, the first of two phases of the inquiry is a study into the use of the conducted energy weapons. After reviewing written submissions and public forums to be held until May 23, Braidwood will make recommendations on the appropriate use of the weapons by B.C. ...
The Province - May 5, 2008
Bias suit faces fight to be heard: Churches exempt from hiring laws
May 5--The Rev. Derrick Gomez alleges that in his job with the North Carolina Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America he was subjected to an intolerable pattern of racial discrimination that ultimately led him to resign. It's not clear whether the allegations -- contained in a lawsuit in federal court -- have merit. And it may not matter. The suit may never be heard because of a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
EDITORIAL: Our View -- Monday
May 5--SMALL VICTORIES FOR GUN RIGHTS: Court, official act to protect Second Amendment: Second Amendment supporters got a couple of pieces of good news last week. One, perhaps the most important in a while, was that a federal appeals court didn't buy New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's argument that firearms manufacturers should be held responsible for firearm violence in his city.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Scrabble surges back, thanks to upstart Scrabulous
May 5--Scrabble is nothing if not a retro game, one that conjures up images of the canasta and bebop generation, and brings back memories of fussing with wooden alphabet tiles, as high-scoring crosswords marched across the pastel grid of the game board and Frank Sinatra, perhaps, crooned in the background. So it's a bit of a surprise to discover a new generation has quietly become addicted to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Guilty until proven innocent: Parents accused of child abuse by DCFS fight to clear their names
May 5--The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services wrongly placed more than 3,000 people on the state's official list of child abusers over a five-year period, a News-Democrat investigation found. That's an error rate of one in four, based on more than 11,000 cases where people appealed to have their names removed from the list. Parents and foster parents accused of child abuse or ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Voters and ID cards
The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Friday, May 2: ___ You show your ID at the grocery store to cash a check. You show your ID at the airport to get on a plane. Why not be required to show an ID at the precinct on Election Day? That's what Indiana and many other states require. Doesn't sound unreasonable. But opponents challenged a 2005 Indiana law, arguing that it could ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
No photo to vote, for now: Officials debate need for photo ID
May 5--DENVER -- You may need a driver's license to get a beer, but you don't need one to get a ballot. When voters go to the polls this year, they will be able to show they're eligible to vote by presenting a copy of their birth certificate, pay stub or utility bill. The Legislature has debated whether Colorado needs stricter standards, and the parties are split on the issue.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
EDITORIAL: Poisoning Rover
May 5--The Virginia Supreme Court has agreed to rehear part of a case about a subject far from everybody's heart: e-mail spam. In February a divided court upheld the conviction of a notorious spammer, Jeremy Jaynes, under Virginia's anti-spam law. That law prohibits sending unsolicited, bulk e-mails beyond a certain threshhold. Although the court ruled the law was applied to Jaynes in a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Greater legal aid sought for poor: Proposed center would offer help by volunteer lawyers
May 5--Linda Paddock was beside herself. She was being sued for nearly $12,000 after defaulting on a car loan -- seven years after the auto had been repossessed. Paddock earned enough money to pay the rent and put food on the table by working two jobs. She earned slightly too much, however, to qualify for a lawyer's assistance from the Legal Aid Society, a not-for-profit agency that represents ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Brain maturation may be defense in teen's murder trial
May 4--Blame the brain. A growing field of neuroscience research suggests teenagers take more risks, don't focus on consequences and tend not to reason things out because there's too much going on in their heads. The studies show brain maturation continues many years longer than scientists once thought. Researchers think an overabundance of gray matter and still-strengthening connections between ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
Top court takes area gun case: Marion man seeks to clear his name
May 4--The case of a Marion County man barred from owning a gun because of a conviction for simple battery will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court later this year. Randy Hayes, of Mannington, pleaded guilty to simple battery, a misdemeanor, in 1994 for a dispute with his then wife, said his attorney, Troy Giatras. He was sentenced to one year of probation. In 2004, Marion County police officers ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
Houston Chronicle Rick Casey column: Lawyer who undid DA is after sheriff
May 4--The lawyer who brought down District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal is setting his sights on Sheriff Tommy Thomas. Rosenthal's demise came from deleting more than 2,000 e-mails after being ordered by a federal judge to produce them. Attorney Lloyd Kelley had sought the e-mails in connection with a suit that accused five of Thomas' deputies of violating the civil rights of two brothers.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
A TRIBUNE SPECIAL REPORT: Health & death behind bars
May 4--Lack of care Health assessments are supposed to be done within 14 days of an inmate's admission, and inmates are supposed to receive medical care upon request. Out of 57,105 inmates booked with length of stay at least four days: More than 60 Maricopa County jail inmates have died since 2004, many from illnesses that would be treatable in normal medical settings.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
Guilty until proven innocent: Parents accused of child abuse by DCFS fight to clear their names
May 4--The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services wrongly placed more than 3,000 people on the state's official list of child abusers over a five-year period, a News-Democrat investigation found. That's an error rate of one in four, based on more than 11,000 cases where people appealed to have their names removed from the list. Parents and foster parents accused of child abuse or ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
'Taking On The Trust' By Steve Weinberg
May 4--Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller both embraced hard work and the value of careful analysis. "Like Rockefeller, Tarbell grounded her decision-making in hard evidence, not in emotionalism," Steve Weinberg writes in "Taking on the Trust." The clash between these two strong people, Weinberg writes, changed journalism and American business. Tarbell, born in 1857, was raised in the nation's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
What's on a winning resume?: Experts say no job is like governor's Selling points
May 4--North Carolina will see not only a new governor next year but, the candidates say, a new style of governing. Gov. Mike Easley's remote management style is campaign fodder for Republican candidates who paint him as disengaged. The two Democrats who want the job, while not mentioning Easley, join Republicans in promising accessibility and hands-on leadership.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
Dallas County district attorney wants unethical prosecutors punished
May 4--The Dallas County district attorney who has built a national reputation on freeing the wrongfully convicted says prosecutors who intentionally withhold evidence should themselves face harsh sanctions -- possibly even jail time. "Something should be done," said Craig Watkins, whose jurisdiction leads the nation in the number of DNA exonerations. "If the harm is a great harm, yes, it should ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
EDITORIAL: Class Actions: Absurd and sublime
May 4--This month, the Missouri Supreme Court gave a swift boot to one of those irritating class-action lawsuits that drive business executives up the wall. The court's prudent decision shows there's little need for a harsher crackdown on class actions now under consideration in the Missouri Legislature. Class-action cases range from the ridiculous to the justified.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
EDITORIAL: Democracy's loss: The U.S. Supreme Court sets the bar discouragingly low for states' efforts to discourage legitimate voters
May 4--Up in Washington, the Supreme Court made a mountain out of a molehill -- verified instances of people voting with fraudulent intent -- and then leveled the molehill with a bulldozer. By a 6-3 margin the court upheld an Indiana law that requires voters to present an official photo ID card at the polls. Yes, the ruling may help deter fraud -- although Indiana hasn't experienced any (no ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
EDITORIAL: Bill promotes religion
May 4--State lawmakers are involved in another attempt to display the Ten Commandments in public buildings. This effort is just as pointless and unconstitutional as past attempts. The bill, which was approved by the House last year, was taken up by a Senate panel last week. Under the bill, the Judeo-Christian cornerstone could be displayed in public schools and courthouses in the state as long ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
Thomas: Remember to give thanks
May 4--HIGH POINT -- Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas told High Point University's class of 2008 graduates to appreciate and respect those who helped get them to where they are. "None of you made it here on your own. There are people who gave birth to you, raised and loved you, even when you were not so lovable," Thomas said. The Supreme Court justice was the keynote speaker during HPU's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
Supreme Court justice speaks at HPU commencement
May 4--HIGH POINT -- If Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas were to package Saturday's commencement speech at High Point University into an inspirational book about learning everything needed for life, he could call it "Those old folks are right." "Good manners will open doors that nothing else will open," Thomas told graduates seated on the manicured lawn of the private college.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
EDITORIAL: Truman Changed The Balance Of Power
May 4--INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- Business, meaning research by historians and nourishment for history hobbyists, is brisk at the Harry S. Truman Library on this 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift, the desegregation of the armed services, recognition of the state of Israel and the improbable election of the president responsible for many momentous policies. The library is a place, and now is a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
OPINION: Fight to regulate campaign funds scores a victory
May 4--RALEIGH -- The fight to regulate spending in state and federal elections has gone on so long it might as well be called the Thirty Years War -- except it's already longer than that and shows no sign of ending. Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo case that limits on what candidates can spend are unconstitutional restrictions on speech, states have struggled ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
Suit challenges building fees: City illegally shifted millions to General Fund, group alleges
May 4--STOCKTON -- A building industry group said it will sue Stockton this week, claiming the city turned its permit center into a money-maker, illegally charging excessive fees to fund activities unrelated to development. The lawsuit, to be filed by the Building Industry Association of the Delta, challenges the legality of the city's transfer of millions of dollars from its permit center to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
Blacks may stay home in November if Obama's denied the nomination
INDIANAPOLIS _ Many black voters are making it very clear: They're concerned that Barack Obama is going to be denied the Democratic presidential nomination that they see as rightfully his, and if that happens, a lot of them may stay home in November. "It would hurt me not to vote," said Charles Clark, an Indianapolis retiree. He's thinking about leaving the presidential box on his ballot blank ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
A night on the water: spearing, netting walleyes on Mille Lacs Lake
May 4--It was midnight on Mille Lacs Lake when three Fond du Lac spear-fishermen discovered a massive ice floe creeping closer to their nine nets. After a call to conservation officers to seek permission to pull in the nets, since spearing and netting are not to take place at the same time, the men made a few more attempts in the inky black night early Tuesday to find a walleye.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
Sites of Bell verdict protest near transit hot spots
May 4--People protesting the acquittal of detectives in the fatal shooting of Sean Bell will gather Wednesday near six transit choke points around New York City before leading a march and "pray-in" organizers anticipate will lead to some arrests, the Rev. Al Sharpton said Saturday. Speaking at the "House of Justice," headquarters for his National Action Network on 145th Street in Harlem, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
The Record, Stockton, Calif., Michael Fitzgerald column: Attorney's books raise questions
May 4--Normally an attorney who "misappropriated" $400,000 would be disbarred and shipped to prison. But the case of Helena M. Dakopolos is a harder call. Not that there's any doubt that Dakopolos, a Stockton attorney, took client money. She admits she did. San Joaquin's district attorney, however, has yet to file criminal charges, though the state bar recommended two months ago Dakopolos be ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
Businesses discover there's life after ban: Most are complying with law, health officials say. However, private clubs want it blown away
May 4--Corky's Thomastown Caf has the distinction of being one of the top bars in the state. Unfortunately for owner Billy McFrye, his bar sits atop a list of businesses that have violated Ohio's indoor smoking ban law. No business in Ohio has racked up a bigger bill than McFrye's, which is facing $5,600 in fines so far. It's not surprising. Walk into Corky's, at South Arlington Street and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
SC affirms Comelec's prosecutorial powers
May 5--THE Commission on Elections (Comelec) is empowered by the Constitution to prosecute violators of elections laws and has the right to determine under which laws prosecution will be pursued, based on an en banc decision written by Justice Minita Chico-Nazario. The Supreme Court (SC) stressed this ruling in its 30-page decision upholding Comelec's action to file charges against the couple ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
BJP weighs 'options' against Speaker move
May 5--DELHI -- Amid indications of a fresh round of confrontation between the Opposition and Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee, senior NDA leaders are to discuss on Monday ways to show their disapproval of his act of referring the cases of 32 MPs, all from the Opposition and BSP, to the privileges committee for their "unruly behaviour" when they were protesting against a serious issue like ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 5, 2008
Witness will testify to sexual encounter with R. Kelly, minor
CHICAGO _ The judge in the R. Kelly case has dealt a blow to the superstar's defense, allowing at least one witness to testify to an alleged sexual encounter with Kelly beyond the one recorded on the video at the center of his upcoming trial, sources close to the case said. One witness may testify that she engaged in a sexual encounter with both the singer and the minor said to be depicted in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
Bellingham in legal fight for special ed funds
May 4--The underfunding of education in Washington state has moved into the courtroom. Bellingham is one of 12 school districts battling since October 2004 to increase state funding for special education, which districts are legally required to provide. The case is scheduled to be heard in the Court of Appeals on Tuesday. Members of the Special Education Alliance include the Everett, Federal Way ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 4, 2008
Wachovia may take $1 billion 2Q charge
May 1--Adding to a run of bad news for Wachovia Corp., the Charlotte bank on Wednesday said it expects to take an after-tax charge of up to $1 billion in the second quarter because of a court ruling involving leasing transactions. The announcement was the latest fallout from controversial leasing arrangements that banks used in the late 1990s and early this decade to lower their tax bills until ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 1, 2008
Hollywood private eye says he did not lead criminal enterprise
LOS ANGELES -- Indicted Hollywood private eye Anthony Pellicano said Wednesday he acted as a 'lone ranger' while gathering information for his A-list clients and did not lead a criminal enterprise, as prosecutors have alleged at his racketeering trial. During his closing argument, Pellicano insisted he shared no information with colleagues as he conducted investigations and only allowed others to ...
Los Angeles Daily News - May 1, 2008
Eve's assets restored on Roseville mural: Artist says he still loves city despite lengthy legal battle
May 1--Clutching a paintbrush dipped in a shade labeled light sienna, Ed (Gonzo) Stross finished replacing what a black rectangle on his Roseville mural previously left to the imagination. Not even two minutes passed Wednesday when the artist, clad in a red-and-black flannel jacket and cargo shorts, stepped down from his plastic chair saying, "That's it in all its brilliance.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 1, 2008
Son of slain dancer still wants truth after 5 years
May 1--Jonathan Bond doesn't flinch when discussing his slain mother's profession. "Some ask about who my mom was or was she really a stripper, or whatever," the 15-year-old told the Free Press this week. "I always say, yeah. It was a job ... just like a policeman. It's legal." Jonathan is the son of Tamara Greene, also known as Strawberry. Her unsolved killing has fueled rumors linking her to a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 1, 2008
West Coast ports shut down
May 1--West Coast cargo traffic came to a halt Thursday as port workers staged daylong anti-war protests, terminal operators said Thursday. Six thousand dockworkers were scheduled to report for work Thursday morning, according to the Pacific Maritime Association. The work action left ships and truck drivers idle at ports from Long Beach to Seattle, Pacific Maritime Association, said PMA ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 1, 2008
Bembenek appeals to Supreme Court: Three state courts have denied retrial
May 1--Laurie Bembenek, the former Milwaukee police officer and convicted killer who has always maintained her innocence, has asked the United States Supreme Court to reverse her conviction based on new evidence. The odds of the nation's high court taking the case are slim, conceded Ira B. Robins, a private detective who has been pursuing the case for more than 20 years.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 1, 2008
Texas Supreme Court justice's wife re-indicted in house fire
The wife of a Texas Supreme Court justice was indicted for a second time Wednesday on charges connected to a fire that destroyed the couple's suburban Houston home last summer.A grand jury indicted Francisca Medina on felony charges of arson and two counts of criminal mischief. She faces up to life in prison if convicted.In January, a different grand jury indicted both Francisca Medina and her ...
Sun Herald - May 1, 2008
Mass-producing human flesh in machine form.
How do you feel about mass-producing and selling human tissue in machine form? I hope you like the idea. Because it's on the way. A few days ago, the University of Michigan trumpeted a study validating the efficacy of its 'bioartificial kidneys.' In a clinical trial involving people with acute renal injury and failure, the kidney boosters cut the usual death rate (compared to patients using ...
Slate - May 1, 2008
Court Grants Preliminary Approval of $33 Million Gender Class Action Settlement With Smith Barney
Late yesterday, a federal court granted Late yesterday, a federal court granted preliminary approval of a $33 million settlement with Citigroup Global Markets, Inc. d/b/a Smith Barney, on behalf of all women employed as Financial Advisors in (i) the United States branches of Smith Barney's retail brokerage division at any time from August 24, 2003 through March 1, 2008 or (ii) the California ...
MarketWire - May 1, 2008
CRRA Seeks Speedy Court Ruling On Tipping Fee
May 1--The state trash authority is asking a Superior Court judge in Hartford for a speedy ruling on whether its 2009 budget, including the tipping fee it charges 70 municipalities, was adopted properly. "This would be the fastest way for CRRA and the towns to get on with their business," said Paul Nonnenmacher, a spokesman for Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - May 1, 2008
Holzer Holzer & Fistel, LLC Announces That a Shareholder Class Action Has Been Filed Against Wendy's International, Inc. (NYSE: WEN)
A shareholder class action lawsuit has been A shareholder class action lawsuit has been filed in the Common Pleas Court of Franklin, Ohio against Wendy's International, Inc. ("Wendy's" or the "Company") (NYSE: WEN) and certain of its officers and directors on behalf of Company shareholders. The lawsuit alleges that certain individual directors and officers of the Company breached their ...
MarketWire - May 1, 2008
Federal Court Decides License Fees to Be Paid to ASCAP by AOL, RealNetworks and Yahoo!
The United States District Court for the The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York today made public a decision in the proceeding to determine reasonable license fees to be paid to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) by AOL (Time Warner Inc.) (NYSE: TWX), RealNetworks Inc. (NASDAQ: RNWK) and Yahoo! Inc.
MarketWire - Apr 30, 2008
Court ruling may create loophole in defective home construction cases
Apr. 30--A state Supreme Court ruling last week has some area lawyers worried the court has created a loophole that could lead to more property owners building their own homes to skirt responsibility for defects. The court ruled a Hilton Head Island property owner who built his own home is not liable for shoddy construction work discovered by the next owner.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
Ga. court considers whether carbon monoxide is pollutant
ATLANTA (AP) - The Georgia Supreme Court must decide whether carbon monoxide gas is a pollutant, in a case that could have repercussions for the insurance industry. At issue is whether an insurance company must defend a policy holder, landlord Melvin Waldrop, from the claims of a tenant who says she suffered carbon monoxide poisoning. Auto-Owners Insurance claims it isn't responsible because the ...
Sharewatch - Apr 30, 2008
Boston Herald Joe Fitzgerald column: In softer voice, America keeps the faith
Apr. 30--It's hard to imagine it happening now, but in 1952 a joint session of Congress resolved that a National Day of Prayer was in order. President Harry Truman then gave his blessing, beginning a tradition that will be renewed in cities and towns across the land tomorrow as Americans and their community leaders cast their cares upon a Power much greater than themselves.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
Producer testifies in Uma Thurman stalker case
Apr. 30--A film producer testified yesterday she was afraid to stay alone in actress Uma Thurman's Greenwich Village town house after a man accused of stalking the star left a note in which he threatened to kill himself if he ever saw Thurman with another man. Samara Koffler, a producer from Santa Monica, Calif., said she found the disturbing letter on the kitchen counter of Thurman's home while ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
Cayce development may have hit another snag
Apr. 30--A panel of federal appeals court judges Tuesday added yet another ripple to the battle over flood maps for Cayce's disputed and huge Vista Farms project. Three judges on the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., ruled a November decision by an S.C. federal judge should not take effect yet. The appeals panel, which included the court's chief judge, issued a stay of Judge ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
Bembenek appeals to Supreme Court
MILWAUKEE _ Lawrencia Bembenek, the former Milwaukee police officer and convicted killer who has always maintained her innocence, has asked the United States Supreme Court to reverse her conviction based on new evidence. The odds of the nation's high court taking the case are slim, conceded Ira B. Robins, a private detective who has been pursuing the case for more than 20 years.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
EDITORIAL: Where's the problem?: Supreme Court ruling a green light for partisan efforts masquerading as vote fraud prevention.
Apr. 30--There's a reason why Republican-controlled legislatures are enacting voter ID laws: The voters most likely to be without the required identification are the poor and the elderly, prime Democratic Party constituents whose turnout rate is lower than average to begin with. This week the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority ruled 6-3 to endorse states' right to erect a hurdle to full ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
Abuse-of-power trial starts against former Thai premier
(IANS) Bangkok, April 29 (Xinhua) Thailand's Supreme Court Tuesday started trial of former premier Thaksin Shinawatra and his wife Pojaman for illegally purchasing a plot at a government auction five years ago. Thaksin did not appear in the court but was represented by his wife, the Nation news network reported. The couple are charged of breaching anti-corruption laws, which bar state officials ...
Kyrgyzstan News - Apr 30, 2008
EDITORIAL: Justice will come for Hill
Apr. 30--In six weeks the families of three slain North Augusta DSS workers may finally get the closure that has been elusive for almost a dozen years. The S.C. Supreme Court ruled earlier this week that David Mark Hill's request to be executed can be carried out. Hill, who took the lives of three DSS workers on Sept. 16, 1996, asked that no more appeals be filed on his behalf and that he was ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
16 years on, couple still not divorced
Apr. 30--NEW DELHI -- Divorce can be ugly. But for Jagdish Singh, estranged from his wife for 24 years, it has been a 16-year-long legal battle that still shows no signs of ever ending. A trial court verdict granted Singh divorce in 1999. But in 2004, the Allahabad High Court reversed the order. Singh challenged the high court verdict in the Supreme Court in 2005, hoping to get a favourable ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
EDITORIAL: Voter ID ruling: An out-of-touch court
Apr. 30--The U.S. Supreme Court has given states permission to ward off potential instances of voter fraud by imposing burdens on elderly and disadvantaged people. Though justices conceded the record showed no evidence that anyone had tried to vote under another person's name, the court upheld an Indiana law requiring voters to present photo IDs issued by the state or federal government.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
LNG barges pose dangers
New York Gov. David Paterson wisely rejected plans to locate a huge liquefied natural gas (LNG) barge in the waters off Long Island. The LNG floating terminal was spearheaded by Shell Oil and Broadwater Energy and does little to move America away from dependence on fossil fuels. Paterson said the proposal would 'scar' , and environmental groups like Save the Sound rallied to block the so-called ...
Hampton Roads Daily Press - Apr 30, 2008
'Winter's Doctrine' on water rights still haunts the American West
Apr. 30--WASHINGTON -- When a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1908 gave rise to the "Winter's Doctrine" of reserved tribal water rights, only the U.S. government stood between tribes and a settler-state thirst for water that threatened many reservations with drought. A century later, for a host of highly practical, place-based reasons, tribes and states have gotten together to negotiate water ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
Cook public defender seeks to halt ouster
Apr. 30--Cook County Public Defender Edwin Burnette on Tuesday tried to delay County Board President Todd Stroger's attempt to fire him until his pending lawsuit over control of the office is resolved. The public defender sued Stroger in November, saying he thwarted Burnette's independence by making personnel decisions for his office. This month, Stroger launched his unprecedented campaign to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
Mountain of cases in Valley of misery
Apr. 30--NEW DELHI -- Two months apart, a young woman and four IAF officers were on two different roads in Srinagar when militants swooped in. Weeks and months apart over the past two decades, ordinary Kashmiris were raped, killed and brutalised. The young woman was 23-year-old Rubaiyya Sayeed, daughter of Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, then Home Minister of India.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
Scratch torture from U.S. rule book
The following editorial appeared in the Miami Herald on Tuesday, April 29: ___ When it comes to torture, the Bush administration wants the United States to have it both ways. President Bush believes America can be a country governed by laws, even though it may break the law under special circumstances. This is a morally bankrupt position that diminishes America's stature in the world, and puts ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
New Times sues Arpaio, Thomas: Claims include false arrests, racketeering
Apr. 30--A Phoenix newspaper on Tuesday accused Maricopa County's sheriff and top prosecutor of breaking several state and federal laws during a threeyear battle with the paper. The accusations came as part of a lawsuit filed by the Phoenix New Times and its executives in the county's Superior Court, accusing Sheriff Joe Arpaio, County Attorney Andrew Thomas and others of a long list of abuses, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
Chattanooga: Chief Justice Barker retiring from state Supreme Court
Apr. 30--The Chattanooga native who has led Tennessee's Supreme Court since October 2005 announced his retirement Tuesday. Chief Justice William M. "Mickey" Barker, who now lives on Signal Mountain, will step down as leader of the state's top legal body on Sept. 1, according to a statement from the court system's administrative office. Justice Barker, who was appointed to the Supreme Court in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 30, 2008
Sharpton vows mobilization' to confront Bell acquittals
After a nearly two hour meeting held at the midtown headquarters of influential hospital workers union Local 1199, Sharpton said civic, church and community leaders had put together a strategy that includes civil disobedience, a boycott, and a march targeting the judicial system. Sharpton said specific plans for the actions would come in the next few days, but he pledged a coordinated effort for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Va. Supreme Court to revisit divisive spam case: It upheld convictions but will consider constitutional issue
Apr. 29--The Supreme Court of Virginia yesterday agreed to a limited rehearing of its closely divided decision upholding the first felony spam convictions in the country. In a 4-3 ruling in February, the state's high court upheld three convictions against Jeremy D. Jaynes for violating Virginia's 2003 Anti-Spam Act. He was sentenced to nine years in prison.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
BRIEF: Chicago newspapers, AP ask state high court to open R. Kelly proceedings
Apr. 29--Chicago's two daily newspapers and the Associated Press asked the Illinois Supreme Court to unseal court records and release transcripts of closed hearings in the R. Kelly case on Monday, after the presiding judge last week rebuffed their efforts to open the proceedings. The Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and the Associated Press filed a petition to the Circuit Court of Cook County last ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Woman who lost case on veil to go to federal court: Lawyer says judge violated her rights
Apr. 29--A Muslim woman who lost a small-claims suit in Hamtramck district court in 2006 after she refused to remove her religious veil during testimony will take her case before a federal judge today, hoping to overturn the district judge's decision and establish precedent in eastern Michigan courtrooms. "If the judge rules in our favor, it would preclude other judges from doing the same thing ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Rigsbys issue rebuttal: Sisters say they did nothing wrong
Apr. 29--GULFPORT -- Attorneys for the two women at the center of the State Farm whistleblower lawsuit asserted on Monday their clients did what they thought was right and legally recovered evidence against the company. Attorneys for Cori and Kerri Rigsby filed a 51-page, 17-point rebuttal in federal court Monday to State Farm's counterclaims the two women conspired with lawyer Dickie Scruggs ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Detainee driver slovenly, threatens boycott
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- Osama bin Laden's driver appeared at his war crimes trial Monday looking disheveled and threatening a boycott. Lawyers for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 36, of Yemen filed a brief as far back as February protesting what they argue has been a protracted regime of virtual solitary confinement behind the detention center's barbed wire. They argued that his mental health has ...
Miami Herald - Apr 29, 2008
Voter ID ruled legal, but state law on hold: U.S. Supreme Court ruling boosts proponents
Apr. 29--MADISON -- The U.S. Supreme Court's approval Monday of a voter ID law in Indiana reinvigorated supporters of the cause in Wisconsin, yet opponents have all but guaranteed that the measure will be blocked in the state until at least 2011. The ruling gave Republicans a new argument on an emotional election-year issue. But Democratic leaders, including Gov.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
November election will be true test of voter ID law
Apr. 29--Columbus reports no problems implementing the Georgia law requiring voters to show a photo ID at the polls, but the real test is yet to come. Initially passed in 2005 and later amended to comply with court rulings noting its constitutional complications, the Georgia law so far has been in effect for only two local elections -- the first being last November's referendum on giving local ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Indiana voter ID ruling is victory for GOP: Critics fear open door to partisan election rules
Apr. 29--WASHINGTON -- For years, Republicans have shouted from the mountaintops that fraud at the polling place is commonplace. They've passed laws and formed task forces. Combating voter fraud was a centerpiece of Justice Department efforts under former Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales. And it's central to the ongoing controversy over blocked appointments to the Federal Election Commission.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Drunkenness an issue in murder retrial
Apr. 29--There is no question about Jean Ferdinando's screams as Gary Smith stabbed her to death with a steak knife at the end of a 911 call in October 2005, Smith's lawyer said Tuesday in Suffolk County Court. They prove that Smith killed his girlfriend's daughter, he said. But Smith's slurred speech in a second 911 call moments after the slaying show that he was too drunk to know what he was ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Business briefs: Fed ready to bump down key rate
Battling risky economic crosscurrents, the Federal Reserve is ready to bump down a key interest rate again to brace the wobbly economy. That rate cut could turn out to be the last one for a while as zooming energy and food prices heighten inflation concerns. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues are walking a tightrope, trying to shore up economic growth at the same time they are mindful ...
Southwest Florida Herald Tribune - Apr 29, 2008
Woman sues school officials: SUIT: THEY DID NOT PROTECT BULLIED DAUGHTER
Apr. 29--A mother whose daughter was allegedly bullied for at least four months says Fayette County school officials failed to protect the middle school student, according to a lawsuit filed Friday. LaFleesha Patton says in the lawsuit, which names Superintendent Stu Silberman and five other Fayette County Public Schools employees as defendants, that she notified school officials in January that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Seattle denies pursuing lawsuit to force sale of Sonics
Apr. 29--Seattle on Monday called "outlandish" a claim it is pursuing a lawsuit against the owners of the SuperSonics only to force them to sell the team. Seattle attorneys were responding in court to an accusation made by the Oklahoma-based owners April 16. The Sonics' owners alleged Seattle officials are scheming with a potential buyer to use the lawsuit to drive up their costs -- "to increase ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Slain Blairsville dentist's estate sues state police
Apr. 29--The estate of an Indiana County dentist has filed a $1 million lawsuit against Pennsylvania State Police, accusing investigators of covering up for a trooper who faces trial this summer in the brutal slaying of Dr. John Yelenic. Among defendants named in the lawsuit filed in the Middle District of U.S. District Court in Harrisburg are Trooper Kevin Foley, who is accused of the April 13, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
BRIEF: Economist: Anti-plaintiff changes have helped economy
Apr. 29--Caps on lawsuit damages and other anti-plaintiff changes since 1995 have helped create $112 billion in annual new spending and nearly a half-million new jobs, according to a report released Monday by economist Ray Perryman. Savings from reduced damage awards, less administrative legal system costs and fewer lawsuits filed against companies created the jobs and spending, according to the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Uma Thurman's friend, father testify at trial of man accused of stalking her
NEW YORK _ A film producer testified Tuesday she was afraid to stay alone in actress Uma Thurman's Greenwich Village town house after a man accused of stalking the star left a note in which he threatened to kill himself if he ever saw Thurman with another man. Samara Koffler, a producer from Santa Monica, Calif., said she found the disturbing letter on the kitchen counter of Thurman's home while ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Tankleff wants evidence of innocence from AG
Apr. 29--Martin Tankleff's attorneys will file new motions Tuesday requesting that the state attorney general's office turn over any evidence of Tankleff's innocence and also disclose the purpose of the sitting grand jury listening to evidence on the case. Tankleff was convicted in 1990 of murdering his parents, Seymour and Arlene Tankleff, in their Belle Terre home.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Internet-aided hunting targeted: A bill to close a state pension system loophole also goes to the governor.
Apr. 29--OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Oklahoma Senate passed a measure Monday that would ban computer-assisted remote control hunting. The measure, Senate Bill 1463 by Sen. James A. Williamson, R-Tulsa, now goes to the governor. "There is a growing practice in some other states," Williamson said. "We are trying to get out in front of it to keep people from using the Internet to activate a remote-control ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
EDITORIAL: Step on the accelerator
Apr. 29--The legislature need not fear getting a ticket for moving too fast on legislation to abolish mayor's courts. The long-debated measure, pushed early last year by Chief Justice Thomas Moyer of the Ohio Supreme Court, finally moved out of the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month. There is no reason action shouldn't accelerate to reform a system too often twisted into a cash cow for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Boy Scouts push for new relevance: Trying to heal image and end a huge drop in rolls, nearly 100-year-old movement focuses on urban youth
Apr. 29--HOUSTON -- The scene on a recent weekend at Camp Strake, a Boy Scout overnight camp in the woods north of Houston, looked ageless and familiar: A group of youths, their tan uniforms neatly buttoned as they emerged from their tents, lined up eagerly to watch several fathers demonstrate skeet shooting. But this was not a Scouting tableau as Norman Rockwell might have pictured it.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Tax break for developers could be reinstated
Apr. 29--A bill making its way through the state Legislature would reinstate a tax break for developers and builders that was ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court in January, County Assessor Ken Yazel says. The bill would take millions of dollars worth of property off the tax rolls and likely raise millage rates for other property owners, Yazel said last week.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Supreme Court supports voter ID requirements
WASHINGTON _ For years, Republicans have shouted from the mountaintops that fraud at the polling place is commonplace. They've passed laws and formed task forces. Combating voter fraud was a centerpiece of Justice Department efforts under former Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales. And it's central to the ongoing controversy over blocked appointments to the Federal Election Commission.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 28, 2008
Spitzer's call girl sues Girls Gone Wild'
MIAMI _ Five years after Girls Gone Wild recorded the unknown teen cavorting topless, the now-notorious Ashley Alexandra Dupre is demanding a cut of the money from the video sales. Dupre filed a lawsuit Monday in federal court in Miami, claiming Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis should pay her more than $10 million. Turning 23 Wednesday, Dupre was underage _ 17 _ when she ran into Francis' ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 28, 2008
Civil rights lawsuit filed against state police in Blairsville dentist's murder
Apr. 28--The estate of an Indiana County dentist brutally murdered two years ago, allegedly at the hands of a state trooper, has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in Harrisburg against several troopers and the dentist's wife. The suit charging that other troopers and administrators at the Indiana station purposely conspired to hinder the initial investigation and covered up the crime.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 28, 2008
Osama bin Laden's driver appears at war crimes trial disheveled, threatens boycott
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba _ Osama bin Laden's driver appeared at his war crimes trial Monday looking disheveled and threatening a boycott. Lawyers for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, 36, of Yemen filed a brief as far back as February protesting what they argue has been a protracted regime of virtual solitary confinement behind the detention center's barbed wire. They argued that his mental health has ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 28, 2008
Alleged 9-11 plotters consult Navy lawyers
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba _ Ten weeks after the Pentagon prosecutor swore out preliminary death penalty charges, Navy defense lawyers have had first talks with the top three alleged 9-11 conspirators. For each of the men, it was his first private meeting with an attorney offering help after years of secret CIA custody and interrogation, including the waterboarding of one of them.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 28, 2008
Judge denies prosecutors abortion reports in suit against Planned Parenthood
KANSAS CITY, Kan. _ Johnson County District Court Judge Stephen Tatum ruled Monday that prosecutors cannot have the abortion reports they want for their criminal case against Planned Parenthood. The documents are key to District Attorney Phill Kline's 107-count case against Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri and its Overland Park, Kan., clinic, Comprehensive Health, its attorneys have ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 28, 2008
Supreme Court justices reject Lehman Brothers appeal in $10M tax dispute with Delaware
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court on Monday refused to consider an appeal by a Lehman Brothers subsidiary that is fighting a $10 million tax bill from Delaware. The company said in court filings that Delaware's tax regime is unconstitutional, because it taxes all the earnings of its bank subsidiary, even though about 2 percent of the bank's income is earned in Delaware.
Canadian Business Magazine - Apr 28, 2008
Working retirees await pension ruling: Court to decide if workers must pay into state fund
Apr. 28--Tommy Johnston has waited almost two years to learn the fate of his retirement. Johnston, principal at Gold Hill Middle School in York County, is one of approximately 15,000 employees in the state retirement system who have retired and come back to work. Those working retirees still are waiting for a court to decide whether they must keep paying 6.5 percent of their salary into the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 28, 2008
School funding case heads back to court: State high court to hear arguments on how S.C. doles out money to schools
Apr. 28--South Carolina's education landscape has changed a lot since a pair of high-power legal teams last squared off in court to debate the merits of how the state underwrites its public schools. Those same lawyers -- one set representing the state; the other representing poor, rural school districts -- are putting the finishing touches on briefs for the state Supreme Court so it can do ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 28, 2008
Sexton Building: 'That place is a mess'
Apr. 28--The three dozen residents of the Sexton are scattered widely among the mostly vacant 123 units in the downtown Minneapolis condominium building. But mutual misfortune has turned them into a tight-knit bunch. "We've all gotten to know each other. We all consider ourselves victims," said Brian Scates, the only occupant among 19 units on the top floor.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 28, 2008
Judges can face fury of disgruntled litigants
Apr. 28--Judges make some of the most important decisions in people's lives, impacting money, freedom and families, but the power they wield can also make them targets of wrath. "It's something you have to think about, but you don't live your life in fear or let it affect how you decide cases," said U.S. District Chief Judge David Herndon, who presides over federal court in East St.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 28, 2008
'Winter's Doctrine' on water rights still haunts the American West
WASHINGTON - When a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1908 gave rise to the ''Winter's Doctrine'' of reserved tribal water rights, only the U.S. government stood between tribes and a settler-state thirst for water that threatened many reservations with drought. A century later, for a host of highly practical, place-based reasons, tribes and states have gotten together to negotiate water rights ...
Indian Country Today - Apr 28, 2008
EDITORIAL: This is not a federal case
Apr. 28--The U.S. Supreme Court's unanimous decision last week in Virginia v. Moore, allowing police to search a suspect even though arresting him was illegal under state law, at first looked like a simple case of expanding what we have called the drug law exception to the Fourth Amendment. It is certainly true that the high court has systematically narrowed that amendment's protection against ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 28, 2008
O'Connor speaks at fundraiser for former home: Ex-justice discusses Congress, memories at Tempe event
Apr. 28--The political rancor that has enveloped Congress would lessen if members of opposing parties spent more time socializing together, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said Sunday. As majority leader of the state Senate, O'Connor said she would regularly have Republican and Democratic lawmakers over for dinner to hash out legislative compromises.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 28, 2008
State races pale as Dems muscle in: Candidates scramble to capture turnout
Apr. 28--RALEIGH -- In some ways, next week's North Carolina primary is like rock star Bruce Springsteen showing up at a high school battle of the bands. In a very short time, the Democratic presidential duel between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken center stage. And the dozens of Tar Heel races -- from the statehouse to the courthouse -- have been reduced to a political ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 28, 2008
UN inspector is key May 4 event speaker
Apr. 28--The former top weapons inspector for the United Nations will be the keynote speaker at the 38th annual May 4 commemoration at Kent State University. Scott Ritter, 46, has become a well-known anti-war figure and talk show commentator since resigning in 1998 from the U.N. Special Commission, which was charged with finding and destroying all weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 28, 2008
Miriam defers JPEPA sponsorship: Deferment is to make way for exchange of notes between RP and Japan on the agreement
Apr. 29--Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, recognizing the difficulty of getting the Senate's conditional concurrence in the ratification of the Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA), deferred Monday her sponsorship of the controversial agreement. Santiago, chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said that the deferment would allow the Department of Foreign Affairs ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
BRIEF: Minister has stake in Setu project too, says Swamy
Apr. 29--NEW DELHI -- Seeking directions to make TR Baalu a party in pending petitions on the Sethusamudram project before the Supreme Court, Janata Party president and petitioner Subramanium Swamy on Monday moved an application accusing the shipping minister of pushing the project for his "family's private and pecuniary interests". Swamy claims to have incriminating evidence against Baalu, who ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 29, 2008
Misdiagnosis: Reproductive Health and Our Environment
It is winter in New York City. I wake up sweating in the middle of the night, and I can't sleep because I'm too hot. The night sweats wake me several more times before my alarm finally goes off at 6:30 a.m. In the morning I'm anxious; this shouldn't be happening so frequently. The winter advances from the isolated weather of January into the endless darkness of February and March.
