Boston-based legal firm Goodwin Procter has inked a deal to lease several floors in The New York Times’ new Manhattan high-rise headquarters.

The law firm will lease seven floors, totaling 216,000 square feet, in the 52-story Renzo Piano designed building, which is now nearing completion.

The move is part of a major expansion by Goodwin Procter of its New York office, which focuses on the city’s booming financial services sector. The firm expects to double its New York office in size from 150 to 300 over the next few years, a spokeswoman said.

The law firm, which has more than 800 lawyers, has opened a number of new offices recently in other cities around the country.

The new Times headquarters building is a joint venture between The New York Times Co. and Forest City Ratner Cos. The 1.6 million-square-foot New York Times Building, which will open in the fall, is now almost fully leased.

http://www.goodwinprocter.com

The US District Court for the District of Columbia Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit against former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for authorizing torture and abuse of detainees by US personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan. The suit asserted that Rumsfeld bears direct responsibility for detainee abuse and that his actions violated the US Constitution, federal statutes and international law. Chief Judge Thomas Hogan based the dismissal on the immunity of government officials from lawsuits and the premise that US constitutional rights do not apply overseas. While noting that the allegations of torture were "horrifying," Hogan concluded that policy considerations counsel against permitting government officials to be sued for political decisions.

The suit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Human Rights First, which had previously sued Rumsfeld and other military officials in 2005 on behalf of eight former detainees. A war crimes action is also pending against Rumsfeld in Germany, where the German Federal Prosecutor is using Germany's universal jurisdiction law to investigate similar allegations.

Incorrectly worded Justice Department documents filed as part of the biggest tax prosecution ever will cause the federal government to miss out on $100 million.

Telecommunications entrepreneur Walter Anderson, who admitted hiding hundreds of millions of dollars from the IRS and District of Columbia tax collectors, was sentenced Tuesday to nine years in prison and ordered to repay about $23 million to the city.

But U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman said he couldn't order Anderson to repay the federal government $100 million to $175 million because the Justice Department's binding plea agreement with Anderson listed the wrong statute.

Friedman said he could have worked around that problem by ordering Anderson to repay the money as part of his probation. But prosecutors omitted any discussion of probation - a common element of plea deals - from Anderson's paperwork.

Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, which prosecuted the case in cooperation with Justice Department headquarters, said the government would bring civil charges against Anderson.

That will require a new round of litigation in a court that does not wield the threat of more jail time. Prosecutors have said Anderson has money stashed away in accounts around the world, a claim Anderson denied in court.

He appeared humbled but not overly apologetic Tuesday. He took responsibility for his actions but said he never intended to defraud the government.

Anderson told the judge that his millions in unpaid taxes weren't funding an opulent lifestyle. He often used jets but for business or charity, he said, and usually he flew business class, not first class, and sometimes even coach.

Anderson launched a long-distance telecommunications business in the 1980s as the industry was undergoing deregulation. When his first company, Mid-Atlantic Telecom, merged with another company in 1992, Anderson formed corporations in the British Virgin Islands to hide the income, prosecutors said.

Authorities said Anderson used other offshore corporations to disguise his ownership in other telecommunications companies that earned more than $450 million between 1995 and 1999. He allegedly did not file federal income tax returns from 1987 to 1993.

With credit for the two years he has been jailed, he will have to serve seven years in prison and will be eligible for release in less than six years.

Among the taxes allegedly owed to the District of Columbia are use taxes, equivalent to sales taxes, on art, jewelry and wine. The indictment alleges that Anderson bought a painting by Salvador Dali and several paintings by Rene Magritte, an 18-karat gold bracelet and more than $47,000 in fine wines, then had them shipped to a Virginia address to avoid Washington taxes.

Intel, the world's biggest chipmaker, started Wednesday construction of a chipset assembly and test facility with total investment of 1 billion U.S. dollars in southern Ho Chi Minh City, the first of its kind in Vietnam, according to local media on Thursday.

When completed (scheduled in mid-2009), the facility will be the seventh assembly site of Intel's global network, and is projected to eventually employ some 4,000 local people, and generate annual revenues of 5 billion dollars, said Youth newspaper.

Assembly and test facilities package chips that come from semiconductor fabrication plants. The assembly and test process can be broken down into three stages: packaging, testing and shipping.

Vietnam is fostering high technologies, including information technology, in a move to realize the target of basically becoming an industrial country by 2020.

