A Bulgarian EU commissioner has hit out at Apple's "improper" policy of bundling iTunes with its iPod players.

The claims were made by Meglena Kuneva, EC Commissioner for Consumer Protection, who has a responsibility to protect the rights of European consumers.

"Do you find it proper that a music CD can be played on all trademarks of players, but the music sold in iTunes can be played only on an iPod?" Kuneva asked German magazine Focus. "I find it quite improper and I will do my best to change it."

Apple could face separate legal action in Norway, which is not a member of the EU, after the government criticised the iTunes monopoly in January.

The Norwegians have set a deadline of October 2007 for Apple to open its digital rights management system up to other companies.

Consumer rights groups in Finland, Germany and France have also laid into the iPod maker in recent months.

Several high-ranking Democratic senators have called for the resignation of US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in the wake of revelations in an official audit that the FBI broke and misused laws in the process of obtaining personal information from telephone companies, Internet service providers, banks, and credit bureaus under the terms of the Patriot Act. Prior to Friday's release of the Department of Justice Inspector General's report Gonzales was already under pressure in connection with publicized dismissals of several US Attorneys that may have been politically motivated.

In an interview on CBS' Face the Nation, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said Sunday:

the Justice Department is different than any other department. In every other department, the Cabinet--chief Cabinet officer is supposed to follow the president's orders, requests without exception. But the Justice Department has a higher responsibility, rule of law and the Constitution. And Attorney General Gonzalez, in his department, has been even more political than his predecessor, Attorney General Ashcroft. Attorney General Gonzalez is a nice man, but he either doesn't accept or doesn't understand that he is no longer just the president's lawyer, but has a higher obligation to the rule of law and the Constitution even when the president should not want it to be so. And so this department has been so political that I think, for the sake of the nation, Attorney General Gonzalez should step down....

What we found in--in the Justice Department over and over again is a lack of respect for the rule of law, a lack of respect for balance of powers. There's a view that the executives should be almost without check. And that is so wrong, and that's one of the reasons I think we need at change at the top in the Justice Department.
Speaking on the same program, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), now ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and former GOP chairman, acknowledged that "there have been lots of problems," but said that the question of Gonzales' resignation was one "for the president and the attorney general." During a judiciary committee meeting last week, Specter suggested that there could be a new attorney general "sooner rather than later."

Appearing on CNN's Late Edition, Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) said:
I think Gonzales has lost the confidence of the vast majority of the American people. I think it goes all the way back to the torture memos, when we gave him the benefit of the doubt, straight through to the firing of these U.S. attorneys and until recently insisting that they could, in fact, under a law -- a little-known provision in the law -- allow them to replace attorneys general.

I think it's an abuse of power. And I think he's lost the confidence of the American people. I think he's lost the confidence of many in the United States Congress. And, obviously, it it's president's judgment to say whether he should stay or not, but I think he's lost the confidence of the Congress.

Also speaking on Late Edition, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that the Justice Department's handling of the US Attorneys firings was "clumsy," but said that he didn't believe Gonzales would resign over the matter.

Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP today announced the opening of the law firm's Shanghai office, marking a natural expansion of the firm's U.S.-based East Asia practice. The new office, Sheppard Mullin's first international location, is housed in the Platinum Tower in Shanghai's Luwan District, near several of the firm's existing clients.

Sheppard Mullin represents 55 of the U.S. Fortune 100 companies, most of which have significant business operations in greater China. The new office in Shanghai marks the next step in Sheppard Mullin's strategic growth plan, which saw the opening of offices in Washington, D.C. in 2003 and New York in 2005. As with Washington and New York, the decision to open in Shanghai was driven by the needs of existing clients.

"Many of our clients have operations in China and are pursuing aggressive growth plans there. It is natural for us to establish a footprint in China to provide the support and guidance that our clients require on both sides of the Pacific," said Guy Halgren, chairman of Sheppard Mullin. The firm has well established China and Korea teams handling outbound as well as inbound investment matters in a variety of industry sectors, including pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, infrastructure, entertainment/media, and hospitality.