AlterNet.org - Apr 28, 2008
Brower Piven Informs Investors Who Have Net Losses of More Than $100,000 That They Have Only Until May 9, 2008 to Move for Appointment as Lead Plaintiff in Force Protection, Inc. Class Action Lawsuit
Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation announces that shareholders of Force Protection, Inc. (NASDAQ: FRPT) ("Force Protection" or the "Company") who purchased shares of Force Protection between August 14, 2006 and March 17, 2008, inclusive (the "Class Period") have only until May 9, 2008 to move for appointment as Lead Plaintiff in a securities class ...
MarketWire - Apr 28, 2008
Use of polygraphs grows, and that's no lie
Apr. 27--True or false? A polygraph exam is a good way to tell if a suspect is lying. Correct answer? Depends on whom you ask. But after decades of being widely discredited, the use of polygraphs, commonly known as "lie detectors," has soared, thanks to national security efforts at the federal level and sex-offender monitoring at the state level. The number of federal agencies using polygraphs ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 27, 2008
Bell's fiancee says verdict 'killed Sean again'
Apr. 27--The justice system "let me down," Nicole Paultre Bell said Saturday, a day after a not-guilty verdict for three New York City police officers charged in the killing of her fiance, Sean Bell. "April 25, 2008, they killed Sean all over again," Paultre Bell told about 250 supporters at the Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network headquarters in Harlem, her first public comments since ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 27, 2008
Feds consider criminal case
Apr. 27--A federal lawsuit against the city and the five cops involved in the shooting that took the life of Sean Bell will be on hold until the Department of Justice decides whether it will bring a separate criminal case, according to attorneys for Bell's family. The lawsuit, filed in July 2007 in federal court in Brooklyn, had already been held in abeyance awaiting Friday's verdict in the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 27, 2008
Pro/Con: Should Congress block offshore terminals for liquid natural gas?
WASHINGTON - New York Gov. David Paterson wisely rejected plans to locate a huge liquefied natural gas (LNG) barge in the waters off Long Island. The floating LNG terminal was spearheaded by Shell Oil and Broadwater Energy and does little to move America away from dependence on fossil fuels. Paterson said the proposed mega-barge would scar Long Island Sound, and environmental groups like Save ...
Pueblo Chieftain Online - Apr 27, 2008
Pot shop owners: We followed law
Apr. 27--Two Modesto men who ran a medical marijuana clinic on McHenry Avenue, raking in $6 million in less than two years, might have a difficult time mounting a defense against federal drug charges when they go to trial Monday. Luke Scarmazzo and Ricardo Ruiz Montes claim they were abiding by the terms of Proposition 215 when they ran a cannabis dispensary that paid state and federal taxes, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 27, 2008
Freedom of speech police strike again
Commentary: The two real rationales for laws regulating political activity are incumbent protection and the convenience of government.Ugly locutions often crop up in the promotion of ugly politics. Consider the threat of 'scrutinization.'It has been made against some residents of Parker North, Colo., who expressed a political opinion without first getting their state government's permission for ...
Times Daily - Apr 27, 2008
In deciding between the objections of environmentalists and supporters who tout the benefits of importing liquid natural gas, Governor Corzine has chosen to go with the growth advocates.
Environmentalists voiced outrage and incredulity. They denounced the terminal, a huge barge to be moored nine miles off the Long Island shore, as a horrific accident waiting to happen, a potential inferno. Nevertheless, the project had won preliminary approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The Coast Guard had also signed off, saying that if strict precautions were taken, the ...
North Jersey.com - Apr 27, 2008
Chicago man freed from death row 21 years ago brings message to Decatur
Apr. 27--DECATUR -- Darby Tillis spent years on death row, but he still knew each day, each heartbeat and each breath was numbered. "You're not a participant in life, you're just an observer," he said during a telephone interview. "Every time you look in another inmate's eyes, you see death, and it's like looking in a mirror." In the 21 years, three months and one week since he was freed, the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 27, 2008
U.S. Supreme Court urged to reject former Gov. George Ryan's appeal
Apr. 27--Former Gov. George Ryan's complaints about the jurors who convicted him of fraud in 2006 are misguided and do not warrant a review by the U.S. Supreme Court, federal prosecutors said in court papers filed Friday. In a 21-page brief filed with the court in Washington, U.S. Solicitor Gen. Paul Clement urged the nation's highest court to refuse to hear Ryan's appeal.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 27, 2008
Base case evidence ignored?: Federal investigators axed suspect sketch
Apr. 27--Federal investigators say they know who killed three family members aboard Camp Lejeune but a series of technicalities prevented them from ever prosecuting their suspect. Members of the media who covered the killings -- including one who later wrote a book about it -- indicate those same investigators turned a blind eye to evidence that pointed elsewhere.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 27, 2008
Campaign finance reforms harming political freedom
Ugly locutions often crop up in the promotion of ugly politics. Consider the threat of 'scrutinization.' It has been made against some residents of Parker North, Colo., who expressed a political opinion without first getting their state government's permission for political activity. Herewith another example of what is being done around the nation in the name of political hygiene, as that is ...
TH Online - Apr 27, 2008
Lawsuit seeks fair price for gasoline in Florida and other warm-weather states: Suit wants oil companies to treat consumers fairly
(South Florida Sun-Sentinel (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Apr. 27--Florida drivers pay among the nation's highest gas prices because of high taxes and the state's lack of refineries and pipelines. Now consumer advocates are taking legal action on another issue they say has Florida and other warmer states paying more to power their vehicles: hot fuel. When gasoline gets hot, it expands, ...
TMC Net - Apr 27, 2008
Alaska Gov. Palin Suggests Special Session for Failed Abortion Restriction Laws
Palin calls her baby born last week with Down Syndrome a 'gift' JUNEAU, Alaska, April 24, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - After refusing to introduce two abortion restricting bills to a special session on a natural gas pipeline on Wednesday because of fears that the bills would not likely succeed, Governor Sarah Palin expressed her willingness to bring the legislation to separate sessions.
LifeSite - Apr 27, 2008
New jail or not, taxpayers spend millions
Spending $33 million to build a new jail may sound like an expensive proposition. But it turns out just planning to build one isn t exactly cheap, either. ERIK PETERSEN/CHRONICLE Over the past decade, county taxpayers have coughed up nearly $5 million to cover costs related to construction of a new jail to replace the aging, overcrowded, 48-bed jail pictured, according to records obtained by ...
AP via Bozeman Daily Chronicle - Apr 27, 2008
Suspensions worry city parents
Apr. 27--Elementary students in the Oklahoma City School District have been suspended from school more than 700 times through March. That number is significantly down from last year, when there were more than 2,300 out-of-school suspensions in elementary schools, according to numbers provided by the school district. Some of the suspended students were suspended more than once.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 27, 2008
Behind the Red Line: DHS leaves landowners still asking questions about the future of the homes
Apr. 27--The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's map confirmed Pamela Taylor's worst fears. On the map -- a satellite image of rural Southmost -- a red line runs north of her property, blocking the only road that leads to Taylor's home. Under the line, in bold white letters, the map reads "Fence." The border fence will rise 18 feet in front of the house she and her husband built by hand in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 27, 2008
Filibuster blocks wage-bias lawsuit bill (By Carrie Sheffield)
The Bush administration had threatened to veto the measure, designed to promote sex equality in the workplace, saying it would lead to a rash of frivolous lawsuits that would clog the judicial system. 'This is basically a vote that's important to what used to be called the American Trial Lawyers Association, the plaintiffs' bar,' said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican.
Washington Times - Apr 24, 2008
High court hears workers benefits case / Insurance firm's potential conflict of interest in denying disability claims stirs confusion
The Supreme Court struggled Wednesday with how much weight to give an insurance company's potential conflict of interest when it denies an employee's health or disability benefits claim. The lawyer representing the woman who sued MetLife Inc. over a disability claim argued that insurance companies have a financial incentive to deny claims. That conflict of interest should weigh heavily in ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 24, 2008
Court weighs request to halt Whole Foods-Wild Oats deal
AP file photo by Pat Wellenbach Whole Foods opened a store on Franklin Arterial in Portland in 2007, just a few blocks away from Wild Oats on Marginal Way WASHINGTON An appeals court panel of three judges appeared split Wednesday on federal regulators' persistent effort to halt Whole Foods Market Inc.'s takeover of a rival. The Federal Trade Commission tried to block Whole Foods' acquisition of ...
Portland Press Herald - Apr 24, 2008
Court of Appeal Unanimously Denies South San Joaquin Irrigation District's Bid to Takeover PG&E Without Approval
SAN FRANCISCO, April 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- California's 3rd District Court of Appeal issued two unanimous decisions supporting Pacific Gas and Electric Company regarding attempts by the South San Joaquin Irrigation District (SSJID) to enter the retail electric business by seizing the utility's assets. The first decision rejects SSJID's plans to condemn PG&E's assets through eminent domain ...
PR Newswire - Apr 24, 2008
Current and Ex Army Officials and Two Contractors Indicted on Defense Procurement Fraud Charges
Aaron Terry, 55, of Wichita Falls, Texas; Timothy Thomas, 51, of Powder Springs, Georgia; James Mcmann, 43, of Kent, Washington; and Eric Auyang, 56, of Mobile, Alabama, have been indicted by a federal grand jury in Atlanta on charges of conspiracy and major fraud against the United States relating to a defense procurement fraud scheme. United States Attorney David E.
PR Newswire - Apr 24, 2008
Attorney General says mobsters pose new global threat
Organized crime has emerged as a top global threat as mobsters conspire worldwide to prey on everything from energy markets to victims of identity theft, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Wednesday. No longer just the stuff of mafia lore, organized crime groups are particularly dangerous when they hook up with terrorists to turn a profit, Mukasey said in announcing a new government focus on ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 24, 2008
Torture of the law
One of President Bush's most shameful failings is his stubborn insistence on the right to torture terrorist suspects. While claiming the country does no such thing, he's vetoed limits on CIA interrogators and shielded his outlook with clouds of rhetoric about protecting the nation. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the White House team has pushed hard to expand its powers, sometimes pushing ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 24, 2008
Elan Reports First Quarter 2008 Financial Results
DUBLIN, Ireland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Elan Corporation, plc today announced its first quarter 2008 financial results and provided a business update. Commenting on Elan Commenting on Elan Unaudited Consolidated Income Statement Data March 31 2007 U.S.$m 2008 U.S.$m Reconciliation Schedule March 31 U.S.$m U.S.$m Reconciliation Schedule March 31 U.S.$m U.S.$m To supplement its consolidated financial ...
Business Wire - Apr 24, 2008
Monarch Casino Reports First Quarter Results and Increase of Stock Repurchase Program
RENO, Nev., April 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Monarch Casino & Resort, Inc. (Nasdaq: MCRI) (the 'Company'), owner of the Atlantis Casino Resort Spa (the 'Atlantis') in Reno, Nevada, today announced results for the quarter ended March 31, 2008 and an increase of its stock repurchase program. The Company reported net revenue of $34.3 million, a 9.3% decline from the $37.8 million reported for the ...
PR Newswire - Apr 24, 2008
Federman & Sherwood Announces That a Securities Class Action Lawsuit Has Been Filed Against Agria Corporation (NYSE: GRO)
On April 11, 2008, a class action lawsuit On April 11, 2008, a class action lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against Agria Corporation (NYSE: GRO). The complaint alleges violations of federal securities laws, Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5, including allegations of issuing a series of ...
MarketWire - Apr 24, 2008
Case Dropped Against Healthcare Worker Who Was Arrested While Providing Care to an Elderly, Disabled Man in Los Angeles Home
Today, the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office dismissed a case against Yolanda McGriff, a Los Angeles- based healthcare worker who was arrested while providing nursing and home health care to a low-income, disabled veteran. McGriff was arrested for trespass-related violations in November 2007 while she was providing care for her employer, a man who lived in what used to be the Alexandria Hotel in ...
PR Newswire - Apr 24, 2008
Representing sect's youth proves a complicated task: Questions loom and client time is chaotic, but for 350 Texas lawyers, it's about the kids
Apr. 24--The lawyers who arrived in San Angelo last week were given IDs, health screenings, multiple shots of hand-sanitizing Purell and a colored folder for each client -- most got one folder, some more than one. Orange was for the pregnant girls, one lawyer said. Another said pink was for the youngest children. They met with their clients in a corner of the crowded local coliseum.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 24, 2008
Shippers win case over air quality
LONG BEACH - A federal court has denied an appeal by California air quality regulators who sought to force strict environmental fuel regulations on thousands of ships visiting the state's seaports. The fuel regulation request, which the city of Long Beach supported in court, would have required ocean carriers to use low-sulfur fuels in their auxiliary engines within 24 miles of the state's ...
Press-Telegram - Apr 24, 2008
Ombudsman opposes Nani Perez plea
Apr. 25--The Office of the Ombudsman on Thursday opposed before the Sandiganbayan a plea of former Justice Secretary Hernando "Nani" Perez to suspend proceedings on criminal charges against him. The court was asked to dismiss the motion of Perez for lack of merit. The opposition was submitted by the Office of the Ombudsman during a hearing at the Sandiganbayan Third Division handling the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 25, 2008
Pennsylvania: Clinton Is Alive and Kicking-And Threatening To Tear the Party Apart?
The Democratic contest has been a 50-50 proposition for months now--more precisely, a 51-49 percent endeavor or maybe a 52-48-percent face-off in Barack Obama's favor, according to the pledged delegate count and the popular vote. Hillary Clinton's 9-point win in the Keystone State (which apparently did not net her a significant pickup in pledged delegates) does not change this.
Mother Jones - Apr 24, 2008
Bracing for a Verdict in the Sean Bell Case
As the city braces for the judge-issued verdict in the Sean Bell shooting, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg near the neighborhood where the shooting takes pace, The Times reports. That may be what he says, but police officers during a four-day period starting tomorrow, in order to prepare for the possibility of widespread street protests, according to The Post.
New York Times - Apr 24, 2008
Death-penalty foe fined by court: Lawyer who prevented client's asset seizure claims case was aimed at silencing him
Apr. 24--The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday overturned a lower court ruling and fined lawyer Yoshihiro Yasuda 500,000 for obstructing compulsory seizures of the assets of his client by moneylenders between 1993 and 1996. The court case has been closely watched because Yasuda, 60, is known as a prominent opponent of capital punishment who earlier led the defense for Shoko Asahara, founder of the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 24, 2008
Senate GOP kills bill on workplace complaints
WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans killed legislation Wednesday aimed at removing limits on how long workers can wait before suing their employers for pay discrimination. Democrats, speaking to key constituencies of women, minorities and swing voters this election year, said they weren't finished trying to pass the bill. 'Women of America: Put your lipstick on, square your shoulders, suit up' and ...
Delaware Online - Apr 24, 2008
Thai appeals court upholds conviction of election commissioners for fraud, abuse of power
BANGKOK, Thailand: Thailand's Appeals Court on Thursday upheld the conviction of three ex-election commissioners for violating electoral laws and abuse of power two years ago in favor of then-Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his party. The court agreed with a 2006 Criminal Court ruling that the commissioners had acted illegally in letting candidates switch constituencies midway through the ...
International Herald Tribune - Apr 24, 2008
Father Raymond J. de Souza on Robert Baltovich and wrongful convictions: Holding the justice system to account
PM by Marni Soupcoff The Premier of Ontario opened the door to a public inquiry into the wrongful conviction of Robert Baltovich yesterday. Given the alarming frequency of wrongful convictions - the Goudge Inquiry into several such cases involving disgraced pathologist Charles Smith wrapped up last month - perhaps there should be a standing office charged with exonerating the wrongfully ...
National Post - Apr 24, 2008
Jurists frown at CJI's refusal to reveal details of judges
Apr. 25--NEW DELHI -- Top jurists on Thursday slammed Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan for "trying to undermine the importance of transparency in the judiciary" by refusing to make public details of assets of Supreme Court and high court judges. They said the CJI's views "could raise doubts in the minds of people". Justice Balakrishnan on Wednesday said that though all the Supreme Court ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 25, 2008
Genetic predisposition as a legal defense.
In Sunday's Washington Post, Rick Weiss detailed an important and underreported trend: the increasing role of genetics in legal disputes. His reporting illustrates how the march of science and the evolution of law are changing the way we think of ourselves. In South Carolina, the state's highest court overturned a murder conviction based on evidence that the killer acted out of genetically-based ...
Slate - Apr 24, 2008
Family fracture, unwed births cost us dearly
SINGLE PARENTING This year, nearly four of every 10 babies will be born outside of marriage. We know statistically and intuitively that, overall, children do not fare as well when their parents are divorced or never married. As a judge, I know that 65 percent of all civil cases heard in Georgia's superior courts involve issues regarding children and families.
Atlanta Journal And Constitution - Apr 24, 2008
EX-YUKOS SECURITY CHIEF DENIES NEZVLIN ASKED HIM TO KILL...
RFE/RL Newsline Section Headlines Print Version E-mail this page to a friend previous issue | next issue HAS PALESTINIAN PRESIDENT COOLED TOWARD MOSCOW CONFERENCE? 'The Washington Times' reported on April 23 that Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas has withdrawn his recently expressed support for a Moscow Middle East conference, which means that the Russian-backed gathering 'will ...
Radio Free Europe - Apr 24, 2008
Nucor loses appeal in libel suit
Apr. 24--Charlotte-based Nucor Corp. has lost an unusual N.C. Court of Appeals case in which the steelmaking giant sued an analyst for libel after he issued a critical report about the company. The company objected to metals-market analyst John C. Tumazos' report that said that "alienated customers may file antitrust lawsuits" and that "Nucor needs to wake up from its monopoly dreams," according ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 24, 2008
Subprime a Triple-A Opportunity for Lawyers
The subprime crisis is likely to gin up a lot of work for litigators for a long time to come, according to a report released today by Navigant Consulting, There were 170 federal lawsuits filed in the first quarter of 2008 that related to subprime mortgages, almost as many as the 181 cases filed in the second half of 2007, when the crisis began. All told, 448 federal complaints have been filed ...
Conde Nast Portfolio - Apr 24, 2008
LendingTree sues over data breach
Five Southern California home lenders improperly tapped into the personal financial information of some customers seeking loans through LendingTree Inc., according to a lawsuit filed this week by the Internet mortgage broker. The suit, filed Monday in Orange County Superior Court, alleges that two former executives of LendingTree, which matches prospective home buyers with lenders, swiped ...
Los Angeles Times - Apr 24, 2008
W.Va. ranked 50th in legal climate
Apr. 23--Once again, the debate over West Virginia's rankings in the legal climate is raging, inspired by a fresh study performed for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce putting the state dead last. Teresa Toriseva, head of the West Virginia Association for Justice, an organization of trial lawyers, ridiculed the Harris poll as "nothing more than a trumped-up public relations gimmick" advancing the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Pelosi to Boehner: Join Us to Lower Gas Prices
Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent the following letter today to House Republican Leader John Boehner in response to a letter sent to the Speaker yesterday by the GOP leadership. Below is a text of the letter: April 23, 2008 The Honorable John A. Boehner House Republican Leader H-204, The Capitol Washington, D.C. 20515 Thank you for your letter from the House GOP leadership ...
PR Newswire - Apr 24, 2008
Ruling could cost Micron millions: A U.S. Court of Appeals says the FTC failed to prove 'monopolization' by Rambus.
Apr. 23--Micron Technology has been handed another setback in its bid to avoid paying back royalties to a Silicon Valley company for alleged patent infringement. An appeals court ruling Tuesday means Micron is more likely than ever to have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties and interest, according to an independent Rambus Inc. analyst. A three-judge U.S.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Loudon road help recommended
The Loudon County Budget Committee voted to recommend the county honor an agreement with the City of Loudon and pay for a third of the road to the Tennessee National development. Under the terms of a 2001 interlocal agreement, the City of Loudon and Loudon County agreed to build the $1.3-million Tennessee National Parkway off Highway 72, with the city picking up 70 percent (approximately ...
Loudon County Online - Apr 24, 2008
Canadian judge promises quick ruling on ABCP issues
(Reuters) - A Canadian judge will give a short ruling as quickly as possible on challenges to a plan to restructure Canada's frozen asset-backed commercial paper market, as the clock ticks down on a noteholder vote planned for Friday. Ontario Superior Court Justice Colin Campbell said on Wednesday that under normal circumstances, he would 'love to take a week' to decide on the various motions put ...
Reuters - Apr 23, 2008
Court to hear case that could help workers claim benefits
When Wanda Glenn first sought disability benefits from MetLife Inc. in 2000, she 'never in a million years' expected it would end up as a Supreme Court case. But on Wednesday, the justices will hear oral arguments in a dispute that is being closely watched by insurance companies and business groups. Depending on how the justices rule, the case could make it easier for employees to win health and ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 23, 2008
House panel backs legal protections for mortgage firms
WASHINGTON A U.S. House panel on Wednesday voted to shield mortgage-service firms from lawsuits if they work to modify certain loans for struggling homeowners. The House Financial Services Committee approved legislation creating a 'safe harbor' for firms that are trying to alter the terms of mortgages that are facing foreclosure. The goal is to encourage servicers to do more to modify loans ...
Houston Chronicle - Apr 24, 2008
Sunday Symposium: Judicial selection
The problem with the recent Supreme Court campaign is not with the issue of whether to appoint or elect. In truth, at least in a democracy, those who do the appointment are elected and should be attuned to their electorate. The real difficulty lies in two places: 1) The pretext that judicial candidates are independent and not politically affiliated. 2) The regulatory nightmare our society faces ...
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Apr 23, 2008
Bush fuel economy rules swipe at California
When the Bush administration announced proposed regulations Tuesday to raise fuel economy standards for cars and trucks to 31.6 miles per gallon by 2015, even some environmentalists applauded. But then they read the fine print. Tucked deep into a 417-page 'Notice of Proposed Rulemaking' was language by the Transportation Department stating that more stringent limits on tailpipe emissions ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 23, 2008
VA Hid Suicide Risk, Internal Emails Show
Also see below: Vets of Bush's Wars Sue the VA: 'More than Half of Wounded Troops Slipping Through the Cracks' CBS News CBS - The Department of Veterans Affairs came under fire again Monday, this time in California federal court where its facing a national lawsuit by veterans rights groups accusing the agency of not doing enough to stem a looming mental health crisis among veterans.
Truth Out - Apr 24, 2008
Department of Justice Launches New Law Enforcement Strategy to Combat Increasing Threat of International Organized Crime
Today Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey announced a new strategy in the fight against international organized crime that will address this growing threat to U.S. security and stability. The Law Enforcement Strategy to Combat International Organized Crime (the strategy) was developed following an October 2007 International Organized Crime Threat Assessment (IOC Threat Assessment) and will ...
PR Newswire - Apr 23, 2008
LendingTree: Data is leave-ing us
The LendingTree is warning that personal information about its mortgage customers - including Social Security numbers and income data - was apparently swiped by former workers who helped other firms break into its computer system. A number of Massachusetts customers have already received e-mail alerts about the security compromise - and Attorney General Martha Coakleys office confirmed yesterday ...
Boston Herald - Apr 23, 2008
American Legacy Foundation Steps Forward to Fight For, Safeguard Ohio's Tobacco Settlement Dollars
In a concerted effort to preserve Ohio's tobacco settlement dollars for their originally intended use, the American Legacy Foundation has asked the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas for permission to intervene in the ongoing litigation regarding whether these state funds, wisely dedicated by the State to tobacco prevention and control, can now be diverted for other purposes.
Interest!ALERT - Apr 24, 2008
Former Sonics owners file lawsuit
Apr. 23--The Seattle SuperSonics' former owners sued Tuesday to have the 2006 sale of the team voided. They are asking a federal judge to order the Oklahoma-based owners to sell the team "to an honest buyer who desires to keep the Sonics in Seattle." The 13-page lawsuit was filed late Tuesday in Seattle. It is the latest legal roadblock to the current owners' efforts to move the team to Oklahoma ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
New fuel economy rules proposed
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The next generation of new cars and trucks will need to meet a fleet average of 31.6 miles per gallon by 2015, the Bush administration proposed Tuesday, seeking more fuel-efficient vehicles in the face of high gasoline prices and concerns over global warming. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters outlined the plan on Earth Day, setting a schedule that was more aggressive than ...
KTVO - Apr 23, 2008
AIIMS docs to observe black day over quota
Apr. 24--NEW DELHI -- Resident doctors at the All India Institute for Medical Sciences (AIIMS) will observe a black day on Thursday to protest the Central government's decision to go ahead with the reservations in postgraduate level. The doctors are not ruling out abstaining from work. The Supreme Court had ruled against reservation of seats for the postgraduates saying once a student is a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 24, 2008
Can't make the assets of judges public: CJI
Apr. 24--NEW DELHI -- Amidst growing demands from various quarters of the society for declaration of assets by judges, Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan on Wednesday said that they have already done it. However, he refused to make the details public. "All the judges of the Supreme Court have declared their assets. It is with me...all the judges-- right from the Civil Judge Junior Division) ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 24, 2008
BRIEF: Birth control denial revisited
Apr. 24--The Thomas More Society, a law firm based in Chicago that represents abortion opponents, on Wednesday asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to hear an appeal of a disciplinary action brought against a pharmacist who refused to fill a prescription for birth control because of his religious beliefs. The high court is not required to accept all appeals; the seven justices vote on the cases ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 24, 2008
Dallas not immune from lawsuit over Jabari's rampage
Apr. 24--A state appeals court found on Tuesday that the city doesn't have sovereign immunity against being sued by Dallas Zoo patrons who were injured when a 350-pound gorilla escaped from its habitat in March 2004. "That's good news for us," said Ray Jackson, an attorney for a family in the lawsuit. "That means that we will get to try the case or try to settle." Jabari, a 13-year-old western ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 24, 2008
Stadium Authority left out of land deal
Apr. 24--Pittsburgh's Stadium Authority should have been consulted before the city offered the Steelers a prime piece of North Shore real estate for a low price, the authority's chairwoman said Wednesday. Chairwoman Debbie Lestitian said city officials erred in promising to sell 3.82 acres near Heinz Field to the Steelers for about $1 million without approval from the five-member Stadium ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 24, 2008
Court considers case that could help workers claim benefits
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court struggled Wednesday with how much weight to give an insurance company's potential conflict of interest when it denies an employee's health or disability benefits claim. The lawyer representing the woman who sued MetLife Inc. over a disability claim argued that insurance companies have a financial incentive to deny claims. That conflict of interest should weigh ...
Sharewatch - Apr 24, 2008
Raiding States' Rights?
RAIDING STATES' RIGHTS? Do federal raids of legal local marijuana dispensaries violate state sovereignty? Charles 'Cully' Stimson and Jacob Sullum debate. Today, Stimson and Sullum debate the federal government's assertion of authority in states where certain kinds of drug use are legal. Previously, they compared drug legalization and decriminalization. Later in the week, they'll discuss ...
Media Awareness Project - Apr 24, 2008
Judge promises quick ruling on ABCP issues
TORONTO (Reuters) - An Ontario judge will give a short ruling as quickly as possible on challenges to a plan to restructure Canada's frozen asset-backed commercial paper market, as the clock ticks down on a noteholder vote planned for Friday. Ontario Superior Court Justice Colin Campbell said on Wednesday that under normal circumstances, he would 'love to take a week' to decide on the various ...
Edmonton Journal - Apr 24, 2008
Carter accuses Rice of being untruthful over Hamas meeting (AFP)
Former US President Jimmy Carter on Wednesday accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of being untruthful over remarks made about his controversial meeting with the Islamist Hamas group. Rice had chided Carter for meeting with Hamas, saying US State Department officials had told him such talks would not help the Middle East peace process. But a statement from the Atlanta-based Carter Center, ...
Yahoo! - Apr 23, 2008
Time for India to coin a word for 'divorce'
Heena may have appeared to have everything that many young Indian women aspire to. She had her own burgeoning career, a marriage and two children. What she also had - albeit largely hidden from public view - was an alcoholic and abusive husband. For Heena, an interior designer living in Delhi, the time to get rid of that husband was when he started to get violent with their children.
New Zealand Herald - Apr 23, 2008
Jordan's king meets Bush, Abbas (AFP)
Jordan's King Abdullah II met Wednesday with US President George W. Bush and urged him to set 'clear grounds and fixed time-frames' for stalled Middle East peace talks, Jordan's embassy said. Abdullah later discussed his White House visit with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who was due to meet Thursday with Bush as Washington pushes for a peace agreement before the US leader's term ends in ...
Yahoo! - Apr 23, 2008
Israel says it resumes fuel deliveries to Gaza power plant
Israel on Wednesday resumed fuel shipments to the sole power plant in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said a day after the utility warned that supplies were so low it would have to shut down. 'A million litres of fuel for the central power plant are being transferred today through Nahal Oz, which opened this morning,' said an army spokeswoman, referring to the fuel terminal on the Israeli border ...
Zawya.com - Apr 23, 2008
Pinon Canyon foes file lawsuit to try to make Army back up
Apr. 23--A coalition opposed to the Army's plan to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site is filing a lawsuit in federal court today challenging the 2006 environmental study the Army used to make its claim that expanding the 238,000-acre training ground is necessary. Steve Harris, attorney for Not 1 More Acre, said the lawsuit attacks the adequacy of the 2006 Army study on two points: First, that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Court to hear case that could help workers claim benefits
Wanda Glenn. It's a dispute that is being closely watched by insurance companies and business groups. Depending on how the justices rule, the case could make it easier for employees to win health and disability benefit payments in court. Disability benefits are a big business. Disability insurance plans cover 28 million Americans, and insurers paid more than $7.2 billion in long-term disability ...
Springfield News Sun - Apr 23, 2008
Former Sonics owners file lawsuit
Apr. 23--The Seattle SuperSonics' former owners sued Tuesday to have the 2006 sale of the team voided. They are asking a federal judge to order the Oklahoma-based owners to sell the team "to an honest buyer who desires to keep the Sonics in Seattle." The 13-page lawsuit was filed late Tuesday in Seattle. It is the latest legal roadblock to the current owners' efforts to move the team to Oklahoma ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Background-checks settlement would divvy up $20.7 million
Apr. 23--A complaint about improper background checks at a Newport News call center has triggered a settlement exceeding $20 million with the company that owns the checking agency. The lawsuit accused LexisNexis Risk Management Inc. of failing to give employees sufficient notice of problems it had uncovered and, later, of creating too many hurdles when workers requested reviews.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
EBay Files Suit Against Dilution Of Its Minority Stake In Craigslist - Update
Tuesday evening, San Jose, California-based online auctioneer eBay Inc. (EBAY | news | PowerRating | ) said it has filed a lawsuit against privately-held internet bulletin board Craigslist for actions taken to dilute eBay's minority stake in it by more than 10%. eBay currently holds a 28.4% stake in Craigslist, which it acquired in August 2004. Further details of the suit are not known.
TradingMarkets - Apr 23, 2008
Kline presses for late-term abortion records
Apr. 23--If district attorneys in Kansas can't subpoena abortion records, then the state's late-term abortion law is essentially unenforceable at the county level, Johnson County's district attorney contends. In a legal brief filed Monday, Phill Kline argued that a judge should order the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to turn over the 23 late-term abortion records he has subpoenaed. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Justices seem divided on Davis' challenge
Apr. 23--WASHINGTON -- The U. S. Supreme Court appeared deeply divided Tuesday as it replayed the 2006 congressional race in Jack Davis' challenge to the limitations he faced campaigning against Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds. Davis, a Clarence Democrat who spent $2.2 million of his own money on the race, claims the "Millionaire's Amendment" to campaign funding legislation violates his free speech ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Court won't consider appeal
WASHINGTON Exxon Mobil suffered a defeat at the Supreme Court on Monday, as the justices refused to consider the oil company's appeal of a $112 million damage award in an environmental lawsuit. The court's decision Monday, without comment, effectively ends the litigation. The case began in 1997 when a former Louisiana judge, Joseph Grefer, and his family sued Exxon, alleging that a contractor ...
Star-Telegram - Apr 23, 2008
Equal protection under the law?
Apr. 23--Discrimination in the country's legal system is alive and well, a group of legal experts said Monday evening. Speaking at a forum at the University of Oklahoma's College of Law, several legal experts -- including a lawmaker, a law professor and the legal director for the Oklahoma American Civil liberties Union -- said the American criminal justice system has "notoriously administered" ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Cuba Travel Bill Clears Senate Hurdle
A Miami-Dade research group said that codes, land-use, transportation and other policies must change to combat the threat of rising seas. Under conservative predictions of a three-foot rise in sea level, high tide would wash daily into downtown Miami, South Beach and Hollywood. That's the startling future the Miami-Dade County Climate Change Task Force will describe today when members present ...
Florida Trend - Apr 22, 2008
Connecticut Court Considers: What Is A Good Education?
Apr. 23--Simon Bernstein sat in the front row of the courtroom Tuesday as state Supreme Court justices, an assistant attorney general and two law students grappled over the meaning of his words. Back in 1965, Bernstein had been largely responsible for crafting an article added to the state constitution guaranteeing "free public elementary and secondary schools." A former Hartford alderman and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
State's high court hears appeal on right to 'adequate' education
Apr. 23--HARTFORD -- Yale law students argued before the state Supreme Court Tuesday in a farreaching case that seeks to secure Connecticut students' right to a suitable education. The state argued students may have a right to an "equal" education, but denied the plaintiffs' claims to an adequate education, an argument that met stiff questioning from the court.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Chattanooga: Anti-abortion group pushes for amendment
Apr. 23--NASHVILLE -- Abortion-rights foes announced Tuesday a coordinated effort to rally public and legislative support for a constitutional amendment that would effectively remove any right to an abortion from the Tennessee Constitution. Family Action of Tennessee President David Fowler, a former Republican state senator from Signal Mountain, criticized a House subcommittee that killed Senate ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
EDITORIAL: It's a good treaty
Apr. 23--We hope the Senate plenary decides to ratify the Japan-Philippine Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) with the conditional terms written in the joint report of the Committee on Foreign Relations and the Committee on Trade. Ratification--even with the conditions stated in the joint report submitted to the plenary by Senators Miriam Defensor Santiago for foreign affairs and Mar Roxas ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Chattanooga: Student taken from day classes for not standing for pledge of allegiance
Apr. 23--A Tyner Academy senior was removed from daytime classes this week and ordered to night school when she refused to stand and recite the pledge of allegiance. But after the student hired a lawyer and told school officials that she didn't stand because of religious convictions, she was allowed to return to a regular schedule beginning today. "I knew that they were wrong," said Quinesha ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Lawyer's office called a "settlement mill": Aurora-based attorney accused of negligence
Apr. 23--Anyone who watches daytime television would be hard-pressed to miss the advertisements of attorney Franklin D. Azar, who bills himself "The Strong Arm." The Aurora-based attorney, who also has offices in Colorado Springs and Pueblo, specializes in automobile crash claims and boasts he can get the most money from insurance companies. But according to Colorado Springs attorney Patric ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
EDITORIAL: UGA should be free-speech zone
Apr. 23-- The University of Georgia has landed a distinguished keynote speaker for its June commencement: Georgia-born Clarence Thomas, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. But to some within the UGA community, the Friday announcement that Thomas has agreed to speak at graduation is not a coup, but an outrage. Why? Because some faculty and others think the selection of Thomas, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
EDITORIAL: Hop on the execution train: Ol' Troy's revving to go
Apr. 23--Troy King's one predictable fella. Spend a few minutes with Alabama's youthful, inexperienced attorney general and you'll hear the same-ol' mantra that he's trotted out since he was first appointed to the post by Gov. Bob Riley. King's an iron-clad believer in the virtue and value of the death penalty, and he refuses to even acknowledge any method of justice that doesn't offer blind ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Updated: Allstate's future in Florida unclear after court rescinds order
A seeming big win for state insurance regulators went flat Monday when an appeals court pulled back an order it mistakenly released early. But does the foul-up point to the ultimate outcome, now with a known date of April 29 for the end? Monday's too-early version of the 1st District Court of Appeal order rejected all of Allstate Floridians' requests for a rehearing of its case against the ...
Florida Today - Apr 22, 2008
Judge can't stop 'crime mums' interview
VICTORIAN Supreme Court judge Betty King says she can't stop Channel 7 from airing its 'crime mums' interview outside Victoria but she has told the jury in the Lewis Moran murder trial to ignore any news reports about the program. The judge yesterday ordered Seven not to show the interview with Barbara Williams and Judy Moran at all until the trial was over, but she said today that her powers ...
The Australian - Apr 23, 2008
Lynchburg to appeal tax lawsuit to Virginia Supreme Court
Apr. 23--A lawsuit that could cost the city more than $185,000 will be appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court, city officials decided Tuesday. Lynchburg is contending it has the right to tax locally based businesses that perform work in other communities but are not taxed in those places for the revenue they accrue. English Construction Company and its partner firm W.C. English Inc.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Top jurists want Indian judiciary more accountable
Apr. 23--NEW DELHI -- Why won't judges of India's Supreme Court and High Courts be willing to declare their wealth when their counterparts in other democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom do it as a routine? Top jurists say the judges of the US Supreme Court make public the details of their wealth in newspapers, while all details related to judges of the UK can be obtained ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
BRIEF: Tainted judge's appointment rejected
Apr. 23--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court collegium has rejected a proposal to appoint controversial advocate GS Cheema as a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. However, the collegium headed by Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan is understood to have cleared other names recommended for appointment as judges of the high court. Cheema, whose name figured in the 2002 "cash-for-job scam" ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Pelosi to Bush on gas: A little help, please
PM by Matthew Hay Brown House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, under fire from House Republicans for failing to contain rising gas prices, is appealing to President Bush for help. In a letter today, the California Democrat asks Bush to direct the Justice Department to investigate oil cartel price-fixing, authorize the Federal Trade Commission to pursue and punish 'price gougers,' end tax breaks for oil ...
