Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine announced Monday that he has vetoed five bills promoting the death penalty. House Bill 2750 and House Bill 2347  sought to make the murder of a judge and the murder of a witness in a criminal case, respectively, into capital crimes; Senate Bill 1116 proposed a similar measure. House Bill 2348 and its counterpart Senate Bill 1288 would have made accessories to first degree murder eligible for the death penalty. Kaine acknowledged the seriousness of the targeted offenses but said he did not believe that it was necessary to expand the death penalty "to protect human life or provide for public safety needs."

Kaine, a Democrat and a Roman Catholic, ran his 2005 campaign as an anti-death penalty candidate, but said he would not disrupt the current state laws. Monday's vetoes are expected to be overturned by the predominately Republican Virginia General Assembly during a vote on April 4. Virginia currently has the second-highest number of executions in the US after Texas.

Asked why he would want to remain as attorney general amid so many calls for his ouster, Gonzales said he‘s been asking himself lately whether it‘s appropriate for him to stay in his job.

But, he said, "at the end of the day, it‘s not about Alberto Gonzales. It‘s about this great Department of Justice that does so many wonderful things for the American people."

The House voted 329-78 to strip the attorney general of his power to indefinitely appoint federal prosecutors, approving a bill similar to one passed in the Senate. President Bush , who is standing by Gonzales, has signaled that he will not veto the legislation.

Oracle's lawsuit accusing rival SAP of stealing proprietary information is a serious escalation in the battle between the software giants that may create fear and uncertainty among customers, some analysts say.

"Clearly it's a very fierce rivalry that just keeps getting ratcheted up," says James Kobielus, principal analyst for data management at Current Analysis. "It's not surprising they'll continue to duke it out with each other through all available channels. ... Oracle has made no bones about the fact that it covets SAP's primary standing in the business application market. SAP clearly feels the threat from Oracle on that front."

Oracle Thursday accused SAP and its TomorrowNow subsidiary of engaging in "systematic, illegal access" to Oracle's computerized customer support systems. TomorrowNow provides third-party maintenance and support in large part for Oracle applications drawn from its PeopleSoft, Siebel and JD Edwards product families.

Oracle's lawsuit defends against TomorrowNow "looking to undercut a major revenue stream by offering half-rate support," writes Martin Schneider, an analyst at 451 Group. But Oracle has done the same in the past, he writes in analysis issued in response to the lawsuit.

"It is interesting that Oracle has been guilty of the same kind of activity with its recent underselling of RedHat Linux support," Schneider writes. "But since the JDE and PeopleSoft products are under proprietary licenses, Oracle has much more legal recourse than RedHat. But we wonder how much (Oracle) IP SAP did gather that is really hard to come by, since most of the later PeopleSoft bug fixes and patches were built using the open source Eclipse toolkit."

Oracle's lawsuit claims that SAP illegally accessed and downloaded more than 10,000 pieces of Oracle IP off its customer portal, Schneider notes.

A Jackson law firm has sued millionaire trial attorney Richard Scruggs for allegedly withholding money it claims it was owed for working on Hurricane Katrina insurance-related litigation.

The lawsuit was filed March 15 in Lafayette County Circuit Court by Grady F. Tollison Jr. on behalf of the Jones, Funderburg, Sessums, Peterson & Lee law firm in Jackson. No court date has been set for the lawsuit.

Tollison has requested a jury trial. Tollison was not in his office Tuesday and was not immediately available for comment.

Scruggs is one of the nation's wealthiest trial attorneys. In the late 1990s, his Mississippi-based firm earned nearly $1 billion in fees for his part in reaching a landmark $250 billion settlement with tobacco companies. He used that windfall to finance lawsuits against insurance companies for denying thousands of policyholders' claims after Katrina destroyed their homes.

Scruggs created a legal team, called the Scruggs Katrina Group, to represent the policyholders. SKG's work led to a settlement with State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. that will earn the attorneys about $26 million. Those legal fees are at the crux of the lawsuit.

Zach Scruggs of Oxford, Scruggs' son and law partner, said Tuesday that he could not immediately comment on the lawsuit. Also named as defendants in the lawsuit are other members of the SKG team.

The lawsuit, which gives only one side of the legal argument, alleges that senior partner John G. Jones and other members of the Jackson law firm deposed witnesses, handled briefs, filed motions and other tasks for Scruggs' group.

Specifically, the lawsuit mentions Jones and his law firm's work on a July 2006 lawsuit, filed by SKG on behalf of Pascagoula police officer Paul Leonard against Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. over denial of Leonard's claim.

Jones participated in the questioning of witnesses in that lawsuit. The lawsuit notes that the agreement with SKG did not specify a percentage of fees that each participating law firm would receive.

The exception was a Ridgeland law firm that had agreed to finance part of the SKG joint venture.

The lawsuit alleges Scruggs and other conspired to "freeze out" the Jones firm and offered it a "ridiculously low figure" for its "substantial" work. Jones claimed his firm was offered a $1 million payment and was told it would get nothing from the legal fees to be paid by State Farm, according to the lawsuit.

Jones contends Scruggs declined to negotiate or enter into arbitration to settle the fees issue and kept Jones' law firm out of any other lawsuits filed by SKG. The Jones firm claims it is entitled to 20 percent of all past attorney fees collected by SKG and 20 percent of all future attorney fees SKG collects. The lawsuit also asks for unspecified punitive damages.

Georgia's Ministry of Justice said Monday it has filed a lawsuit against Russia with the European Court of Human Rights for the alleged illegal deportation of Georgian citizens last year.

