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Onondaga land claim to be argued in federal court
Breaking Legal News |
2007/10/11 06:48
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The Onondaga Indian Nation's claim to 4,000 square miles of land running down the middle of the state and comprising some of the largest cities in upstate New York was to be argued in court Thursday.
The central New York tribe filed claim in 2005 to a swath of land up to 40 miles wide running north to south from the St. Lawrence River to the Pennsylvania state line. They argue that New York state illegally took the land from them centuries ago.
New York, among other things, claims the Iroquois tribe waited to long to sue. The state will ask U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence Kahn to dismiss the claim, which includes the cities of Binghamton, Oswego, Syracuse and Watertown.
The Onondagas are not seeking monetary damages and insist they do not want to evict the roughly 875,000 residents of the disputed area. They say they want to spur a cleanup of Onondaga Lake, a waterway sacred to the tribe, and other hazardous waste sites.
"There is no attempt to take people off their land and evict them," tribal attorney Joseph Heath said on the eve of arguments. "Our case is about healing."
Heath said that if tribal leaders get a judgment in their favor, they would hope to sit down with state officials to consider a range of options, such as a lease payment plan or a plan to help the Onondagas buy additional land from willing sellers.
While the Onondagas today maintain an 11-mile-square reservation south of Syracuse, they had been spread over much of what is now central New York centuries ago at the height of the Iroquois Confederacy. |
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Profit Boost Perks Up Wal-Mart Shares
Business |
2007/10/11 06:36
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Wal-Mart (WMT) shares climbed 3% Thursday after the giant retailer surprised Wall Street by boosting its earnings estimate for the third quarter, despite tepid sales. The Bentonville, Ark., company said it now expects to make 68 cents to 69 cents a share for the quarter, up from its previous forecast of 62 cents to 65 cents a share. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected earnings of 63 cents a share. The company said it had improved expense controls at its Wal-Mart Stores division, which expanded profit margins. That helped offset relatively meager sales growth. Wal-Mart said same-store sales rose 1.4% from a year ago in September, at the lower end of its forecast for a 1% to 3% rise. Analysts expected a 1.8% increase in same-store sales, or sales at stores open at least a year. Sales in established Wal-Mart stores inched up 0.8%, and those at warehouse-club operator Sam's Club jumped 4.4%. "Overall, apparel and home remain soft. Company research reinforces that customers remain concerned about their finances, especially the cost of living," Wal-Mart said. "In addition, unseasonably warmer weather in much of the country, coupled with tighter consumer spending, negatively impacted key seasonal categories." The report came as many retailers reported sluggish sales for September, including Wal-Mart rival Target (TGT) and department-store chains like J.C. Penney (JCP) and Macy's (M) . While several chains attributed the drop to warmer-than-average weather, the companies are also dealing with inventory missteps and the threat of tighter consumer spending. |
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Gore to learn whether he'll win Nobel Peace Prize
International |
2007/10/11 05:32
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They say they love his advocacy for the environment, his intellect and sense of humor. The people urging Al Gore to run for president have not persuaded him to do so — not yet anyway. The latest salvo from those hoping Gore would reprise his 2000 run for the White House came in a full-page ad in The New York Times sponsored by draftgore.com, which says it is a group of grass-roots Democrats. Gore has said repeatedly, if not definitively, that he is not planning to seek the presidency. "Your country needs you now — as do your party and the planet you are fighting so hard to save," said Wednesday's ad, which group founder Monica Friedlander of Oakland, Calif., said cost $65,000. Despite no overt campaigning for the presidency, Gore was backed by 12 percent of Democrats in this month's Associated Press-Ipsos poll. That's down from 20 percent in June, but enough to tie for third with former Sen. John Edwards, well behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and just trailing Sen. Barack Obama. "Doggone him," Pat Sutton, 69, a Gore supporter and homemaker from Lincoln, Neb., said of Gore's non-candidacy. "That's the kind of president I want, who's willing to stand up to the hard stuff. And there's a lot of hard stuff out there." "He's far and away more intelligent than the others," said Jason Thompson, 36, an environmental health inspector in Fort Myers, Fla. "I like his environmental stand, I think he's the more sincere of the candidates, and I think he got hosed in his first election" when George W. Bush defeated him in 2000 in a disputed election. Longtime political aide Roy Neel, who runs Gore's office in Nashville, Tenn., said the former vice president is focusing on prompting action against global warming. He said he has seen no signs Gore is contemplating a race. "He's making no plans, and we're doing nothing," said Neel, adding, "He's not ruled it out in the future." Asked what "the future" meant, Neel said, "Sometime later than today." Donna Brazile, campaign manager for Gore's bitter 2000 loss to Bush, said she believes he will not run — this time. "He's very comfortable and committed" to his work on global warming, she said, and to business pursuits that include Current TV, a cable network he helped found. She would not rule out a future presidential run. "Al Gore should be viable for the rest of his life" as a candidate, she said. Gore has been in the public eye this year, particularly in February when the movie "An Inconvenient Truth" about his efforts to educate about global warming won the Oscar for best documentary. Current TV also captured an Emmy. Friends hope a crowning third award will come later this week, when the Nobel Prize for peace is announced. |
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Mozilla Working on New Mobile Browser
Venture Business News |
2007/10/11 03:37