Baltimore Sun - Apr 23, 2008
Kansas says Nebraska's water bill $72 million
LINCOLN - Kansas said Tuesday that Nebraska owes it more than $72 million for overuse of Republican River water. And that could be just the initial installment, said Kansas water czar David Barfield. Kansas' demand came in a letter from Barfield to his Nebraska counterpart, Brian Dunnigan, acting director of the Nebraska Department of Natural Resources. Barfield said he expects to seek ...
Omaha World-Herald - Apr 22, 2008
Veto session slated today: Veto session starts today
Apr. 23--RICHMOND -- The General Assembly will return to Richmond today for a one-day session to handle bills the governor amended. They'll also likely approve a bond bill that wasn't finished when the legislature adjourned its regular session, and may approve judicial appointments that proved controversial during the session. While the one-day session is informally called the "veto session," ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Botetourt bows to ACLU on political campaign signs
Apr. 23--Under pressure from the American Civil Liberties Union, Botetourt County has backed off an ordinance that limits when political campaign signs can be displayed on private property. Kent Willis, the head of the state's ACLU branch, said yesterday that he had been informed by Botetourt Administrator Gerald Burgess that the ordinance would be repealed "in the near future and will not be ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Law professor to speak on individuals' rights
Apr. 23--The courts exist to protect individual rights, not to solve society's problems, says legal historian Jonathan Adler. The law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, represents one side of a debate in the legal community about where to draw the line in protecting constitutional rights. Adler will present his views in a public lecture Thursday in Wichita, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Watermen ponder suit over crabbing plans: Proposed rules by Md. and Va. would reduce the harvest
Apr. 23--Chesapeake Bay watermen are considering legal action over proposals in Maryland and Virginia to reduce the crab harvest, arguing that the states shouldn't punish crabbers for government's failure to clean up the bay. Lawyers for the watermen say it is too early to tell how and when they might proceed with litigation. But even the talk of lawsuits is unusual for watermen in the two ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 23, 2008
Pharmacy Law: May Regulations Be Used to Support a Negligence Claim?
In a case of accused negligence in a nursing home, do state regulations establish a legal standard of care? Dr. Fink is professor of pharmacy law and policy at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy, Lexington. Issue of the Case A civil lawsuit was filed alleging personal injuries and wrongful death resulting from negligent treatment and care of a patient in a nursing home in a Southern ...
Pharmacy Times - Apr 23, 2008
Supreme Court to hear Russian uranium case
Apr. 22--Union and management leaders hope the U.S. Supreme Court will strike down an international trade ruling jeopardizing the 1,100-employee Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant by making it easier for Russia to flood the American market with cheap uranium. The high court has agreed to review the case as plant operator USEC Inc. and five major federal agencies requested.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 22, 2008
Court to rule on trade law
WASHINGTON (AP) _ The Supreme Court said Monday it will rule on a case that could make it harder for U.S. companies to obtain protective tariffs on lowpriced foreign goods. The dispute centers on whether uranium that U.S. utilities send to France for enrichment and then import for use in nuclear power plants qualifies as a good or service. The question is critical because only manufactured ...
Cay Compass - Apr 22, 2008
EDITORIAL: Drivers can still have license to show their faith: ?In God We Trust? is not unconstitutional, circuit judge rules.
Apr. 21--Score it God 2, American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana 0. Earlier this year, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals declined to reconsider a ruling that threw out an ACLU lawsuit challenging the practice of saying sectarian prayers to open Indiana House sessions. Last week, Marion Superior Court Judge Gary L. Miller upheld the issuance of Indiana license plates bearing the slogan "In ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 21, 2008
Digest: High court turns away Exxon Mobil appeal
ENERGY Justices turn away Exxon Mobil appealWASHINGTON - Exxon Mobil suffered a defeat at the Supreme Court on Monday as the justices refused to consider an appeal by the oil giant of a $112 million damage award in an environmental lawsuit. The case began in 1997 when a former Louisiana judge, Joseph Grefer, and his family sued Exxon Mobil, alleging that a contractor had contaminated the family's ...
Houston Chronicle - Apr 22, 2008
3M age bias suit moves forward: Class action covers 6,000 former, current workers
Apr. 21--A lawsuit by older 3M Co. employees claiming that the company discriminated against them when it came to promotions, pay and layoffs will go forward as a class action. An order signed by Ramsey County Chief Judge Gregg Johnson creates a plaintiff class of about 6,000 salaried employees, older than 45, who are former or current 3M workers in Minnesota from 2003 to the present.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 21, 2008
Missouri death-row inmate denied Supreme Court hearing
Apr. 22--A man who narrowly escaped execution two years ago for the rape and murder of a Kansas City teenager was denied a U.S. Supreme Court hearing Monday. The court refused to take the case of Michael A. Taylor, who had waged a lengthy legal challenge to Missouri's lethal injection protocol. "This ruling ... brings Mr. Taylor's challenge to Missouri's method of execution to a close," said ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 22, 2008
Supreme Anxiety
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens celebrated his eighty-eighth birthday. Last month, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg turned a spry seventy-five. It takes no leap of faith to imagine America's next president replacing one or both of these justices on the Court. Aside from the usual talking pointsone side will protect the right to choose, the other will overturn Roe v.
REASON Online - Apr 22, 2008
EDITORIAL: Deadly inconsistencies
Apr. 22--Critics say the U.S. Supreme Court spread more confusion about the death penalty in a ruling issued last week. It's true the 97-page decision upholding Kentucky's lethal-injection protocol offered six separate opinions, leading readers along tangled lines of logic. But inconsistent thinking about capital punishment didn't originate with nine justices.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 22, 2008
No need to be graduate to contest polls: Pak SC
Apr. 22--KARACHI -- Pakistan's Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favour of doing away with the graduation condition for contesting general elections in the country. The graduation condition, the Supreme Court said, went against Articles 17 and Article 25 of the Pakistan Constitution. A short order of the Supreme Court stated that the rule, enforced prior to the 2002 general elections by President ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 22, 2008
SC sets party-list arguments
Apr. 22--THE Supreme Court will put to test Tuesday in an oral argument the validity of its own earlier ruling relating to the allocation of party-list seats in the House of Representatives. The oral argument is also meant to settle the contrasting opinions of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and the party-list groups concerning their interpretations on several provisions of Party-List ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 22, 2008
Empty Promises on Warming
White House aides had billed President Bushs Rose Garden speech last week as a major turning point at which the president would unveil an ambitious set of proposals to address the problem of global warming - a late-breaking act of atonement, as it were, for seven years of doing nothing. Sadly, Mr. Bushs ideas amounted to the same old stuff, gussied up to look new.
New York Times - Apr 22, 2008
Showdown likely as Baytown probate battle continues: Possible trial pits widow against her spouse's former guardians
Apr. 22--Perry "Bit" Whatley's ashes remain stored on a shelf in a box in the bedroom of his Baytown home, his widow unwilling to part with them until she puts to rest the probate case that persists beyond Whatley's death. More than a year after the retired Baytown refinery worker died, a showdown still looms in the costly court fight that pits Whatley's widow against the dead man's former ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 22, 2008
American Legacy Foundation Steps Forward to Fight For, Safeguard Ohio's Tobacco Settlement Dollars
In a concerted effort to preserve Ohio's tobacco settlement dollars for their originally intended use, the American Legacy Foundation has asked the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas for permission to intervene in the ongoing litigation regarding whether these state funds, wisely dedicated by the State to tobacco prevention and control, can now be diverted for other purposes.
PR Newswire - Apr 21, 2008
Federal suit filed to disarm guns-at-work law
Business interests filed suit in federal court trying to beat back the guns-at-work law Gov. Charlie Crist signed into law less than a week ago. The Florida Retail Federation and Florida Chamber of Commerce brought the suit in Tallahassee. Rick McAllister, president and CEO of the Florida Retail Federation, said they filed in federal court because of the stark Constitutional implications. ...
Florida Today - Apr 21, 2008
Utah company gets banned in Missouri
Steel Bridge Medical LLC, which denied any wrongdoing in settling the Missouri case, also has been cited by Utah officials for allegedly conducting similar sales practices. In the Missouri case, the company agreed to pay $3,799 in restitution and costs under a judgment filed last week in Jackson County Circuit Court, said Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon.
Salt Lake Tribune - Apr 21, 2008
Border coalition joins fence suit (By Jerry Seper)
The Texas Border Coalition (TBC), whose membership collectively represents more than 6 million people who live along the state's southern border, cited the lack of consultation required under the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2007 as the principle reason for the legal challenge. 'Sadly, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly ignored TBC's pleas for cooperation and coordination ...
Washington Times - Apr 22, 2008
Erie Insurance settles suit
Apr. 21--Erie Insurance Exchange has agreed to pay $5.2 million to settle a class-action lawsuit by former shareholders. The shareholders had claimed the company and Erie Indemnity Co. did not offer a fair price when they bought the outstanding shares of Erie Family Life Insurance Co. in May 2006. Former Erie Family Life minority shareholders are expected to receive about $1.824 per share for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 21, 2008
27-year-old, in retrial, given death for murders he committed when he was minor
The Hiroshima High Court on Tuesday sentenced a man to death in a retrial ordered by the Supreme Court for killing a 23-year-old woman and her 11-month-old daughter in Hikari, Yamaguchi Prefecture, in 1999 when the defendant was 18. In scrapping a lower court s life sentence, Presiding Judge Yasuhide Narazaki said such factors as the age of the man at the time of the killings and the killings ...
Japan Today - Apr 22, 2008
Cyberonics Announces Settlement of Convertible Note Litigation
HOUSTON, April 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cyberonics, Inc. NASDAQ: CYBX today announced that it has settled the previously pending legal proceedings with note holders regarding an alleged default and acceleration of the company's $125 million of 3.0% convertible notes due September 27, 2012 ('Notes'). After receiving a notice in October 2006 from Wells Fargo, N.A., the indenture trustee, ...
PR Newswire - Apr 21, 2008
Who Owns Sports Coverage?
Recently in Dallas, more than an hour before game time, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was in the locker room grinding on the Stairmaster, surrounded by several reporters their microphones deployed, heads tilted away to avoid flying droplets of sweat. A reporter for The Dallas Morning News, who writes a blog, asked Mr. Cuban about a bruised Dirk Nowitzki, referring to the star ...
Tuscaloosa News - Apr 21, 2008
Battle may be brewing over state appeals court pick
Apr. 21--The upcoming retirement of Judith Kaye, after 15 years as top judge on the state's highest court, has sparked intense speculation over a successor. And a back-chamber battle for the prized appointment may be brewing. When David A. Paterson became governor last month, Jonathan Lippman had widely been considered the favorite. He's served since 1996 as the chief administrative judge ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 21, 2008
Party labels hard to avoid: Judge races flirt with partisanship
Apr. 21--Officially, judicial elections in North Carolina are nonpartisan. Why, then, has Associate Supreme Court Justice Bob Edmunds Jr. encouraged Republican voters to re-elect him to maintain a GOP presence on the bench? And why was his opponent, Wake Forest University law professor Suzanne Reynolds, campaigning at a recent statewide gathering of Democrats? Since 2002, when the legislature ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 21, 2008
Corruption in judiciary a challenge: PM
Apr. 20--NEW DELHI -- Prime minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday said that corruption in government and judiciary was as big a challenge as the huge backlog of pending cases. Inaugurating a joint conference of chief ministers and chief justices in New Delhi, the prime minister underscored the "urgent need" to "create special courts to deal with corruption cases." He agreed with Chief Justice of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 20, 2008
DNA Databases Raise Privacy Concerns
He was a church-going father of two, and for more than 30 years Dennis Rader eluded police in the Wichita area, killing 10 people and signing taunting letters with a self-styled monogram: BTK, for Bind Torture Kill. In the end, it was a DNA sample that tied BTK to his crimes. Not his own DNA. But his daughter's. Investigators obtained a court order without the daughter's knowledge for a Pap ...
Washington Post - Apr 20, 2008
EDITORIAL: Gunowners' rights like any others
Apr. 20--Philadelphia leaders, who lost 392 constituents to murders committed with handguns last year, were under no illusions recently when they passed several local laws designed to help reduce the carnage. They knew that the NRA quickly would file a constitutional challenge, as it did, and that the state Supreme Court already has ruled that only the state government may enact gun-control ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 20, 2008
Freed woman hopes to help others: Says she has learned much from shaken baby debate
Apr. 20--A woman imprisoned for allegedly killing an 8-month-old in her care is contemplating a book on the reversal of her conviction, her newfound freedom and the trauma she and her family endured for years. Stephanie Bartok and her pro-bono attorney, Dick Meno of Carlinville, say the book would attempt to make the public and prosecutors aware of two schools of thought in shaken baby syndrome ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 20, 2008
Lawmakers Say Coal Plant's CO2 Emissions Not Pollution
(KCPW News) Utah lawmakers don't think carbon dioxide is a pollutant. They plan to include this statement in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency. Representative Mike Noel -an ardent critic of environmental groups - proposed the missive. 'To call CO2 a pollutant is a pretty big stretch,' Noel says. 'Each one of us, as you know, breathe out CO2, plants can't survive without CO2.
KCPW - Apr 21, 2008
'Bishop of the poor' takes power in Paraguay
A former bishop has ended Paraguay's 61 years of one-party rule, beating the reigning party's candidate to win the country's presidential election. Late last night, Fernando Lugo, a mild-mannered leftist who quit the clergy three years ago, saying he felt powerless to help Paraguay's poor, was announced as the winner of the elections after some uncertainty. Lugo had been given 40 - 43% in four ...
Guardian Unlimited - Apr 21, 2008
British spiritualists protest change to their legal status
Britain's clairvoyants, mediums and mystics foresee trouble ahead. A small group of 'spiritual workers' demonstrated in London on Friday against government plans to regulate their services with consumer protection rules. They fear the move could leave them open to lawsuits by disgruntled customers and troublesome skeptics. 'We live in a very litigious society,' said Carole McEntee-Taylor, a ...
Bradenton Herald - Apr 20, 2008
Voter citizenship bill could reignite old fight
Apr. 20--A bill quietly approved by a Missouri House committee earlier this month is reigniting the same heated debate that accompanied a voter ID law struck down by the state Supreme Court less than two years ago. The bill would require anyone registering to vote to submit explicit proof of citizenship to the local election authority, even when registering by mail.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 20, 2008
EDITORIAL: There's a science to making policy
Apr. 20--President Bush's goal of stabilizing U.S. emissions of earth-warming gases by 2025 shows that he has gone native. He has bought the global warming myths of the environmental movement. Fortunately he has not bought the movement's favored remedies and he did not give away the store by trying to set up 2025 as an enforceable deadline. But the enviro-muggers roaming the store aisles will ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 20, 2008
Suit over well could be precedential
Apr. 20--The state Department of Natural Resources and the village of East Troy in Walworth County are the subjects of a potentially precedent-setting lawsuit filed last week by several individuals and two lake management districts over potential damage to a spring-fed lake and nearby wetlands by a proposed municipal high-capacity well. The well could pump 1.4 million gallons of water a day, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 20, 2008
As a lawyer, client or both, Sam McCloud is hard to ignore
Apr. 21--With his Western suits, boots and hat, Twin Cities defense attorney Sam McCloud is hard to miss, in court or out. "It's like he's walking into a bar, it's like an old movie set," said Dakota County District Judge Richard Spicer. For fun, McCloud, 65, rides a Harley motorcycle with his flat-fee slogan on the side: "Gunfighters don't charge by the bullet." Judges are sometimes miffed when ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 21, 2008
Court rules anti-bias laws apply to religious schools: Teacher who is not minister was fired because of her age
Apr. 21--Religious schools do not have a blanket exemption from the state's anti-discrimination laws, the 4th District Court of Appeals found in a decision released last week that might be precedent-setting. The court, sitting in La Crosse, upheld a lower court ruling that Coulee Catholic Schools had discriminated against a longtime lay teacher, Wendy Ostlund, because of her age.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 21, 2008
EDITORIAL: In line on crack
Apr. 21--The U.S. Justice Department has issued new guidelines under which inmates serving unfair sentences for crack cocaine violations are to be released. Hundreds of inmates in several other states have gone free. But in North Carolina, which has one of the highest number of such cases in the nation, the wheels turn slowly. Just a handful of eligible crack offenders -- 27 to be exact -- had ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 21, 2008
50 Years For A Crime That Never Was
Age may have slowed him, but P.P. James wakes up early every day to head into the fields and harvest rice. The short, wiry 84-year-old pulls a worn red baseball cap over his tousled gray hair, hikes up his sarong and, with quiet determination, swings his scythe through the stalks, methodically cutting his way across the field. While those far younger rest in the shade, he plods on, insistent ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 20, 2008
Judges unwilling to share wealth details
Apr. 21--NEW DELHI -- The judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts are not willing to divulge details of their wealth and disciplinary action taken against them on corruption and misconduct charges. Documents available with HT have revealed that the Supreme Court wanted changes in the Right to Information Act (RTI) to allow appeals seeking judiciary-related information to be decided by court ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 21, 2008
EDITORIAL: Cruel ruling: The U.S. Supreme Court sanctions lethal injection, but North Carolina has good reason not to resume executions
Apr. 20--Asked to decide whether the customary method of lethal injection passes muster under the Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court said that it does. But despite a 7-2 vote, the court's fractured majority was hardly persuasive, and its conclusions fly in the face of recent botched executions. The controlling opinion, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts and signed by just two other ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 20, 2008
EDITORIAL: Capital idea
Apr. 20--In his concurring opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens explained that he hoped the Supreme Court's decision "would bring the debate about lethal injection as a method of execution to a close." He then acknowledged the ruling would not prove so effective. If seven justices agreed last week that lethal injection did not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, they ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 20, 2008
Clear as Mud
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision last week upholding Kentucky's method of execution was a 7-2 cacophony as confusing as the tortured logic that underpins the death penalty itself. The 'controlling opinion,' written by Chief Justice John Roberts, was his alone. Six separate justices wrote separate opinions five concurring, one dissenting. Dissenting Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took exception to ...
Syracuse Online - Apr 21, 2008
Texas prosecutors bring different insights to death penalty debate
Apr. 20--Texas is the death penalty capital of America. In recent decades, the state has executed 405 men and women. For many, the death penalty is a vague abstraction that rarely grabs their attention longer than the time it takes to scan a news brief. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection in a Kentucky case. As it did so, Justice John Paul Stevens ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 20, 2008
Florida's death row inmates await fate: After court ruling, Crist's staff preparing list of eligible convicts
Apr. 20--Charles Foster has a pending appeal that might keep him off the governor's death list. Foster, 61, has been on death row longer than any other prisoner from Bay County. Nine men await death sentences imposed by Bay County judges and juries. According to the Department of Corrections, Gov. Charlie Crist's staff is putting together a list of "five or so" death row inmates who might be ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 20, 2008
California still has legal issues on lethal injection executions
Apr. 20--Every night, when Barbara Christian shuts her eyes and tries to go to sleep in her rural Sacramento County home, the same nightmare haunts her. It's the vision of her daughter, Terri Lynn Winchell, 17, dying a brutal and grotesque death, murdered and raped by Michael Angelo Morales in a Lodi vineyard. "I try to maintain, but as long as Morales is alive, I go to bed and wake up and I see ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 20, 2008
EDITORIAL: Open to protection
Apr. 20--The Ohio Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion, last week opened access to the state's registry of foster caregivers, improving accountability in a system that cares for 10,000 children across the state. Unfortunately, the access will not be complete due to misguided state and federal laws. Access is being sought by the Cincinnati Enquirer, the newspaper pressing for information ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 20, 2008
Tyranny of the majority
Gov. Brad Henry (right) answers a question during a news conference at the Capitol in Oklahoma City on Wednesday. When good politics trumps good policy What a world we live in. That was how I ended last week's column, and it seems even more applicable a week later. This is the world we live in: an Oklahoma where women are treated like incompetents who can't make rational decisions without ...
Tulsa World - Apr 20, 2008
Tesla's High-Tech Lawsuits in Silicon Valley War
An anonymous reader writes 'After pressing charges against its chief competitor in the race for the world's first production electric sports car that we broke down here recently, Tesla Motors seems to be shifting from the high-tech company re-writing Detroit's script to another Silicon Valley startup trying to sniff out the competition. So says Engadget's legal analyst in an in-depth column ...
Slashdot - Apr 20, 2008
Monday Newspaper Review - Irish Business News and International Stories - - April 21, 2008
The suggested solution was that we would stop treating foreign companies differently and introduce a new 12.5pc rate for everybody. Although the economy was doing well, most of our neighbours, and some of our own commentators, dismissed our success as a mere blip, a cyclical rise which would be followed by a fall. We were certainly not seen as an economic powerhouse.
FinFacts - Apr 21, 2008
UP varsity asks colleges to get tough on ragging
Apr. 21--GREATER NOIDA -- The Uttar Pradesh Technical University (UPTU) has directed its affiliated colleges to include an anti-ragging clause in their admission brochures and ensure ragging does not take place in their institutions. Greater Noida has over 50 colleges affiliated to the University. The University circular dated April 15 states: "In every admission prospectus, it shall be clearly ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 21, 2008
House bill for financially- distressed companies sought
Apr. 20--A leading legal luminary is seeking the help of House Deputy Speaker Amelita Villarosa and Nueva Vizcaya Rep. Carlos Padilla Jr. for the immediate passage of a law that will help rehabilitate financially-distressed companies, such as the Steel Corporation of the Philippines (SCP), because the present Interim Rules have been subjected to abuse in corporate rehabilitation cases.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 20, 2008
Polygamist sect hearing in Texas descends into farce (AP)
SAN ANGELO, Texas - A court hearing to decide the fate of the 416 children swept up in a raid on a West Texas polygamist sect descended into farce Thursday, with hundreds of lawyers in two packed buildings shouting objections and the judge struggling to maintain order. The case clearly one of the biggest, most convoluted child-custody hearings in U.S. history presented an extraordinary ...
Starkville Daily News - Apr 17, 2008
Bush's Torture Quote Undercuts Denial
President George W. Bush's comment to ABC News - that he approved discussions that his top aides held about harsh interrogation techniques - adds credence to claims from senior FBI agents in Iraq in 2004 that Bush had signed an Executive Order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees. When the American Civil Liberties Union released ...
Middle East Online - Apr 18, 2008
Ex-harbormaster ordered to pay $58G in fees
Apr. 17--A former town of Huntington harbormaster who unsuccessfully sued claiming sexual harassment has been ordered to pay the town $58,456.12 in daily transcript fees because his attorney put on a confusing case, according to court records. U.S. District Court Judge Joanna Seybert ruled that while the case did not involve complex issues of law, "the presentation of plaintiff's direct case ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 17, 2008
Bolivia's ex-president targeted in US lawsuit over deaths
Bolivian police officers launch tear gas canisters at protesters trying to disperse a march in downtown La Paz, Bolivia, in this Oct. 16, 2003 file photo. Ten Bolivians are suing the former Bolivian president and defense minister in Federal Court in Miami over the government response to protest which killed 67 civilians and injured 400 more. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd, File) Associated Press Writer ...
The Dispatch - Apr 17, 2008
Federal suit filed by mortgage-fraud victims dismissed
A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit by people victimized by the owner of a defunct mortgage company who pleaded guilty to fraud. U.S. District Judge James T. Giles ruled that the banks that underwrote the mortgages had no obligation to monitor the Reading-based broker, Wesley A. Snyder. The borrowers had sought to have their lost mortgage payments apply to their remaining loan balance, ...
Morning Call - Apr 17, 2008
New Independent Legal Analysis of California's Prop. 99 Exposes Fatal Flaws
Today, proponents of Proposition 98 announced new evidence that a competing eminent domain ballot measure, Proposition 99, will do next to nothing to protect homeowners from eminent domain abuse. Proposition 99 includes a major loophole that will allow public agencies to continue to forcibly seize owner occupied homes for the benefit of wealthy and politically connected developers even if the ...
TickerTech.com - Apr 18, 2008
Canadian translator at centre of key legal battle
A Canadian charged by the U.S. forces in Baghdad after a knife fight with a colleague is expected to play a key role in a looming legal battle over the military's right to prosecute civilians. 'This will be the test case,' says Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution. 'It will determine all the others.' At the heart of the case is Alaa (Alex) Mohammad Ali, who holds both Canadian and Iraqi ...
Globe and Mail - Apr 18, 2008
Commercial tenants can be evicted: SC
Apr. 18--NEW DELHI -- A tenant in a commercial property will have to vacate the premises if the landlord's need is bona fide, the Supreme Court has ruled. The apex court has partly struck down a provision of the Delhi Rent (Control) Act, 1958 that barred landlords from evicting tenants from non-residential or commercial premises on the ground of bona fide requirement.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 18, 2008
Justice Department urges dismissal of Vermont emissions ruling
The government argued that federal law pre-empts state rules in the regulation of fuel economy standards, and Vermont's rules were contingent upon EPA granting California the exemption.As a result of the EPA rejecting the California waiver in December, the lawyers wrote, Vermont 'lacks authority to implement its proposed regulations.' Vermont Attorney General William Sorrell countered Thursday ...
Detroit News - Apr 17, 2008
Towards judicial independence
KUALA LUMPUR: True to his promise, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi yesterday took a monumental step in the "long process" of restoring the independence of the country's judiciary by proposing the setting up of a Judicial Appointments Commission. Acknowledging that the ghost of 1988 that still haunts the country until today, Abdullah, who is also Umno president and Barisan Nasional ...
The Edge Daily - Apr 18, 2008
Legal fight vowed after Crist signs guns-to-work law
TALLAHASSEE - As signed the Florida Legislature's controversial guns-to-work bill into law Tuesday, business interests vowed to take the fight to a new arena: the courtroom. Crist put his signature on legislation that allows the 500,000 Floridians with concealed-weapons permits to take their guns to work, provided the weapons are locked in their cars. Most companies have had rules banning ...
South Florida Sun-Sentinel - Apr 17, 2008
AMU evicts 1,000 squatters
Apr. 18--NEW DELHI -- Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has declared 2008 as the "year of academic rejuvenation" and kicked off a campus-cleansing operation, hoping to come out of the shadow of last year's murders and mafia-style lawlessness on its campus. AMU authorities have rid its hostels of 1,000 "non-students" squatting illegally after a combing operation with help from the local ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 18, 2008
Federal judge upholds NYC's calories-on-menus law
New York City health officials won a big victory Wednesday when a federal judge upheld a regulation requiring some chain restaurants to post calories on menus. U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell rebuffed a challenge from the New York State Restaurant Association, a trade group that argued the rule violates the First Amendment by forcing restaurants to 'convey the government's message regarding ...
WTHR - Apr 18, 2008
Connecticut Senate Approves Ethics Reform Bill
Apr. 17--Pensions of corrupt state and municipal officials could be revoked or reduced by judges under a landmark ethics bill approved by a unanimous 35-0 vote Wednesday night in the state Senate. But doubts remained on whether House leaders will even bring it to a vote. A House committee co-chairman insisted that the pension revocation provision in the Senate's compromise bill -- supported by ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 17, 2008
Korean District Court Dismisses Infringement Complaint
FormFactor, Inc. (NASDAQ: FORM) announced the FormFactor, Inc. (NASDAQ: FORM) announced the Seoul (Korea) Southern District Court issued an oral ruling dismissing the company's complaint alleging Phicom's infringement of seven claims of FormFactor's Korean Patent No. 252457, and four claims of FormFactor's Korean Patent No. 324064. The announced district court decision was based on issues ...
MarketWire - Apr 18, 2008
OPINION: Mushrooms may like the dark; democracy doesn't need it
Apr. 17--Tom Blanton wasn't nuts when he told a room full of open-government fans to act squirrely. Scientists have found, he informed us last Friday, that "squirrels have no idea where they've dug that hole and put that nut." They survive the winter by planting enough nuts that "wherever they go, they're likely to uncover a couple of buried items," he explained.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 17, 2008
Ex-bishop takes on ruling party in Paraguay
ASUNCION (Reuters) - A former Roman Catholic bishop could end more than 60 years of one-party rule in Paraguay's closely fought presidential election on Sunday and join the growing ranks of leftist leaders in Latin America. Fernando Lugo left the priesthood to seek the presidency as the head of a center-left coalition. Most polls show him with a slim advantage over the ruling Colorado Party ...
Yahoo! Canada - Apr 17, 2008
Bill that would limit nursing home suits on hold
NASHVILLE - A proposal to put caps on damages from malpractice lawsuits against nursing homes is headed to a study committee, meaning it likely won't pass this session. The measure, sponsored by Sen. Jim Tracy, a Shelbyville Republican who represents much of Rutherford County, was sent to a joint study committee by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.
Daily News Journal - Apr 18, 2008
Lethal injections ruled not cruel punishment
But obstacles remain in California, where a federal judge's ruling has forced the state to overhaul its lethal injection procedures and build a new execution chamber and where another judge has told the state to seek public input before changing its rules. The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in a case from Kentucky, which like California uses an anesthetic to render an inmate unconscious, followed by a ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 17, 2008
Chief Justice Puno vowsto finish term in 2010: Denies rumors that he will step down soon over his frustrations with the High Court
Apr. 18--STRESSING that a public office is a public trust, Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno said Thursday that he will only step down from his post as mandated by the Constitution. Puno issued the statement to deny reports that he is thinking of quitting before reaching his constitutionally mandated retirement age of 70 years old on May 17, 2010. "I am denying the rumors and speculations ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 18, 2008
Absurdly Amusing Sex Laws
Are you breaking the law? When it comes to sexual expression, exploration and pleasure, you may be a criminal and not even know it. Both historically and currently, some of our most intimate moments have been made punishable by law. And wouldnt you know it? the United States takes the cake. While countries around the world are all guilty of trying to control our sex lives, the U.S.
FOXNews.com - Apr 18, 2008
Death penalty method upheld
Apr. 17--The Supreme Court's decision Wednesday upholding the most common method of lethal injection is unlikely to instill fear among inmates on Pennsylvania's death row. "I don't think you're going to see executions in Pennsylvania starting to roll along," said Rich Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "There's some ambivalence toward the death penalty in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 17, 2008
Supreme Court backs death penalty, but outcome for California is unclear
Apr. 17--The U.S. Supreme Court gave the green light Wednesday to a resumption of capital punishment nationwide, ruling the three-drug lethal injection practiced by California and most other states passes constitutional muster. But the justices' 7-2 decision does not necessarily mean the moratorium on executions in California will be lifted any time soon. A number of experts point to a Marin ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 17, 2008
Other issues block N.C. executions
Apr. 17--It's unclear what effect the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold Kentucky's lethal injection method will have in North Carolina. North Carolina has unique legal issues that Wednesday's decision didn't resolve, said Thomas Maher, executive director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham. Executions have been on hold here since 2007 because of legal challenges: --Five ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 17, 2008
Federal judge upholds NYC's calories-on-menus law
NEW YORK: New York City health officials won a big victory Wednesday when a federal judge upheld a regulation requiring some chain restaurants to post calories on menus. U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell rebuffed a challenge from the New York State Restaurant Association, a trade group that argued the rule violates the First Amendment by forcing restaurants to 'convey the government's message ...
International Herald Tribune - Apr 16, 2008
Legal dispute could increase cost of digital TV
WASHINGTON A small Pennsylvania company's patent lawsuits could hamstring the government's $1.5 billion effort to make the transition to digital television easier on consumers' wallets.' Rembrandt Inc. owns a patent on technology that it says is part of the digital television broadcasting standard used by the TV networks. Rembrandt is suing 14 companies, including Walt Disney Co.'s ABC, ...
Delaware Online - Apr 17, 2008
Texas urges U.S. Supreme Court to allow death penalty for child rapists
Apr. 17--WASHINGTON -- States need to be able to use the death penalty to punish and deter offenders from committing crimes as heinous as repeat child sex assault, even when the victim isn't killed, a top Texas legal official told the Supreme Court on Wednesday. "In modern times, we're seeing crimes that 20, 30, 40 years ago, people wouldn't imagine," said Ted Cruz, the state's solicitor ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 17, 2008
Appeals court judges lament negative campaigning
Apr. 17--Wisconsin's two federal appeals court judges on Wednesday bemoaned the negative tone of the recent state Supreme Court election and called for debate on whether judges should be elected. U.S. Appeals Court Judge Terence Evans called the campaign in which Burnett County Circuit Judge Michael Gableman unseated incumbent Justice Louis Butler "a travesty." The race featured record spending ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 17, 2008
Insanity defense for NYC cleaver murder suspect
A lawyer for a mentally ill patient accused of hacking a psychotherapist to death with a meat cleaver said Tuesday that his client will offer an insanity defense.Defense lawyer Bryan Konoski said in Manhattan's state Supreme Court that a psychiatrist he hired to examine murder suspect David Tarloff, 40, found 'very strong grounds' for a psychiatric defense.Konoski's court papers say Tarloff ...
Sun Herald - Apr 16, 2008
Court upholds female guard's harassment award
The complaints by Deanna Freitag led to an investigation by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's inspector general, who found in 2000 that maximum-security inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison had regularly subjected female guards to 'lewd exhibitionism and exhibitionist masturbation' and that the warden and other officials were doing little to stop it.
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 16, 2008
Connecticut Senate Approves Ethics Reform Bill
Apr. 17--Pensions of corrupt state and municipal officials could be revoked or reduced by judges under a landmark ethics bill approved by a unanimous 35-0 vote Wednesday night in the state Senate. But doubts remained on whether House leaders will even bring it to a vote. A House committee co-chairman insisted that the pension revocation provision in the Senate's compromise bill -- supported by ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 17, 2008
Turkey wrestles with a 'judicial coup'
By Hilmi Toros ISTANBUL - Turkey is locked in a do-or-die duel between its secular 'fundamentalism' and 'moderate' Islam. The outcome is likely to bring profound changes at home, and may affect its controversial bid for European Union membership. The all-embracing clash is coming to a boiling point after the Constitutional Court agreed to take up a case brought by the chief prosecutor to close ...
Asia Times Online - Apr 17, 2008
Clock-stopping by legislators raises questions
Apr. 17--FRANKFORT -- After lawmakers officially shut down the 2008 General Assembly at 1 a.m. Wednesday, they left behind questions about the legality of some of the bills that were finalized after the constitutional deadline of midnight. Television cameras and reporters witnessed at least five bills -- two in the Senate, three in the House -- receiving the necessary signatures from House ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 17, 2008
Catawba river endangered: A national environmental group has put the Carolinas' Catawba-Wateree at the top of the list of imperiled rivers
Apr. 17--The Carolinas' failure to protect the Catawba River -- an expansive waterway under siege by growth and drought -- has made it the country's most endangered river, a new report says. American Rivers says the Catawba-Wateree system is at the center of a clash between development in the Southeast and a limited water supply -- and without better state management, everyone will suffer. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 17, 2008
Japan rejects UK hedge funds bid
This case is straightforwardly related to national security. X Nobutaka Machimura, Japanese government spokesman Japan rejected a proposal from Britains The Childrens Investment Fund yesterday, blocking the hedge funds efforts to raise its stake in a major electricity company because of potential disruptions to public order. The London-based hedge fund had proposed raising its stake in J-Power X ...
Taipei Times Online - Apr 17, 2008
Envoys Fail To Reach Consensus On Iranian Nuclear Issue
AM Envoys from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany and the European Union ended a three-hour meeting in Beijing Wednesday night without agreement on a new proposal aimed at persuading Iran to return to the negotiating table over its controversial nuclear program.The envoys are believed to have discussed proposed political, security and economic incentives designed ...
RTTNews.com - Apr 17, 2008
House panel blames judiciary for vacancies
Apr. 17--NEW DELHI -- A day after the Supreme Court expressed concern over the large number of judges' posts lying vacant in the country and the tendency among law graduates to take up corporate jobs, a parliamentary panel said on Wednesday that the judiciary itself was responsible for the vacancies and huge backlog of cases. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice said a lack of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 17, 2008
Senators Hold Hearing On Tomato Picker Pay
MIAMI - U.S. lawmakers called for a federal review of Florida tomato-picker wages and greater oversight of worker conditions during a Senate committee hearing Tuesday, questioning claims by an industry group that the workers earn an average of $12.50 an hour. Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.; and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., expressed concern about the treatment of the Florida ...
Tampa Tribune - Apr 16, 2008
Mo. court rejects class-action status in Diet Coke lawsuit
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- The Missouri Supreme Court rejected class-action certification Tuesday for a lawsuit claiming Coca-Cola has misled consumers about the sweeteners used in some Diet Coke products. The lawsuit contends that many consumers would not have bought the fountain version of Diet Coke if they had known it contained the sweetener saccharin, which some people fear can cause ...
KSHB - Apr 16, 2008
Texas to argue for right to execute child rapists at Supreme Court
Apr. 16--WASHINGTON -- Texas says sometimes the sexual assault of a child can be so violent or obscene that the only appropriate punishment is to execute the offender. And Wednesday, Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz will make that case to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that state legislatures have the constitutional right to allow the death penalty for child rapists.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 16, 2008
EDITORIAL: Appointing justices: After two nasty campaigns driven by millions of dollars in outside money, it's time to change the way Wisconsin selects justices for its highest court.
Apr. 16--Justice Shirley Abrahamson is up for re-election to the state Supreme Court next year. And our guess is that if you felt like taking a shower after this year's race for the court seat won by Michael Gableman, you might want to invest in an industrial-sized bathtub for next year's election. After two campaigns in two years marked by sleazy ads, empty rhetoric and issues often hardly ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 16, 2008
Gun rights a hot topic in Pa., but barely visible in Democratic primary
HARRISBURG (AP) - Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are gingerly threading their way between two of the most politically charged numbers in Pennsylvania: the state's almost 1 million licensed hunters and Philadelphia's nearly one-a-day rate of gun murders. Gun control arouses deep emotions here. Deadly shootings have earned the state's largest city the ominous nickname: "Killadelphia." One ...
Pocono Record - Apr 16, 2008
Court Overturns $41.4 Million Jury Award
The state Supreme Court has overturned a jury award of more than $41.4 million to a Bristol man paralyzed in a construction accident almost 14 years ago. In a ruling released Monday, the justices said that Norman Pelletier's employer, not the general contractor he sued, was responsible for ensuring the safety of a poorly welded steel beam that broke loose and struck him in June 1994.
Hartford Courant - Apr 15, 2008
Charges against law firm dismissed
The former law firm of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff has paid the Judiciary of Guam $324,000 and agreed to cooperate fully with the local attorney general's office in exchange for the dismissal of criminal charges against it in the Superior Court. The terms of the dismissal of the charges against international law firm Greenberg Traurig are stated in court papers that Chief Prosecutor Phillip ...
