The manufacturer of the 911 sports car currently owns 31 percent of the shares in VW and plans to raise its stake to more than 50 percent at an unspecified point in the future.

Porsche said it had called on Volkswagen to propose changes to its articles of incorporation at a shareholders' meeting April 24 and to eliminate clauses deemed illegal by a European Union court in October.

The amendments would include annulling the right of the German government, and the state of Lower Saxony which holds a 20 percent stake in VW, to send representatives to the car maker's supervisory board.

Porsche also said the VW corporation bylaws should remove a clause that caps voting rights at 20 percent regardless of the number of shares owned by an investor.

A clause that defines 80 percent of VW shares represented at the general assembly as a "qualified majority" vote should be reduced to 75 percent, Porsche said.

A qualified majority vote from the assembly is required on certain strategic issues, effectively giving Lower Saxony a veto over some decisions.

Porsche said it wanted the amendments included in the assembly agenda because VW had not implemented a ruling from the European Court of Justice.

The court ruled that certain clauses of the so-called Volkswagen Law, passed by the German government in the 1960s to protect the carmaker from hostile takeovers, violated EU laws on free movement of capital.

Porsche urged the German government to scrap the VW law altogether, after officials said they were working on a new draft that would pass EU muster.

The luxury sports car maker has called in the past for the government to begin considering VW as "a normal company."

The Florida Supreme Court this week disciplined 19 attorneys, including two in Central Florida.

Norman Sanders Moss, 813 E. Michigan St., Orlando, was suspended until further order of the court following a Feb. 27 court order, and was ordered to stop acting as a personal representative for any estate, as guardian for any ward and as trustee for any trust.

The Florida Bar's petition for emergency suspension says Moss misappropriated $107,000 held in trust for clients. Moss, who retired from The Florida Bar Jan. 14, 2008, is currently the subject of five other Florida Bar disciplinary matters.

In addition, Paulette Deloise Singleton, 499 N. State Road 434, Suite 2019, Altamonte Springs, was disbarred for five years effective 30 days from a Feb. 14 court order.

The Bar says beginning in early 2006, Singleton began not adequately communicating with clients and failed to diligently pursue their cases. Clients attempting to reach her would find her phone disconnected, and one found mail piled outside her office door.

In one case, the Bar says she took a fee and did no work and then only partially refunded the fee. In another case, she was late for a final hearing with no evidence of preparation.

As an official agency of the Florida Supreme Court, The Florida Bar and its Department of Lawyer Regulation are charged with administering a statewide disciplinary system to enforce Supreme Court rules of professional conduct for the 80,000-plus lawyers admitted to practice law in Florida.

Bear Stearns Friday revealed it will tap JPMorgan Chase & Co. for a four-week secured loan facility to boost the company's liquidity. JPMorgan will make the loan in conjunction with the New York Federal Reserve.

Throughout this week, investors have been concerned about the investment bank's possible explosure to collapsing fund Carlyle Capital and other at-risk investment funds. Carlyle Capital, an arm of private equity firm Carlyle Group, invested heavily in poor-quality mortgage assets and has had to default on $16.6 billion in debt.

The market was concerned that Bear could end up seizing low-quality mortgage-backed securities as collateral from Carlyle. That likely would have left Bear unable to sell those assets. Bear Stearns already had taken significant writedowns on its own mortgage-related holdings.

The chaotic scene marked the most violent demonstrations since protests by Buddhist monks began in Lhasa on Monday, the anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. The protests have been the largest in Tibet since the late 1980s, when Chinese security forces repeatedly used lethal force to restore order in the region.

The developments prompted the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, to issue a statement, saying he was concerned about the situation and appealing to the Chinese leadership to “stop using force and address the long-simmering resentment of the Tibetan people”.

By Friday night, Chinese authorities had placed much of the central part of the city under a curfew, including neighborhoods around different Buddhist monasteries, according to two Lhasa residents reached by telephone. Military police were blocking roads in some ethnic Tibetan neighborhoods, several Lhasa residents said.

Meanwhile, the United States Embassy in Beijing warned American citizens to stay away from Lhasa. The embassy said it had “received firsthand reports from American citizens in the city who report gunfire and other indications of violence.”

The Chinese government’s official news agency, Xinhua, issued a two-sentence bulletin, in English, confirming that shops in Lhasa had been set on fire and that other stores had closed because of violence on the streets. But the Chinese news media otherwise carried no news about the protests. The White House responded with expressions of concern, but not direct criticism, although it urged the Chinese authorities to use restraint.

“We believe Beijing needs to respect Tibetan culture, needs to respect multi-ethnicity in their society,” a spokesman, Tony Fratto, said while traveling with President Bush to New York. “We regret the tensions between ethnic groups and Beijing.”

