A federal district judge has ruled that United Airlines employees can proceed with a class action lawsuit against the beleagered airline's employee stock ownership plan and the plan trustees, attorneys for the employees said Tuesday. The suit was filed in 2003, but District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan certified the lawsuit, which includes about 70,000 employees, as [...]

The Second District Court of Appeals in Florida issued a one-page mandate on Tuesday allowing Michael Schiavo to remove the feeding tube which sustains his brain-damaged wife Terri Schiavo . Terri's parents were seeking an emergency stay to keep their daughter alive in the hopes of filing further legal challenges. The appeals court's mandate on [...]

The Hong Kong government announced on Tuesday that it will begin encouraging couples to have three children, in an effort to reverse the territory's falling birth rate. In a radio interview, Chief Secretary Donald Tsang said the government is considering providing tax incentives to encourage couples to have more children. Currently, Hong Kong has one [...]

The Internal Revenue Service announced Tuesday a plan to reduce penalties for executives and companies that admit to using an abusive tax shelter designed to avoid taxes on stock options. IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said that the agency had identified 42 well-known corporations with executives who failed to report more than $700 million in income. [...]

Leading Tuesday's corporations and securities law news, supermarket giant Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. and 23 of its US subsidiaries have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York . The company announced it has secured an $800 million credit facility from Wachovia Bank to pay for the [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit heard oral argument Tuesday morning concerning a challenge to the FCC-imposed broadcast flag for digital television. Two of the three panel judges noted that the FCC never received permission from Congress to enact the broadcast flag rule. "You're out there in the whole world, regulating. Are [...]

In Tuesday's international brief, state prosecutors for South Africa have appealed to the Constitutional Court for permission to retry Dr. Wouter Basson, a scientist allegedly employed by the apartheid government to create a "smart virus" that would only target black South Africans. Basson was acquitted in 2002 on charges of conspiracy, drug trafficking, and murder. [...]

The US Supreme Court issued opinions in two cases Tuesday. In the first, Smith v. Massachusetts, the Court ruled that a trial judge's reversal of a mid-trial ruling to dismiss a firearm charge constituted double jeopardy. Justice Scalia wrote the opinion in the 5-4 decision, with Justice Ginsburg authoring the dissent. According to the Court, [...]

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a former high school valedictorian in Virginia, has been charged with conspiring to assassinate President Bush and with supporting al-Qaida. Abu Ali made an initial appearance in federal district court Tuesday to face charges. The indictment alleges that Abu Ali plotted with an unidentified person in 2002 and 2003 on several [...]

KGW.com in Portland, OR, is reporting that the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear a Bush administration challenge to Oregon's Death with Dignity Act , which allows assisted suicide. The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals previously upheld the law against a federal challenge and later refused to rehear the case. The Court had [...]