Guam Pacific Daily News - Apr 15, 2008
States Tackle Foreclosures In Absence of Federal Help
This month alone, Philadelphia's sheriff delayed foreclosure auctions of 759 homes at the city council's urging. Maryland extended the time it takes to complete a foreclosure. State leaders in Ohio recruited more than 1,000 lawyers to aid distressed borrowers. Frustrated by the slow pace of federal action on behalf of struggling homeowners, some states and cities have struck out on their own to ...
Washington Post - Apr 15, 2008
Ethanol blend inventor on trial
A decade ago, Colorado businessman William Orr pioneered an ethanol fuel blend he said was the solution to U.S. dependence on foreign oil. However, the government that gave him millions of dollars to fund his research now has him on trial in a federal courtroom, charged with 28 counts of fraud and tax evasion. Prosecutors say he fudged his fuel performance results.
Ethanol Producer Magazine.com - Apr 15, 2008
Marriage could cost worker her job
Q. Unfortunately, my fiance is well-known in this town and had a messy divorce from a well-known woman who accused him of domestic violence. My boss knows and likes this woman and so do all our clients. All I can say is they don't know the real her. My fiance is 100 percent honest and has convinced me his ex-wife is a liar. Still, she's trashed his reputation.
Anchorage Daily News - Apr 15, 2008
Wrongly convicted man freed: He was imprisoned 12 years for rape
Apr. 15--Nathaniel Hatchett had just one request Monday when he became a free man after 12 years in prison: pork chops. And a couple of hours after he walked out of the Macomb County circuit courthouse surrounded by cheering family members, Hatchett had them -- smothered, no onions -- at his mother's house on Stockwell on Detroit's east side. "Twelve years," said Hatchett, 29, as he sat on the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 15, 2008
Stakes high in jury selection: Choices could be pivotal in Ellis case
Apr. 15--The first clue for prospective jurors that this is a big case might have been the three TV cameramen hunched on the floor, filming their feet as they shuffled past. The second sign might have been the backroom meeting with the suits, in which Douglas County District Judge Greg Schatz and attorneys interviewed the would-be jurors, one by one, on the death penalty and their knowledge of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 15, 2008
Maker of Vioxx Is Accused of Deception
Two teams of researchers with access to thousands of documents gathered for lawsuits over the painkiller Vioxx allege that Merck waged a campaign of deception to promote its drug, moving slowly to warn of possible hazards while at the same time dressing up in-house studies as the work of independent academic researchers. The reports in today's in effect charge one of the world's biggest ...
Washington Post - Apr 15, 2008
Hearing set today on lacrosse lawsuit
Apr. 15--DURHAM -- Enough time has passed that current and former Duke lacrosse players shouldn't have any need to counter adverse publicity that came their way in connection with an exotic dancer's false allegation of rape, city officials contend. That argument came as the city government's lawyers were firing the last shot in the "battle of the briefs" leading up to a hearing today that will ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 15, 2008
Court will hear wrongful conviction case (AP)
LOS ANGELES - The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether a man who served 24 years in prison before his murder conviction was overturned can sue two former prosecutors for allegedly violating his civil rights. Thomas Goldstein, now 59, was convicted of a 1979 murder on the strength of a jailhouse informant's testimony that Goldstein had confessed to the crime.
Starkville Daily News - Apr 15, 2008
Judge tosses Snyder lawsuit: More than 800 borrowers who say they lost $25 million to Wesley A. Snyder's Exeter Townshipbased firm claimed 24 banks should have monitored the broker.
Apr. 15--A federal judge has dealt a blow to victims of a Berks County mortgage broker's Ponzi scheme, ruling 24 banks had no obligation to monitor the broker. U.S. District Judge James T. Giles threw out a suit against the banks that was brought on behalf of Personal Financial Management Inc. mortgage borrowers. Collectively, more than 800 of those borrowers say they lost at least $25 million ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 15, 2008
Chevron lashes out at Ecuadoreans who won award for legal battle over rainforest
San Francisco, Calif. - Chevron Corp. is sharpening its attacks against two opponents in a 15-year legal battle over whether the oil company should foot a multibillion-dollar bill to clean up a toxic stew in the Amazon rainforests. The San Ramon-based company intensified its criticism Monday while two Ecuadoreans, Pablo Fajardo and Luis Yanza, were in San Francisco to pick up the Goldman Prize, a ...
South Florida Sun-Sentinel - Apr 16, 2008
A Battle for the Ages - TIME
Like the detectives and the prosecutors on law & Order, two very different groups of people are responsible for the words that fill the world's magazines and newspapers. There are the writers, who produce the prose, and the editors, who do their best to wreck it. Whtevr u say, Mike, but this hedlin didnt get editd and thts why it readz like this The economy is tanking.
Time - Apr 15, 2008
Govt rushes to roll out quota from next session
Apr. 16--NEW DELHI -- The government has made its intention clear to implement the 27 per cent OBC reservation from the next academic year (2008-09), with the HRD Ministry circulating a Cabinet note to exclude creamy layer from the ambit of the law. In the note it has sought permission to amend the Central Education Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2007 to ensure the creamy layer ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 16, 2008
Groups back state lawsuit on rock mining
Apr. 15--The Southern Environmental Law Center and 14 other environmental groups have bored into a growing Appalachian rock-mining and mineral rights fight, filing court papers in support of Tennessee's legal effort to stop rock mining on the Cumberland Plateau. Saying more than 450,000 acres of public and private property is at risk if a Hamilton County Chancery Court ruling from last year ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 15, 2008
State insurance services files intent to sue
Lt. Gov. and her campaign on behalf of an insurance broker caught in the crossfire between Perdue and her rival for the Democratic nomination for governor, state Treasurer . Raleigh attorney said his client, State Insurance Services, is seeking unspecified monetary damages for defamation and unfair trade practices, Dan Kane reports. Perdue's campaign ran a for several days earlier this month ...
Raleigh News & Observer - Apr 15, 2008
State faces lawsuit over mental health: It says services improperly taken away
Apr. 15--Two law firms that represent low-income people are suing the state over mental-health care, contending that patients are having their services taken away without good reason. Legal Services of Southern Piedmont, based in Charlotte, and the National Health Law Program are suing Dempsey Benton, secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services, on behalf of a 12-year-old boy ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 15, 2008
FBI says problems with letters fixed
The FBI is resisting legislation that would put more restrictions on domestic surveillance of Americans' private records, saying the agency already has tightened its rules to crack down on wrongful use of national security letters. FBI general counsel Valerie E. Caproni told a House panel Tuesday that the agency has responded to abuses outlined in internal reports by tightening the requirements ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 15, 2008
Connecticut Supreme Court overturns $41.4 million injury award
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) -- The state Supreme Court has overturned a jury award of more than $41.4 million to a Bristol man paralyzed in a construction accident almost 14 years ago. In a ruling released Monday, the justices said Norman Pelletier's employer, not the general contractor he sued, was responsible for ensuring the safety of a poorly welded steel beam that broke loose and struck him in ...
TheDay.com - Apr 15, 2008
Bush to Endorse 'Intermediate' Emissions Goal
President Bush will endorse an 'intermediate goal' today for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but he will not put forward any specific legislation or proposal on how the goal should be met, White House officials said. In an afternoon address in the Rose Garden, Bush will also reiterate his long-standing opposition to mandatory emissions regulations without simultaneous agreements from large ...
Washington Post - Apr 16, 2008
High Court fails to rule on Senate motion on Neri case
Apr. 16--The Supreme Court on Tuesday failed to come up with a decision on the Senate's motion for reconsideration seeking to reverse its earlier decision upholding the petition of Romulo Neri to invoke the principle of executive privilege. In a two-page resolution, signed by Assistant Clerk of Court Felipa Anama, the High Tribunal en banc instead gave Neri, the former director general of the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 16, 2008
Craigslist, FBI, Washington State Attorney General, US Postal Inspector, PayPal, Microsoft, Symantec and MySpace Converge at the Authentication and Online Trust Summit to Share Best Practices for Online Safety
Today, the Authentication and Online Trust Today, the Authentication and Online Trust Alliance (AOTA) announced keynote speakers for its 4th annual Summit focused on enhancing online trust, confidence and brand protection from escalating online threats. The event offers valuable insights and networking opportunities for security, marketing, IT and brand management professionals who are taking ...
MarketWire - Apr 15, 2008
Law Offices of Brodsky & Smith, LLC Announces Class Action Lawsuit Against Inverness Medical Innovations Inc.
Law offices of Brodsky & Smith, LLC Law offices of Brodsky & Smith, LLC announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of all persons who purchased the common stock of Inverness Medical Innovations Inc., ("Inverness Medical" or the "Company") (AMEX: IMA) in the Company's secondary public offering on or about November 14, 2007 (the "Secondary Offering").
MarketWire - Apr 15, 2008
Law Offices of Brodsky & Smith, LLC Announces Class Action Lawsuit Against iStar Financial Inc.
Law offices of Brodsky & Smith, LLC Law offices of Brodsky & Smith, LLC announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed on behalf of all persons who purchased the common stock of iStar Financial Inc. ("iStar Financial" or the "Company") (NYSE: SFI) pursuant or traceable to the Company's secondary public offering on or about December 13, 2007 (the "Secondary Offering").
MarketWire - Apr 15, 2008
Fired prison guard who was harassed by naked inmates wins court ruling
The complaints by Deanna Freitag led to an investigation by the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's inspector general, who found in 2000 that maximum-security inmates at Pelican Bay State Prison had regularly subjected female guards to 'lewd exhibitionism and exhibitionist masturbation' and that the warden and other officials were doing little to stop it.
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 15, 2008
Environmental groups seek to block construction of fence along U.S.-Mexico border
DALLAS _ The U.S. Supreme Court may get a chance to join the fractious debate over building fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. A legal challenge by two environmental groups seeking to limit enhanced Department of Homeland Security powers to suspend more than 30 laws to build the fence is gathering support in Congress. But at least one constitutional expert said that although the legal ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 14, 2008
Connecticut Supreme Court overturns $41.4 million injury award
HARTFORD, Conn. The state Supreme Court has overturned a jury award of more than $41.4 million to a Bristol man paralyzed in a construction accident almost 14 years ago. In a ruling released Monday, the justices said Norman Pelletier's employer, not the general contractor he sued, was responsible for ensuring the safety of a poorly welded steel beam that broke loose and struck him in June 1994. ...
Greenwich Time - Apr 15, 2008
Fight over border fence environmental waivers could reach Supreme Court
Apr. 15--The U.S. Supreme Court may get a chance to join the fractious debate over building fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. A legal challenge by two environmental groups seeking to limit enhanced Department of Homeland Security powers to suspend more than 30 laws to build the fence is gathering support in Congress. But at least one constitutional expert said that although the legal ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 15, 2008
Court Steps Into Utilities Case
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an environmental case in which utility companies want to revive an industry-friendly regulation put in place by the Bush administration. The dispute with environmental groups revolves around the harm companies cause when they draw water from rivers and lakes to cool electric generating equipment, then return it to the waterway.
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 14, 2008
North Carolina newspapers sue governor over deleted e-mails
RALEIGH, N.C. _ The Raleigh News & Observer and nine other North Carolina news organizations sued Gov. Mike Easley on Monday over his administration's deletion of official government e-mails, which they say violates the state's Public Records Law. The news media coalition accuses Easley's administration of "the systematic deletion, destruction or concealment of e-mail messages sent from or ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 14, 2008
Louisiana law that allows death for child rape is fought in court
SLIDELL, La. -- When the news broke last month that a janitor had been arrested and accused of raping boys in the bathroom at an elementary school, the issue of justice and retribution became the talk around dinner tables and baseball fields. Castrate him, some said. No, let the other inmates deal with him. No, execute him. Castration and jailhouse vigilantism are out of the question, but ...
The Sun News - Apr 14, 2008
Beach restoration suit waits: State Supreme Court heard case nearly a year ago
Apr. 14--DESTIN -- The Supreme Court of Florida heard arguments for and against beach restoration nearly a year ago but it still has not ruled. The court has yet to decide whether restoring storm-damaged beaches is an unconstitutional taking of private property from beachfront homeowners. The players in the issue have not heard a word, either. Attorney Dan Stengle represents Save Our Beaches, a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 14, 2008
Delaware has done well in court battles
The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision blocking New Jersey's grab of Delaware waters was only the 134th case labeled 'Original' in the high court's docket. The court is the only one that can settle such disputes, and other battles between states are still pending or have been decided in recent years. The U.S. Geological Survey says the most common dividing lines between states are a stream, lake ...
Delaware Online - Apr 14, 2008
Business, labor aim to alter state laws: Groups clash over measures to rein in unions, mandate raises and insurance, and more
Apr. 14--DENVER -- Business and labor leaders spent last week sparring over proposed changes to the state constitution, and despite the intervention of Gov. Bill Ritter, the battle may get nastier. Wednesday, a group called A Better Colorado filed 133,000 petitions with the secretary of state. Its goal is to add an amendment to the state constitution that would prohibit collective bargaining ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 14, 2008
EDITORIAL: Truth, justice and merit selection
Apr. 14--When two members of Wisconsin's new government watchdog board resigned last week, they demonstrated how important it is to be a stickler for detail where government ethics and accountability are concerned. They also demonstrated something else: Wisconsin 's historical suspicion of the practice of electing judges. The reasons for that suspicion are worth remembering, especially in the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 14, 2008
Judicial conference here a first
Apr. 14--Should state election standards come under federal control? What's brewing inside the U.S. Supreme Court? And what's with that 1964 trial in which Chattanooga jurors got to be the first to convict the infamous Jimmy Hoffa? These are some points of discussion planned for the 2008 Judicial Conference of the 6th Circuit, set to start in Chattanooga on May 7, the first time the annual ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 14, 2008
It's Legal to Discriminate Against Grandma and Grandpa?
Content provided by ProtectSeniors.Org (ARA) - According to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) it is now legal to discriminate against senior citizens in this country. This happened in late March when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review a lower court decision in the case AARP vs. EEOC, which ruled the EEOC can implement a new regulation allowing employers to reduce ...
WQAD - Apr 15, 2008
Chevron lashes out at Ecuadoreans who won award for legal battle
Chevron Corp. is sharpening its attacks against two opponents in a 15-year legal battle over whether the oil company should foot a multibillion-dollar bill to clean up a toxic stew in the Amazon rainforests. The San Ramon-based company intensified its criticism Monday while two Ecuadoreans, Pablo Fajardo and Luis Yanza, were in San Francisco to pick up the Goldman Prize, a prestigious honor given ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 15, 2008
SC on quota: Giving minority institutes the miss justified
Apr. 15--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court has justified the exclusion of minority educational institutions from the purview of Article 15(5) of the Constitution that enabled the State to bring in the law providing for reservation for OBCs in central educational institutions. A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan that upheld the validity of the 93rd ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 15, 2008
Doctors to protest if creamy layer included in OBC quota
Apr. 15--NEW DELHI -- Resident doctors across the country have threatened a massive protest if the creamy layer is included from the ambit of the OBC reservation. Several political parties like the PMK, a constituent of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), have raised a hue and cry on the Supreme Court's decision to exclude the creamy layer. The judiciary on April 10 upheld the law providing ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 15, 2008
Anorexic Denied Coverage Under Health Plan
Young Kathryn Laudadio, already battling anorexia and various mental disorders, now has another demon crushing her guilt that her parents had to pay thousands for a treatment program last summer because insurance wouldn't cover it. Kathryn, 17, entered the residential program after losing 10 pounds in three weeks and then running 80 minutes on a very hot day until she collapsed.
Hartford Courant - Apr 14, 2008
Judge to hear final arguments in Sean Bell shooting
Apr. 14--Promptly at 9 a.m. today, Justice Arthur J. Cooperman will enter a packed, cavernous State Supreme Court room in Kew Gardens and ask attorneys to explain why three detectives should be convicted or acquitted of killing Sean Bell in a torrent of bullets. For most of the morning, and possibly into the afternoon, defense attorney Paul Martin and his colleagues Anthony Ricco and James ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 14, 2008
The $100M lodge Blixseth built
BIG SKY - This is the house that Tim Blixseth built, and it starts with 120,000 square feet n almost three acres n of boards and timbers and stone called the Warren Miller Lodge at the Yellowstone Club. Thats your basic $100 million lodge, Blixseth said.The lodge contains ski shops and restaurants, lobbies and bars and lots of big, gas-fired fireplaces. Fine art adorns the walls, bronze statuary ...
Bozeman Daily Chronicle - Apr 13, 2008
Lawyers seek to restore trust: Bar task force to study issue
Apr. 13--Attorneys are discussing what changes are needed to restore confidence in Mississippi's legal system after five of their own pleaded guilty in a judicial bribery case and a federal judge on the Coast cited several law firms for breaching legal ethics in Katrina insurance cases. "I can't imagine anything worse than attempting to bribe a judge," said Gulfport attorney Donald Dornan, who ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 13, 2008
Battle Looms Between CRRA, Towns That Sued Over Enron Deal
Apr. 14--Yet another legal battle is looming between the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority and the 70 towns that sued the quasi-public agency over its $220 million failed energy agreement in 2001 with the now-bankrupt Enron Corp. An auditor hired last month by Vernon officials has found inappropriate assumptions and charges in the authority's recently approved Mid-Conn budget for 2009, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 14, 2008
Bill Clinton's China connection
AM by Stephen Braun NEW YORK -- As Chinese authorities have clamped down on unrest in Tibet and jailed dissidents in advance of the 2008 Olympics, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has taken a strong public stance, calling for restraint in Tibet and urging President Bush to boycott the Olympics opening ceremonies in Beijing. But her recent stern comments on China's internal crackdown collide with ...
Baltimore Sun - Apr 13, 2008
Will Berkeley's law school fire a professor for writing the torture memos?
By Jack Balkin Over at The Nation, Stephen Gillers argues that the Yoo-Bybee torture memos violated canons of professional ethics, in part because Yoo and Bybee were confused about who their client was: How could two really smart guys authorize torture using 'one-sided legal arguments' that have 'o foundation' in law? How could they be guilty of a 'stunning failure of lawyerly craft'? The sad ...
Slate - Apr 13, 2008
Terrorizing Publishing [incl. Khalid bin Mahfouz, Robert O. Collins, "Alms for Jihad," Cambridge Univ. Press]
This spring, Encounter Books is publishing 'Willful Blindness: a Memoir of the Jihad,' by Andrew McCarthy, who helped prosecute the 'blind sheik' Omar Abdel-Rahman and other jihadists. I recently received a message from someone who helps distribute our books in Britain: 'Can you please let us know if there are any references to Saudis and terrorist[s] in the book.
Campus Watch - Apr 14, 2008
A query: Are health-care mandates constitutional?
An important element is being overlooked in the health-care debate between the Democratic presidential candidates: Namely, whether the plans they propose are constitutional. The largest difference between their health-care plans is that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton would 'mandate' that everyone (with limited exceptions) purchase private health insurance. Although Sen.
Houston Chronicle - Apr 14, 2008
Flags flown at half-staff can cause uproar if done improperly
Apr. 13--NORMAL -- In every case, the answer is virtually the same. "We wanted to do something in their honor. We didn't think anyone would complain if we lowered the flag to half staff." But people do complain. Unit 5 School Superintendent Gary Niehaus understands that now. It was Feb. 29 and the district was dealing with the aftermath of an accident that killed a 42-year-old woman who had ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 13, 2008
Courts reviewing a tax dodge for the rich
Is it fair that some Canadians are able to, in effect, deduct the interest paid on their home mortgages while the vast majority cannot? I know that fairness often has little to do with income tax law but I object to the status quo where some Canadians are able to abuse the tax system by arranging their affairs so as to enable them to effectively deduct interest on their home mortgages.
Toronto Sun - Apr 13, 2008
Homeowner: mortgage banker inflated house's value
Apr. 13--When George Cornielle paid $812,500 for his East Massapequa high ranch in 2005, he said he was told by his mortgage banker that it was a good deal -- and that he could afford it. Now, just over two years later, Cornielle is in foreclosure, unable since last November to make his $4,100 monthly mortgage payment. Underneath Cornielle's financial situation is another story, one told in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 13, 2008
Nixon library will debut new Watergate exhibit
YORBA LINDA, Calif. _ For nearly a year, visitors to the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum have strolled past displays detailing nearly every aspect of Richard M. Nixon's presidency, except for one: The Watergate scandal that forced Nixon's resignation in the middle of his second term. The hallway that once hosted the Watergate exhibit now features only a few vacant display cases, walls ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 13, 2008
Insurance payment ruled valid: High court finds bicyclist hurt in crash entitled to $500,000
Apr. 13--The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday upheld lower court decisions that required an insurance company to pay $500,000 to a West Bend man it had insured. The lawsuit was brought in 2004 by G. Vaughn Stone, who was struck by a van while he was bicycling. He suffered multiple fractures and dislocations and a collapsed lung, all of which required multiple surgeries as well as a three-week ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 13, 2008
Crunched by good credit
As home prices soared and mortgages sold like hotcakes in the mid-2000s, people with good credit scores like Daniel Montrond and Aderito B. Andrade should have been able to sail into real estate investments without a hitch. But their superlative credit scores turned out to be a kiss of death of sorts. Those scores made them and others good prospects for Dwight Jenkins, a Dorchester real estate ...
Boston Herald - Apr 13, 2008
Sarabjit release appears bleak
Apr. 13--NEW DELHI -- The chances of securing the release of Sarabjit Singh from the gallows in Pakistan "appear bleak" though all efforts should be made to commute his death sentence to life imprisonment, leading human rights activist and former Pakistani minister Ansar Burney has said. Burney, a member of the UN Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, said Sarabjit's case was not an easy one ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 13, 2008
Where there's smoke, there might be a city ordinance banning it
Apr. 13--A majority of the Beaufort City Council supports an ordinance that would ban smoking in all indoor public places and many outdoor places. The City Council had planned to consider a smoking ban early in 2007 but put that proposal on the back burner after Greenville bar and restaurant owners sued the city of Greenville over its smoking ban. The Supreme Court ruled last month that cities ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 13, 2008
Crunched by good credit: Deals left investors in financial ruin
Apr. 14--As home prices soared and mortgages sold like hotcakes in the mid-2000s, people with good credit scores like Daniel Montrond and Aderito B. Andrade should have been able to sail into real estate investments without a hitch. But their superlative credit scores turned out to be a kiss of death of sorts. Those scores made them and others good prospects for Dwight Jenkins, a Dorchester real ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 14, 2008
Ex-worker presses dispute with O'Charley's: Man claims he was let go after complaining about illegal workers
Apr. 14--A Charlotte chef is heating up a reverse discrimination case against a former employer this spring. Kyle Pruitt claims the University City O'Charley's franchise where he worked as a kitchen manager in 2005 unfairly fired him after he complained about losing work hours to illegal Latino workers. O'Charley's would not comment but the former franchise general manager disputed Pruitt's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 14, 2008
SC order dismissal, arrest of stenographer
Apr. 14--A court stenographer is now a fugitive from justice for failing to transcribe the stenographic notes she took in a court session. Administrative charges were filed against Ruby Hechanova, a court stenographer assigned at Regional Trial Court (RTC), Branch 69, Silay City, Negros Occ., by her own immediate superior, Judge Felipe Banzon, the court's presiding judge.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 14, 2008
Barnstable file suit over proposed wind farm transmission lines
BARNSTABLE, Mass. (AP) - The town of Barnstable has gone to court in a dispute over transmission lines for a proposed energy-producing wind farm in Nantucket Sound. Barnstable officials filed a complaint in Superior Court earlier this week claiming the Cape Cod Commission has exclusive jurisdiction over the transmission cables that would link 130 turbines to the shore.
WWLP.com - Apr 14, 2008
Have Florida crime laws gone to pot?: Sentencing for marijuana use highlights debate
Apr. 13--Mosley High School Assistant Principal Brian Barnes was arrested April 1 for allegedly purchasing more than 20 grams of marijuana. Police said he told investigators he wanted the illegal herb for stress relief and recreational use. Though the federal government classifies marijuana as a Schedule I substance, a characterization that denotes addictiveness and denies any currently accepted ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 13, 2008
New York judge dismisses parts of Dan Rather's $70 million lawsuit
NEW YORK: A judge has allowed former news anchorman Dan Rather's $70 million ( 44 million) breach of contract lawsuit against CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. to go forward but has dismissed the portions that named three of the company's executives. Judicial Hearing Officer Ira Gammerman struck down the parts of the suit that named Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone, CBS President Leslie Moonves and ...
International Herald Tribune - Apr 10, 2008
Nutter defies '96 ruling by signing new gun laws
Apr. 11--Harkening back to the founding of America, Mayor Nutter and City Council yesterday challenged the state General Assembly on gun control. Nutter swiftly signed into law five bills passed unanimously by Council, and compared them to the Declaration of Independence. The state Supreme Court in a 1996 ruling declared that only the General Assembly has the power to regulate guns, tossing out ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
While the Beijing Olympics come under fire, Jeremy Schaap tells the story of one boycott that almost worked -- when thousands protested Hitler and the 1936 Games.
Seventy-two years ago this summer, Hitler's Germany played host to the Games of the Eleventh Olympiad in Berlin. The games are now best remembered for the brilliance of Jesse Owens -- who won four gold medals -- and the success of the Nazis' propaganda machine. For the first time in the history of the modern Olympics, the Games were held hostage by the political goals of the host nation.
ESPN.com - Apr 11, 2008
Cogeco Cable Reports Strong Second Quarter 2008 Financial Results Thus Improving its 2008 Financial Guidelines
Today, Cogeco Cable Inc. (TSX: CCA) announced its financial results for the second quarter and first six months ended February 29, 2008. Today, Cogeco Cable Inc. (TSX: CCA) announced its financial results for the second quarter and first six months ended February 29, 2008. For the second quarter and first six months of 2008: - Consolidated revenue increased by 14.3% to $265.1 million and by ...
MarketWire - Apr 10, 2008
Jilted? Ease the pain in court: Lawmakers want rejected spouses to be able to sue their rivals
Apr. 11--Jilted husbands and wives once again would be able to sue people for stealing their spouses under proposed legislation in the S.C. Senate. "It should be a law. It's just like if someone steals your car. If someone steals your wife," there should be consequences, said sponsor Sen. Jake Knotts, R-Lexington. His position contradicts the spirit of the 1992 state Supreme Court ruling ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
State's protocols on execution are ordered released
Apr. 11--A step-by-step look at how Kentucky lethally injects Death Row inmates is now public after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the partial release of the state's execution protocols. The order was made Wednesday in a case brought by Death Row inmates Ralph Baze and Thomas C. Bowling, challenging the constitutionality of Kentucky's lethal injection procedures.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
S.F. ban on handguns dealt a final defeat
The court's unanimous order was a victory for the National Rifle Association, which sued on behalf of gun owners, advocates and dealers a day after the measure passed with 58 percent of the vote in November 2005. The initiative has never taken effect. The ordinance, Proposition H, would have forbidden San Francisco residents to possess handguns, exempting only law enforcement officers and others ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 10, 2008
Fearful mothers discuss abortion decisions: Tiller investigation invades medical privacy, they say
Apr. 11--TOPEKA -- Making the decision to terminate their pregnancies because of severe fetal problems was heartbreaking, two women said Thursday. Now the women say they live in fear that their private medical records will be reviewed by a grand jury -- and possibly others -- investigating abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. The two women use pseudonyms to protect their identity.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
EDITORIAL: A reasonable delay: Gov. Easley asks for another look at Yadkin River's use
Apr. 11--Gov. Mike Easley has put the brakes on his administration's support for relicensing Alcoa Power's hydroelectric plant on the Yadkin River so policymakers can rethink how the river's water is used. It's a timely and interesting turn of events in Alcoa's effort to renew its federal license to generate power for another 50 years. Just a few weeks ago it appeared there was little in the way ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
Video game fan asks court to ban real sloth and greed from World of Warcraft
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ He wants justice in the mystical world of Azeroth, protecting warriors, warlocks and rogues from what he calls a conspiracy threatening their way of life. Antonio Hernandez plays "World of Warcraft." It's the most popular online role-playing game in the world, with more than 10 million subscribers paying to create characters who go on quests, kill monsters and earn ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 10, 2008
The siege of State Farm
(Fortune Magazine) -- For State Farm Insurance - the nation's leading auto and home insurer - coping with once-in-a-lifetime disasters is everyday business. Risk analysis is what it does, and its actuarial staffs are prepared for every eventuality. Almost. When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, it infamously brought a storm surge the likes of which the nation had never seen, ...
Fortune - Apr 10, 2008
Toy bill out, McCoy calls out 'yo-yos and puppets'
Apr. 10--JACKSON -- The specter of 2004's heated tort reform debate reappeared Wednesday in the Capitol. The state House attempted to override Gov. Haley Barbour's veto of a dangerous-toys bill, which was aimed at Chinese imports that contain lead and other hazardous materials, but they failed by eight votes. The bill died. As the reason for his veto, Barbour cited concern that the bill, which ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 10, 2008
Court rejects Clark jury secrecy
Apr. 10--BEDFORD -- The state Supreme Court has denied a request to keep private the name of the county where a jury will be chosen to hear a Bedford County death penalty case. The high court's decision denying such secrecy was signed Wednesday, a spokesman for that office confirmed. Defense attorney Thomas Crawford of suburban Pittsburgh requested the seal March 4.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 10, 2008
Ferris in talks on SEC penalty: Baltimore firm could pay $1.2 million fine in stock manipulation
Apr. 11--Ferris, Baker Watts is negotiating a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission that could result in a civil fine of $1.2 million or more and lead to additional penalties against current and former employees, according to regulatory documents filed yesterday. The negotiations stem from a lengthy federal investigation of the Baltimore brokerage's supervision of a former ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
EDITORIAL: Expert advice
Apr. 11--On Wednesday, the Ohio Supreme Court corrected an injustice with its unanimous ruling overturning the death sentence of Clifton White. Writing for the court, Justice Robert Cupp stressed that two expert psychologists evaluated White and concluded that he met the definition of mental retardation. It wasn't a close call in their view. Thus, Cupp and his colleagues had no choice but to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
EDITORIAL: Revamping assessments: A model to study
Apr. 11--A Canadian province could teach the Pennsylvania General Assembly how to adhere to the uniformity of taxation clause of the state Constitution. If the state Supreme Court upholds a ruling by Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick Jr. -- that Allegheny County's base-year assessment system is unconstitutional -- it could force the Legislature to investigate an intriguing property ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
EDITORIAL: Good health ideas: One benefit of election season is the potential for good ideas. Candidates for governor have some for mental health reform
Apr. 11--The News & Observer asked the four main Republican and two Democratic candidates for governor what they would do to address the state's mental health reform gone bad, and voila! -- up came some ideas with merit. The state needs all of those ideas it can get, in view of a series of articles published recently by The N&O that found too little money spent on people with serious mental ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
The Council Wins Industry Changing Countersignature Decision
The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers The Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers won a major victory Thursday when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Nevada's countersignature laws as unconstitutional barriers to competition, affirming an earlier ruling by a U.S. district court judge. Nevada is the last battleground in The Council's efforts to eliminate countersignature ...
MarketWire - Apr 10, 2008
Private health clinics remain unregulated in most of Canada
Provincial governments and governing medical colleges across Canada are scrambling to regulate and monitor private medical facilities as anxious patients languishing on waiting lists look outside the public system for health services. Private clinic operators and watchdogs agree that clinics need to be regulated and monitored, yet only 2 provinces currently do so.
Canadian Medical Association Journal - Apr 11, 2008
Judge clears way for new LeNature's trustee
Apr. 11--The LeNature's Inc. bankruptcy case is about to enter a new phase. It is expected to feature extensive litigation against Wachovia Bank and its affiliate, Wachovia Capital Markets, the accounting firm of BDO Seidman, and former company executives who are alleged to have been involved in a fraud that plunged the company into bankruptcy and triggered a federal criminal investigation.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
McConnell Hancock apologizes for kidnap hoax, gets probation: Lawyer asks forgiveness, offers no explanation
Apr. 10--A lawyer who fabricated a story of being kidnapped from downtown Toledo in December and dumped off near Atlanta three days later apologized to law enforcement officials and the public yesterday during her sentencing in Toledo Municipal Court. Karyn McConnell Hancock, 35, of 2663 West Village Drive was sentenced to two years of probation with a three-month jail sentence suspended, a $300 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 10, 2008
Verdict lets Syosset Patsy's keep name for now
Apr. 11--Hold the pizza. On second thought, put everything on it. In the case of the dueling Patsy's eateries, a federal jury in Brooklyn last night issued a trademark infringement verdict that seems like a win for the famed Patsy's Restaurant in Manhattan but is allowing -- for the moment -- Patsy's Pizzeria in Syosset to keep its name. In a verdict that took almost a half-hour to read in the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
Owner wins cash ruling
Apr. 10--SCHENECTADY -- The owner of a dusty bag of money taken out of a basement wall by a handyman has another court judgment in his favor to get all of the $177,700 back. State Supreme Court Justice Vincent J. Reilly Jr. ruled Michael Casadei has a right to $68,047.26 from Kevin Skoog. Casadei hired Skoog to put in a security system in a home Casadei owned on Union Street in Schenectady in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 10, 2008
Not the last word on reservation yet
Apr. 11--NEW DELHI -- The judicial validation of the OBC quota regime in central higher educational institutions (CHEI) has set off a veritable stampede among parties to claim credit for the Congress-led UPA's initiative, the first impact of which may be witnessed in the Karnataka polls. But while welcoming the Supreme Court verdict upholding the 27% quota for OBCs in CHEIs, parties differed ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
An ETF for alternative energy
'Alternative energy has been among the hottest investment themes of the past few years,' says Paul Tracy, editor of the industry leading StreetAuthority Market Advisor. Here, the advisor reviews a recent recommendation for the Market Vectors Global Alternative Energy ETF (NYSE: GEX), an exchange-traded fund that offers broad exposure to several key sub-sectors of the alternative energy industry.
TheStockAdvisors.com - Apr 11, 2008
Court skims cream off OBC quota
Apr. 11--NEW DELHI -- With the Supreme Court stating that the creamy layer should be excluded from the ambit of OBC reservation, the Union Cabinet will now address the issue. HRD minister Arjun Singh said he will take up the matter with the Cabinet and would also try to meet the Prime Minister in this regard. The HRD Ministry had excluded creamy layer from OBC reservation benefit in its original ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
Arnstein & Lehr LLP Expands Construction Practice with Addition of Two Attorneys
CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Chicago law firm of Arnstein & Lehr LLP announced today that Attorneys Justin L. Weisberg and W. Matthew Bryant became members of the firm Ray Werner, Arnstein & Lehr Weisberg will continue to concentrate his practice on construction and design law at Arnstein & Lehr. He represents engineers, architects, design builders, developers, owners, contractors, ...
Business Wire - Apr 10, 2008
'Exclusion of rich a partial victory'
Apr. 11--NEW DELHI -- Anti-quota protesters have heaved a sigh of relief as the Supreme Court announced the exclusion of the creamy layer from the ambit of reservation. "It is definitely a partial victory for us. The decision to withdraw the creamy layer from receiving the benefits of reservation is definitely good, as most politicians were reluctant to part with it," said Dr Anil Sharma, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
EDITORIAL: No marks for merit
Apr. 11--As part of the Republic of India's almost 60-year effort to rid the nation of caste discrimination, the Supreme Court has upheld the caste-driven Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admission) Act, 2006. This means that the Centre, as shepherded by the vision of Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh, will now be able to implement the 27 per cent quota of seats for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 11, 2008
Indiana law focuses on 'sexually explicit' materials: New law on sexually oriented materials could ensnare bookstores and other businesses
Apr. 10--SOUTH BEND, Ind.--Planning to open a bookstore in Indiana? Maybe a newsstand? How about a pharmacy? You may be officially labeled a purveyor of "sexually explicit materials." Now, if you'll just sign this registry, the secretary of state will accept your check for $250. At the end of March's legislative session, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed House Act 1042, which requires all new ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 10, 2008
Kansas Supreme Court hears arguments about grand jury's bid for abortion provider's records
Apr. 9--TOPEKA -- Do repeat investigations of abortion provider George Tiller amount to harassment? And if not, should a grand jury investigating the Wichita doctor get access to patient medical records? In a rare special session, the Kansas Supreme Court heard arguments from all sides Tuesday as it considers Tiller's request to block a grand jury's request for medical records.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 9, 2008
BNSF wants memo on railroad-tie plants to be sealed
Apr. 9--FORT WORTH -- BNSF Railway wants a Tarrant County judge to seal a document showing that the railroad did not have a companywide program to warn its employees about using toxic chemicals at its railroad tie-treatment plants. A 1984 internal memo known as Exhibit 356 said the railroad was warning employees about the chemicals at plants in California and Illinois, as required under state ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 9, 2008
Council pounces on mayor's lawyer: Denial of any role of text messages is met with disbelief
Apr. 9--Detroit City Council members reacted with indignation and a flurry of disbelieving questioning Tuesday after one of Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's attorneys insisted that the mayor's text messages didn't trigger the settlement of a police whistle-blower lawsuit. Wilson Copeland II, testifying on the first of three days of hearings the council is conducting, said the abrupt settlement of the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 9, 2008
Border fence waivers challenged : news - Valley and State
The legislators called on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the 2005 law that granted him waiver authority, setting up a potential legal battle over what critics are calling one of the most significant power grabs by the executive branch in years. 'This waiver by the secretary of Homeland Security is a direct challenge to Congress's constitutional role,' said House Homeland Security Committee ...
McAllen Monitor - Apr 9, 2008
FCC's abuse of power has TV on the run
Thirty years ago, the Supreme Court voted that broadcasters are second-class citizens with limited First Amendment protection.Today, the Federal Communications Commission under the leadership of Republican loyalist Kevin J. Martin, joined by powerful members of Congress, is a drumbeat for more content regulations. This particular battle is over indecency, the use of 'fleeting utterances' such as ...
Review Appeal - Apr 9, 2008
5 contend for 2 seats on Supreme Court
Apr. 9--There are two seats up for grabs on West Virginia's Supreme Court of Appeals this year and five candidates vying for the spots. Chief Justice Elliot "Spike" Maynard, who has recently come under scrutiny for his ties to a coal company executive, is up against Morgantown law professor Bob Bastress, former justice Margaret Workman, and lawyers Menis Ketchum and Beth Walker.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 9, 2008
Superagent Michael Ovitz says he paid $75,000 for services of private eye
Testifying for an hour, Ovitz said he also had discussions with defendant Anthony Pellicano about getting embarrassing information about the two reporters who were writing stories in 2002 while his Artists Management Group was in talks to be acquired. The stories alleged financial problems at the company, Ovitz said. Attorney Chad Hummel, who represents co-defendant Mark Arneson, asked Ovitz ...