"The lawsuit is based on thousands of instances of serious violations of human rights of Georgian citizens and ethnic Georgians during their deportation from Russia," the ministry said in an official statement.

Russia and Georgia became caught up in an intense diplomatic row last September when the arrest of four Russian officers in Tbilisi on spying charges prompted Russia to deport hundreds of Georgians, cut off mail and transport links with Tbilisi as well as crack down on 'illegal' Georgian businesses.

Mikhail Kamynin, the Russian Foreign Ministry's official spokesman, said that "such actions by Tbilisi officials will not help [the two countries] normalize bilateral relations, which Russia is striving for."

Vissarion Bokhashvili, Georgia's representative at the Strasbourg Court, is expected to make a statement on the lawsuit later Tuesday.

According to unofficial information, the Georgian side will present evidence of deported citizens who allegedly suffered from inhumane treatment at Moscow's police detention centers, as well as documents proving that their stays in Russia were legal.

Relations between Georgia and Russia have been strained ever since the Western-leaning government of President Mikheil Saakashvili came to power in 2003.

In addition to tensions over the breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which Saakashvili has pledged to restore to Georgia proper, Georgia's ambition to join the Western NATO military alliance has been sharply criticized by Russia.

Last March, Russia banned Georgian wine and mineral water, dealing a heavy blow to the ex-Soviet republic's fragile economy.

Following the spying row, the situation deteriorated further when Tbilisi subsequently threatened to withdraw its support for Russia's WTO bid.

Goldman Sachs Groupdelayed until April 11 a vote on a shareholder's proposal to prohibit issuance of new stock options to executives. At its annual meeting Tuesday morning, shareholders overwhelmingly defeated two other proposals the company opposed regarding its charitable contributions and environmental policies.

Goldman delayed the options vote because the proposal was left out off the Feb. 21 proxy document sent outlining the annual meeting agenda. Goldman on March 19 sent shareholders an amended proxy with the proposal.

Goldman Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein apologized to longtime corporate governance gadfly Evelyn Y. Davis, who made the proposal, for losing it. Davis had addressed it to former Goldman Chairman and CEO Henry Paulson rather than to Blankfein, who assumed the top posts last June. (Davis suggested at the meeting that Goldman fire its corporate secretary for the mishap.)

The proposal would bar Goldman from granting options to "anyone" because the awards "have gone out of hand in recent years," Davis's proposal says, and create distortions in managing the company because options can be tied to short-term earnings gains. Goldman's directors oppose the plan because it would put the investment bank "at a disadvantage in retaining, motivating and recruiting employees," the proxy said. Blankfein on Tuesday said the company needs both stock grants, which Davis supports, and option grants to successfully compete.

Blankfein was paid $54 million last year, including 209,228 options that the proxy statement valued at $10.5 million. His two lieutenants - Presidents Gary Cohn and Jon Winkelried - each collected options valued at $10.3 million. The trio collectively received about 21% of all options Goldman granted employees last year.

Net income at Goldman rose 70% in 2006 to a Wall Street record of $9.4 billion while its stock price soared 56%. Blankfein's compensation rose 42%.
As of the end of last November, the 52-year-old executive held $63.2 million of options that he had not yet converted into stock, according to the proxy statement.

A Goldman shareholder earlier this month filed a lawsuit against claiming the bank awarded too many options to top executives because it miscalculated their worth under the Black-Scholes valuation model it uses. The lawsuit against the firm and its directors seeks to void the election of directors at the meeting and to require a new accounting of the options.

Options granted the firm's top five executive officers in 2006 are worth $23 million more than Goldman disclosed in its proxy statement, the lawsuit said.
A Goldman spokesman said the company will "vigorously contest" the lawsuit.

On Tuesday, about 93% of voting shareholders approved electing all the bank's directors to one-year terms. Fewer than 7% voted for proposals from politically conservative interest groups that would have required a semiannual accounting of its charitable contributions and, separately, a policy paper explaining its environmental policies. A representative of the National Legal and Policy Center, which sponsored the charitable donation proposal, lashed out at Goldman on Tuesday for donating funds to Rainbow Push and other organizations led by Rev. Jesse Jackson.

In other matters, Blankfein said Goldman expects to raise $19 billion to $20 billion in its new private equity fund. The fund is about to be closed, and the amount raised is more than double money raised from outside investors and the firm itself in any of its five earlier private equity funds.
In another private equity discussion, Blankfein said Goldman maintains good relations with The Blackstone Group, despite the bank's absence from the underwriting group leading the private equity firm's initial public offering. Goldman sometimes can't do deals because of conflicts, he said.

He also defended Goldman's growing commitment of its own capital to trading and investing, saying the increased risk has been justified by supersized gains in capital and profits in recent years. The proprietary activities do not jeopardize relations with corporate clients because Goldman maintains "very very strict, high impermeable walls" between its client and proprietary activities to avoid conflicts of interest, he said.

He cited its status as Wall Street's biggest merger advisor and raiser of equity as testament to clients' loyalty.

Blankfein said he opposed government regulation of hedge funds because of the difficulty in creating "sensible regulations" for firms that rely on the funds' "very nimble" trading strategies. Goldman has no direct investments in hedge funds, but provides trading services and short-term loans to the funds through its large prime brokerage business. Goldman also manages almost $200 billion of its own and clients' money in alternative investments such as private equity and hedge funds, he said.

Fielding questions from shareholders on other issues, Blankfein said Goldman has no plans to split its stock, which currently trades at more than $200 a share, or close down its stock specialist operations on U.S. exchanges.

Shares of Goldman were down $1.36 to $210.37, or .6%, in early afternoon trading on The New York Stock Exchange. Shares of its largest competitors were off by about 1%.