The White House says that the American ambassador in Beijing, Clark T. Randt Jr., had urged restraint in his contacts with the Chinese authorities.

The disturbances appear to be becoming a major problem for the ruling Communist Party, which is holding its annual meeting of the National People’s Congress this week in Beijing. China is eager to present a harmonious image to the rest of the world as Beijing prepares to play host to the Olympic Games in August.

On Thursday, attorneys for Lisa Miller-Jenkins asked the court to revisit the issue, which was decided in favor of Janet Miller-Jenkins in 2006.

The two Virginia residents were joined in a Vermont civil union in 2000, but later split up. Lisa had a child in 2002 and a Vermont family court awarded Janet visitation rights.

Lisa argues that since Virginia law doesn’t recognize civil unions her former partner shouldn’t have parental rights.

Janet says the case has already been decided in her favor by a family court.

A federal advisory panel, in response to mounting safety concerns, called on Thursday for additional restrictions on the use of anemia drugs by cancer patients.

The recommendation by a committee that advises the Food and Drug Administration could lead to an additional decline in sales for the drugs: Aranesp, made by Amgen, and Procrit by Johnson & Johnson.

But the two companies avoided the outcome they most feared: a recommendation that the drugs not be used by any cancer patients. That probably would have meant the loss of at least $1 billion in sales for each company.

“They dodged the really big bullet, but they still took some damage,” said Geoffrey C. Porges, a biotechnology analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company.

Yaron Werber, an analyst with Citigroup, estimated that Amgen would lose about $125 million in Aranesp sales if the recommendations were enacted. That would be about 25 percent of Mr. Werber’s already reduced projections for 2008 sales to cancer patients in the United States. The meeting was held because eight clinical trials suggested that the drugs might make cancer worse for some patients or even shorten their lives. Cancer patients take Aranesp or Procrit to counter the anemia caused by chemotherapy.

The difficulty for the committee was that those eight studies involved high doses of the drugs. There was very little solid information on whether the drugs were dangerous at doses typically used by cancer doctors.

Faced with that information, the panel voted 13 to 1 in favor of recommending that the drugs remain available for use by many cancer patients.

But the committee then voted 9 to 5 in favor of recommending that the drugs not be used by patients with either breast cancer or head and neck cancer because the evidence of a risk was strongest for those types of tumors.

The committee also voted 11 to 2, with 1 abstention, to recommend that the drug not be used by patients being treated with the intent of curing their cancers. The definition of that category is vague, but it generally refers to patients with early-stage cancer who are undergoing chemotherapy after surgical removal of a tumor, in which the doctors hope the cancer has been eliminated. F.D.A. officials said after the meeting that most use of the anemia drugs was for patients with more advanced cancers.

The panel members also recommended that patients be made to sign consents in order to obtain the drugs. But the panel voted against carefully controlling distribution of the drugs.

The White House announced Thursday that Bush had nominated G. Steven Agee to the Richmond, Va.-based appeals court, which has handled some of the country's biggest terrorism cases.

If confirmed by the Senate, Agee would fill the seat of J. Michael Luttig, who resigned in 2006.

"Justice Agee is an experienced attorney, dedicated public servant and respected judge," White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said.

Bush wants the Senate to consider Agee's nomination swiftly because heavy caseloads and the duration of vacancies have created a "judicial emergency" at the 4th Circuit, she said.

Five of the 15 seats on the court are vacant. Agee was one of several people that Sens. John Warner, R-Va., and Jim Webb, D-Va., recommended to Bush after conducting a search of their own.

Confirmation of Bush's judicial nominees has caused friction between the Senate and the White House for years.

"Bush has a history of not consulting home-state senators or seeking consensus nominees, so Agee's nomination is a healthy sign," said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. "Bush should consult more often and select consensus nominees."

Tobias said it's unclear, however, whether there will be time for Bush's nominee to be confirmed. Judicial nominees must go through security checks, American Bar Association evaluations and Senate hearings and votes.

Typically, "appointments slow down in an election year and stop after the (political) conventions," Tobias said. "If the Virginia senators push, Agee could be confirmed, though he would have to move ahead of a number in the queue."

Bush has accused the Senate of dragging its feet on his judicial nominees.

The White House says there are 11 circuit court nominees awaiting Senate confirmation. The current Congress has confirmed only six circuit court judges while the Senate has confirmed an average of 17 circuit court judges in the final two years of the past three administrations, according to the White House.

Agee, 55, a native of Roanoke, Va., was an associate and partner in several private law firms before becoming a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, a position he held from 1982 to 1994. From 2001 to 2003, he was a judge on the Virginia Court of Appeals and since 2003 has been a justice on the Virginia Supreme Court.

Agee, who is married with one child, is a graduate of the University of Virginia and New York University schools of law.