Los Angeles Daily News - Apr 9, 2008
Company offers video of private Wal-Mart meetings
BEIJING, April 10 (Xinhuanet) -- After losing its biggest client, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., a small Kansas production company trying to stay in business is offering video clips of the world's largest retailer's private meetings to researchers such as plaintiffs' lawyers and union critics. Wal-Mart dropped longtime contractor Flagler Productions in 2006 and the company has opened its archive, but not ...
Xinhua News Agency - Apr 10, 2008
City Jeers Suit Over 1861 Debt
Apr. 9--TAMPA -- A Tampa woman is more than a century too late in her attempt to be repaid $22 million for a $300 loan her ancestors made to the city during the Civil War, Tampa officials say. In its legal filings, the city says the delay by Joan Kennedy Biddle and her family in asking for the money is "completely unreasonable, inexcusable and unprecedented." The city filed a motion Tuesday to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 9, 2008
7 killed as lawyer protest sparks unrest in Pakistan's biggest city
KARACHI: Groups of lawyers clashed in Pakistan's biggest city, triggering a spasm of violence that left seven people dead, five of them in a blazing building. Wednesday's violence was the most serious yet to buffet the new Pakistani government as it prepares to assail the powers of President Pervez Musharraf and the second involving lawyers pushing for his removal from office.
Economictimes - Apr 10, 2008
Colombia Trade Deal Stalled; New Warnings about Iran; Real I.D. Backlash; Katie Couric Likely to Leave CBS News
LOU DOBBS, HOST, LOU DOBBS TONIGHT: Wolf, thank you. Tonight a major setback with the Bush administration and its face-off with Congress over so-called free trade. The battle could influence the outcome of the critical Pennsylvania primary. We'll have complete coverage here tonight. Also rising divisions in the Republican Party as corporate elites try to import even more cheap labor to replace ...
CNN - Apr 10, 2008
EDITORIAL: A bitter PIL
Apr. 10--The Supreme Court's decision to evaluate the achievements of public interest litigations (PILs) is bound to generate a debate on whether they have really been effective so far or not. Many feel that several PILs entertained by the judiciary have been frivolous and have done nothing beyond generating headlines. Others feel that they have served the purpose of safeguarding public interest ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 10, 2008
Panganiban for reversal of executive privilege ruling
Apr. 10--A former Chief Justice on Wednesday appealed to the Supreme Court to reverse its decision favoring the petition of Romulo Neri, who had invoked executive privilege during a Senate probe of the controversial broadband deal. Neri, chairman of the Commission on Higher Education, argued that conversations between the President and the Cabinet are covered by executive privilege.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 10, 2008
Copyright reform remains elusive
There's a striking irony in the development -- or nondevelopment -- of Canadian copyright legislation: The more this once-obscure bastion of intellectual property rights makes its way into the public consciousness, the more likely it is that the federal government will continue to dance around the issue. 'Successive governments have left Canadian business and consumers adrift by failing to reform ...
National Post - Apr 10, 2008
Master Resale Rights Revisited: 7 Tips For Understanding And Reselling Products
If you've ever bought an ebook on internet marketing, you've probable encountered the phrase 'master resale rights'. You may wonder if these rights even really mean anything or are legitimate. In a word, yes, they are legitimate. (However, if taken to the Supreme Court, I am not sure how valid the license write-up would be.) Master resale rights are usually offered for internet marketing ...
Search Articles.net - Apr 9, 2008
Iraq Pullout to be Suspended; McCain Attacks Rivals on Iraq; Border Fence Fight; Veterans Affairs Waste and Abuse
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. LOU DOBBS, HOST, LOU DOBBS TONIGHT: Thank you, Wolf. Tonight the economic slowdown is intensifying, the unemployment rate rising. What is the Bush administration doing to help jobless Americans? We'll have that special report. And stunning charges tonight that employees of the Veterans Administration squandered ...
CNN - Apr 9, 2008
Pulitzer Prize comedy celebrates the eccentrics
Apr. 9--You know it's a bad week when both the FBI and the IRS show up at your door. "You Can't Take It With You," George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, was first produced in 1936. The play won the drama award in 1937. But this most revived of Kaufman and Hart's screwball comedies has some relevance today. Circumstances weren't that different: The economy was tight, the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 9, 2008
Expert witness: Lethal injection is humane
State takes tobacco funds for jobs program Tobacco money to be funneled into Ohio jobs program Group keeps pushing for sick days law Doctor critical of state's lethal injection procedure Cleveland child helps prevent tragedy Ohio, mortgage lenders reach agreement Nurse issues guilty plea in death of son Lotteries ELYRIA Ohio's execution procedure is humane and includes ...
Canton Repository - Apr 9, 2008
California Supreme Court Adopts Sophisticated User Defense
Article by Christopher J. Garvey , Elizabeth Runyan Geise , Forrest A. Hainline, III , Kenneth J. Parsigan , Chad W. Higgins and Liana Grossman The California Supreme Court announced that it has adopted the 'sophisticated user' defense in products liability and toxic tort actions. Johnson v. American Standard, Inc., slip op. S139184 (April 3, 2008). Agreeing with predictions made by prior ...
Advisen FPN - Apr 9, 2008
Court Overturns Ohio Death Sentence
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- The Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned the death sentence of a double murderer, agreeing with defense lawyers who said the man shouldn't be executed because he is mentally retarded. The court ruled unanimously in favor of convicted killer Clifton White of Akron, citing the 2002 ruling that executing the mentally retarded violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and ...
New York Times - Apr 9, 2008
Transcript of Nathan J. Hochman, Tax Division's Assistant Attorney General Announcing Creation of the National Tax Defier Initiative
The following is a transcript of Nathan J. Hochman, Tax Division's Assistant Attorney General announcing creation of the National Tax Defier Initiative: WASHINGTON, D.C. APRIL 8, 2008 11:00 A.M. EDT MR. HOCHMAN: Good Morning. My name is Nathan Hochman, and I am the Assistant Attorney General of the Tax Division of the United States Department of Justice.
PR Newswire - Apr 9, 2008
S.F. ban on handguns dealt a final defeat
The court's unanimous order was a victory for the National Rifle Association, which sued on behalf of gun owners, advocates and dealers a day after the measure passed with 58 percent of the vote in November 2005. The initiative has never taken effect. The ordinance, Proposition H, would have forbidden San Francisco residents to possess handguns, exempting only law enforcement officers and others ...
San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 10, 2008
Brower Piven Announces the Filing of a Class Action Lawsuit Against MoneyGram International, Inc.
Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation Brower Piven, A Professional Corporation announces that a class action lawsuit has been commenced in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota on behalf of purchasers of the common stock of MoneyGram International, Inc. ("MoneyGram" or the "Company") (NYSE: MGI) between January 24, 2007 and January 14, 2008, inclusive (the "Class ...
MarketWire - Apr 9, 2008
Columbia tribes give up call for breaching dams: But the Nez Perce didn't agree to the deal that provides more money for hatcheries and habitats
Apr. 8--Three Pacific Northwest Indian tribes agreed Monday to stop pushing in court to breach four federal dams on the Lower Snake River in exchange for $900 million over nine years for new hatcheries and salmon habitat rehabilitation projects. Federal dam managers also agreed not to challenge a tribal agreement with Oregon and Washington that will let the tribes catch more salmon in years when ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Senators ask Supreme Court toreconsider executive privilege
Apr. 9--The Senate on Tuesday filed before the Supreme Court its long-awaited motion for reconsideration on a high note, confident that the High Tribunal would reverse its 9-6 decision favoring the petition of Higher Education Chairman Romulo Neri, who had invoked executive privilege in his refusal to make another testimony before the Senate. In their petition, the senators requested the High ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 9, 2008
Which laws can government officials break, and who gets to decide?
Eric: 'I agree with you that these decisions [whether the U.S. should breach its treaty obligations] should be made by politically responsible officials at the highest levels.' Of course I agree with Eric that if Congress authorized the CIA to engage in cruel treatment, such a later-enacted statute would, for domestic-law purposes, supersede the executive obligation not to breach the treaties.
Slate Magazine - Apr 8, 2008
Many Americans who spy against the US are motivated by ideology, not money, report says
Text Size : Americans who spy against the U.S. are increasingly motivated by ideology rather than by money, with nearly half of the known spies since the end of the Cold War showing allegiance to another country or cause, according to a government report. Prior to 1990, just a fifth of Americans spying for others were ideologically motivated. The March report, obtained by the Federation of ...
International Herald Tribune - Apr 8, 2008
Ideology growing as spy justification (By Pamela Hess)
Americans who spy against the U.S. increasingly are motivated by ideology rather than by money, with nearly half of the known spies since the end of the Cold War showing allegiance to another country or cause, according to a government report. Before 1990, just a fifth of Americans spying for others were ideologically motivated. The report, released last month and obtained by the Federation of ...
Washington Times - Apr 8, 2008
LISA Affirms Property Rights: Files Amicus Brief Defending Insurable Interest
"The Life Insurance Settlement Association "The Life Insurance Settlement Association (LISA) reaffirmed its commitment to property rights for life insurance policy-owners in a recent court filing," said LISA Executive Director Doug Head. LISA filed an amicus brief in the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in First Penn-Pacific v. Evans, urging the Court to affirm the decision of U.S. ...
MarketWire - Apr 8, 2008
Rezko lawyer goes after witness
Attorney Stuart P. Levine, the political insider who asserts that he and Mr. Rezko schemed to squeeze more than $7 million in kickbacks from companies seeking business from the state of Illinois, said he sometimes went to his office after all-night drug parties and continued snorting crystal methamphetamine and other powerful narcotics behind closed doors. The testimony marked the latest effort ...
Washington Times - Apr 8, 2008
Death penalty diminishes U.S. moral standing
Today's Top Headlinesfrom the Kennebec Journal BALDACCI VETOES SCHOOL BILL New Maine plate aimed at raising breast-cancer awareness No one is injured during afternoon fire at Mike's Auto Repair andWilson's Pallet Recycling WAYNE Raccoon causes a scare Aggressive animal displayed signs of having rabies Waterfront progress in Gardiner Town wants city-run schools A license to protest Thomas College ...
MaineToday.com - Apr 9, 2008
Ex-Nymex Director Pleads Guilty to Fraud
By Gregory Meyer and Aaron Lucchetti Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- A former director of the New York Mercantile Exchange pleaded guilty Tuesday to two felony counts related to illegal trading in natural-gas markets. Steven Karvellas pleaded guilty to one count of commodities trading fraud and one count of tampering with physical evidence. Three other traders have also pleaded ...
Smart Money - Apr 9, 2008
BRIEF: Idaho Supreme Court election will be May 27
Apr. 8--Two candidates are vying next month for a contested seat on the Idaho Supreme Court. Hon. Joel Horton of Boise, a justice on the state's highest court, and Hon. John Bradbury of Lewiston, a District Court judge in Idaho's Second Judicial District, are running for election May 27. Horton was appointed by Gov. Butch Otter to the Supreme Court in September after Justice Linda Trout retired. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
"Project Runway" Ditches Bravo For Lifetime, NBC Sues To Keep Hit Show
Reality hit 'Project Runway,' the foundation of Bravo's transformation into a reality-based power network, is jumping ship in favor of women's network Lifetime but NBC isn't going down without a fight. Lifetime Networks' President and CEO Andrea Wong and The Weinstein Company's co-chairmen Bob and Harvey Weinstein announced today that 'Project Runway' will begin its sixth season on Lifetime in ...
AlterNet.org - Apr 8, 2008
Defense expert disputes claims in Bell shooting case
Apr. 8--A defense expert in the Sean Bell trial yesterday disputed prosecution contentions against three detectives charged in the deadly November 2006 incident and, using color computer images, showed why the cops could have believed they were being fired upon from Bell's car. Alexander Jason, a member of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists from San Francisco, indicated in state Supreme ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Doctor: Ohio's lethal injection inhumane (AP)
ELYRIA, Ohio - An anesthesiologist testified Monday that Ohio's lethal injection procedure isn't appropriate for dogs or cats, let alone humans. Dr. Mark Heath's testimony on behalf of two murder defendants came in a Lorain County hearing on the constitutionality of state's method for putting prisoners to death. Heath, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at Columbia University, says it's ...
Yahoo! - Apr 8, 2008
Grace to pay $3 billion to those suing because of death or illness from exposure to asbestos in their products
Seven years ago last week, W.R. Grace & Co. filed for bankruptcy protection against 112,000 lawsuits filed on behalf of people who had been sickened or killed because of exposure to asbestos in vermiculite mined, manufactured or sold by the company. Today, after weeks of sometimes heated negotiation with a panel of lawyers allegedly representing the interest of the dead, dying and sick, Grace ...
Seattle Post Intelligencer - Apr 8, 2008
EDITORIAL: Immunity would endanger public
Apr. 8--Most Americans believe that medicines and health aids that win U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval are safe, at least to the degree those products are described by the manufacturers. Unfortunately, this isn't always the case. The FDA, charged with ensuring the safety and effectiveness of drugs and health aids, is, its critics charge, a seriously overworked agency that has on ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Bill would ban disclosure of police officers' salaries
Apr. 8--An amendment to a bill introduced Monday seeks to push police salary and other basic information about officers back out of public view. The bill comes on the heels of two state Supreme Court decisions rulings last year finding that salaries and other basic information about police officers are indeed public records. Assembly Bill 1855, authored by Assemblyman Anthony J.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Make data on GM crops under trials public: SC
New Delhi, Apr 8 (PTI) The Supreme Court today directed the Central government to make public all the data related to public health, including toxicity, of genetically-engineered crops under field trials. On an application filed by Aruna Rodrigues, who is carrying out a legal battle against GM crops, a bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan asked the government to make public all data ...
Yahoo! India - Apr 8, 2008
Study: subprime crisis spurs lawsuits
WASHINGTON (AP) - The ongoing housing slump and subprime mortgage crisis have sent more unhappy shareholders to federal court. The number of securities class action suits filed last year increased to 163, up from 109 in 2006, according to a study released Tuesday by PricewaterhouseCoopers. The data is the latest evidence that the housing meltdown, which has so far cost banks $200 billion in ...
Sharewatch - Apr 9, 2008
Trek seeks to dump LeMond: It says famed cyclist's comments about Armstrong disparaged brand
Apr. 9--Trek Bicycle Corp. moved Tuesday to sever its relationship with three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond as a nasty dispute involving champion cyclists, suspicions of drug use and business intrigue bubbled to the surface in federal court. Enmeshed in the soap opera that professional cycling has become, the case appears to turn on the bad feeling between LeMond and seven-time tour ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 9, 2008
Family expects to file suit over nursing home death
The family of a woman who died under suspicious circumstances at a McHenry County nursing home where two workers have been indicted for endangering patients is planning a lawsuit against the facility's former owners, their attorney said Monday. The suit, to be filed by Cary resident Vickie Lund on behalf of her mother, Virginia Cole, would be the first filed in connection with as many as six ...
Chicago Daily Herald - Apr 8, 2008
Effort to restrict nursing home lawsuits dead for year
STORY TOOLS More State and Regional Share and Enjoy [?] Get Reprints Want to use this article? Click here for options! NASHVILLE - Legislation that would have put new restrictions on lawsuits against nursing homes was killed for the year Tuesday, but a joint House-Senate committee will apparently be appointed to make recommendations for next year. When the bill came up in the House Civil ...
Knox News Sentinel - Apr 9, 2008
Canyon wants someone else to foot the bill for RICO case
Apr. 8--Canyon County commissioners will keep trying to sue local businesses for hiring undocumented workers -- but only if someone other than county taxpayers puts up the money. Commissioners voted 2-1 Monday to ask the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to agree to hear the appeal that was rejected by three of its judges March 23. That step will cost up to $1,500 in legal fees, and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Do PILs help? SC orders a reality check
IST,Dhananjay Mahapatra ,TNN NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday asked for a case-by-case examination of what its public interest interventions had achieved - a move that's sure to intensify the debate on the apex court-inspired PIL procedure which has had many successes to its credit but which is now increasingly being seen as having accomplished little besides generating headlines.
Times of India - Apr 9, 2008
BBC Caribbean News in Brief
UN troops fired rubber bullets at protesters Haiti protests continue Thousands of people staged demonstrations in Haiti's capital Port au Prince for the second consecutive day on Tuesday, over rising food prices. A large group of protesters gathered outside the presidential palace to voice their anger. The president's chief of staff, Fritz Longchamp, said United Nations troops fired rubber ...
BBC Caribbean - Apr 9, 2008
Defense expert disputes claims in Bell shooting case
Apr. 8--A defense expert in the Sean Bell trial yesterday disputed prosecution contentions against three detectives charged in the deadly November 2006 incident and, using color computer images, showed why the cops could have believed they were being fired upon from Bell's car. Alexander Jason, a member of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists from San Francisco, indicated in state Supreme ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
States think smaller, slower on immigration
WASHINGTON _ The headlong rush of states into immigration policy may be slowing. In legislative sessions this spring, ambitious proposals in state capitols have been watered down, delayed or outright defeated. State legislators, many frustrated with federal inaction on immigration issues, continue to dive into the debate over whether undocumented immigrants are entitled to driver's licenses, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
Microsoft CEO Sets Deadline For Yahoo Deal
SEATTLE/SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo has three weeks to accept Microsoft's $31-a-share cash-and-stock offer or Microsoft may lower its bid and take its offer to Yahoo investors, Microsoft said Saturday. Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said in a letter dated April 5 and addressed to Yahoo's board of directors that 'now is the time' to negotiate final terms of a deal, which, valued at more than ...
Information Week - Apr 7, 2008
Ohio justices to enter fray over gun laws: High court to decide home-rule authority
Apr. 7--COLUMBUS -- In 2005, Bruce Beatty openly defied Toledo's ordinance prohibiting guns in city parks, throwing a well-publicized "birthday party" to mark the anniversary of passage of Ohio's concealed-carry law. He carried a 45-caliber handgun into West Toledo's Ottawa Park, and was arrested, tried, and convicted. He was ordered to fork over $129 in fines and court costs that he steadfastly ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
Tiller abortion battle continues today
Apr. 8--TOPEKA -- The ongoing legal fight by activists against abortion provider Dr. George Tiller will bring a small army of attorneys today to the Kansas Supreme Court. Tiller, medical director of Women's Health Care Services of Wichita, is trying to stop grand jury subpoenas for records of approximately 2,000 women who received services at his clinic. Anti-abortion groups allege that Tiller ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Penmanship revealing for employers
Apr. 7--A flawless resume, impeccable references, a stellar work history and a charismatic interview can all help an applicant get a job. But none of this information enables the employer to gauge the underlying traits of an employee. Written Inc. wants to change that. The Temecula company uses handwriting analysis to create personality profile that help companies judge potential employees. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
OPINION: Monster-sized effort helps slay Frankenstein
Apr. 7--Wisconsin voters struck down the "Frankenstein" veto Tuesday and sent the message that Wisconsin supports good government. I am very proud of our fellow citizens for taking the time to understand the complicated veto-gone-berserk that allowed governors to rewrite legislation by cobbling together unrelated words and figures in state budgets. This compromised the balance of power between ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
BNY Mellon calls Russian suit 'invalid'
Apr. 8--The Bank of New York Mellon Corp. on Monday labeled as "invalid" claims in an ongoing lawsuit brought by the Russian Federal Customs Service that the bank helped illegally transfer $7 billion out of Russia in the 1990s. Even if the Moscow court overseeing the case did rule against BNY Mellon, the decision "would not be enforceable" in the United States, said CEO Robert Kelly on a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Asbestos victims offered billions: W.R. Grace reaches deal to settle suits, clear bankruptcy
Apr. 8--W.R. Grace & Co. said yesterday that it has reached a deal that could be worth more than $3 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits by people who say they were sickened by exposure to the company's asbestos products. The deal potentially clears a path for the Columbia-based chemical maker to emerge by year's end from one of the most complex bankruptcy reorganizations in U.S. history.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Web site at issue in lacrosse case: It details proceedings in players' suit
Apr. 8--DURHAM -- Members of the 2006 Duke University lacrosse team are objecting to the city's request to shut down a Web site that chronicles the legal proceedings in the players' federal lawsuit. The 38 members of the 2006 team filed documents in federal court Monday raising objections that were similar to ones they made when Duke accused the lawyer representing the players of violating the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
SC: Stronger laws on personal info needed: Chief Justice Reynato Puno cites rising identity theft cases in the US, passing of related laws in Europe
Apr. 7--SUPREME Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno has called on Congress for the crafting of tougher protective laws on personal information privacy to serve as deterrent against identity thieves. Puno made the appeal in the wake of advances in global information technology, making it easier for criminals to steal one's identity. He warned that identity theft could become a real problem soon, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
EDITORIAL: Kaine correct to halt state's executions
Apr. 7--Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, Virginia has executed 98 men, second only to Texas, with more than 400. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, though personally opposed to capital punishment, has allowed four executions to proceed since becoming governor in 2006. The method of choice for executions in the United States is lethal injection, involving a three-drug ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
Burke official fights order to detail role in wind farms
Apr. 8--BURKE -- A Town Council member is fighting a subpoena that compels him to explain his ties to proposed wind-farm projects in Burke. David Vincent, who began a four-year term in January 2006, is to appear in Franklin County Court today to show why he should not have to answer questions or turn over documents relating to his possible personal connection to Noble Chateaugay Windpark, Noble ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Condemned man on trial in another murder
Apr. 8--Clayton -- Vincent McFadden's fourth murder trial began Monday with his former girlfriend describing how she huddled in shrubbery and watched him shoot her sister. She said she figured he would one day kill her, too. It is one of two separate Pine Lawn homicides in which McFadden was convicted, sentenced to death and then won new trials. He already lost the retrial in the other case and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Not eminent domain, but rents and rail lines
The television commercials leading up to the June 3 California primary - and they will air thousands of times in all parts of the state before that vote - will tell voters this election is all about eminent domain, with the big question whether government at any level should be allowed to take property from one private owner for the purpose of selling it to another.
Ventura County Star - Apr 7, 2008
The ABCs of asset-backed commercial paper
What is ABCP? Asset-backed commercial paper is 30-day and 60-day notes designed to pay investors interest generated by bundles of mortgages, car loans, derivatives and other assets pooled in special vehicles called conduits or trusts. Why did ABCP become popular with investors? ABCP offered good returns at a time when central banks were slashing interest rates.
CTV.ca - Apr 7, 2008
Judge flushes sewer-line lawsuit
Apr. 8--A judge has plugged Highland Sewer and Water Authority's attempt to force the Forest Hills Municipal Authority to sell it some sewer lines that Forest Hills installed a decade ago. Judge David Tulowitzki ruled Thursday that Highland never had a legal agreement to buy the Richland Township part of Forest Hills' $38 million sewage collection system and treatment plant.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
EDITORIAL: A dangerous legal shield for drug makers
Apr. 8--Let's say a drug company hides damaging findings during medical trials of a new cholesterol-lowering drug. Unaware of those health risks, the federal Food and Drug Administration approves the product. Later the drug maker's deception comes to light. The FDA receives reports of a significant number of deaths associated with use of the new product. Years later, the FDA requires a stronger ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Farmers Branch seeks change in state's open meetings law: Council says burden of proof is unfairly on it
Apr. 7--The city of Farmers Branch, the target of three lawsuits alleging violations of the state open meetings law, is trying to get the law changed. The suits accuse the City Council of improperly deliberating in private about ordinances designed to prohibit the renting of apartments and houses to illegal immigrants. City officials, who have denied the allegation, say the burden is unfairly on ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
High court will hear appeal of woman convicted in I-84 attack: Sarah Pearce's attorneys saythe victim misidentified her. Linda LeBrane will tell her story on TV.
Apr. 7--The brutal 2000 attack of a Washington woman left for dead in rural Canyon County is before Idaho courts again and for television viewers nationwide. On Wednesday, Sarah Pearce, one of four people sentenced for kidnapping, stabbing and beating Linda LeBrane in June 2000, will appeal her conviction before the Idaho Supreme Court. In early May, LeBrane will tell the story of how she lived ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
EDITORIAL: Just Asking
Apr. 7--Voters rose against the abusive-driver fees. A unanimous Virginia Supreme Court declared unelected regional transportation authorities unconstitutional. Will history remember the 2007 transportation package -- which originated in the GOP House of Delegates and which was signed by a Democratic governor -- as the most pathetic piece of legislation since the miserable years of Massive ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
Northwest talks rack up hefty bills: Law firm releases payments info
Apr. 8--UNION TWP. -- In the heat of public debate about contract talks during last month's Northwest Area School Board meeting, teacher Bryan Glahn asked how much board lead negotiator attorney Richard Galtman was paid, and warned a raucous crowd: "Be prepared to have your eyes opened. You will be shocked." On Monday, Galtman released details of district payments to the firm of Sweet, Stevens, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Payouts stuck in legal limbo: $1 million insurance in eight-party lawsuit
Apr. 7--WILKES-BARRE -- Three days before he murdered his estranged wife and then killed himself at a Clinton County Sheetz, Benjamin Barone faxed to his insurance agent a form removing his wife as beneficiary of his $1 million life-insurance policy. In the form, he added two of his siblings and his new girlfriend to those who would benefit financially from his death.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
High Court sets deliberation on mining issue: The SC agrees with the ?transcendental importance of the case? raised by the gold mining firm
Apr. 8--BAGUIO CITY: Acting on the urgency of the issue, the Supreme Court has set for deliberation an urgent motion seeking a reconsideration of its division ruling that cancelled all mining rights and operations of Filipino firms within the Diwalwal Gold Rush Area that paved the way for the government to negotiate a mining exploration agreement with controversial Chinese firm ZTE Corp., in the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Legislators seek gift-law clarification
Apr. 7--DENVER -- Legislators plan this week to ask the newly formed Independent Ethics Commission whether government workers can accept inheritances or allow their kids to take college scholarships -- and to look to change the law if the answers are "no." House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver, has asked the Office of Legislative Legal Services to draw up a list of the most commonly asked ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
'Perverted' husband acquitted
Apr. 8--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court on Monday acquitted a "sexually perverted" husband, whose wife poisoned their two daughters and committed suicide allegedly due to his demands for unnatural sex. A bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and P Sathasivam held that the husband's act did not amount to abetment of suicide as defined under Section 306 of the Indian Penal Code.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Untangling the Kansas casino legal mess
Apr. 8--The question of public financing for state-owned casinos in Kansas is a sticky one. It's also an odd one considering that state dollars and state manpower will be expended in coming years in the state's role as casino owner. That dilemma hasn't come up yet. For now, both sides in the battle are lawyered up, and the legal briefs are flying. A lawsuit financed in part by Topeka-based ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 8, 2008
Yahoo bid: Microsoft threatens proxy battle
Yahoo has three weeks to accept Microsoft's $31-a-share cash-and-stock (about R240) offer or Microsoft may lower its bid and take its offer to Yahoo investors, Microsoft said on Saturday. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said in a letter dated April 5 and addressed to Yahoo's board of directors that 'now is the time' to negotiate final terms of a deal, which, valued at more than ...
IOL - Apr 7, 2008
OPINION: Supreme Court race was nasty, alarming and very expensive
Apr. 6--I used to complain that judicial races were boring. Candidates were reluctant to say anything of substance, and there was a veneer of decorum that made it impossible for reporters to find any edges in the debate. Sigh. Be very careful what you wish for. Now, as far as the Wisconsin Supreme Court is concerned, the debate is nasty and usually misleading.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 6, 2008
Woman jailed by Tills joined him on trip: Former state justice is a central figure in probe of activities of Buffalo Jesters
Apr. 6--A woman who faced drug and prostitution charges in State Supreme Court Justice Ronald H. Tills' courtroom later accompanied him on an out-of-state trip for a fraternal organization called the Jesters. Investigators are trying to determine whether the woman offered her services as a prostitute at the convention or whether she was just a guest of the judge, who has since retired.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 6, 2008
Observers: Bell prosecutors have yet to prove case: Testimony in Sean Bell shooting case
Apr. 6--The testimony in the Sean Bell trial has been dramatic and heartbreaking, particularly when the dying man's last words to a friend -- "I love you, too" -- were retold last week. But it's unclear if four weeks of such evidence will be enough to convince a Queens Supreme Court judge that three detectives are guilty of manslaughter and other charges in the Nov.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 6, 2008
Allstate frozen out of Florida
Court upholds regulators' power to shut down insurer's business Share this article: Insurance regulators have the power to shut down Allstate in Florida to force the company to cooperate with rate investigations, a court ruled Friday. The 1st District Court of Appeal decision -- which could block Allstate from selling any kind of insurance policy, including auto, home and life coverage, in ...
Florida Today - Apr 6, 2008
Microsoft CEO Sets Deadline For Yahoo Deal
SEATTLE/SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo has three weeks to accept Microsoft's $31-a-share cash-and-stock offer or Microsoft may lower its bid and take its offer to Yahoo investors, Microsoft said Saturday. Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said in a letter dated April 5 and addressed to Yahoo's board of directors that 'now is the time' to negotiate final terms of a deal, which, valued at more than ...
Information Week - Apr 7, 2008
Drug Makers Near an Old Goal: A Legal Shield
For years, obscured evidence that its popular Ortho Evra birth control patch delivered much more estrogen than standard birth control pills, potentially increasing the risk of blood clots and strokes, according to internal company documents. But because the approved the patch, the company is arguing in court that it cannot be sued by women who claim that they were injured by the product - even ...
New York Times - Apr 6, 2008
Rules will shield appraisers from lender pressure
In all the chatter these days about mortgage reform, the new rules for appraisers aren't getting a lot of attention. But that issue gained traction after New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo began investigating allegations of conflicts of interest, fraud and other misconduct - all fallout from the mortgage meltdown. One result is that mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae agreed to ...
Los Angeles Daily News - Apr 6, 2008
Half of Kansas abortions on visitors: Many women cross state line for procedure, especially in late term
Apr. 7--For the past decade, almost half of the abortions performed in Kansas have been for women who didn't live here. They come from far as California, Maine and even Alaska. But mostly they just cross over the state line from Missouri. Data recently released by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment show that last year was no different. Of the 10,836 abortions done in Kansas in 2007, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
OPINION: Of Oregon, tax freedom and mascots
Apr. 6--Notes, quotes and anecdotes while wondering what to do if the economy recovers before I finally get my economic stimulus check: What big tax advantage? -- If Oregon has such a huge advantage over Clark County because the state has no sales tax, why have two Home Depots been built on this side of the river when we could shop at 10 Home Depots across the river, including two within a mile ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 6, 2008
High court victory may give bench new bent: Balance shift likely with conservative's 10-year term
Apr. 6--MADISON -- Circuit Judge Michael Gableman's victory in Tuesday's state Supreme Court election marked a turning point in how judicial campaigns are run in Wisconsin, and likely altered the direction of the court itself. Some court observers said Gableman's presence on the court could change its balance -- and it could remain that way for years to come because of the way the election ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 6, 2008
Nursing home residents sue for at-home care
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) -- Since a stroke four years ago, 66-year-old Bud Lee can't lift himself out of bed or take himself to the bathroom. He would like to regain a bit of his old independence. John Boyd, 50, has been paralyzed since 14. He would like an apartment of his own and a job, like when he answered customer service phones for Red Lobster a few years back.
St. Petersburg Times - Apr 6, 2008
Nursing homes want to limit lawsuitsPatient advocates call courts only recourse
It was two years ago that a doctor forced Patricia Crouch to gaze at the gaping bedsore that had festered under her mother's bandages for months. The sight sent Crouch's sister screaming down the hall, and has now pushed the family into the middle of a fierce legislative debate. Crouch, along with her six brothers and sisters, sued the nursing home, claiming negligence caused their mother's sore ...
Tennessean - Apr 6, 2008
Autograph collector knows what's
Apr. 7--Orange selectman selling There was the time he read that now AT&T. i Harry S. Truman, then a former Blake already had an interest in signatures, but he prizes president, was coming to Hart- politics and had become a Demothe memories even more ford "I . knew he got up at 6 a.m. every the crat Republicans because it was , who that gave party him , not a day to take a walk, so I went to the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
China's IPR protection on fast track
Qiao Gangliang, vice-president of the UK-based General Electric (GE) Healthcare, was surprised to see his company win a trade secret and copyright infringement case in China within eight months last year. 'It was much faster than I had expected,' says Qiao, who compared the efficiency with that in the United States where he had worked as a law clerk. 'As I understand, it usually takes two to ...
CHINAdaily - Apr 7, 2008
SC acts on petition to declare Mining Act unconstitutional
MANILA, Philippines-The Supreme Court ordered Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Secretary Lito Atienza and several mining firms to comment on a petition filed by several lawmakers to declare Republic Act 7942 or the Philippine Mining Act of 1995 as unconstitutional. In a one-page resolution, the high court gave the DENR, Sagittarius Mines Inc.
Philippine Daily Inquirer - Apr 7, 2008
SC: Stronger laws on personal info needed: Chief Justice Reynato Puno cites rising identity theft cases in the US, passing of related laws in Europe
Apr. 7--SUPREME Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno has called on Congress for the crafting of tougher protective laws on personal information privacy to serve as deterrent against identity thieves. Puno made the appeal in the wake of advances in global information technology, making it easier for criminals to steal one's identity. He warned that identity theft could become a real problem soon, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
Laws on loan
Apr. 7--NEW DELHI -- Delhi has almost a borrowed culture, they say. But did you know that it has 71 laws borrowed from other states? Extended to Delhi from states like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Orissa, many of these laws are archaic and proving to be stumbling blocks in the way of good governance. So much so that courts had to intervene and pass orders to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
State public records not so public anymore
NASHVILLE If you want to know everything about the parolee who just moved into your neighborhood or whether the judge hearing your divorce case has been accused of being mentally impaired, you can t not in Tennessee. Since Tennessee declared government records open to the public in 1957, lawmakers and judges have spent the last 50 years closing some of those records.
The Daily Times - Apr 7, 2008
TV Show Looks At Humor In Lawsuits
LOS ANGELES -- Most people find courtrooms are nothing to chuckle about. Not comedy entrepreneur Jamie Masada. The Laugh Factory owner was sitting in his venerable Sunset Boulevard club one night when a patron screamed so loudly at a comedian's joke that the guy sitting next to him claimed his hearing was damaged. Next thing he knew, Masada said, he was being named in a lawsuit.
FOX 7 KTBC - Apr 7, 2008
EDITORIAL: Moving Forward
Apr. 6--Virginia faces not one transportation crisis, but two. The second is easy. The first is not. The second crisis, which arose only recently, is temporary and minor: a $600 million funding hole created by repeal of the abusive-driver fees and a Virginia Supreme Court decision striking down special taxing authorities in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 6, 2008
D.C. handgun-ban case could put controls in the crosshairs
Apr. 6--The Second Amendment is only 27 words long -- the same as this paragraph -- yet the United States Supreme Court has never fully explained what the words mean. That may change in June, as could the legal landscape and political strategies of gun-rights advocates. The court that month is expected to rule on the constitutionality of a handgun ban in Washington, D.C.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 6, 2008
Supreme Court to examine if high court can bar lawyers
New Delhi, April 6: The Supreme Court is to examine Monday if a high court has the power to bar a lawyer from practising before it and in the lower courts in the respective state. A bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan has been called upon to decide on the crucial question impinging upon the independence of the bar. The plea has been moved by advocate K.K.
NewKerala.com - Apr 6, 2008
Farmers Branch seeks change in state's open meetings law: Council says burden of proof is unfairly on it
Apr. 7--The city of Farmers Branch, the target of three lawsuits alleging violations of the state open meetings law, is trying to get the law changed. The suits accuse the City Council of improperly deliberating in private about ordinances designed to prohibit the renting of apartments and houses to illegal immigrants. City officials, who have denied the allegation, say the burden is unfairly on ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
Grisham shows his mastery once again
Apr. 6--Characters are easy to identify with "The Appeal"; By John Grisham; $27.95; Doubleday; ISBN 978-0-385-51504-7 The plot of John Grisham's latest, "The Appeal," is set in central Mississippi and revolves around litigation against a large chemical company alleged to have polluted the local environment. Grisham's drama unfolds in kaleidoscopic imagery.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 6, 2008
Critics claim TVA holds advantage on legal battlefield
Apr. 6--Former TVA power chief Bob Steffy often cited the tale of his uncle's ax to explain the longevity of TVA's coal plants. "That ax had four blades and three handles, but it was still the same old great ax," Mr. Steffy quipped. Like the ax of Mr. Steffy's uncle, many of TVA's aging coal plants have been rebuilt and upgraded. Four of TVA's 11 coal plant sites are more than a half century ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 6, 2008
Missouri Senate backs DWI courts
Apr. 7--JEFFERSON CITY -- Special courts allowing drunken-driving offenders to reduce sentences by participating in rigorous treatment programs could get a boost this year from the Missouri General Assembly. Sen. Jolie Justus, a Kansas City Democrat, added language enabling DWI courts to a larger transportation bill approved last week. Typically, a repeat or felony drunken-driving offender faces ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 7, 2008
Florida Needs Plan To Keep Jails From Warehousing Mentally Ill
By some accounts, as many as one-quarter of the people in county jails have serious mental illnesses that go untreated. Once released, their behaviors leave them destined to return, creating a danger to their communities and running up the bill for taxpayers. In 2006, a Pinellas judge got fed up with mentally ill inmates languishing in jail for lack of treatment beds, and threatened to jail the ...
Tampa Tribune - Apr 7, 2008
Wyo: Toss Montana's lawsuit
BILLINGS, Mont. -- Wyoming's attorney general asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to dismiss a lawsuit alleging the state's agriculture and energy industries are using too much water in violation of an interstate agreement. Montana sued its southern neighbor last year. It claimed farmers and other water users along the Powder and Tongue rivers were being harmed by Wyoming's excessive water ...
Casper Star Tribune - Apr 7, 2008
$4.5M bedbug lawsuit dropped
Apr. 3--DURHAM -- Concerned that various judges were taking too many bites out of the case, a Durham lawyer has temporarily squelched a novel $4.5 million lawsuit involving some allegedly voracious bedbugs. Attorney Eric Michaux this week dismissed the suit in which two women complained they were physically ravaged and emotionally traumatized by blood-sucking bugs at a local Days Inn during ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Top court refuses to hear federal secrecy law challenge
The Supreme Court of Canada has turned down an effort by Mohammad Momin Khawaja, who is charged under the Anti-Terrorist Act, to challenge the federal secrecy law. Mohammad Momin Khawaja, who was arrested in 2004, will not be able to plead his case before the Supreme Court of Canada.(Tom Hanson/Canadian Press) In a ruling released without comment on Thursday, the court in Ottawa said it refused ...