Opening in Shanghai is also a natural expansion of the firm's other international practices, which include the successful prior launch of Latin America, Italy, and Israel teams. "Several of our domestic and international practices focus to a significant degree on Chinese companies looking to raise capital or develop markets outside of China, and our new Shanghai office allows us to expand the services that we provide to those clients," said Halgren.

The Shanghai office opens with four seasoned China hands positioned to immediately handle a full range of investment, intellectual property, real estate, trade, financial restructuring, and international disputes matters. Partner David Huebner has relocated from Los Angeles to Shanghai to head the China practice and lead the new office. Also relocating to Shanghai is special counsel Xudong Ni from the firm's Washington, D.C. office. Special counsel William Zheng and senior legal consultant Michael Zhang have joined Sheppard Mullin from China's AllBright Law Firm.

In addition, partners Edward Tillinghast and Jerry Gumpel will remain integral members of the Shanghai team and will anchor the U.S.-side of the firm's greater China practice from their offices in New York and Del Mar, California, respectively.

Huebner, a former chairman of Coudert Brothers LLP, specializes in intellectual property and international dispute resolution. He has represented governments and corporations in various sectors including pharmaceuticals, technology, entertainment/media, telecom, and construction. Huebner is a solicitor in England & Wales as well as a member of the Bars of California, New York, and D.C. He is a graduate summa cum laude from Princeton University and Yale Law School, and worked earlier in his career in Tokyo as a policy advisor to a member of the Japanese Diet. He sits on the ICC Commission on Arbitration and has handled numerous disputes in and related to greater China.

Ni, a native of China, has many years of experience handling foreign investment and trade matters, and helped found one of China's first private law firms. He also has prior experience at a Virginia-based business strategy consulting firm. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Peking University School of Law, and earned an LLM from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has particular expertise in strategic planning for foreign companies doing business in China, as well as deep industry experience in the aviation and banking sectors.

Zheng focuses his practice on foreign direct investment in the greater China region and has extensive experience in advising clients in various matters relating to intellectual property, corporate law, M&A, and venture capital in China. He worked earlier in his career for one of the Big Five accounting firms. He received his bachelor degree from Brandeis University and J.D. from Pace University School of Law. He is a member of the New York Bar.

Zhang has broad experience in intellectual property and corporate law, with a focus on advising clients on structuring investments and protecting intellectual assets. He has handled a wide range of matters in China for U.S. Fortune 100 companies and other international clients. He is a graduate of the Law School of the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Trade.

Tillinghast specializes in financial restructuring, cross-border insolvencies, creditors' rights litigation, distressed mergers and acquisitions, and advising distressed asset investors. Former head of Coudert Brothers' Global Insolvency and Restructuring practice, Tillinghast has written and spoken widely on the challenges of cross-border restructurings, and represents U.S. and greater China-based clients in cross-border matters in the U.S. and China.

Gumpel, the leader of the firm's International group, is a cross-border investment and M&A specialist. He represents U.S.-based multinationals and non-U.S. companies that have invested in the U.S.

About Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP

Sheppard Mullin is a full service AmLaw 100 firm with 490 attorneys in 10 offices located throughout California and in New York, Washington, D.C. and Shanghai. The firm's California offices are located in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Century City, Orange County, Del Mar Heights and San Diego. Founded in 1927 on the principle that the firm would succeed only if its attorneys delivered prompt, high quality and cost-effective legal services, Sheppard Mullin provides legal counsel to U.S. and international clients. Companies turn to Sheppard Mullin to handle a full range of corporate and technology matters, high stakes litigation and complex financial transactions. In the U.S., the firm's clients include more than half of the Fortune 100 companies.

www.sheppardmullin.com

China plans to gradually lessen the number of executions it carries out while still keeping the death penalty, according to a statement released Sunday by China's Supreme People's Court, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Public Security, and China's lead prosecutor. The statement indicated that China cannot entirely abolish the death penalty, but noted that if the possibility exists that a convicted individual did not commit the crime, then that person should not be executed. The legal groups also condemned confessions through torture and said police must instead gather evidence according to the law.

