Trials in two high-profile corporate fraud cases are under way, with the trial of former HealthSouth Corp. CEO Richard Scrushy beginning Tuesday and jury selection in the retrial of former Tyco Inc. officials being completed. Scrushy faces 58 criminal charges in connection with $2.64 billion accounting scandal that came to light in 2003. He will [...]

Jury selection in the trial of former WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers was completed Tuesday, and opening statements began this afternoon. Ebbers faces charges of fraud, conspiracy and filing false regulatory reports in the $11 billion fraud scandal that forced WorldCom, now MCI , into bankruptcy. Read the Ebbers indictment and superseding indictment . Ebbers, who [...]

High-profile New York-based monitoring group Human Rights Watch has broken from its practice of not directly endorsing or opposing Cabinet nomineees to issue a formal statement opposing the nomination of White House counsel Alberto Gonzales for the post of US Attorney General. HRW said in a press release Monday that it had serious reservations about [...]

Leading Tuesday's corporations and securities law news, SEC Chairman William Donaldson stated in a speech today that the agency is considering changes to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to ease burden on foreign companies. Companies in both Europe and the US have complained of the costs to meet the act's requirements. European companies also contend that some [...]

The first parliamentary elections in Afghanistan under the newly established government of Hamid Karzai may be forced to be delayed due to slow progress on a census of the population. Already delayed once from this fall, the elections are scheduled to be held May 20. However, a deadline to present a finished national census to [...]

The Taiwanese government has urged the US to intensify its opposition to China's proposed anti-secession law , which is aimed at Taiwan. Joseph Wu, Taiwan's top official for China-Taiwan affairs, admitted late on Monday that there may be no way to stop Beijing from enacting the law, which Taiwan and US officials believe will create [...]

The National Telecommunications Commission in the Philippines has ordered cable operators to shut down all chat rooms, in response to complaints that some had become sex channels. The NTC commented that some chat room operators were not regulating the use of profane language or explicit messages in their facilities. The Philippine Daily Inquirer has more.

Jerzy Urban, editor-in-chief of the Polish weekly newspaper Nie , was convicted by a court in Warsaw Tuesday for criticizing Pope John Paul II . Jerzy was found guilty of insulting a head of state, and was fined $6,500. In his 2002 article, titled "Walking Sadomasochism", Urban referred to the Pope's as "the Brezhnev of [...]

Iran's highest official, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , told hard-line lawmakers in parliament Tuesday to stop the impeachment of cabinet members appointed by reformist President Mohammad Khatami . Ali Khamenei's statement, a rare public political comment, was reported by the Iranian news agency. Conservative lawmakers who won election to parliament last year have already impeached one [...]

The US government has joined the entertainment industry in arguing before the US Supreme Court that file-sharing services such as Kazaa and Grokster, accused of enabling widespread copyright infringement, should be shut down. Acting Solicitor Paul D. Clement filed a brief in support of the entertainment industry late Monday. In MGM Studios v. Grokster, 04-480, [...]