CBC - Apr 3, 2008
Last chance for justice for ex Enron CEO Jeff Skilling
Jeff Skilling, the former CEO of energy giant, Enron, was back in court this week, appealing his conviction. What is very disturbing is that it appears during Skilling's trial, prosecutors concealed evidence helpful to the defence. In an appeals court filing earlier this month, Skilling's lawyer, Daniel Petrocelli, alleged the government bolstered its case by hiding statements from Enron's ...
Neftegaz.RU - Apr 4, 2008
EDITORIAL: Executing Stays
Apr. 3--During his 2005 campaign, Tim Kaine reiterated his opposition to capital punishment but promised that as governor he would allow the law to proceed. He has done just that. Four executions have occurred on his watch. Kaine has cited legitimate reasons for delaying several other executions. This week, for instance, he stayed the April 8 execution of Edward Bell and rescheduled the date for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Cockfighting fans battle federal ban: Suit says law creates unhealthful climate for breeders, birds
Apr. 3--A group trying to legalize animal fights in the United States has filed a federal lawsuit in Columbus in the hope that a third legal challenge will be a charm. Anthony Saville, president of the American Game Fowl Society, and five other plaintiffs are suing the departments of Agriculture and Justice, arguing that the country's law against animal fighting is unconstitutional.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
W.Va. Supreme Court overturns $76 million award against Massey
Four months, two recusals and numerous national headlines later, West Virginia's Supreme Court has echoed its earlier conclusion vacating a $76.3 million judgment against Massey Energy Co. in a coal contract dispute. As it had in November, the court voted 3-2 to overturn a 2002 Boone County verdict that Harman Mining Co., and its president had won against the competing coal producer.
Lexington Herald Leader - Apr 3, 2008
Court Tosses $800 Billion Suit Against Tobacco Companies
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal appeals court tossed out an $800 billion class-action lawsuit against tobacco companies on Thursday brought by smokers who said they were deceived into believing 'light' cigarettes were healthier. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said the smokers could not sue collectively. The decision means each individual smoker must prove that she or he had ...
Talk 650 KSTE - Apr 3, 2008
Fallout from outbreak continues: Great Escape now faces 3 class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of guests who got sick in March
Apr. 3--QUEENSBURY -- A third class-action lawsuit has been filed against Six Flags Great Escape Lodge and Indoor Waterpark after visitors to the lodge fell ill with the Norwalk virus. DeGraff, Foy & Kunz, a Saratoga Springs law firm, filed the suit Wednesday in state Supreme Court in Warren County. The only plaintiff named in the suit was Leonard Baker, a Saratoga Springs resident who works in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Court rules family not liable for woman's AIDS
SPRINGFIELD -- A woman whose now-dead fiance infected her with AIDS cannot collect $2 million from his parents for possibly misleading her about their son's health, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled today. The justices said the infected woman never proved she reasonably relied on the parents in making health decisions. Based on the facts presented, the court said, she should have realized ...
Chicago Daily Herald - Apr 4, 2008
'Prove you own the loan' defense fails
Dann seeks other ways to thwart foreclosure process E-mail| Print | digg us! | del.icio.us! | Click-2-Listen Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann's attempt to slow foreclosures using a novel legal argument has largely collapsed, and his office says it's now devoting its energies to educating homeowners and preventing foreclosures. In December, Dann sought to dismiss 40 foreclosure cases across Ohio ...
Cincinnati Enquirer - Apr 3, 2008
EDITORIAL: EPA defies top court; states take up gauntlet
Apr. 3--She might've held her fire: Like so many leaders of a nation sick to death of White House arrogance, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley could have given up on the Bush-Cheney Environmental Protection Agency deciding whether it will seriously regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from motor vehicles. She could have waited -- hoped? --for an administration worthy of the name to take ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Ohio high court rejects former judge's bid to erase her 2006 defeat
Apr. 3--Former Franklin County Domestic Relations Judge Carole Squire yesterday lost her legal bid to throw out the results of the 2006 election in which she was unseated. In a unanimous decision, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that irregularities in the election were not serious enough to overcome the 13,069-vote margin by which she lost to Christopher J. Geer.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
States hoping to force action on emissions
'The Bush administration has ignored science, it has ignored policy makers, and now it is ignoring the Supreme Court of the United States. It is sad that the states must once again petition a court to force the EPA to deal with global warming.' Maine Attorney General Steve Rowe said. The petition asks the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to require the EPA to make a ...
Portland Press Herald - Apr 3, 2008
The decision: Demolition: An old right of way. A Texas company. A Day Island couple and their dream home. A lawsuit. It's a mess.
Apr. 3--On the Day Island spit, where a hidden inlet ends and muddy tidelands begin, you'll find the makings of a high-stakes, complex land dispute. The property in question measures 2,500 square feet and is sandwiched between a home built in 1912 and a BNSF Railway line. Last year, Strong Capital V LP of Texas bought the property as part of a bulk purchase of rights of way, according to Pierce ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Dissecting the latest Bush administration's legal rationale for torture.
If true, the allegations that Hillary Clinton as a young lawyer assisting the congressional Watergate investigation sought to hide files, and the precedents within them, in order to deny Richard Nixon legal counsel in the context of an anticipated impeachment inquiry are once quaint and deeply troubling. The story is quaint because it is reminiscent of the well-told tales of first law students ...
Slate - Apr 3, 2008
Doctor's complaint started lawsuit
Retiree says hospital knew about deal E-mail| Print | digg us! | del.icio.us! | Click-2-Listen Doctors and health-care administrators created a closed circle to feed each other patients that resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in charges to federal health benefits programs, a federal whistle-blower alleges. But the cozy - and lucrative - circle amounted to an illegal kickback scheme ...
Cincinnati Enquirer - Apr 3, 2008
Senecas won't collect tobacco tax
Apr. 3--With health groups and others pushing the state to end tax-free cigarette sales now that there is a likely agreement to boost the tobacco tax by $1.25 per pack, the Seneca Nation used the news from Albany to rally Wednesday in Niagara Square to insist that the nation never will collect taxes for the state. "Boston Tea Party -- Americans fought taxes," stated signs at the rally, which ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Environmental waivers could doom park's future
Apr. 3--Environmental advocates said Wednesday that they weren't surprised by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's decision this week to waive several environmental laws to expedite construction of border fencing in four states. Still, they haven't given up on efforts to stop the project. "I thought eventually, they would do this," said Martin Hagne, manager of Valley Nature Center in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Environmental advocates not giving up fight: Homeland Security's ruling on border fence no surprise
Apr. 3--Environmental advocates said Wednesday that they weren't surprised by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's decision this week to waive several environmental laws, therefore expediting construction of border fencing in four states. Still, they haven't given up on efforts to stop the project. "I thought eventually, they would do this," said Martin Hagne, manager of Valley Nature ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
EDITORIAL: A necessary halt in state executions
Apr. 3--Gov. Tim Kaine's decision to stop executions until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the constitutionality of lethal injection was a prudent move, not a political one. The court has not allowed any inmate to be executed since September, when it agreed for the first time in more than a century to decide the legality of a particular method of killing. About 30 scheduled executions in 13 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
BJ's settles discrimination suit for $100,000
BJ's Wholesale Club is to pay $100,000 to settle a discrimination lawsuit involving its Homestead store, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced Thursday. The EEOC had filed suit in U.S. District Court in South Florida, charging that a hostile workplace was created when one of BJ's managers subjected a Puerto Rican employee and a black employee to offensive slurs based ...
South Florida Business Journal - Apr 3, 2008
New life for UP discrimination lawsuit
(The following story by Pamela Manson appeared on The Salt Lake Tribune website on April 1.) SALT LAKE CITY, Utah The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today reinstated a lawsuit by a former Union Pacific Railroad yard conductor in Utah who alleges the company ignored a pervasive climate of racism and harassment. The Denver-based court reversed a ruling by U.S.
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen - Apr 3, 2008
NY: Tobacco companies win a legal round over smokers
NEW YORK: Tobacco companies have won a legal round over smokers who claim they were misled about the health effects of light cigarettes. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan overturned class-action status on Thursday for a lawsuit seeking at least $200 billion on behalf of tens of millions of smokers. The damages theoretically could go as high as $800 billion.
International Herald Tribune - Apr 3, 2008
Moncrief Oil International files new suit against Gazprom in Texas.
The Russian Ministry of Justice impedes service of the claim for The Russian Ministry of Justice impedes service of the claim for damages filed against Gazprom with the Landgericht (Regional Court) of Berlin. Medvedev's most recent statements on the state of lawlessness in Russia are hardly suited to console the plaintiff. Berlin, Fort Worth, April 3rd, 2008.
MarketWire - Apr 3, 2008
Foreclosures swamp court
Thousands of abandoned foreclosed homes across Massachusetts will remain shuttered for months due to a case backlog at the overwhelmed Massachusetts Land Court. Karyn Scheier, chief justice of the Land Court, acknowledged yesterday that a deluge of foreclosure applications has swamped the court. New cases are now coming in at a rate of 145 per day. At the current pace, the court will handle ...
Boston Herald - Apr 4, 2008
Immigration bill nears accord: Committee laying framework for state reform
Apr. 3--A House-Senate conference committee reached substantial agreement Wednesday on the framework of a new state immigration reform law. The House tentatively agreed to Senate provisions requiring private employers to verify immigration status of workers. The House version of the bill applied requirements only to employers with government contracts. Members from both sides said they want to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Private Detective Offered To Kill Partner, Court Told
A New York hedge fund manager accused by Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. of taking part in a dirty-tricks campaign to bring down the company's stock has shocked a U.S. federal court with testimony that a private detective offered to kill one of his former investment partners, media reports said. Adam Sender, the founder of Exis Capital Management, is a witness in the trial of Hollywood sleuth ...
National Post - Apr 3, 2008
Does O'Neill have a case?: A promise by AD to UA assistant could raise legal questions
Apr. 3--Kevin O'Neill may indeed toss his Wildcat T-shirts into a bonfire this weekend at his upstate New York lake house, but Arizona could find its legal ties to him aren't so easily severed. O'Neill, who says he burns his team gear at home every time he leaves a job, holds both a verbal agreement for a second year for $375,000 as a UA men's assistant basketball coach and a stated promise to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Beef recall sparks hearings, tightened inspections
Congress held a series of hearings after secretly recorded video of animal abuse and food safety violations at a Chino, Calif., slaughter plant sparked the largest beef recall in U.S. history this February. Video of cows too sick or injured to stand being dragged by chains, rolled with forklifts, and shot with high-intensity water hoses by employees of Hallmark/Westland Meat Co.
American Veterinary Medical Association - Apr 3, 2008
Montana Files Brief with Supreme Court in Insurance Lawsuit
Montana State Insurance Commissioner John Morrison has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a legal dispute before the U.S. Supreme Court over an insurance company's dual role of paying disability benefits and deciding whether employees are eligible for them. Morrison filed the brief on behalf of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, in a lawsuit filed by an Ohio woman against ...
Insurance Journal - Apr 3, 2008
ZTE-govt mining deal questioned before SC: Records show the High Court paved the way for government to enter into mining deal with ZTE
Apr. 4--A Supreme Court ruling has inevitably paved the way for government to negotiate with controversial Chinese firm ZTE Corp. for a mining exploration project in the 8,100-hectare Mount Diwalwal Gold Rush Area in Mindanao. Court records, citing proceedings before the Senate investigation on the controversial national broadband deal, pointed out that the government signed a Memorandum of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 4, 2008
BRIEF: Anti-abortion efforts consolidated
Apr. 3--OKLAHOMA CITY -- The House has approved an anti-abortion bill that consolidates into one section of law items dealing with the topic. In recent years, anti-abortion groups have secured passage of major legislation. Senate Bill 1878 sponsored in the House by Rep. Pam Peterson, R-Tulsa, combines several initiatives, including ones: --To protect health-care professionals' freedom of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
California, 17 other states sue EPA over greenhouse gases
Apr. 3--Attorney General Jerry Brown joined officials in 17 other states Wednesday to demand that the federal Environmental Protection Agency release its internal finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health. The move comes after EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson wrote last week that he plans to open a months-long public comment period on greenhouse gas emissions, a procedure ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Bill for FDA regulation of tobacco advances
Apr. 3--WASHINGTON -- Landmark legislation that would give the federal government the power to regulate cigarettes and other tobacco products passed an early hurdle yesterday. The House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the bill, 38-12. The measure would allow the Food and Drug Administration to review new tobacco products before they could go on sale, limit advertising and restrict sales ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Immigration bill nears accord: Committee laying framework for state reform
Apr. 3--A House-Senate conference committee reached substantial agreement Wednesday on the framework of a new state immigration reform law. The House tentatively agreed to Senate provisions requiring private employers to verify immigration status of workers. The House version of the bill applied requirements only to employers with government contracts. Members from both sides said they want to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
California, 17 other states sue EPA over greenhouse gases
Attorney General Jerry Brown joined officials in 17 other states Wednesday to demand that the federal Environmental Protection Agency release its internal finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health. The move comes after EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson wrote last week that he plans to open a months-long public comment period on greenhouse gas emissions, a procedure critics say ...
Sacramento Bee - Apr 3, 2008
Minneapolis sues firm over mortgages: 'It's personal'
Apr. 3--The city of Minneapolis and three of its neighborhoods allege in a lawsuit filed Wednesday a vast conspiracy to illegally drive up housing prices in north Minneapolis, cash in and leave the area devastated by foreclosures. They allege that Roseville-based TJ Waconia, owners Thomas J. Balko and Jonathan E. Helgason, and associated firms converted 140 owner-occupied homes into rental ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
State settles bias lawsuit: '98 race-profiling case against troopers ends in $400,000 payment
Apr. 3--Maryland has agreed to pay about $400,000 as part of a settlement of a decade-old federal lawsuit alleging that state troopers used racial profiling in deciding which drivers to pull over on Interstate 95. The agreement to end what had become known as the "driving while black" lawsuit was announced jointly yesterday by the state police and the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Bruning locks horns with state's anti-bias agency
Apr. 3--LINCOLN -- Angered that he was asked to file a housing discrimination lawsuit on behalf of an illegal immigrant, Attorney General Jon Bruning proposed eliminating the Nebraska Equal Opportunity Commission. "The NEOC has not done their job and the Legislature ought to consider shutting them down," Bruning said Wednesday after calling reporters to his office.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
AIDS, lies and how the Illinois Supreme Court might rule
SPRINGFIELD -- A potentially precedent-setting ruling in a case pitting morality against legality over the issue of AIDS is expected today by the Illinois Supreme Court. On the surface, the case boils down to whether a Cook County woman is entitled to collect a judgment of more than $2 million she received against her fiance's parents for allegedly misleading her about their son's health.
Chicago Daily Herald - Apr 3, 2008
Keeping court records public protects the public
I'm not the only Wayne Greene in Oklahoma. That's why I support those who are trying to convince the state Supreme Court to back away from its restrictive rules on online court records. The courts came up with a bunch of rules last month that would remove everything except dockets from the online court records. The new rules also would have removed a bunch of identifying information from the ...
Tulsa World - Apr 2, 2008
EDITORIAL: Controlling water: State should reappraise its stance on the Yadkin River
Apr. 3--The Yadkin River slices through North Carolina and into South Carolina on a southeast course from its headwaters in the Blue Ridge. Since early in the 20th century it has powered a hydroelectric operation that once provided electricity for the bustling Alcoa aluminum plant at Badin. Now it's the topic of a concerted campaign by Stanly County officials to slow down a federal relicensing ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Legal issues seen in proposed state budget: PUBLIC ADVOCATE SAYS THOUSANDS OF POOR WON'T BE REPRESENTED
Apr. 3--The state's chief public defender said Wednesday that the proposed state budget is unconstitutional because it would leave thousands of poor criminal defendants without legal representation. Even a House Democrat who helped broker the compromise budget, which cuts the state Department of Public Advocacy's budget by $2.3 million next year, says the cuts could lead to legal challenges ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
OPINION: On smoking, sloppiness, arrogance and poetic justice
Apr. 3--YOU COULD say it's poetic justice. Or, if you wanted to be less charitable, what goes around comes around. Or, the Legislature got what it had coming. Whatever language you use, the Supreme Court's unanimous decision upholding Greenville's workplace smoking ban dealt a stunning blow to the sloppy, shortcut-laden way the Legislature does business. And there is no other way to see that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Lawsuit aims to prevent cemetery relocations near KCI
Apr. 3--A Kansas City woman has filed a federal lawsuit to block the proposed relocation of four cemeteries near Kansas City International Airport. The suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court Western District of Missouri by Oralee Watkins, seeks to "prevent any further irreparable harm" to 19th-century pioneer and slave graves descendents believe are scattered throughout 7,000 acres of vacant ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
New aid law puts end to schools' suit
Apr. 3--LINCOLN -- A five-year court battle over school finance drew to a quick end Wednesday after a series of events that included a new state aid system being established and the Omaha Public Schools declaring that Nebraska is giving new attention to disadvantaged students. But some rural senators and school district officials aren't content with the major changes coming in how the state ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
Governor Kaine postpones Bell execution: Executions will be stayed till U.S. high court rules in lethal-injection case
Apr. 2--Gov. Timothy M. Kaine granted a temporary reprieve to condemned killer Edward Nathaniel Bell yesterday, pending a challenge before the U.S. Supreme Court to the way lethal injections are conducted. Kaine said he would also grant similar reprieves to any other inmates scheduled for execution before the high court rules on the death penalty method, expected by July, unless the justices ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 2, 2008
Resolution rejecting Tennessee-Georgia boundary commission moves in Senate
Apr. 2--NASHVILLE -- A Tennessee Senate panel on Tuesday approved a resolution rejecting Georgia's efforts to re-examine the two states' long-disputed border as a Chattanooga lawmaker warned the issue only was about tapping into the Tennessee River. "We're going to be dealing with Georgia on this issue for a long time about water, and this is one way of telling them this is not the solution," ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 2, 2008
Budget May Solve Political Battle Over Home Invasion
Apr. 3--Gov. M. Jodi Rell will not meet today with Democratic legislators after being trashed this week as a political panderer exploiting the latest tragic home invasion. The speaker of the House, too, is incensed over the issues of crime and punishment. "Don't even compare, madam governor, your record on crime to mine because I'll go toe to toe with you," James Amann declared Wednesday ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 3, 2008
UK Entertainment Attorney Robb Klein Joins Sheppard Mullin Century City
Robb Klein has joined the Century City Robb Klein has joined the Century City office of Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP as special counsel in the firm's Entertainment & Media practice group. Klein was most recently a partner in the Media & Communications Group of leading European law firm SJ Berwin in London. Klein specializes in film and television financing, production and ...
MarketWire - Apr 2, 2008
Finally! Online Legal Services Go Mainstream
Have you ever needed help with a legal Have you ever needed help with a legal document but didn't know where to turn? Want to find a lawyer who works the way you do? A lawyer, who uses the Web, skips the fancy office and cuts down on paperwork, passing the savings on to you? If the answers to these questions are yes, then RocketLawyer.com can help. Today, RocketLaywer.com raised the bar for ...
MarketWire - Apr 2, 2008
CalBizCentral Announces Booklets to Help Businesses Navigate State, Federal Employment Laws, Reduce Legal Risk
CalChamber's CalBizCentral 'What Every Manager Needs to Know About' series provides training managers need to comply with confusing laws. Sacramento, CA (PRWEB) April 3, 2008 -- CalBizCentral, a leading provider of human resources and legal information for California businesses, announced today the launch of a five-booklet series designed to help educate managers about employment law and keep ...
EMedia Wire - Apr 3, 2008
Judge on the hot seat
Public should learn if Nottingham is punished Rocky Mountain News Wednesday, April 2, 2008 More trumps earmark reform Story Tools Change text size this site It's too early to say whether U.S. District Judge Edward Nottingham's, er, indiscretions might eventually lead to his impeachment. We're not sure they should, but we understand why Colorado Sen.
Rocky Mountain News - Apr 2, 2008
Family pushes suit against MySpace
Wire report NEW ORLEANS -- The family of a teenage girl who says she was sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old man she met on MySpace.com when she was 13 asked a federal appeals court Monday to revive their lawsuit against the social networking Web site. A federal judge in dismissed the $30 million suit in February 2007, rejecting the family's claim that MySpace has a legal duty to protect its ...
Bryan-College Station Eagle - Apr 1, 2008
Clinton Makes Declaration to Fight Until the End; McCain Defends Policies on the Economy
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. LOU DOBBS, HOST, LOU DOBBS TONIGHT: Thank you, John. Tonight, the Bush administration says it's determined to build hundreds of miles of fence along our southern border, but what about the rest of that 2,000-mile long border with Mexico? We'll have that report. And more than a million students dropping out of ...
CNN - Apr 2, 2008
Court gives N.J. border insecurity
The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a blow to New Jersey sovereignty Monday when it released a decision affirming that the State of Delaware can control what goes on along a big chunk of the Jersey side of the Delaware River. Based on a 1905 agreement, the high court said Delaware could veto a liquefied natural gas facility planned in Logan Township, because it was to have a 2,220-foot pier built into ...
Gloucester Co. Times - Apr 1, 2008
Ignoring the Supreme Court
THE BUSH administration never had any intention of doing what the Supreme Court commanded it to do a year ago today: regulate greenhouse gas emissions. We infer this because, even though President Bush ordered his agencies last May to work together to meet the court's directive, and even though the Environmental Protection Agency delivered to the White House last December its finding that those ...
Washington Post - Apr 2, 2008
Kansas Health Department Refuses to Turn Over Records to Abortion Foe
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment refused to turn over abortion records subpoenaed by anti-abortion extremist Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline. According to Health and Environment Department Spokesperson Joe Blubaugh, the agency's attorneys state that turning over the records would be against the law, reports the . The Department has filed a motion to block the ...
Ms. - Apr 1, 2008
Wal-Mart drops reimbursement effort against ex-worker
Debbie Shank is shown in this 2005 photo at her nursing home in Jackson, Mo. (File photo/Robert Cohen/P-D) BENTONVILLE, Ark. (AP) -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is dropping a controversial effort to collect over $400,000 in health care reimbursement from a former employee who suffered brain damage in a traffic accident. The world's largest retailer said in a letter to the family of Deborah Shank of ...
STLtoday.com - Apr 1, 2008
Wal-Mart Drops Claim Against Shank Family
Tuesday Jim Shank of Jackson received word from Wal-Mart that the company intends to drop its $470,000 reimbursement claim against the Shank family. He says he's pleased and relieved Wal-Mart decided to drop the claim. Shank credits the pressure of public outcry from bad publicity as the turning point to Wal-Mart dropping the claim. Shank had recently appeared on several national television ...
KFVS12 - Apr 2, 2008
Court Agrees to Take 2 Free Speech Cases
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to step into two free speech cases, one involving a church that wants to place a religious monument in a park and the other on payroll deductions for labor union political activity.Officials in Pleasant Grove City, Utah, asked the court to step into the lawsuit brought by the religious group known as Summum, saying that if the group prevails, governments would ...
Newsday - Apr 1, 2008
Feds Sue Wal-Mart Over Airman's Job
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- The Department of Justice has sued Wal-Mart Stores Inc. on behalf of a former airman, claiming the company didn't give him his job back after he was discharged from the military, the department announced Monday. The lawsuit on behalf of Sean Thornton, a former airman with the United States Air Force, alleges Wal-Mart violated the Uniformed Services Employment and ...
The Baytown Sun - Apr 1, 2008
Our Shrinking Zones of Privacy
Jack Kenny Along with, I am sure, millions of other Americans, I was appalled that anyone had the tastelessness, the insensitivity and the unmitigated gall to ask Chelsea Clinton about her father s notorious affair with infamous intern Monica Lewinksy. Most of us agreed with the former first daughter when she said her family s internal struggle with that affair is none of the questioner s ...
LewRockwell.com - Apr 2, 2008
Supreme Court upholds Delaware border claim
Ruling 6 to 2, the justices say New Jersey has no right to build a liquefied natural gas plant with a Delaware River pier. Page 1 of 2 This feature requires a newer version of Macromedia Flash Player and javascript-enabled browser. Reporter Warren Richey discusses the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of Delaware in its border dispute with New Jersey. Delaware has won a border dispute with ...
Christian Science Monitor - Apr 1, 2008
Mississippi Nifonging: Heroes & Obama Connection
Good News! The Mississippi Supreme Court reinstated Mr. Shelton to the practice of law based on a record that the Court itself not only described as 'replete with substantial and compelling evidence which justifies Shelton's immediate reinstatement,' but also indicated that Mr. Shelton had been the victim of 'serious and perhaps even criminal acts by others.' When I wrote 'Nifonging in ...
Web Commentary - Apr 2, 2008
Funds eye court action against Bear Stearns
Several large public pension funds are mulling legal action against Bear Stearns Cos. Inc. Massachusetts Treasurer Tim Cahill will consider legal action against the firm on behalf of the state pension fund if an investigation returns any evidence of securities fraud. Alison Mitchell, spokeswoman for Mr. Cahill's office, said the treasurer is looking into the matter "as we would look at any ...
Financial Week - Apr 1, 2008
Embattled HUD secretary Jackson takes exit ramp
WASHINGTON Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson resigned Monday amid a criminal investigation into alleged favoritism in awarding HUD contracts that critics say was blunting the agency's effectiveness in dealing with the subprime mortgage crisis. 'There comes a time when one must attend more diligently to personal and family matters,' Jackson said in a statement.
Chicago Tribune - Apr 1, 2008
ID House fails to pass constitutional amendment bill
BOISE, Idaho A state House vote has fallen short of the margin needed to place on the ballot a proposed state constitutional amendment to make it easier for cities, counties and publicly owned hospitals to sign long-term leases or sell bonds, so long as the debt isn't repaid with taxpayer money.Tuesday's vote was 36-33, short of the two-thirds supermajority needed for passage.
Idaho Statesman - Apr 1, 2008
Prepare for more swaps suits
The legal dispute between Merrill Lynch and monoline insurer XL Capital Assurance over credit default swaps on collateralized debt obligations could be a harbinger of more lawsuits to come as counterparties to such contracts try to minimize losses stemming from the credit crunch. Merrill is suing the financial guaranty subsidiary of Security Capital Assurance over the termination of seven CDS ...
Financial Week - Apr 1, 2008
Marquette grad to prosecute at Guantanamo: Morris works on first war-crimes tribunal at base
Apr. 2--In just six weeks, Marquette University graduate and Army lawyer Lawrence Morris will be thrust into the international spotlight as the chief prosecutor at the first U.S. war-crimes tribunal since the World War II era. The trial of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, charged with working for al-Qaida, comes more than six years after Morris and others helped draft rules for trying terrorism suspects ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 2, 2008
Justices to rule on ID case over payroll deductions
WASHINGTON The Supreme Court on Monday stepped into a dispute between the state of Idaho and labor unions over payroll deductions for political activities.The state asked the justices to take the case, which involves an Idaho law that prohibits cities, counties and school districts from making payroll deductions for donations to political candidates or parties.Five labor unions and the Idaho ...
Idaho Statesman - Apr 1, 2008
EDITORIAL: All Virginians deserve in-state tuition: Even the legal children of illegal immigrants.
Apr. 1--Here's the situation. Anton was born in Virginia. He grew up in Virginia. He went to school in Virginia. He's a U.S. citizen by birth. Now he wants to go to one of the state's fine public universities. Unfortunately, his Russian parents overstayed their visas and illegally live in the commonwealth and the country. Because he lives with his parents, Anton isn't entitled to in-state ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 1, 2008
Judge erred in tossing discrimination suit against Union Pacific Railroad, appeals court rules
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today reinstated a lawsuit by a former Union Pacific Railroad yard conductor in Utah who alleges the company ignored a pervasive climate of racism and harassment. The Denver-based court reversed a ruling by U.S. District Judge David Sam throwing out the suit by Ranee Tademy, an African-American man who alleged he was subjected to a hostile work environment. ...
Salt Lake Tribune - Apr 1, 2008
Ted Nugent touts gun rights
KALAMAZOO -- The atmosphere was more like a rock concert than a public speech as Ted Nugent brought his message of ''God, Guns and Rock 'n' Roll'' to Miller Auditorium on Monday night. The ''Motor City Madman'' did not disappoint the near-capacity crowd as he spoke for more than two hours, answered questions and ended the night with a distortion-heavy version of ''The Star-Spangled Banner'' on ...
Kalamazoo Gazette - Apr 1, 2008
IRS debunks common tax myths
'The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.' -- Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) Every year at this time, I write a series of tax-related columns. My purpose is to provide some guidance for homeowners preparing to file their income tax returns. Millions of Americans try to file their returns well in advance of the April 15 deadline.
Reno Gazette-Journal - Apr 1, 2008
TEP files rebuttal in support of rate-hike push: Utility cites legal opinion by former Arizona Supreme Court chief justice
Apr. 2--In testimony filed Tuesday, Tucson Electric Power Co. called in a big legal gun -- a former Arizona Supreme Court chief justice -- to beef up its case for new rates. TEP is trying to make a case that a 1999 rate settlement with the Arizona Corporation Commission gave it the right to charge "market-based," or competitive, rates when a rate freeze imposed by the deal expires at the end of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 2, 2008
Where U.S.-Mexico border fence is tall, it works
U.S. border patrol agent Michael Bernacke guns his SUV down the wide desert-sand road that lines the U.S.-Mexican border through urban San Luis, Ariz. To his right stands a steel wall, 20 feet high and reinforced by cement-filled steel piping. To his left another tall fence of steel mesh. Ten yards beyond, a shorter cyclone fence is topped with jagged concertina wire.
Arizona Republic - Apr 1, 2008
Shining example now shunned by all
Apr. 2--NEW DELHI -- Salwa Judum, the anti-Naxal people's resistance movement in Chhattisgarh that came under fire from the Supreme Court on Monday, has fallen on bad days. But the experiment that went horribly wrong had been held out as a shining example of success in countering left-wing extremism by the Central government till about two years ago. The Supreme Court's adverse remarks on the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 2, 2008
High Court gives split verdict on sealing, once again
Apr. 2--NEW DELHI -- The Division Bench hearing cases of demolition in the Capital on Tuesday once again emerged divided -- the second time in the last five months. On October 12, 2007, the Bench of Justices AK Sikri and Rekha Sharma gave divergent judgments on whether the high court could stay a sealing order given by the Supreme Court-appointed monitoring committee pertaining to some shops in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 2, 2008
Kuwaiti court affirms OFW's death sentence
Apr. 2--The Philippine government on Wednesday pledged to exhaust all means to save the life of May Vecina, a 28-year-old Filipina from North Cotabato after the Kuwait high court affirmed her death sentence. Vecina, or May Membrini, as her name was given in court documents, was convicted of the murder of a 6-year-old boy under her charge and the attempted murder of the boy's brother and sister. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 2, 2008
Court agrees to take Idaho case
WASHINGTON The Supreme Court on Monday stepped into a dispute between the state of Idaho and labor unions over payroll deductions for political activities. The state asked the justices to take the case, which involves an Idaho law that prohibits cities, counties and school districts from making payroll deductions for donations to political candidates or parties.
Centre Daily Times - Apr 1, 2008
DOJ Asks High Court Review on Navy Sonar
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Washington Post - Apr 1, 2008
UPDATE 1-US high court: Delaware can block BP LNG terminal
(Adds BP comment, background) WASHINGTON, March 31 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sided with Delaware and ruled the state can block a $750 million liquefied natural gas plant that BP Plc (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) wants to build on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River. The high court's 6-2 ruling is a setback to BP's plan to build the Crown Landing terminal to offload ...
Reuters UK - Apr 1, 2008
Researcher: Cell Phones 'More Dangerous Than Smoking'
Researcher: Cell Phones 'More Dangerous Than Smoking' • Cell Phones May Provide False Sense Of Security • Study Suggests Cell Phone-Salivary Gland Cancer Link • Scientist Worries WiFi May Harm Children • British Study To Examine Cell Phone-Health Links • Study: Cell Phone Use Not Linked to Cancer Risk • FDA Will Review Cell Phone-Cancer Link • Supreme ...
Consumer Affairs - Apr 1, 2008
Columbia on track to curtail smoking: S.C. high court rules cities have right to tighten restrictions
Apr. 1--Columbia City Council, buoyed by a state Supreme Court decision Monday, will press ahead this week on activating a dormant 2006 ordinance that would prohibit smoking in public buildings. Mayor Bob Coble said he asked the city's attorney to brief the seven-member panel Wednesday on a ruling that upholds a municipal ordinance that bans smoking in Greenville's restaurants and bars.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 1, 2008
High Court ruling can cover all Senate hearings: Spokesman of Supreme Court says ruling on Neri case can apply to all Senate hearings without published rules
Apr. 1--Malacanang is right after all in saying that all Senate investigations conducted without published rules are "null and void." The Supreme Court Spokesman, Lawyer Jose Midas Marquez, on Monday pointed out though that only Chairman Romulo Neri of the Commission on Higher Education is covered by the court en banc's ruling that the Senate could not cite Neri in contempt nor order his arrest. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 1, 2008
Musharraf swears in Pakistan cabinet full of foes
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf swore in 24 members of Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's cabinet today, six weeks after opposition parties won a general election. There is strong speculation the new government will force US ally Musharraf, who came to power as a general in a 1999 coup, to quit within weeks or months. There has been some apprehension within Pakistani media and political ...
SABC - Mar 31, 2008
EDITORIAL: Drunk Driving: A glitch and an opportunity
Mar. 31--The Missouri Supreme Court earlier this month may have handed get-out-of-jail cards to a lot of habitual drunken drivers. The Legislature should fix the clumsily crafted, contradictory law that led to the ruling. On March 4, the state Supreme Court ruled that suspended sentences given by municipal courts don't count toward the three-strikes rule that makes a defendant eligible for a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 31, 2008
Measure of a Nation: The cult of decisiveness, in American culture and politics
EDINBORO, Pa. (AP) - On a wintry morning, in a college town not far from Lake Erie, a coup is brewing. "You're going to take over the country today, brothers and sisters," Werner Lange, an assistant professor of sociology, tells his Contemporary Social Problems class. On this day, 20 undergraduates at Edinboro State University will take a crack at being the president of the United States and ...
Wichita Falls Times Record News - Apr 1, 2008
Voters to deliver decisions on court, local competitions
Apr. 1--After an expensive and muddy race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, voters are to issue their verdict on the contest today and decide winners in a host of local races. Those races include hotly contested contests for Milwaukee County executive and Milwaukee city attorney, as well as municipal and school board races throughout the state. Turnout statewide is expected to be about 20%, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 1, 2008
2 Die After Getting Teen's Organs
Die After Getting Teen's Organs// (Melville, N.Y.) By Ridgely Ochs(c) 2008, Newsday MELVILLE, N.Y. -- When 15-year-old Alex Koehne died a year ago, his parents decided to donate his organs because he was the kind of boy who always wanted to help others. Alex had been diagnosed with bacterial meningitis, but his organs were deemed healthy enough for transplantation.
Central Utah Daily Herald - Apr 1, 2008
SPCA and Hindus Butting Heads Over a Cow
Published Content: 188 Total Views: 24,445 Favorited By: 39 CPs Contact Subscribe Rating: 3.0 of 5 Currently 3.00/512345 Font Font Two organizations that revere the lives of animals are about to butt heads in the United Kingdom, as a Hindu temple files suit against the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) for killing the temple's sacred cow.
Associated Content - Apr 1, 2008
Gay couple wants health benefits back after move to Idaho
Filed under: EAGLE, Idaho , JESSIE BONNER , Lost Benefits EAGLE, Idaho (Map, News) - What they didn't know before moving to Idaho could fill a house, and in many ways it does. The kitchen table holds stacks of legal papers. Medication bottles litter a nearby countertop. The two-story home Robert Ryan, 42, shares with his partner, Ralph Martinelli, 53, overlooks a quaint suburb west of Boise, a ...
Examiner-Boise - Apr 1, 2008
LegalView Expands Baxter Heparin Information Portal to Include Information on an Additional Heparin Recall
LegalView updated its Baxter Heparin information portal to add information on the most recent recall of the blood-thinning drug. Heparin, which is used to control blood during surgical procedures, was recently discovered to have a Heparin-like contaminant that sickened many and caused at least 19 deaths. Denver, CO (PRWEB) March 31, 2008 -- The Baxter Heparin practice area on LegalView's site, ...
EMedia Wire - Mar 31, 2008
Peanut butter case moved to federal court
Mar. 31--LEXINGTON -- A lawsuit filed against the makers of Peter Pan peanut butter in Madison Circuit Court has been taken to the federal level. Con Agra Foods Inc., the defendant in the case, moved the case to U.S. District Court in Lexington on the basis of diversity jurisdiction, the notice of removal states. Federal court is a more appropriate venue for the case because while the plaintiff, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 31, 2008
Two former clients sue attorney over his conduct in mold case
Mar. 31--A Tucson attorney who was ordered to pay $750,000 in sanctions last fall for his handling of a civil lawsuit involving mold is now being sued by two of his former clients. Lee Foulkes and his wife, Antonieta Foulkes, and more than 100 other Tucson residents hired Harold Hyams six years ago to file a lawsuit against Wasatch Property Management, Creekside Place Holdings and Randy and Dell ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 31, 2008
No probe against Amitabh, rules SC
Apr. 1--NEW DELHI -- The Supreme Court on Monday dismissed Uttar Pradesh government's petition seeking criminal investigation against Amitabh Bachchan in the Barabanki land deal case in UP. The bench headed by Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan refused to entertain the petition challenging the Allahabad High Court's order restraining it from initiating any criminal, civil or revenue proceedings ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Apr 1, 2008
How good of a lawyer was our second president?
Paying due respect to John Adams, Esq., the founder now coming to life in a teleseries, Adam rues the absence today of more than a 'lucky few' capable of 'deep political, philosophical, and legal argument.' An HBO subscription's outside my monthly budget; nonetheless, I've listened to the David McCullough book on which the series is based, to the Ron Chernow work on Alexander Hamilton that Adam ...
Slate - Apr 1, 2008
Fed Rules Claim to Pre-Empt Injury Suits
If you think the prescription drug you took for headaches caused your heart attack, the Food and Drug Administration says you can't sue the maker for injury if it met agency standards.The Consumer Product Safety Commission says you can't sue a mattress maker if your mattress bursts into flame despite meeting CPSC standards. Companies making sport utility vehicles would get similar protection from ...