China, which executes more prisoners than any other country in the world, revised its death penalty laws last year, mandating the Supreme People's Court to review any death sentences handed down. The country has been under pressure to take a closer look at its policies after China's deputy chief prosecutor revealed that almost every wrongful conviction in recent years has been the result of torture and intensive interrogation techniques.

An Egyptian appeals court on Monday upheld the four-year prison sentence given to an Egyptian blogger who criticized conservative Muslims and was convicted of insulting Islam and Egypt's president, court officials said.

Abdel Kareem Nabil's sentence last month had been widely condemned by local and international rights groups as a bid to curb free expression.

Nabil, a 22-year-old former student at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, had been sentenced to three years in prison for insulting Islam, the Prophet Muhammad and inciting sectarian strife, and another year for insulting President Hosni Mubarak.

Nabil, who used the blogger name Kareem Amer, was an unusually scathing critic of conservative Muslims. His frequent attacks on Al-Azhar led the university to expel him in March 2006 and caused prosecutors to bring him to trial.

Court officials said Monday that the Appeal Court in Alexandria upheld the earlier sentence. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press.

The judge in the original trial found that Nabil had insulted the Prophet Muhammad with a piece he wrote in 2005 after riots in which angry Muslim worshippers attacked a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria over a play deemed offensive to Islam.

"Muslims revealed their true ugly face and appeared to all the world that they are full of brutality, barbarism and inhumanity," Nabil wrote in his blog. He called Muhammad and his 7th century followers, the Sahaba, "spillers of blood" for their teachings on warfare — a comment cited by the judge.

In a later essay not cited by the court, Nabil clarified his comments, saying that Muhammad was "great" but his teachings on warfare and other issues should be viewed as a product of their times.

In other writings, he called Al-Azhar the "other face of the coin of al-Qaida" and he criticized Mubarak, describing him as "the symbol of tyranny."

A 60-year-old bookkeeper who embezzled more than $1 million from a small, family-owned law firm in downtown Cincinnati will spend the next six years in prison.

Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Charles J. Kubicki Jr. ordered the sentence this morning for Candace Vail, who pleaded guilty last month to a charge of theft. Kubicki also ordered Vail to re-pay the $1,038,499 she stole from from Goodman & Goodman between Jan. 1, 2001, and Feb. 16, 2006.

Vail’s excuse in a letter to the court? She wasn’t paid enough and often did errands for the attorneys she worked for without extra compensation.

Vail used the money to bankroll her son's landscaping business, according to Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Andy Berghausen.

Court records show Vail filed for bankruptcy last October.

Vail took client checks to Goodman & Goodman from the mail, deposited them into little-used firm accounts and then wrote 1,325 checks to herself and her family. She forged attorney names on another 91 checks she wrote to herself, according to court records.

She even duped the Ohio Supreme Court, which began investigating shortly before she was caught. When the firm's trust account, which by law must be kept by law firms, was overdrawn, the bank alerted the Ohio Supreme Court.

Vail intercepted letters notifying the attorneys about the investigation, forged attorney signatures on documents and told Ohio Supreme Court officials they should deal with her. That investigation has been resolved since the theft was discovered, Goodman said.

The firm realized money was missing on March 8 when one of the firm's attorneys went to the bank himself and discovered several bounced checks. Vail was immediately fired, Goodman said.

Although the government generally respected and promoted human rights at the national level by investigating, prosecuting, and sentencing public officials and members of the security forces, a deeply entrenched culture of impunity and corruption persisted, particularly at the state and local level. The following human rights problems were reported: unlawful killings by security forces; kidnappings, including by police; torture; poor and overcrowded prison conditions; arbitrary arrests and detention; corruption, inefficiency, and lack of transparency in the judicial system; statements coerced through torture permitted as evidence in trials; criminal intimidation of journalists, leading to self-censorship; corruption at all levels of government; domestic violence against women often perpetrated with impunity; criminal violence, including killings against women; trafficking in persons, sometimes allegedly with official involvement; social and economic discrimination against indigenous people; and child labor.

On Friday, Calderon said he plans to replace each state's individual criminal code with a single, nationwide code. He also wants to make it easier to fire corrupt police officers and to transition to trials similar to those in the US. Trials are currently held behind closed doors.