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After a couple of experiences dipping a toe into the mobile market, Mozilla Corp. said it plans to get serious about developing a mobile browser. Mozilla has recently hired two new developers to help work on the project and plans to release Mobile Firefox some time in the next year or two. The iPhone, Apple Inc.'s popular new mobile phone, in part contributed to the renewed interest in mobile browsing at Mozilla. "The user demand for a full browsing experience on mobile devices is clear," Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering at Mozilla Corp. wrote in his blog on Tuesday. "If you weren't sure about this before, you should be after the launch of the iPhone." As Mozilla continues to develop Mozilla2, the second version of the platform on which Firefox is built, it will add mobile devices as a category. That means developers of Mozilla2, which is expected to be complete in early 2009, will keep mobile phones in mind as they build the new platform, Schroepfer wrote. He didn't get more specific on a release date for the mobile browser other than to say "not before 2008." Schroepfer also said Mozilla hadn't yet decided which mobile phones the browser would work on. Depending on compatibility, Mozilla could face competition from companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Apple that include their own browsers in phones running their operating systems, as well as from third parties such as Opera Software ASA that have been fine-tuning their mobile browsers for years now. The announcement comes after the release earlier this year of a new version of Minimo, a Mozilla-based mobile browser for Windows Mobile devices. A few months prior to the release, the lead developer of Minimo said he wouldn't be spending much time on the project in the future. On Tuesday, Schroepfer said that there are no plans to further develop Minimo. Mozilla also offers Joey, a project in development that lets users clip and save text, photos, videos and other content while using a PC and then access that content through a browser on a cell phone. Mozilla is also involved with a group of companies including Arm Ltd. and MontaVista Software Inc. that is developing an open-source Linux-based platform for devices that are bigger than a cell phone but smaller than a laptop. Mozilla is developing a browser for the platform and has already built one for a similar device, the N800, from Nokia Corp. The new Mozilla hires who will contribute to the mobile Firefox initiative are Christian Sejersen, who recently worked for Openwave Systems Inc., and Brad Lassey, who worked for France Telecom R&D, which has been very active in mobile Linux initiatives. |
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Supreme Court lets H-P/Compaq suit proceed
Class Action |
2007/10/11 02:46
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A class-action lawsuit alleging Compaq Computer Corp. sold defective computers can proceed, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday. Compaq, which was founded in 1982 and bought by Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) in 2002, was sued by Oklahoma residents who said the company sold defective computers and then refused to repair or replace them. In June 2003, the state gave class-action status to the case which grew to include 1.7 million people who bought similar computers. H-P is a major employer in Roseville.
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Greenspan sees slowing economic growth
World Business News |
2007/10/10 16:52
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While U.S. economic data look good in the third quarter, the growth rate will continue to slow and the housing market will weaken further, former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan said Wednesday. Economic growth should continue to slow through the rest of the year and into the first quarter of 2008, while home prices have further to drop, Greenspan said, speaking before attendees at the World Business Forum, held Wednesday and Thursday at Radio City Music Hall in New York. "The critical question is the price level of homes in the United States, which are almost certainly going to fall," Greenspan said, as the hefty inventory of unsold homes continues to drive down prices. "What we don't know at this stage is whether, in fact, the decline in home prices will be a large one or a modest one," he said. Given the current climate, the odds that the United States will skirt a recession now look better than 50/50, Greenspan said. In March, he put the odds of a recession over the next six to nine months at one-third, but that could be offset by stock market prices if they continue to rise, he said. Greenspan also addressed the credit crisis that roiled markets this summer, noting that credit market adjustments were "an accident waiting to happen" given the low level of credit spreads for such a long period of time. "History always suggests that that does not last," Greenspan said. "If it wasn't subprime, it would have been something else." The United States came into the credit crisis amid a "fairly strong" global economic upswing, and talking about the U.S. economy without the worldwide context is "no longer relevant," he said. Turning to China, Greenspan said growth there has been "quite remarkable," adding that "nobody is fully cognizant or understands why they have done so well for so long." China has moved dramatically toward capitalism, he said, and even though its economy appears to be "overheating," the country continues to progress. Greenspan also said rising Chinese inflation was of little significance, noting that much of the increase was due to rising food prices. But, he added, "at some point, they've got to slow down" and other areas of eastern Asia could begin to successfully compete with the country. At least through the Olympics, however, China "should do very well," he said.
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Lawsuit accuses Mattel of insider trading
Breaking Legal News |
2007/10/10 16:49
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Attorneys for a Michigan pension fund alleged in a shareholder lawsuit filed Wednesday that Mattel Inc. has misled investors by delaying the reporting of defects in its toys to federal regulators. The lawsuit, filed in Delaware's Court of Chancery, also accuses three current members and one former member of Mattel's board of directors of engaging in illegal insider trading by dumping more than $33 million in stock before the company's massive toy recalls this summer. Since August, Mattel has announced three separate recalls of some 21 million toys because of dangers to children from lead paint or from tiny magnets that can be harmful if swallowed. Attorneys representing the Sterling Heights, Mich., police and fire pension fund allege that Mattel knew about the defects for months but failed to report them to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, as required by federal law. They allege that the company has withheld information about its products from the commission for years in order to prop up sales and avoid fines, thereby artificially inflating the value of Mattel's shares and breaching their fiduciary duties to shareholders. Officials with El Segundo, Calif.-based Mattel did not immediately respond to a telephone call and e-mail seeking comment on the lawsuit.
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Class action or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued. This form of collective lawsuit originated in the United States and is still predominantly a U.S. phenomenon, at least the U.S. variant of it. In the United States federal courts, class actions are governed by Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule. Since 1938, many states have adopted rules similar to the FRCP. However, some states like California have civil procedure systems which deviate significantly from the federal rules; the California Codes provide for four separate types of class actions. As a result, there are two separate treatises devoted solely to the complex topic of California class actions. Some states, such as Virginia, do not provide for any class actions, while others, such as New York, limit the types of claims that may be brought as class actions. They can construct your law firm a brand new website, lawyer website templates and help you redesign your existing law firm site to secure your place in the internet. |
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