Hartford Courant - Mar 30, 2008
Concerns About Supreme Court Case on Product Liability in State Courts Prompt Alaska To Settle Medicaid Lawsuit
The $15 million settlement this week of a lawsuit filed by the state of Alaska against Eli Lilly over allegations that the company concealed data about the side effects of the antipsychotic Zyprexa and cost the state Medicaid program millions of dollars because of an increased incidence of diabetes among beneficiaries likely resulted because of the 'prospect of a pending Supreme Court case that ...
Kaiser Network.org - Mar 31, 2008
Advertising may have more influence on prescriptions than science
Few Canadians are taking a controversial new cholesterol-lowering drug compared with millions in the United States, where the medication has been heavily promoted, according to a new study that suggests advertising may have a greater influence on the use of a medication than scientific evidence. More than 33 million prescriptions for ezetimibe, sold under the brand names Zetia, Ezetrol and ...
Report On Business - Mar 31, 2008
Taking a closer look at ads: Rebuttals shed light on accusations before Supreme Court vote
Mar. 30--MADISON -- Voters are being bombarded with ads in the run-up to Tuesday's state Supreme Court race, many of them leveling accusations that are tough for viewers to sort out. The Brennan Center for Justice estimated last week that more than 6,500 ads had been aired -- and that there will be thousands more by the time the polls close Tuesday. Many of the ads are funded by special-interest ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 30, 2008
Officials predict low voter turnout Tuesday: Supreme Court attack ads not expected to raise participation
Mar. 31--MADISON -- Those nonstop TV and radio ads praising and condemning candidates in Tuesday's Supreme Court election cost millions of dollars, but they likely won't dramatically raise voter turnout. Kevin J. Kennedy, director of the state Government Accountability Board, says 20% of eligible voters turned out in the spring election in 2007 -- the first time the campaigns of both Supreme ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 31, 2008
Supreme Court race important, nasty
Mar. 30--The race for Wisconsin Supreme Court has been dubbed one of the most important in recent memory -- and one of the most ugly and expensive. More than $2 million has been spent on TV ads, some of which have sparked strong reactions among the legal community and the public. At stake, many observers believe, is the ideological bent of the state 's highest court, which is the final arbiter ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 30, 2008
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Jim Stingl column: Let your fingers do the voting, not dialing
Mar. 30--Excuse me for a second while I call Louis Butler and ask him to deliver justice, not loopholes. Then I have to ring up Michael Gableman and tell him we need higher ethical standards for our judges. Hmm, I'm wondering if I'm the only dork who actually wrote down the phone numbers in those incessant TV ads and called the candidates for the Wisconsin Supreme Court because the voiceover ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 30, 2008
Guardian keeping a watchful eye: Attorney oversees people who have been accused of crimes and ruled incompetent.
Mar. 30--More than $4 million a year is spent taking care of accused criminals who are incompetent for prosecution because of mental retardation. A state public guardian has 30 people in her custody who have been charged with crimes such as murder, rape, child sexual abuse, kidnapping and assault. The average annual cost is $139,000 each to house, supervise and serve in various programs for ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 30, 2008
Immigration back on agenda: Who's responsible for illegal workers still under debate
Mar. 30--Immigration issues return to the legislative agenda Wednesday when a House-Senate conference committee meets for the first time in three weeks to try to resolve differences in their bills. The main issue in contention is still whether individual employers should be held accountable for hiring illegal immigrants. The Senate version of the bill requires all employers to use a federal ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 30, 2008
Two former clients sue attorney over his conduct in mold case
Mar. 31--A Tucson attorney who was ordered to pay $750,000 in sanctions last fall for his handling of a civil lawsuit involving mold is now being sued by two of his former clients. Lee Foulkes and his wife, Antonieta Foulkes, and more than 100 other Tucson residents hired Harold Hyams six years ago to file a lawsuit against Wasatch Property Management, Creekside Place Holdings and Randy and Dell ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 31, 2008
State entities are unaffected by new tort law: Paves way for suit in deaths of Uhl sisters
Mar. 30--A 2006 Illinois Supreme Court decision has led judges across the state to dismiss negligence lawsuits filed against cities and counties. But the ruling has not affected lawsuits against state government agencies, such as the Illinois State Police, which still remain liable for "willful and wanton acts" of its officers, according to attorneys and lawmakers.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 30, 2008
Embezzlement lawsuit expenses may be recouped: Hampshire plans for move into new judicial center
Mar. 30--ROMNEY -- The chairman of the Hampshire County Building Commission wants to see not only restitution for the embezzlement of more than $100,000 from the county building fund by the previous chairman, but payment of the costs associated with the investigation and legal action. Walt Davis, chairman of the building commission, made his quarterly report to County Commissioners Don Cookman, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 30, 2008
Things far from sunny in 'pearl of Sunshine Coast'
B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell says he had no idea the province's top cop has been... You wouldn't expect an idyllic seaside town, where the weekly paper headlines a contented couple planting snowdrops, to be in the crossfire of controversy. And yet there is a war of words going on between the city and the good folks of Powell River (population 12,957). As with most like-minded wars, who's right ...
The Province - Mar 31, 2008
Students facing lawsuit threats for downloading music get help
Students facing lawsuit threats for downloading music get help 03/30/08 09:50:20 Related Content - All Job Categories - Accounting Admin & Clerical 1 Banking1 Biotech1 Broadcast - Journalism1 Development Construction Consultant Design Distribution - Shipping Education Engineering Entry Level Executive Facilities Finance General General Labor Government Health Care Hotel - Hospitality Human ...
Fresno Bee - Mar 30, 2008
Former Sacramento County prosecutor faces trial over alleged misconduct
Mar. 31--The ghost of a brutal 26-year-old murder has come back to haunt Christopher "Kit" Cleland, for many years one of Sacramento County's top prosecutors. Cleland is to go on trial Tuesday in the State Bar Court in San Francisco on misconduct charges stemming from his prosecution of Gloria Marie Killian, found guilty by a jury in 1986 of first-degree murder and other crimes.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 31, 2008
Shooting survivors to take stand in Bell case
Mar. 31--Prosecutors in the Sean Bell trial expect to wrap up their case with a dramatic flourish today by calling to the witness stand the two men who survived the 50-shot fusillade by police. Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman -- prosecutors haven't said which will take the stand first -- will testify about the night of Nov. 25, 2006, when they were shot numerous times while with Bell in his ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 31, 2008
Peckerwood Hill: An artifact of the death penalty
Mar. 31--HUNTSVILLE -- A shroud of low, ashen mist cuts a swath across Peckerwood Hill on a corpse-cold day in Texas. No matter. The Rev. Carroll Pickett knows the spot he seeks. The ground is spongy with night rain, sunken in some places where cheap pine-box coffins have rotted and collapsed, so he walks respectfully among the dead. A plastic grocery sack flutters in the highest branches of a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 31, 2008
THE INVINCIBLE MAN
Mar. 30--Scruggs 'never thought he could be touched and he got touched' Former state Supreme Court Justice Chuck McRae Dickie Scruggs blinked back tears as he rushed from the federal courthouse in downtown Jackson. He had just testified against a fellow attorney who was like a brother, Paul Minor. Scruggs and Minor had grown close as they built multi-million dollar law practices on the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 30, 2008
Birth certificate option dies in committee
Mar. 31--When Doreen Busca of Hamden went into labor and gave birth March 13, 2007, eight days short of full term, her daughter was stillborn. Doreen and Sean Busca received a death certificate for Delaney Caitlin Busca and buried her in St. Mary's Cemetery. But the lack of a birth certificate has left a hole in their hearts. "I had a completely healthy pregnancy and over the weekend I didn't ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 31, 2008
Attorney Roger Cutler, who engineered controversial legal moves in Salt Lake City, set to call it quits
WEST JORDAN - City Attorney Roger Cutler toted his experience with big-city scandals and capital politics to this sprawling west-side suburb in 2003. As Salt Lake City's top lawyer for three decades, Cutler braved the failed 'Citygate' cabal that spurred a form-of-government change in 1980, preserved prayers in city-council meetings in 1993, crafted the contentious 1999 sale of a chunk of Main ...
Salt Lake Tribune - Mar 30, 2008
Transportation fixes urged: Chamber chairman says Va.'s business reputation at stake
Mar. 30--TYSONS CORNER Virginia's starts and stops as it tries and fails to fix its transportation problems has been a frustrating journey for the state's residents. Mike Daniels has seen their annoyance firsthand for years as a leader in the Northern Virginia technology and defense industries and now from his perspective as 2008 chairman of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 30, 2008
Kaine puts end to driver fees: Kaine signs bill to repeal abuser fees
Mar. 28--RICHMOND -- The unpopular abusive-driving fees are no more. Gov. Tim Kaine yesterday signed two bills that repeal the fees, and because the bills had an emergency clause, the repeal goes into effect immediately. "After six months of implementation, it was clear that the fees did not improve the safety of Virginia highways," Kaine said in a statement.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 28, 2008
U.S. to propose CO2 rules this spring
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration, which has resisted regulating carbon dioxide emissions, this spring will propose rules that could affect everything from vehicles to power plants and oil refineries, the top U.S. environmental official told Congress on Thursday. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson said the agency will issue proposed rules 'later this ...
Reuters - Mar 28, 2008
Abu-Jamal's conviction upheld, death sentence questioned
Mar. 28--COLLEGE KIDS march with his face on placards, chanting a mantra that has been oft-repeated throughout the world: "Free Mumia!" Celebrities use their clout to demand his freedom and to raise money for his legal defense. Activists strive to make the name Mumia synonymous with racism in the criminal-justice system. But others insist that Mumia Abu-Jamal is not the martyr supporters have ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 28, 2008
Scalia criticizes news media
WASHINGTONJustice Antonin Scalia took the news media to task Thursday for some recent coverage of the Supreme Court. At a conference of attorneys in Washington, Scalia said news organizations often fail to focus on the text of the laws the court interprets, citing accounts of last month's 8-1 decision that made it harder for consumers to sue makers of federally approved medical devices.
Monterey Herald - Mar 27, 2008
Attorney's law license suspended over baseball
Mar. 27--ST. CHARLES COUNTY -- The Missouri Supreme Court has suspended for one year the law license of a St. Charles County lawyer accused of having a client get a Terry Bradshaw-autographed baseball for a prosecutor. The lawyer, David A. Dalton II, already had signed an agreement with the U.S. attorney's office not to practice law for one year beginning June 25, 2007.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 27, 2008
'Govt blocking right to know'
Mar. 27--NEW DELHI -- India's information watchdog has said the government is coming the way your right to know. Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah said the old mindset should be changed for effective implementation of the Right to Information Act. Habibullah has said the judiciary, barring those of the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court, has been slow in implementing the Act ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 27, 2008
Ads keep hammering in court race: New spots, one from state teachers union, join Butler-Gableman fight
Mar. 27--MADISON -- A slew of tough ads were unleashed this week in a state Supreme Court race observers are calling the most contentious and bitter in state history. The launch of five TV ads and one radio ad also introduced a new player to the fray: the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teachers union. Some court observers decried the WEAC ad, which attacked Burnett ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 27, 2008
DWI ruling expected to spare some from prison
Mar. 27--Three strikes in drunken driving cases and you go to prison. Or not. A Missouri Supreme Court ruling over a sloppy revision of the drunken driving law a decade ago seems sure to spare some offenders from prison, and to shorten prospective jail terms for others. It even caused the St. Charles County prosecutor to consider reducing a felony murder charge.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 27, 2008
EDITORIAL: Executive privilege
Mar. 27--ADIVIDED Supreme Court is of two minds about executive privilege but the majority has upheld the accepted fundamentals. The ruling broke no new ground but it spelled out in clearer terms the limits of congressional inquiry. It was a reassurance to the President and the members of the Cabinet that executive privilege, as defined by the Court, enjoys protection of the law.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 27, 2008
EDITORIAL: Medellin v. Texas: Supreme Court ruling in Houston murder case puts at risk Americans' rights abroad.
Mar. 27--The U.S. Constitution states that "all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby ... " However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that its decisions need not be governed by the plain meaning of the Founders' words. In a case involving a Mexican national on ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 27, 2008
Homeowner who sues builder finds herself battling Indian tribe
Mar. 27--When Rita Carls of El Dorado Hills sued her homebuilder for shoddy construction, she never imagined she'd be in a head-to-head battle with an Indian tribe over sovereign immunity. Even more bewildering to Carls, now 69, and her family: Her home was built on non-tribal land, purchased from a non-tribal business, and the tribe she's fighting in court is located hundreds of miles away in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 27, 2008
North Dakota Supreme Court Slashes Traffic Ticket Profiteering
North Dakota Supreme Court ruling smacks down cities attempting to boost revenue with excessive ticket fines. North Dakota motorists could receive millions in refunds from illegally imposed traffic fines following a ruling Monday from the North Dakota Supreme Court. The justices were unanimous in denying that municipalities had the legal authority to set traffic ticket fines at a level exceeding ...
TheNewspaper.com - Mar 27, 2008
Supreme Court won't hear case that would have required higher retiree benefits
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a decision made by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia in AARP vs. EEOC that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC) rule permitting employers to coordinate their health benefits for retirees with Medicare was 'legal and reasonable.' The Appeals Court said that 'over time, it will likely benefit all retirees,' the LA Times reports. ...
AccountingWEB - Mar 27, 2008
Ex-trooper tries whistleblower suit again in Ellerby case
Mar. 28--A former trooper who was a key witness in a family's lawsuit against the Pennsylvania State Police has petitioned to reinstate his whistleblower suit against the agency. Retired Sgt. James Baranowski, the incident commander following the fatal 2002 shooting of Michael Ellerbe, 12, of Uniontown, claims he was told to mind his own business and ultimately forced out of the agency after he ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 28, 2008
Hannaford data breach prompts local lawsuit
Mar. 28--ALBANY -- A lawsuit seeking class-action status has been filed in U.S. District Court in Albany against Hannaford Bros. Co. in the wake of the data security breach that exposed 4.2 million credit and debit card numbers. At least 1,800 cases of fraud have been reported, according to the Maine-based supermarket chain. The suit was filed Wednesday on behalf of Todd Stevens, identified only ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 28, 2008
Court will hear sex case: Justices to consider whether it's a crime if child 'victim' isn't real
Mar. 28--By Phil Trexler Beacon Journal staff writer The Ohio Supreme Courtagreed Wednesday to hear the case of a Rittman man whose prostitution case involving a mythical 11-year-old girl was overturned last year. William Bartrum, 41, was convicted in 2006 of compelling prostitution after he agreed to pay $500 to have sex with a woman and her 11-year-old daughter, neither of whom really existed. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 28, 2008
Coal plant critics sue: Cliffside will violate pollution limits, environmental groups say in their legal challenge
Mar. 28--Critics of Duke Energy's planned coal-burning power plant near Charlotte filed a legal challenge Thursday seeking to overturn the state environmental permit for the facility. Five environmental organizations contend that the permit issued by the Division of Air Quality in January would allow the Cliffside plant to exceed pollution limits set by state and federal clean air laws.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 28, 2008
Consumers suffer as mortgage default rates hit record high
Mortgage defaults in Victoria reached record levels in the first two months of this year, and they are not likely to improve any time soon. According to real estate experts, the same trends are likely to occur elsewhere, particularly in the so-called 'aspirational' suburbs of greater Sydney. A record number of Victorians lost their homes in January and February this year due to higher interest ...
Huliq.com - Mar 27, 2008
Clinic owners admit role in steroids ring: Three plead guilty, agree to testify against owners of Signature Pharmacy
Mar. 28--ALBANY -- Three operators of a South Florida wellness clinic whose vast client list for performance-enhancing drugs included many top professional sports figures pleaded guilty to criminal charges Thursday and agreed to cooperate in the ongoing Albany-based probe. The pleas brought the amount of money seized or forfeited by 14 defendants convicted in the case to almost $1 million, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 28, 2008
George's law license isn't revoked
Court allows convicted former state senator George to seek reinstatement Madison - The state Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to revoke the law license of former state Sen. Gary R. George (D-Milwaukee), allowing the convicted felon instead to seek reinstatement from a 51-month suspension in June. OIC Troubles Archived Coverage Archive: Previous coverage of troubles at the Opportunities ...
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Mar 27, 2008
Killer could face death: Man's request for a new trial could subject him to the death penalty again.
Mar. 28--Charles Malloy is well aware of the life-or-death consequences, his attorney said Thursday. Malloy sits in prison waiting to learn if York County Common Pleas Court Judge John S. Kennedy will grant him a new trial. A new trial for the 1996 kidnapping and killing of 18-year-old Arthur Irick could subject Malloy, now 32, to a death-penalty prosecution again.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 28, 2008
DSS shooter to request swift execution; Hill will ask S.C. high court to expedite his sentence on Tuesday
Mar. 28--David Mark Hill will ask that he be executed as soon as possible at a hearing scheduled for Tuesday morning. The South Carolina Supreme Court will hear arguments from Hill who has requested the withdrawal of his petition for post conviction relief and to waive his right to further appeals. The specific issues at hand are whether Hill is competent to make these requests and be executed ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 28, 2008
Ex-Dallas death row inmate gets life in prison in plea deal: Prosecutors end pursuit of death penalty in 1991 case
Mar. 28--A man whose death sentence was overturned last year by the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to life in prison Thursday in exchange for Dallas County prosecutors not seeking to execute him. The plea bargain likely means LaRoyce Smith will die in prison. District Attorney Craig Watkins had said as recently as 11 months ago that he would seek the death penalty against Mr.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 28, 2008
Pro-Vouchers Bill Clears Panel
Mar. 27--TALLAHASSEE -- The first of two proposals aimed at overriding a court decision against school vouchers is headed for the November ballot, over objections from those who likened the measure to a Pandora's box of legal problems. The proposal that narrowly passed the state Taxation and Budget Reform Commission on Wednesday would repeal a circa-1885 provision in the state constitution that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 27, 2008
Elderly fear home loss in loan scheme
For Charles and Patricia Simmons, the offer seemed like a boon as they coped with extra medical costs: lower monthly payments on their $550,000 Inglewood home, reduced interest rates and $25,000 in cash. Instead, the couple ended up with no cash, a $5,600 monthly mortgage payment, deeper debt, much of their savings lost - and facing the potential loss of their longtime home.
Los Angeles Daily News - Mar 27, 2008
Pranks in office can fall flat
There's no doubt that when employees get along and have some fun at work, more work actually gets done. But should that fun include pulling pranks? With April Fool's Day just around the corner, here are some things to consider. According to a report by executive job site TheLadders.co.uk, playing a prank on a colleague on this day can 'encourage creativity and teamwork.' Fun-loving employees ...
Los Angeles Daily News - Mar 27, 2008
Safety committee OKs gun-control legislation
Mar. 28--Kervin Henry was waiting at a bus stop on his way home to Germantown in October when three men walked up, brandished a pistol and demanded his money. Henry had only a Transpass. "They said: 'Man, just let him have it,' " Henry, 23, recalled yesterday, leaning on a crutch and explaining how one of the men shot him in the right knee. That shooting landed Henry in a different sort of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 28, 2008
Forever Guantnamo
Pentagon announced that charges were being filed against six men in connection with the September 11 attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the attacks and one of al-Qaeda's most senior members, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a leader of the Hamburg cell that included several of the September 11 pilots. It has taken nearly seven years for these men to be indictedwhile more than ...
New York Review of Books - Mar 27, 2008
Archer Daniels goes after railroads
Mar. 27--Agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midland Co. has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit in Minneapolis, accusing the five largest U.S. railroads of a price-fixing conspiracy. ADM joins a growing chorus of companies that have filed such claims against the railroads since last year. Pretrial discovery is being handled by the U.S. District Court in Washington.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 27, 2008
Citi settles Enron suit for $1.66B
NEW YORK Citigroup Inc. agreed Wednesday to pay $1.66 billion to creditors of Enron Corp. who lost money when the energy trader collapsed in 2001. Citigroup was the last remaining defendant in what was known as the 'Mega Claims' lawsuit, a bankruptcy suit filed in 2003 against 11 banks and brokerages. The filer, called Enron Creditors Recovery Corp., alleges that with the help of banks like ...
Augusta Chronicle - Mar 26, 2008
Cangene's anti-hepatitis B product granted orphan-drug exclusive approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Cangene Corporation today announces that its HepaGam B(TM) (Hepatitis B Immune Globulin Intravenous (Human)), has received orphan-drug exclusive approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration ('FDA') for the prevention of hepatitis B recurrence following liver transplantation in hepatitis B surface antigen ('HbsAG')-positive liver transplant patients.
Canada NewsWire - Mar 26, 2008
ACLU sues Cave Creek over day laborer law: Ordinance prohibits asking drivers for work, money in town
Mar. 26--To the vice mayor of Cave Creek, a law he helped create last year to rid his town of day laborers was a "desperate" move to "diffuse a situation," he said Tuesday. Now, that desperate move is in the cross hairs of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a federal lawsuit earlier in the day calling the town ordinance a violation of the First Amendment.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 26, 2008
EDITORIAL: ACLU lawsuit on graduation rates may be hitting the wrong target
Mar. 26--ISSUE: ACLU files suit over high school graduation rates in Palm Beach County. No matter what formula you use, Palm Beach County's graduation rates are too low. Even the school district's brass can agree with that, and with the effort to call attention and bring relief to a pervasive problem afflicting not just Palm Beach County but school districts across the state and nation.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 26, 2008
Hollywood can use eminent domain on downtown property, court rules
Mar. 26--A state appeals court on Wednesday ruled the city of Hollywood can take a family's downtown property and give it to a private developer. In a 2-1 decision, the Fourth District Court of Appeal reversed a 2006 ruling by Broward Circuit Judge Ronald J. Rothschild in favor of the Mach family. The family has owned a 2,900-square-foot building on Harrison Street for decades.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 26, 2008
In Obama's New Message, Some Foes See Old Liberalism
Sen. Barack Obama offers himself as a post-partisan uniter who will solve the country's problems by reaching across the aisle and beyond the framework of liberal and conservative labels he rejects as useless and outdated. But as Obama heads into the final presidential primaries, Sen. John McCain and other Republicans have already started to brand him a standard-order left-winger, 'a ...
Washington Post - Mar 26, 2008
Guam resort to pay $243K to settle harassment case
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency announced Tuesday. In a rare federal employment case in Guam, the EEOC had charged that Leo Palace Resort subjected three female employees to a sexually harassing work environment and unlawfully retaliated against them for complaining about it.In its 2006 lawsuit, the EEOC charged that three women employees at Leo Palace Resort were ...
Saipan Tribune - Mar 26, 2008
State airline passenger bill of rights struck down
A federal appeals court Tuesday struck down a New York State law requiring airlines to provide food, water, working toilet facilities and fresh air to passengers stuck on the ground for more than three hours. The law, signed by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer, was supported by consumer groups angered by lengthy delays that they said trapped passengers on airplanes for hours, sometimes without food or ...
Chicago Tribune - Mar 26, 2008
Clintons to head back to North Carolina
Mar. 26--The Clintons are coming North Carolina this week. Today, Sen. Hillary Clinton will visit Raleigh, Fayetteville and Winston-Salem. The Winston-Salem event will be held at the Forsyth Technical Community College gymnasium at 1300 Bolton St. The event is free and no ticket are required, according the Clinton campaign. On Friday, former President Bill Clinton will likely pass through ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 26, 2008
'Govt blocking right to know'
Mar. 27--NEW DELHI -- India's information watchdog has said the government is coming the way your right to know. Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah said the old mindset should be changed for effective implementation of the Right to Information Act. Habibullah has said the judiciary, barring those of the Supreme Court and the Delhi High Court, has been slow in implementing the Act ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 27, 2008
4 on short-list to head Sandiganbayan
Mar. 27--FOUR magistrates are contending to become presiding justice of the Sandiganbayan, the only vacancy in the country's anti-graft court. The Judicial and Bar Council has submitted to President Gloria Arroyo the names of Acting Presiding Justice Edilberto Sandoval, Justices Cristina Cortez-Estrada, Francisco Villaruz and Diosdado Peralta. The position of presiding justice is vital as he or ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 27, 2008
Governments falling short defending press freedom
A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad. -- Albert Camus - - - The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees freedom of conscience and religion, of peaceful assembly and association, and of thought, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press. Because the media are an important means of ...
Vancouver Sun - Mar 26, 2008
Two N.Y. tower cranes shut down for safety violations
NEW YORK _ Two tower cranes, including one at a SoHo project where a worker died in January, have been shut down for safety violations following a deadly crane collapse in Midtown earlier this month. As part of an emergency safety sweep of 30 tower cranes citywide, the Buildings Department found violations at three of 12 cranes inspected as of Tuesday. All but one of the cranes inspected were in ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 26, 2008
EDITORIAL: Executive privilege
Mar. 27--ADIVIDED Supreme Court is of two minds about executive privilege but the majority has upheld the accepted fundamentals. The ruling broke no new ground but it spelled out in clearer terms the limits of congressional inquiry. It was a reassurance to the President and the members of the Cabinet that executive privilege, as defined by the Court, enjoys protection of the law.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 27, 2008
Palace backs reviving 'Garci': Malaca?ang to support Melo's initiatives to clean up Comelec
Mar. 27--Malacanang said it will back reopening of the "Hello, Garci" controversy if such support will help reform the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and put an end to the killings of officials of the poll agency. "Comelec is a separate constitutional body, and we respect the desire of the newly appointed chairman to do whatever he wants in order to reform the [commission]," Executive ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 27, 2008
Flight attendant testifies that Tyoka Jackson hurt him
Mar. 26--A male flight attendant told a jury in a lawsuit Tuesday that former Rams defensive lineman Tyoka Jackson launched him off his feet and caused serious harm in a confrontation aboard a Memphis-to-St. Louis flight. Jackson is expected to tell his side today in the trial of a lawsuit filed by Gary Rihn and his wife, seeking damages of $1.2 million. Rihn testified that Jackson's push on a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 26, 2008
Starbucks tips case gives hope to dealers
By Our Partners at the Las Vegas Sun LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- Serving coffee is a lot different from dealing cards. But not to casino dealers in Las Vegas, who are cheering a landmark ruling last week by a California court against a tip-sharing policy at Starbucks they hope will build public support for a similar lawsuit filed by dealers at Wynn Las Vegas. Despite the similarities between the two ...
Casino City Times - Mar 26, 2008
Rialto presses case for U.S. help with water pollution
Mar. 26--RIALTO -- The quest to clean up polluted water from the Rialto-Colton Groundwater Basin has been a seven-year study in bureaucratic frustration, amplified by costly water purification measures and legal battles, city officials say. On Tuesday, they added preferential treatment to the list of complaints. Rialto is appealing to the U.S Environmental Protection Agency for help addressing ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 26, 2008
Jubilant crowds greet former Pakistani chief justice
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan _ One man held pictures of his children and court documents about the case of his murdered wife. He wanted justice. Others held up posters of former Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry and shouted his name. Lawyers in black suits, black ties and crisp white shirts held bags of rose petals. On Monday night, for the first time since Chaudhry and his family were placed ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
Detroit mayor, aide charged with perjury, misconduct and obstruction
DETROIT _ Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and former chief of staff Christine Beatty were charged Monday in a 12-count indictment with perjury, obstruction of justice, misconduct in office and conspiracy because of their conduct in last year's police whistle-blower trial, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced. Kilpatrick is charged with eight felonies and Beatty with seven.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
Court case over legal fees to be public, judge rules
Mar. 25--An upcoming trial that pits a lawyer against his former firm in a nasty dispute over fees will remain open to the public despite the firm's objections, Hennepin County District Judge Denise Reilly ruled Monday. Reilly's order was prompted by the Star Tribune's request to intervene on the public's behalf. She also agreed to reevaluate whether documents in the case should remain secret. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 25, 2008
Trump files lawsuits over Jones Beach project
Mar. 25--Donald Trump went on the offensive yesterday for his Jones Beach project, suing the state and accusing officials of sabotaging the project when a new parks chief took office last year. Earlier this month, Trump had offered to redesign his Trump on the Ocean restaurant and catering hall so it would have no basement, which the state has refused to approve twice in the past four months. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 25, 2008
Farmers Branch says it asked apartments about tenants' legal residency: Official calls form about legal residency an error; attorney wants sanctions
Mar. 25--Farmers Branch acknowledged Monday that the city asked 11 apartment complexes to check whether prospective tenants were in the country legally, even though a federal judge has blocked enforcement of the city's ban on rentals to illegal immigrants. City Manager Gary Greer called the situation, involving an annual application for a rental license, inadvertent and an "unfortunate error." ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 25, 2008
Gilani elected Pak Prime Minister
Mar. 25--LAHORE -- Pakistan Peoples Party leader Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani was elected Pakistan's 25th Prime Minister on Monday, polling over 2/3rd votes in the 342-member National Assembly amid cries of "Go Musharraf, Go Musharraf" and "Zinda hai Bhutto zinda hai." Of the votes polled, Gilani got 264 against 42 of Opposition PML-Q nominee and former Punjab Chief Minister Pervez Illahi.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 25, 2008
Money keeps flowing in Supreme Court race: Butler, Gableman have raised almost $1 million
Mar. 25--MADISON -- Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler continued to outpace his challenger in the fund-raising race, with $228,328 cash on hand -- nearly twice as much as Burnett County Circuit Judge Michael Gableman had in his campaign account. Gableman reported to the state Government Accountability Board that he had $120,738 cash on hand heading into the April 1 election -- a race in which ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 25, 2008
Jailhouse lawyer pays price for being heard by Supreme Court
WASHINGTON _ Stanford Law School professor Jeffrey L. Fisher and South Carolina felon Michael R. Ray are unlikely partners in a criminal-sentencing case that the Supreme Court heard Monday. Working behind bars, Ray wrote a brief that was good enough to persuade the high court to consider an appeal by fellow prisoner Keith Lavon Burgess. Few attorneys get that far.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
EDITORIAL: Gableman's ad shows he is unfit for the Supreme Court
Mar. 25--We support incumbent Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler over his opponent, Burnett County Circuit Court Judge Michael Gableman, based on his experience and the way he responds to questions with specific detail and thoughtfulness. But there is, unfortunately, another reason to support Butler over Gableman: The grossly distorted ad that Gable-man's campaign ran about Butler's role in a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 25, 2008
Owner gets back hidden cash stash: Judge rules money found in home by handyman needs to be returned to resident
Mar. 25--SCHENECTADY -- A large trash bag of cash taken from the basement of a Stockade home by a handyman 4 years ago will finally be returned to its owner under a recent state Supreme Court ruling. State Supreme Court Justice Vincent J. Reilly Jr. ruled in a written decision dated March 17 that the $177,700 in question does belong to Michael Casadei, owner of the home at 241 Union St.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 25, 2008
'Multiple millions' at stake for state care centers
Mar. 24--The Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals has granted class action status to a lawsuit that claims Oklahoma nursing home owners are owed millions of dollars because Medicaid reimbursement rates have failed to cover operating costs. "Multiple millions of dollars" and perhaps even "hundreds of millions of dollars" are at stake, according to attorneys and a witness involved in the lawsuit.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
'At the Death House Door' chronicles capital punishment
Mar. 24--Ninety-five inmates in Texas' Huntsville prison spent their final day with the Rev. Carroll Pickett as they ate their final meals, said goodbye to their families, and uttered their last words before being put to death by lethal injection at midnight. "At the Death House Door," which premiered on March 9 at Austin's South by Southwest film festival, revisits the 15 years that Pickett ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
Ruling an assault on home-schooling
I'm not sure how the Free State Project is going in New Hampshire, but the Police State Project appears to be advancing rapidly here in California. The latest installment: A state court of appeal has basically outlawed home-schooling. As the Los Angeles Times reported, "Parents who lack teaching credentials cannot educate their children at home, according to a state appellate court ruling that ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
Last chance for bills on videotaped questioning, photo lineups by police
Mar. 24--Legislators on the Judiciary Committee today will consider bills that would require police to videotape interrogations and change the way officers conduct photo lineups. Versions of the two bills have failed for half a dozen years, in part because of opposition from law enforcement. But lawmakers hope they can pass a compromise version of each bill, and that, if passed, the changes ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
OPINION: Low turnout expected in California's June primary
Mar. 24--One consequence of the state's first February presidential primary election -- unintended, perhaps, but a consequence nevertheless -- will almost certainly be an extraordinarily low voter turnout for the June 3 regular primary. Primary elections generally see subpar turnouts, in part because independents have almost no motivation to vote. But June's election will be especially devoid of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
State struggles on where to draw the line: Plan to protect Lake Michigan water will leave some communities out
Mar. 24--Part two of a two part series Mary Lazich is familiar with the water crisis in Atlanta, and she says Wisconsin could learn from Georgia's mistakes. "That is just a perfect, perfect example of what can happen here," said the Republican state senator from New Berlin. The drought-plagued and fast-growing Atlanta region has come perilously close to draining the water supply for many of its ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
Creighton is teaching new ways to resolve conflict
Mar. 24--Matt Butler knew something had to change when he got sued by a passenger who said she bruised her tailbone when she sat on a seat belt in a taxi. Now Butler, former owner of Happy Cab and Hunt Transportation in Omaha, former candidate for lieutenant governor and a self-proclaimed failure at retiring to Florida, is one of the first holders of a master's degree in mediation from Creighton ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
Ruling in shooting of PHA cop sparks ire
Mar. 25--A judge yesterday dismissed an attempted-murder charge in the shooting of a Philadelphia Housing Authority police officer last month, prompting outrage among police and prosecutors. "Give him another m-----ing rifle. He can just walk. That's just madness," one PHA police officer, who did not want to give his name, said right after yesterday's preliminary hearing.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 25, 2008
Sde Boaz residents live in defiance of road map' at illegal West Bank outpost
SDE BOAZ, West Bank _ There's not much to speak of on this rocky hillside with panoramic views of Jerusalem. A small team of bored Israeli soldiers mans a drab military guard tower that looms over a dozen mobile homes and battered shipping containers. Four squat, cement homes perch on the edge of terraced valleys filled with vineyards and olive groves. The two dozen young parents, teachers, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
All four convicts get life sentence
Mar. 25--NEW DELHI -- Impressed by RK Sharma's "contribution to the society as an IPS", a city court on Monday spared him the gallows and sentenced him to life imprisonment in the Shivani Bhatnagar murder case. The court gave the same sentence to three other convicts Pradeep, Shri Bhagwan and Satya Prakash. Additional Sessions Judge RK Shastri, who discussed Sharma's "distinguished services" to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 25, 2008
More time needed to probe broadband deal: Justice department panel fails to meet deadline to finish investigation of botched deal
Mar. 25--A Department of Justice panel tasked to conduct a fact-finding probe on the allegations of bribery and corruption in the botched P330-million national broadband deal has asked for 30-day extension to complete its job, after it failed to meet its deadline. Justice Undersecretary Ernesto Pineda, head of the five-man fact-finding team, explained that they needed more time to dissect the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 25, 2008
Abigail's death reduces damages, experts say
Mar. 25--The death of 6-year-old Abigail Taylor of complications from a wading pool accident last summer means the maker of the pool and the club where she was injured likely will pay less in damages. The Edina girl's death last week changes the family's lawsuit from a personal injury case to a wrongful death case, and moves damages from the possible blockbuster range down to the mere millions, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 25, 2008
Sports complex trial back in session: Experts weigh in on whether proposed UC Berkeley facility violates state law
Mar. 24--HAYWARD -- The two sides battling about whether UC Berkeley can build a $125 million sports training center near the Hayward fault were back in court Thursday -- 15 months after lawsuits to stop the project were filed. University officials say the legal wrangling has already increased the project cost by at least $10 million, to about $135 million.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
EDITORIAL: Do the right thing to fend off the courts
Mar. 24--A new lawsuit in federal court is yet another example of trying to get the courts to force Alabama to correct injustices when its own lawmakers won't. Public school students in Lawrence and Sumter counties are suing, saying that property taxes do not bring in enough money for elementary schools and high schools. This shortfall hurts black students more than others, according to the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
Erotic City's owners sue over Jackson County ordinance
Mar. 25--Owners of an adult entertainment business in Jackson County have filed a federal lawsuit to overturn a new county ordinance that regulates the industry. The lawsuit by Erotic City, 8401 E. Truman Road in Blue Summit, says the ordinance violates free speech and other provisions of the U.S. Constitution. The suit asks the court to issue a permanent injunction to keep the county from ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 25, 2008
Tax group behind suit questioning Wyandotte County casino proposals
Mar. 25--A Topeka-based taxpayer group is behind a lawsuit filed Monday alleging that three casino projects proposed for Wyandotte County violate a ban on public financing. The lawsuit filed in Shawnee County District Court names the Kansas Lottery, the Kansas Lottery Commission, the Lottery Gaming Facility Review Board and the Kansas Racing and Gaming Commission as defendants.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 25, 2008
Missouri Supreme Court ruling gives DWI offenders a break
Mar. 23--For decades, Missouri lawmakers regularly tweaked drunken-driving laws to toughen them. But along the way, they neglected to cut an old paragraph that did the opposite. As a result, a recent Missouri Supreme Court ruling now allows many repeat drunken drivers to avoid felony charges, and it probably will allow others to get out of prison. In Jackson County alone, prosecutors had about ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
Records rules may be put off: The state's Supreme Court wants input on public records.
