A Toronto-based law firm with a history of targeting litigation at corporations as varied as chocolate companies and silicone breast implant manufacturers has a new company in the crosshairs: Facebook.

Merchant Law Group, which has offices in 10 Canadian cities, last week launched litigation seeking class action status against the massive social-networking site, alleging the mishandling of sensitive user data--the latest development in a resurgence of action against the social network's privacy policies, after it looked for a while as if all the fuss had calmed down.

The suit alleges that Facebook changed user privacy settings and its terms of service without adequate consent from users, rendering a significant amount of information public to the Web when it had once been protected. The lead plaintiff is a Winnipeg, Manitoba, resident named Donald J. Woligroski, and the complaint alleges that he "has been subject to, inter alia, breach of privacy and the misappropriation of his personal information and, in the addition or alternative, the conversion of said information for commercial use through the materially deceptive conduct of the Defendant"--that defendant being Facebook.

A mattress and furniture retailer here has won a $7.3 million emotional distress verdict against a law firm in a case involving the now-defunct Northern Mattress & Furniture Co. of Fairfield, Maine, according to a report in the Kennebec Journal.

Peter Redman, who now operates Priceless Mattress & Furniture in Augusta, Maine, said the firm Bernstein Shur Sawyer & Nelson was negligent in representing him in a sexual harassment claim brought by a co-worker at the former store in 2004.

He won the case at a jury trial three weeks ago, the Journal reported. An attorney representing the law firm said his client will ask for a new trial.

Republican Sen. John McCain says he plans to vote against confirming Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

The Arizona senator's decision makes him the latest in the GOP to oppose President Barack Obama's nominee to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.

McCain says Kagan is unlikely to exercise judicial restraint, based on her decision as dean of Harvard Law School to bar military recruiters from the campus career services office because of the ban on openly gay soldiers.

Democrats have more than enough votes to confirm Kagan. So far, no Republican has announced plans to back her.

The European Union has approved a new chewable form of cholesterol blockbuster Lipitor for children 10 and up with high levels of bad cholesterol and triglycerides, a type of blood fat, Pfizer said Tuesday.

The approval includes children whose high blood fats are due to an inherited disease that causes extremely high cholesterol levels, familial hypercholesterolemia.

New York-based Pfizer Inc. won U.S. approval for Lipitor use in children 10 to 17 with that condition in 2002.

Lipitor is the world's top-selling drug, with 2009 sales of about $13 billion, but its U.S. patent expires at the end of November 2011. Pfizer, the world's biggest drugmaker, will quickly lose most Lipitor revenue once generic competition hits, so the company has been trying to boost sales where possible before then.

Pfizer said last fall that it plans to apply for a six-month extension of its patent in European countries, after doing studies of Lipitor in youngsters.

As in the United States, the European Union allows drug makers to seek an additional six months of patent protection for medications if they test them in children, who generally are excluded from the drug studies performed to win approval for a new medication.

The Department of Justice has opened a criminal investigation into whether some HSBC Holdings Plc clients may have failed to disclose offshore accounts, lawyers familiar with the probe said on Tuesday.

The London-based bank has become the latest focus of a widening federal probe into U.S. citizens believed to have stored billions of dollars of assets in offshore accounts to avoid scrutiny by domestic tax authorities.

HSBC clients have received a June 21 letter from Kevin Downing, a senior litigator at the Justice Department who oversaw the UBS probe, that says they are subjects of a criminal investigation. Reuters obtained a copy of the letter.

A Justice Department representative did not immediately return an email request for comment.

Last year, Switzerland's UBS AG admitted to criminal wrongdoing for helping U.S. clients evade taxes. It agreed to pay a $780 million penalty and hand over details on more than 250 client accounts, and later agreed to disclose names of 4,450 wealthy U.S. clients to tax investigators.

Germany condemned Wednesday the jailing of a 79-year-old prominent human rights lawyer by a Syrian court and demanded his immediate release.

The German government's human rights commissioner, Markus Loening, said he was "shocked" by the sentencing of Haytham al-Maleh to three years in prison Sunday on charges of "publishing false information".

"Mr Maleh is considered a leader of the Syrian human rights movement who has committed himself for decades at great personal risk for the protection of human rights in his country," Loening said.

"I call on the Syrian government to comply with its international commitments, in particular in implementing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and, in light of Mr Maleh's advanced age and his precarious health, release him immediately."

Maleh was arrested in Damascus on October 14 last year, and investigated by the military court over articles he had written.

The lawyer had been imprisoned from 1980 to 1986, along with a large number of trade unionists, activists and political opponents, for demanding constitutional reforms.

He has worked with Amnesty International since 1989 and, in 2001, helped to establish the Syrian Human Rights Association, whose activities have been frozen for more than three years.

A Kentucky man has pleaded guilty to writing and posting on a white supremacist website a poem threatening the assassination of President Barack Obama.

Johnny Logan Spencer Jr. of Louisville entered an open plea — admitting guilt without a deal with prosecutors — Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Louisville.

The 28-year-old Spencer's sentencing is set for Nov. 2. The charge carries a maximum of five years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.

U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Stephan M. Pazenzia said in an affidavit that Spencer wrote and posted the poem, titled "The Sniper," on a page called NewSaxon.org.

The poem describes a gunman shooting and killing a "tyrant" later identified as the president, setting off panic.