The Shearman & Sterling attorneys advising Citigroup included partners Creighton Condon (New York – Mergers & Acquisitions), Eliza Swann (New York – Mergers & Acquisitions), Linda Rappaport (New York – Executive Compensation and Employee Benefits), Peter Blessing (New York – International Tax), Azam Aziz (New York – Asset Management) and Barney Reynolds (London- European Finance), counsel Ansgar Simon (New York – Tax), Ann Woo (San Francisco – Mergers & Acquisitions), associates Sara Haskamp (New York – Mergers & Acquisitions), Stephen Penner (New York – Asset Management), Adam Kaminsky (New York – Executive Compensation and Employee Benefits), Garrett Dowd (New York –Executive Compensation and Employee Benefits), Nicola Espie (New York - Asset Management), Gwen Gordon (New York-Asset Management) and Thomas Donegan (London-European Finance).

On April 12, the United States District Court in New Jersey granted the Merck & Co.'s motion to dismiss with prejudice a consolidated securities class action filed by investors against Merck in connection with disclosures by Merck regarding VIOXX. In his ruling, Judge Stanley R. Chesler found that the securities action should be dismissed because all of the plaintiffs' claims were time-barred under the applicable statutes of limitations. Cravath is lead counsel for Merck in the securities action. The Cravath team was led by partners Robert H. Baron, Evan R. Chesler and David Greenwald and associate Karen R. King.

www.cravath.com

A number of disgruntled current and former shareholders of AWB Ltd are suing the wheat exporter for $25 million over its role in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal.

Law firm Maurice Blackburn Cashman said today that it would begin a shareholder class action against AWB in the Federal Court.

AWB said the proposed class action was "ill-conceived".

"If the proceedings are issued, they will be vigorously defended," AWB said.

The managing principal of the Maurice Blackburn Cashman's NSW branch, Ben Slade, said the firm was acting for an unspecified number of institutional and retail investors in AWB who were claiming they lost money because AWB failed to inform the stock market of its activities in Iraq.

"We've been instructed by a number of victims of AWB's wrongful conduct seeking compensation for the losses that they've suffered as a result of that wrongful conduct," Mr Slade said.

Mr Slade said it was alleged AWB had failed to continuously disclose to the marketplace material facts that could reasonably be expected to affect the company's share price.

He said it was claimed that AWB should have revealed it was involved in taking steps that caused Australia to be in breach of United Nations sanctions under the oil-for-food program and by one means or another was getting money from a UN account to make payments to Iraq in breach of the program.

"That is a material fact that the sharemarket should have been told, and had they been told the share price of AWB shares would have been lower than it was," Mr Slade said.

"There are certain groups that wouldn't have bought any AWB shares at all, and there are others who would have bought at a materially lower price."

Mr Slade said the claimants estimated direct losses at about $25 million and there was also the possibility of claims for opportunity loss.

Australia's single desk wheat exports system is set for overhaul after AWB was found to have paid $290 million in kickbacks to Iraq between 1999 and 2003 under the UN's corruption-ridden oil-for-food program.

The Cole inquiry into AWB's kickbacks, which reported in November 2006, recommended 11 former executives face further investigation for possible breaches of criminal and corporations law.

US citizen Christopher Paul pleaded not guilty Friday to charges that he conspired to assist terrorists and to bomb European tourist sites and US military and government facilities overseas. Paul, from Columbus, OH, did not request to be released on bond during his arraignment in the US Southern District of Ohio.

Paul pleaded not guilty to all three counts of conspiring to provide material support and resources to terrorists, conspiring to use weapons of mass destruction, and providing material support and resources to terrorists. Paul is allegedly connected to two other men from Columbus who have also been indicted on terrorism charges. Iyman Faris, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, attended the same mosque and became friends with Paul. Nuradin Abdi, a Somali awaiting trial on 2004 charges that he plotted with other al Qaeda operatives to blow up a Columbus-area shopping mall, used Paul as a reference on a government employment application. Officials also found evidence in Paul's apartment that will be used against Abdi at trial.

According to investigators, Paul traveled to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the early 1990s to receive military training at an al Qaeda training camp and, upon his return to the US, continued to funnel money and other resources to al Qaeda. The indictment also alleges that Paul provided explosives training to co-conspirators in Germany to carry out future attacks on European and United States targets. If convicted of all charges, Paul could receive a maximum penalty of life in prison.

The Mississippi Supreme Court Thursday upheld the manslaughter convictions of former Ku Klux Klan organizer Edgar Ray Killen. Killen, now 82, was sentenced to 60 years in prison in 2005, receiving one 20-year sentence for each of the 3 young men who were killed in 1964 after assisting African-Americans in registering to vote. Killen appealed his sentence on a number of grounds, including prejudice in the 41-year pre-indictment delay resulting in, among other things, faded witness memories. The court rejected any contention of actual prejudice from the delay, citing the fact that Killen's own witnesses had testified live about the events of 1964, and none claimed problems with faded memories.

The court further rejected Killen's argument that the delay was intentionally used to gain a tactical advantage. Killen claimed in his brief that the political climate in Mississippi in the 1960s would have made a conviction back then far less likely. The court expressed surprise that Killen would even attempt to claim present prejudice stemming from the fact that he was not tried by a white-prejudiced jury.

The court issued the injunction after it found that Baisden had promoted a plan which encourages and assists customers to create corporations into which they allegedly had their incomes deposited for the primary purpose of decreasing their tax liability.

Several of Baisden's customers are physicians and nurse anesthetists from North Platte, Neb., many of whom have not filed past-due tax returns. According to Baisden's plan, the customers created real estate and forestry corporations, but almost all of the income reported by the corporations was derived from the customers' income from their jobs in the medical profession. Baisden reported deductions for the corporations for customers' lawn care expenses, expenses related to their personal residences, car expenses, and for one customer, the purchase cost and storage fees for an airplane. Baisden also prepared tax returns in California which characterized wages as rent, which is not subject to self-employment or employment taxes.

The court found that Baisden prepared tax returns that identified customers as investors when they were actually physicians or nurses and claimed business deductions for non-deductible personal expenses of customers or for which he and his customers did not provide supporting documentation. The tax returns he prepared also failed to report a reasonable compensation to owners of such corporations and otherwise mischaracterized their income. Finally, the court found that Baisden engaged in misconduct related to his representation of customers by falsely advising them not to comply with IRS document and meeting requests, filing meritless requests to delay civil audits, advising clients to make insufficient estimated tax payments, and advising customers not to file lawfully due returns.  More information about this case is available at http://www.usdoj.gov/tax/txdv06670.htm.

USDOJ

Russia denounces the use of double standards in the human rights sphere, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Yakovenko told reporters on Thursday.

Moscow "proceeds from the necessity to de-politicize the human rights sphere.... It is absolutely inadmissible to use human rights as an instrument of political pressure or for squaring accounts," Yakovenko was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

"Russia is opposed to the attempts by certain countries and groups of countries and nongovernmental organizations to impose on the international community their own approaches in the human rights sphere under the pretense of universal standards," he said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that the U.S. State Department report on human rights and democracy in the world is politicized in nature..

"The section of the document dealing with Russia applies a whole arsenal of simple logical methods -- exaggeration, selection of facts to support conclusions formulated in advance, the substitution of notions, arbitrary interpretation of facts and some others to convince the U.S. and international public that Russia urgently needs democratization," the statement said.