Mar. 23--OKLAHOMA CITY -- Feeling the heat over its new rules to redact public records, the Oklahoma Supreme Court may put off implementing the new rules or it may create a task force to study them further, an official said. Michael Evans, court administrator for the state Supreme Court, said the court is receiving public input on its decision to restrict the full use of Social Security numbers, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
'Issue ads' playing big role in race for Wisconsin Supreme Court
Mar. 23--Much of the information about the Wisconsin Supreme Court race so far has come not from the two candidates but from special interest groups. Incumbent Justice Louis Butler of Milwaukee has been targeted by conservative groups. Burnett County Circuit Court Judge Michael Gableman has been under fire from liberal groups. The candidates themselves are expected to raise and spend a few ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
EDITORIAL: Let public know about findings of police misconduct
Mar. 23--Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith is profusely apologetic. She has accepted responsibility, on behalf of her department, for the tragic accident that led to the deaths of two bicyclists and serious injury of a third earlier this month. The California Highway Patrol is investigating the traffic accident, in which a deputy sheriff drove his patrol car across the yellow line to hit ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
EDITORIAL: Life without parole: Our view: It's an inappropriate sentence for juveniles
Mar. 23--At 35, Marcus Tunstall has spent more than half his life in prison. It's unlikely he'll ever get out unless a governor intervenes or the law changes. That's because Mr. Tunstall is serving life without parole for a crime he committed while a minor. He is among 15 such men who entered Maryland's prison system under this unforgiving term. Arrested as adolescents, they were too young to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
Opening a conversation on race in Western New York: FOCUS: RACE IN AMERICA
Mar. 23--When Sen. Barack Obama gave his speech on race Tuesday in Philadelphia, he broached a subject few Americans would dare address except, maybe, with close friends. Obama talked about anger in the black community and its roots, but also how that anger can be dangerously counterproductive. He spoke of resentment among whites and how it is real and sometimes legitimate.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
Ancient legal concept may affect use of Delta water: Under Roman and English common law, resources also belong to future generations
Mar. 23--A powerful state agency is coming under increasing pressure to apply an ancient, obscure and potent legal concept to sort out the state's untenable water mess and save the Delta's dying ecosystem for future generations. The public trust doctrine, which has roots in the Roman Empire, could lead to sweeping revisions in the amount of water that may be taken from the Delta.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
1912 Presidential Election Had A Tough Third-Party Candidate
Mar. 23--This is the fifth in a five-part series on lesser-known contentious presidential elections in American history. America has seen its share of third-party presidential candidates, from Strom Thurman and George Wallace to H. Ross Perot and Ralph Nader. But the 1912 election featured the most formidable third-party candidate of all: former President Theodore Roosevelt of New York. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
No urgency this time on executions
Mar. 24--LINCOLN -- The Nebraska Supreme Court last month decided to pull the plug on the electric chair. This week, the Legislature will consider whether to close the execution chamber for good. Lawmakers on Tuesday will begin debating Legislative Bill 1063, which would abolish the death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life in prison without parole.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
Options running dry: With thirsty neighbors, the Great Lakes region can learn from Atlanta's desperate attempts to find a new supply of drinking water
Mar. 23--ATLANTA -- People hoping to protect the Great Lakes from becoming a Paul Bunyan-sized water cooler for an increasingly thirsty world like to invoke frightening language. They say we'd better act fast to build a legal dike around the world's biggest freshwater system, because wars in the coming decades won't be fought over oil. They will be fought over water.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
State struggles on where to draw the line: Plan to protect Lake Michigan water will leave some communities out
Mar. 24--Part two of a two part series Mary Lazich is familiar with the water crisis in Atlanta, and she says Wisconsin could learn from Georgia's mistakes. "That is just a perfect, perfect example of what can happen here," said the Republican state senator from New Berlin. The drought-plagued and fast-growing Atlanta region has come perilously close to draining the water supply for many of its ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
Serving justice or politics?
Mar. 24--Sara Jane Olson and her husband, Dr. Gerald Peterson, were celebrating her release from prison over a plate of chicken wings Friday night at the Los Angeles International Airport when some state employees abruptly interrupted. "They approached her and said, 'You need to come with us. This is not an arrest,'" Peterson said. "Sara very calmly understood that she needed to go with them." ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
Civil rights suit filed over arrest in Fayette
Mar. 24--A Fayette County man claims his civil rights were violated when he was handcuffed and forced to wait outside in sub-zero temperatures while a judge was summoned to hear his case. In a federal civil lawsuit, Donald M. Verney of Uniontown contends he was publicly humiliated when two constables took him into custody on an arrest warrant issued for a bad check.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
Man cedes to city over stop signs, speed limit: California Supreme Court rejected similar initiative in February
Mar. 23--SAN RAMON -- A San Ramon man who locked horns with the city over his attempt to organize ballot initiatives aimed at improving traffic safety in his neighborhood has withdrawn the initiatives. Doug Burr said he decided to end his campaign to make the city install nine stop signs and lower speed limits in his subdivision -- one of the newer Windemere-built developments in eastern San ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
Specter tells tale of beating cancer: Pennsylvania's U.S. senator is at Moravian Bookstore to promote his memoir.
Mar. 23--The hair has grown back on Sen. Arlen Spector's (R-Pa.) head, but the cancer survivor is not about to forget what turned him, in his own words, "cueball bald." "It's very debilitating," said Specter, of his treatment for Hodkin's lymphoma that began in 2005. "When you have chemo you begin to look like hell. When you grow bald and pale and thin, and look at yourself in the mirror, you're ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
Lawyer helped shield beaches from intensive development
Mar. 23--CHAPEL HILL -- Are you glad Carolina Beach doesn't look like Myrtle Beach? Thank Milton Heath. A professor in the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Government for more than 50 years, Heath drafted most of North Carolina's environmental laws, including the 1974 Coastal Area Management Act, which limited development along the state's shoreline. "He was involved in environmental law before anyone ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
OPINION: My month as a juror: An education in more than the law
Mar. 23--I was trembling, not so much that others would notice but distinctly enough that I won't soon forget. I was sitting with my fellow jurors, having gathered in the jury box, ready to share our verdict in a recent homicide case. The trembling arrived unexpectedly, and I wasn't alone. Once clear of the courtroom, other jurors shared their own surprise at the power of the moment.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
50 years later, Ayn Rand's ideas still spark debate
Mar. 23--Fifty years after "Atlas Shrugged" was published, Ayn Rand's most famous work continues to be loved, reviled and, most of all, read. In fact, it's selling better than ever. The 1,100-plus-page novel is set in an industrialized America struggling as its economy collapses and its gifted industrialists and creators disappear. They have gone on strike, the reader learns, a protest against ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
Creighton is teaching new ways to resolve conflict
Mar. 24--Matt Butler knew something had to change when he got sued by a passenger who said she bruised her tailbone when she sat on a seat belt in a taxi. Now Butler, former owner of Happy Cab and Hunt Transportation in Omaha, former candidate for lieutenant governor and a self-proclaimed failure at retiring to Florida, is one of the first holders of a master's degree in mediation from Creighton ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
Godhra panel judge Shah dies
Mar. 24--AHMEDABAD -- The final report on the probe into the 2002 Godhra train burning and the riots afterward may get further delayed with the death of Justice K.G.Shah, one of the two judges comprising the two-member commission. Justice Shah died early on Sunday at his residence in the Satellite area of the city. He had not been keeping well the last few months and probably died in his sleep ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
Raza Gilani takes the stage
Mar. 24--LAHORE -- It happened in 2005. "The man you are convicting will be President of Pakistan one day," shouted Asif Ali Zardari from the backbenches in a Rawalpindi courtroom. The presiding judge had just convicted Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani for "irregularities" in appointments to his secretariat as Speaker of the National Assembly during the 1993-1996 Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) rule.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 24, 2008
Lawmakers clash over sex offender policy: Costly program keeps inmates for treatment
Mar. 23--TOPEKA -- Kansas' controversial program that indefinitely holds sexual offenders past their prison sentence continues to produce friction among lawmakers. Last week, a move to require an audit of the program was defeated by legislators who said the request was a threat to public safety and jobs. "The program works," said House Minority Leader Dennis McKinney, D-Greensburg.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 23, 2008
District Court Rules Judicial Watch May Conduct Discovery Into Clinton Library
Judicial Watch, the public interest group Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that U.S. District Judge James Robertson granted Judicial Watch's motion to conduct discovery into the procedures used by the National Archives and Records Administrations to process its requests for records at the Clinton Library.
MarketWire - Mar 20, 2008
EDITORIAL: Court upholds lottery: N.C. lawmakers' hasty, deceptive process wasn't illegal
Mar. 21--A split N.C. Court of Appeals Tuesday upheld the way the state legislature created a state lottery in 2005. Though the legislative process was undeniably hasty and deceptive, the court ruled that ramming the lottery bill through with a single vote in each house wasn't unconstitutional. It has been painfully obvious for some time that creating the lottery was a questionable policy ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 21, 2008
Settlement in suit over slain Burger King worker totals $2 million
Mar. 20--The family of a slain restaurant worker has accepted a $2 million settlement in a wrongful-death lawsuit against Burger King Corp. and the franchisee of the restaurant where she was killed in 2006, Lake County court records state. In court Thursday, an attorney for the family of Mary Hutchison sought to have the financial details of the settlement sealed, but Judge Raymond McKoski ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
Don King fights to keep alive lawsuit
MIAMI _ Boxing promoter Don King rarely passes up an opportunity to grab the limelight. So when he walked into the Broward County Courthouse on Thursday, he didn't hesitate to sign autographs and shake hands with visitors and courthouse employees on his way to the elevator _ wearing his trademark smile all the way. But King, 76, was ready to fight when he reached the courtroom as he and a team ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
Justice O'Connor hears appeal: O'Connor sits on three-judge panel hearing prayer case
Mar. 20--RICHMOND -- Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor told lawyers arguing on behalf of Fredericksburg City Councilman Hashmel Turner yesterday that the city's nonsectarian prayer policy "seems perfectly reasonable." O'Connor was part of a three-judge panel who heard Turner's appeal to the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The judges' reactions to Turner's case did not differ ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
Same-sex marriage bill raises questions: Catholics say proposal would open door for gay wedlock in state
Mar. 20--The Connecticut Catholic Conference fears that a bill before the General Assembly's Judiciary Committee recognizing Massachusetts' same-sex marriages opens the door to allowing gay matrimony in this state. State Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, co-chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said W e d n e s d a y the purpose of the bill is to treat gay couples from Massachusetts, the only ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
Death penalty case that highlighted jury bias ends in plea deal
Mar. 20--One of Dallas County's most notorious death penalty cases ended quietly Wednesday after more than two decades when Thomas Joe Miller-El pleaded guilty to capital murder and aggravated robbery in a deal that spares his life but virtually assures that he will die in prison. State District Judge John Creuzot sentenced Mr. Miller-El, 56, to life in prison on the capital murder charge and 20 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
Sean Bell trial witness denies hearing gun remark
Mar. 20--A key prosecution witness in the Sean Bell case said yesterday that he didn't hear any remark about a gun during a confrontation in front of a Jamaica strip club -- a statement later contradicted by notes of what he earlier told investigators. The witness, Fabio Coicou, the boyfriend of one of the club dancers, admitted he had a faceoff with Bell in front of the Kalua Cabaret on Nov. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
In Pakistan, it's a Facebook faceoff
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan _ The clash over Pakistan's future also is being fought on the popular Internet social networking site Facebook, where competing groups of mostly 20-somethings try to sabotage one another or debate which potential Pakistani leader is "hotter." By far the most popular leader _ judging by the number of Facebook groups, at least _ is President Pervez Musharraf, the U.S.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
Judge's removal sought from priest's suit
Mar. 20--The attorney for a woman suing Toledo priest Gerald Robinson after accusing him of satanic ritual abuse has filed a motion asking Judge Ruth Ann Franks to voluntarily step down from the case because of her Catholic upbringing. Attorney Mark Davis, representing the Toledo woman who sued anonymously as Survivor Doe with her husband Spouse Doe, said in a motion filed Tuesday in Lucas ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
Kansas landowners suing over federal Trails Act Trails and tribulations Ownership of abandoned rails is at question in suits
Mar. 20--Two Kansas landowners have sued for compensation after the government took old railroad rights of way on their properties -- but unless Congress intervenes, only one is likely to get paid. The aim was to turn the old tracks into recreational trails. But the cases illustrate how federal rails-to-trails programs can lead to decades of legal conflict.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
EDITORIAL: Open the court: Judge should allow public knowledge regarding appeal of Rubio murder case
Mar. 20--We can't think of any valid reason state District Judge Arturo Cisneros Nelson should impose a gag order regarding the retrial of John Allen Rubio, who had been sentenced to die for killing and beheading his two children and a stepchild in 2003. A jury found Rubio guilty on three counts of capital murder in the deaths of the Julissa Quesada, 3, John E.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
State Reps get bad news from high court
Mar. 21--The state Supreme Court issued a three-sentence order yesterday spelling nothing but trouble for two state House members from Philadelphia, Thomas Blackwell and Harold James. The state's high court overturned a ruling by Commonwealth Court Judge Doris A. Smith-Ribner and ordered her to consider a challenge against James's nominating petitions, seeking to have him thrown off the April 22 ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 21, 2008
Now off Texas death row, inmate talks of jail, not crime
Mar. 21--After two decades on death row, an overturned conviction and then a guilty plea, Thomas Joe Miller-El still won't admit he is a murderer. He pleaded guilty in court Wednesday but would not discuss his crimes Thursday during a jailhouse interview with The Dallas Morning News . The interview touched on the Supreme Court ruling overturning his original death sentence, life on death row, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 21, 2008
UC Berkeley stadium case returns to court
Mar. 20--The two sides battling over whether the University of California, Berkeley can build a $125 million sports training center near the Hayward fault were back in court Thursday -- 15 months after the lawsuits to stop the project were filed. University officials say the legal wrangling has already increased the project cost by at least $10 million, to about $135 million.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
Supreme Court ruling could directly, indirectly affect Alabama gun laws
Mar. 20--Printed statistics show that in a single year killers in Alabama have used guns as weapons in more than half of the state's homicides, but those often undocumented moments when guns have been used in self defense have sparked some heated controversy over the rights of gun ownership. The U.S. Supreme Court has heard arguments since Tuesday over whether the Second Amendment allowing the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
Supreme Court overturns death penalty in Louisiana case
Mar. 20--The justices also are currently considering whether the lethal injection method used to execute prisoners in more than 30 states is unconstitutional. "It's a sign the court is acknowledging the problems with the death penalty in this country," Denno said. Invoking O.J. Simpson Jefferson Parish, La., where the trial took place, has a long history of controversy over the dismissal of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
OPINION: Need a defense attorney? It's not necessarily that easy...
Mar. 20--The Supreme Court heard two firearms-related cases this week, but it was the obscure one from Fredericksburg that produced the more surprising arguments. Under the government's version of events in Walter Rothgery v. Gillespie County, Rothgery was masquerading as a security guard in an RV park when he was arrested for being a felon with a firearm in 2002.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
Commission calls for judge's suspension: State Supreme Court may rule on petition
Mar. 20--Hinds County Circuit Judge Bobby DeLaughter should be suspended while a judicial commission investigates accusations he took a bribe, the commission said in a petition filed Wednesday with the Mississippi Supreme Court. The Mississippi Commission on Judicial Performance asked the state Supreme Court to suspend DeLaughter after two Jackson attorneys filed complaints against him because ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
Dispute is unique, GOP says: Summit party claims Brunner's rejection of appointee is unprecedented in court
Mar. 20--The Ohio Supreme Court is on new ground with a case filed by the Summit County Republican Party, the party's attorney said Wednesday in a brief filed with the court. The high court has never decided a case involving a secretary of state soliciting negative information on a local party's recommended appointee to an elections board from the opposite party, state Sen.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
Duluth News-Tribune, Minn., Robin Washington column: Will past actions cloud judgment of new chief justice?
Mar. 20--Listen to practically anyone in Minnesota's legal community and the consensus on Eric Magnuson is nothing but glowing: He's a great guy and a fantastic lawyer, destined to make a fine chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. But you have to wonder what Thomas Thompson Jr. would say about the appointment, or what he would say if he hadn't been permanently brain damaged thanks to a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 20, 2008
State Blasts Broadwater Ruling: After Federal OK, Ball Is In New York's Court
Mar. 21--The approval Thursday by federal regulators of the proposed Broadwater natural gas plant in Long Island Sound shifts the focus of the rancorous debate over the plan to New York, where opponents are hoping officials will block the project. Three New York state agencies have to weigh in on Broadwater, and any one of them could derail it. One agency, the Department of Environmental ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 21, 2008
EDITORIAL: A patent victory
Mar. 21--The Delhi High Court's verdict allowing Cipla Ltd to manufacture and sell the generic version of Hoffman-La Roche's lung cancer drug, Tarceva, is a shot in the arm for Indian generic drug makers. In a ruling on Wednesday, the court stated that the "huge difference in prices of the two products" made the generic version much more affordable to people.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 21, 2008
Sariska gets 2nd chance with tigers
Mar. 21--NEW DELHI -- In a message intended to boost India's losing battle to save its national animal, the Prime Minister's Office on Thursday cleared a plan to reintroduce tigers to Rajasthan's Sariska tiger reserve, where the Royal Bengal Tiger's local extinction in 2004 sparked worldwide alarm. Three tigers -- a male and two females -- have been identified at the Ranthambhore tiger reserve, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 21, 2008
ACLU sues Palm Beach County School Board over graduation rate: Graduation rates low, minorities face 'significant disparity, 'ACLU argues
Mar. 19--Calling Palm Beach County's high school graduation rate "shamefully low," the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday sued local educators to churn out more diplomas. In a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of parents and students, the ACLU accused the Palm Beach County School Board and Superintendent Art Johnson of failing to provide students with a high-quality education ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 19, 2008
Katrina suit moving ahead
Mar. 19--A lawsuit that Dickie Scruggs and his Scruggs Katrina Group filed for 22 policyholders against State Farm is moving forward in U.S. District Court. Don Barrett of Lexington took over as lead attorney on the case after Scruggs stepped down in December 2007 because of his indictment on judicial bribery charges. Policyholders led by Glenda Shows of Pascagoula accuse State Farm of engaging ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 19, 2008
Supreme Court is asked to disbar Scruggs: He admits he tried to bribe judge
Mar. 19--The Mississippi Bar Association petitioned the state Supreme Court on Tuesday to permanently disbar the state's best-known attorney, Dickie Scruggs, 61. The bar filed a separate complaint seeking permanent disbarment of Sidney Backstrom, 38, who also practiced at the Scruggs Law Firm in Oxford. Both pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in Oxford to one charge each of conspiring ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 19, 2008
In vital Pa., Clinton relies on a maverick
WASHINGTON _ Gov. Ed Rendell clearly isn't working from a script, at least not one written by Sen. Hillary Clinton, the candidate he's working so hard to promote in Pennsylvania these days. First, Rendell criticized her campaign's strategy. Then he kicked up a controversy by saying some white Pennsylvania conservatives wouldn't vote for Barack Obama. Then came a string of generous comments about ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 19, 2008
State ballot could pit two from same party
Mar. 19--OLYMPIA -- A U.S. Supreme Court ruling Tuesday shoved Washington politics into a strange realm where two candidates from the same party could run against each other in the November election. The decision also means minor political parties could largely vanish from the general-election ballot. And it may help more moderate candidates win office. All of that, and perhaps more, stems from ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 19, 2008
OPINION: Court ruling offers hope to dysfunctional California politics
Mar. 19--The U.S. Supreme Court gave California a road map to fundamental political reform Tuesday, if it's willing to take it, by approving Washington state's new version of the blanket primary election. Eight years ago, the court threw out California's experimental blanket primary system that allowed voters to cross party lines in choosing nominees for state office, and Washington state's very ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 19, 2008
Lawsuit seeks relocation of Native Alaska village
Mar. 19--KIVALINA, Alaska -- A tiny and impoverished Alaskan village of Inupiat Eskimos located in the Arctic Circle, Kivalina, filed a lawsuit March 4 against industrial corporations that emit large quantities of greenhouse gases. Kivalina faces imminent destruction from global warming due to the melting of sea ice that formerly protected the village from coastal storms during the fall and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 19, 2008
The News & Observer, Raleigh, N.C., Ruth Sheehan column: Adopting a cat hits a snag
Mar. 19--As a devoted cat owner, Brian Vanlandingham imagines himself running a sort of old folks home. He doesn't want kittens or young, active cats. He prefers more mature, sedate animals. "I like cats who want to climb up into your lap and be petted and loved," Vanlandingham said. Since older cats are often more difficult for pet adoption agencies to place, it would seem an owner like ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 19, 2008
EDITORIAL: States may limit individual gun rights: 'A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.'
Mar. 19--Nearly 70 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court obliquely ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees a collective right to bear arms, not an individual right. For almost as long, legal scholars have fought over the full meaning of that decision and the amendment. Tuesday, the court took up the issue again, hearing arguments over the constitutionality of a Washington, D.C., handgun ban.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 19, 2008
UTB, government reach settlement on border fence
Mar. 19--The federal government's lawsuit against UTB-TSC over the border fence has been dismissed-at least for now. After six hours of negotiations, both parties' lawyers reached a compromise before the case's scheduled court date today. The resulting court order gives federal surveyors access to the university's land, but asserts a number of related conditions.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 19, 2008
Woman files federal suit against city, cops in obscenity dispute
Mar. 19--BOSTON -- A Lowell woman who was at the center of an obscenity complaint when her neighbors, offended by her use of racy posters and anatomically correct statues, called police, has filed a federal lawsuit alleging malicious prosecution by the city and police. Janie Polay, 58, of 25 Westview Road, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court Friday against the city of Lowell, Police ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 19, 2008
Greenstone Settles Lawsuit Over Trade Secret
Greenstone Holdings, Inc (PINKSHEETS: GSHN) Greenstone Holdings, Inc (PINKSHEETS: GSHN) announced today that the Company and D&L LLC settled a lawsuit filed by D&L in the Circuit Court in Florida July 2004. The settlement resolves a long-standing dispute between D&L, Greenstone and the Inventor of a patent and two patent applications. No financial terms about the settlement were ...
MarketWire - Mar 19, 2008
Holzer Holzer & Fistel, LLC Announces Shareholder Class Action Has Been Filed Against Darden Restaurants Inc.
A shareholder class action lawsuit has been A shareholder class action lawsuit has been filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida against Darden Restaurants Inc. ("Darden" or the "Company") (NYSE: DRI) on behalf of purchasers of the Company's common stock between June 19, 2007 and December 18, 2007 (the Relevant Period). The shareholder class action complaint ...
MarketWire - Mar 19, 2008
UnitedHealth stock suit certified as class action
Mar. 19--A federal judge on Tuesday granted class-action status to a shareholders' lawsuit against UnitedHealth Group set to go to trial this summer. The widely expected decision means anyone with a similar complaint can join the suit and could benefit from any payout. Lead plaintiff California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) is suing UnitedHealth over stock options backdating, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 19, 2008
Supreme Court justices critical of D.C. gun ban
WASHINGTON _ The Supreme Court justices on Tuesday took dead aim at the District of Columbia's strict handgun ban but seemed divided over what other types of gun-control laws might be permissible. In a long-awaited and potentially historic oral argument, the justices repeatedly suggested that the district's sweeping gun ban infringes on the right to bear arms, which is guaranteed under the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
Q&A on the Supreme Court's gun-control case
WASHINGTON _ Supreme Court justices fired off numerous Second Amendment questions Tuesday morning as they considered the most important gun-control case in decades. But you needn't dress in black robes to have questions about the case, called District of Columbia v. Heller. Here are some of them: Q. Who is Heller, and what does he want? A. Dick Anthony Heller is a 66-year-old Army veteran and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
Supreme Court rules in favor of Washington state open primary
Mar. 18--The U.S. Supreme Court today upheld Washington's top-two primary system, delivering a huge defeat for the state's political parties. The decision means the state will dump its unpopular "pick-a-party" primary that's been in place while the top-two system was being challenged in court. The new system will be used for the state primary on Aug. 19. Under the top-two primary, the two ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
Supreme Court will review FCC's policy on expletives
Mar. 18--The U.S. Supreme Court this fall will consider the issue of profanity on the airwaves for the first time in 30 years. The high court yesterday agreed to hear arguments on a Federal Communications Commission policy of punishing so-called "fleeting expletives" -- isolated broadcasts of curse words -- with monetary fines. The FCC asked for a review after a federal appeals court invalidated ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
EDITORIAL: Let it shine: More access, not less, should be goal
Mar. 18--It was cloudy as this Sunshine Week began, and we're not just talking about Monday's gray skies and rain. The pall was cast by last week's Oklahoma Supreme Court decision to make less information available in court documents and to place limits on what can be accessed via computer. The court said it's trying to balance people's privacy with the people's right to know.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
SWAT officer released on $50,000 bond
Mar. 18--LIMA -- Sgt. Joe Chavalia entered the courtroom Monday in handcuffs before sitting in the defendant's chair. The 31-year veteran of the Lima Police Department was charged with two misdemeanors from the Jan. 4 fatal shooting of Tarika Wilson and the wounding of her 1-year-old son, Sincere, during a SWAT team drug raid. Through his attorney, Bill Kluge, Chavalia pleaded not guilty to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
A $54 million laptop computer 'suits' Best Buy customer
Sometimes the news is so strange, the first thing a newspaper person has to do is swear it's true. OK, I swear. Sometimes out loud. A check of the latest news stories, as culled from the wires and papers that comprise our latest installment of News Is Stranger Than Fiction: At a Best Buy in Richfield, Va., a woman filed a lawsuit against the store, seeking $54 million in damages, after it lost ...
Pantagraph.com - Mar 18, 2008
Civil union law does little to stop ignorance
Mar. 18--HARTFORD -- Gay and lesbian couples, legally joined together after the state's landmark 2005 civil-union law, said Monday they need expanded mandatory protections and more public awareness of their rights. Holly Robinson, a 30-year-old Danbury lawyer, said New Milford Hospital briefly prohibited her name from her son Andrew's birth certificate last year after her partner, Lois, gave ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
Water rights question appears headed back to court
The plaintiffs in a water rights dispute appear to be ready to pursue their claims in state court despite a recent setback at the federal level. Tulsa lawyer Steve Harris, whose clients are challenging the Grand River Dam Authoritys right to assess fees for raw water drawn from Fort Gibson Lake, said the rural water districts he represents must get board approval before he refiles the lawsuit. ...
Marion Star - Mar 18, 2008
EDITORIAL: Bad Counsel: Rev. Wright mentored Obama for two decades
Mar. 18--Barack Obama's disavowals of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's racist sermons might be more convincing if his wife's words didn't reflect the deep influence of those sermons. Michelle Obama said she is proud of America for the first time in her adult life. Well, no wonder. The Obamas have been sitting at the feet of a race baiter denouncing his country for 20 years.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
Canadian man pleads guilty in pipeline plot
SANTA FE - A Canadian man pleaded guilty in federal court on Thursday to a terrorism charge for plotting to blow up the trans-Alaska oil pipeline at the 2000 millennium. 'Guilty,' Alfred Heinz Reumayr quietly told a judge, to one count of an eight-count indictment handed up in 1999. Reumayr, 58, of New Westminster, British Columbia, faces 13 years in prison under a plea agreement accepted ...
Juneau Empire - Mar 18, 2008
Top appellate lawyer is new chief justice From outsider to head of the state Supreme Court
Mar. 18--Top appellate lawyer is new chief justice From outsider to head of the state Supreme Court -- The lawyer in charge of vetting Minnesota judicial candidates will soon become the state's top judge. Gov. Tim Pawlenty on Monday appointed Eric Magnuson, his former law partner and the chairman of the Minnesota Commission on Judicial Selection, as chief justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
Hearing in jail death is canceled: Judge rules autopsy challenge is a civil, not criminal, matter
Mar. 18--A court hearing scheduled for today as a defense challenge to the autopsy in the 2006 death of 28-year-old Summit County Jail inmate Mark D. McCullaugh Jr. has been canceled. A spokesman for the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office, brought in by state authorities to handle the McCullaugh case as special prosecutor, said Judge Herman F. Inderlied Jr.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
Dead teen's family files wrongful death suit: Parents' lawsuit says police violated rights, shooting not justified
Mar. 18--The parents of an Akron teen whose controversial death last year during a police stop triggered protests and an independent review is suing Akron police in federal court for wrongful death and violation of civil rights. Horace L. Vinson Jr, father of 19-year-old Demetrus Vinson, and Beverly A. Wallace, the teen's mother, filed the lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
Cosco Busan pilot cited for environmental violations
Mar. 18--The pilot of the cargo ship that sideswiped the Bay Bridge and spilled more than 50,000 gallons of fuel oil into the San Francisco Bay collided with another problem on Monday -- a rare federal prosecution for environmental violations that shows the government may want to make an example of last November's startling maritime accident. Prosecutors on Monday charged John Joseph Cota with ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
Big Brother's big week
The following editorial appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Monday, March 17: ___ Americans learned last week that, whatever the law says, they shouldn't assume that their private communications are private. It was a big week for Big Brother, with but a single, small ray of hope at week's end. _The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the National Security Agency, which is supposed to ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
American Civil Liberties Union sues over "shamefully low" graduation rates
Mar. 18--PALM BEACH COUNTY -- Calling Palm Beach County's high school graduation rate "shamefully low," the American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday sued local educators to churn out more diplomas. In a class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of parents and students, the ACLU claimed the Palm Beach County School Board and Superintendent Art Johnson have failed to provide students with a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
UnitedHealth stock suit certified as class action
Mar. 19--A federal judge on Tuesday granted class-action status to a shareholders' lawsuit against UnitedHealth Group set to go to trial this summer. The widely expected decision means anyone with a similar complaint can join the suit and could benefit from any payout. Lead plaintiff California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) is suing UnitedHealth over stock options backdating, ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 19, 2008
Bakersfield, other cities suing chemical companies over water contamination
Mar. 18--A recent lawsuit filed by the city and California Water Service Company over detection of a suspected carcinogen in drinking water supplies is just the latest in a series of suits statewide. The chemical, 1,2,3-Trichloropropane, has been found at extremely low levels in about 60 of the 200 wells owned by the City of Bakersfield and California Water Service Company, according to Cal ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
Probe reveals doctor payoffs
Critics worry that the payments, which amount to millions of dollars annually, could sway doctors to pick more-expensive devices for patients and drive up health care costs. More than half of the nation's 700,000 hip and knee replacements are performed on Medicare patients. 'You've got a situation where the hospital buys the implant, but has little choice but to buy whatever one the surgeon ...
Washington Times - Mar 18, 2008
BRIEF: Judge upholds Proposal 2, dismisses federal suit
Mar. 18--A federal judge today dismissed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionally of Proposal 2, the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative that banned race and gender affirmative action in university admissions and government and public school hiring and contracting. "We agree with judge's decision," Rusty Hills, spokesman for Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox said today after U.S.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 18, 2008
Supreme Court takes on fleeting obscenities' on TV
WASHINGTON _ The Supreme Court will again be weighing political punishment for dirty words, this time involving undeleted expletives exuberantly uttered by the singers Bono and Cher. On Monday, in a nod to the Bush administration, the high court agreed to consider whether broadcasters can be disciplined for airing "fleeting" obscenities. The vividly rendered First Amendment conflict becomes the ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 17, 2008
Saudi wields British law against U.S. author: Billionaire leverages harsher libel rules to suppress unflattering book
Mar. 17--NEW YORK -- Rachel Ehrenfeld writes about terrorism for a living. But now she is the one who feels targeted. Her modest midtown Manhattan apartment is filled to the ceiling with books, most having to do with global terror networks and Mideast conflict. Sitting at her desk, she gazes out at the Hudson River. She says she has a hard time placing her work.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 17, 2008
U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Further Appeals in NYMEX Copyright ...
ATLANTA, March 17 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IntercontinentalExchange (News), a leading operator of global derivatives exchanges and over-the-counter markets, issued the following statement regarding today's decision by the United States Supreme Court to reject further appeals by the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) in long-running litigation, originally brought by NYMEX (News) in 2002, over ...
FinanzNachrichten.de - Mar 17, 2008
Lauderdale real estate investor sued for OD death at condo: Real estate investor called negligent
Mar. 17--A wrongful death lawsuit accuses a Fort Lauderdale real estate entrepreneur of negligence in the fatal drug overdose of a guest at his oceanfront penthouse in 2006. Rhode Island attorney Kathleen Golini, the dead man's mother, says Brian Neiman brought her son to his home Sept. 30, 2006, after meeting him at a Hooters restaurant on Fort Lauderdale beach.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 17, 2008
When government reaches over the wall: Lawmakers and courts sometimes intervene when religious groups violate the laws of the land.
Mar. 17--Local, state and federal governments several times have reached over Thomas Jefferson's socalled wall of separation between church and state to apply a secular law to religious practice. "Public laws are general laws, and religious institutions have to abide by them," said Dr. Gerald S. Vigna, professor of theology at Alvernia College and director of its Center for Ethics and ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 17, 2008
EDITORIAL: Big Brother's big week
Mar. 17--Americans learned last week that, whatever the law says, they shouldn't assume that their private communications are private. It was a big week for Big Brother, with but a single, small ray of hope at week's end. -- The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the National Security Agency, which is supposed to spy only on foreign targets, now "monitors huge volumes of records of ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 17, 2008
Bear Stearns: Last gasp at Bear
Editorial: Last gasp at Bear The Fed dove in to rescue one of the biggest players in mortgage securities from almost certain bankruptcy. What about the millions of homeowners who are underwater?From the Journal SentinelPosted: March 17, 2008If only the federal government was as quick to throw a line to underwater homeowners as it was to bail out one of Wall Street's bad boys.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - Mar 18, 2008
Solar energy trumps shade in California prosecution of tree owner
Mr. Vargas said he planned to install solar panels on the trellis behind his house - meaning he needed access to sunlight. But the row of eight 10- to 25-foot redwoods along that edge of the couple's backyard would have to go - or be shortened, or perhaps replaced with smaller trees. So, in a suburban odyssey symbolic of the chasm between people with different ideas of how to use nature, he got ...
Christian Science Monitor - Mar 17, 2008
Texans not on fence over gun case
Mar. 17--WASHINGTON -- A landmark gun control case that goes before the Supreme Court this week has stirred intense interest in Texas, where the right to carry guns has been rooted in the state's culture since the frontier days. The nine justices who will hear the case Tuesday will ultimately decide whether to uphold or overturn an appeals court ruling that struck down the District of Columbia's ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 17, 2008
Pakistan's new leaders declare last day of dictatorship'
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan _ Pakistan's newly elected National Assembly met for the first time Monday and delivered an immediate rebuff to Pervez Musharraf, setting up a head-on clash between the elected assembly and the unpopular U.S.-backed president. With the incoming government committed to restoring the judges who were fired by Musharraf and stripping the powers of the presidency, a battle seems ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 17, 2008
McAlester faces crisis over funds
Mar. 17--MCALESTER -- A financial scheme that allowed McAlester's former city manager to embezzle nearly $500,000 continued for more than a year after he went to prison. The culprit: A longstanding city policy of putting restricted sales-tax money into a general fund, where it was tapped for multiple uses. McAlester's city council recently ended that policy.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 17, 2008
BRIEF: Finjan legal win may be worth millions: The security technology company won an intellectual property decision in the US.
Mar. 17--Israeli web security company Finjan Software Inc. has won a significant legal battle in the US after a jury in the US District Court of Delaware found in its favor in a lawsuit first filed in 2006. The jury found that Finjan's US rival Secure Computing Corp. (Nasdaq: SCUR), infringed three patents that Finjan registered over the past decade. The ruling could earn Finjan tens of millions ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 17, 2008
R.I. court weighs lead paint verdict
BOSTON (AP) - A landmark jury verdict that could cost three former lead paint manufacturers billions of dollars is based on 'old and well-established' law and should be upheld, lawyers for the state of Rhode Island told the state's highest court in legal papers filed Monday. The state says the companies' appeal of the verdict represents their latest attempt to avoid responsibility for the ...
Advanced Financial Network - Mar 17, 2008
India tries new ways to reach its underfed children
BADARWAS, India (Reuters) - A couple of months ago, Sheela Adivasi's infant son fell sick and his eyes filled with pus. By the time the infection cleared up, Deepak's pupils had turned a pearly white. He is now permanently blind. It did not help matters that Deepak is malnourished, as are half of all young children in India. His belly is swollen, his dry skin speckled with dark dots, and his hair ...
Scientific American - Mar 18, 2008
Court boosts lawyer fees in retirement suit
COLUMBIA, S.C. --The South Carolina Supreme Court has doubled the money awarded to attorneys who sued a state retirement incentive program on behalf of thousands of retirees. The court ruled in January that the $8.7 million originally awarded in attorneys' fees was 'entirely unreasonable' and recommended $445,000 instead. On Monday, the justices adjusted that amount to include additional fees. ...
The State - Mar 17, 2008
EDITORIAL: A taxpayer win: But stay alert
Mar. 17--Here's a grand development that should drive bonkers liberals everywhere trying to concoct sneaky ways to impose taxation without representation: The Virginia Supreme Court has ruled that the state General Assembly did not have the power to give the 13-member unelected Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA) the right to raise taxes for regional road and rail projects.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 17, 2008
Lawyers, nursing homes at odds
Contentious bill would limit suits against facilities and related costs By Tom Humphrey (Contact) Related reports 333 Total nursing homes 323 Total Medicare-funded facilities 226 Privately operated 64 Operated by nonprofit 26 Operated by government 38,167 Total nursing home beds 34,591 Average daily population (2005) 9.1% Increase in Tennessee home residents ages 65 and older (1996 to 2005) ...
Knox News Sentinel - Mar 17, 2008
LA Times On Kessler Obama Story
In a posting this evening, Newsmax.com reports that its correspondent witnessed Sen. Barack Obama attending one of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's anti-white sermons on July 22 and nodding his head in agreement with the black congregation. The report on the conservative website directly contradicts the Democratic presidential candidate's recent statements that while he denounced the pastor's ...
Los Angeles Times - Mar 17, 2008
New parliament convenes in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan _ Pakistan's new parliament met for the first time Monday, setting up a likely clash between embattled President Pervez Musharraf and hostile lawmakers who have threatened to seek Musharraf's ouster. The two major parties in the ruling coalition both won on anti-Musharraf platforms last month. The parliament is expected to try to restore the judges Musharraf fired during a ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 17, 2008
Q & A: Human Resources Forum
That question is being litigated in the courts right now in an important Houston case, Kennedy vs. Plan Administrator for Dupont Savings. Liv Kennedy, divorcing William P. Kennedy, agreed to waive all rights to his pension benefits, but he failed to remove her name as beneficiary from his pension plan documents. After he died, the Dupont Savings Plan administrator awarded the benefits to his ...
Mass High Tech - Mar 17, 2008
For Scruggs, a long and well-publicized road to bribery charge
Last November, a lawyer who was working with famed plaintiffs attorney Richard Scruggs entered the chambers of a local Mississippi judge and delivered the last chunk of a $40,000 cash payment. In return, the judge said he would issue a ruling favorable to Mr. Scruggs in a fee dispute with other lawyers. Driving away after delivering the cash, the lawyer was pulled over by federal agents and ...
Pantagraph.com - Mar 16, 2008
Putting the First Amendment in context: A scholar says the Constitution's language on religion was intended to avoid sectarian conflict.
Mar. 16--The First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." Later, President Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association referred to building a wall of separation between church and state. His words became a guiding principle referred to nearly as often as the two clauses in the First ...
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 16, 2008
BRIEF: Gun-rights ruling could ricochet across nation: Chicago has stake in high court case
Mar. 16--WASHINGTON -- It's a shooting war, for certain. Democrats versus Republicans, cities versus states, cops versus cops, scholars versus scholars, and most bizarrely, the Bush administration against itself. The root of the conflict lies in a case that will be argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, one as dramatic as any in recent memory.
McClatchy Tribune Business News - Mar 16, 2008
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