Vietnam plans to have 38 million phone subscribers by the end of this year, or 43 units per 100 residents, up from 27.5 million subscribers by the end of last year. It also eyes 6 million Internet subscribers, by late 2007, up from over 4 million by late2006.

Vietnam earned nearly 1.8 billion dollars from exporting electronics goods, including computers, mainly to Japan and Southeast Asian countries, in 2006, up 24 percent against 2005, according to the country's General Statistics Office.

"This kind of memory has never been seen before. Manufacturers of such items as cellular phones and consumer electronics will welcome it the most," Samsung President Hwang Chang-gyu said.

"With our Flex-OneNand, for example, they will be able to come up with cheaper and slimmer products while offering more applications," said Hwang who leads the firm’s semiconductor unit.

Flex-OneNand combines two memories and product manufacturers can adjust their capacity through dedicated software. Previously chip memories were either embedded or external.

This is expected to sharply increase data throughput speeds and reduce the prices of handsets, portable game consoles and media players.

"We are poised to roll out the Flex-OneNand in the second quarter of this year. Already big-name companies are ready to incorporate the item into their products," Hwang said.

"Down the road, more advanced features will debut on the back of fusion memories including Flex-OneNand," the researcher-turned-chief executive said.

Alongside the chips, Samsung also unveiled gigabyte solid-state disks and 8.4-million pixel CMOS image sensors at the forum.

Hwang projected that fusion memories will become a mainstream component for portable consumer gadgets.

"With the advent of the convergence era that blurs boundaries among conventional industries, we face the need to produce fusion chips encompassing as many applications as possible," Hwang said.

"In the end, mobile handsets will be composed of just three parts: a display, battery and chip that includes memory, flash card and logic functions," he said.

Hwang said Samsung aims to chalk up $10 billion in sales over the next five years from fusion chips alone, which he said are ready for prime time.

Asked about the impact of the fusion chips, Hwang refused to make specific comments because Samsung’s customers are now developing customized products.

“We don’t anticipate any changes or interruptions in phone service as a result of this litigation, so we advise customers to continue using their service as they always have,” said John Yocca, Vonage public relations manager, in a written response to a query from Stars and Stripes. “There are many options available to us and we are prepared to implement them as necessary.”

Rates for the Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, technologies that allow consumers to make calls over the Internet aren’t expected to change, either, he added.

Last week, a federal judge said he would issue an injunction barring Vonage Holdings Corp. from using Internet phone call technology patented by Verizon Communications Inc., but delayed signing the order for two weeks.

Vonage currently offers service in the United States, Canada and United Kingdom, but Yocca said customers can take their Vonage devices anywhere in the world where VoIP is legal and a high-speed cable connection is available.

Servicemembers arriving in South Korea before June 1 can continue using Vonage and other U.S. VoIP companies to make international phone calls. Those arriving in country after June 1 will be required to use a South Korean VoIP provider.

Latham & Watkins LLP1 is pleased to announce that five attorneys from four of the firm's departments across offices in the United States and Europe were elected to the firm's partnership, effective April 1, 2007.  All five attorneys were previously of counsel with the firm.  This year the firm has admitted 31 new partners worldwide.

"We extend our congratulations to each of these outstanding new partners," said Robert M. Dell, Chairman and Managing Partner of Latham & Watkins. "All have demonstrated impeccable client service, sound business judgment and strong technical expertise. Their election to the partnership recognizes their hard work, team play, commitment  and valuable contributions to the firm."

New Partners
Paris - Alexander Benedetti
Alexander Benedetti is a member of the Corporate Department. His practice focuses on private equity and mergers & acquisitions, with particular emphasis on LBOs. He regularly represents private equity institutions and equity sponsors in connection with leveraged buy-out acquisitions.  Benedetti received a law degree in 1994 and a post graduate law degree in 1995 from the University of Aix-en-Provence in France.

Los Angeles - Stacey L. Rosenberg
Stacey Rosenberg is a member of the Finance Department. Rosenberg has a broad finance practice and represents financial institutions, including commercial and investment banks, insurance companies and private investment funds.  She has acted as counsel to the lead bank on large syndicated credits for both investment grade and highly-leveraged companies. Rosenberg also regularly represents equity sponsors in connection with financing for leveraged acquisitions and companies in connection with leveraged recapitalizations and ongoing financing needs. She is regularly involved in financing, co-production and distribution transactions for the motion picture, television, theater and related entertainment industries. Rosenberg received her J.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1996.

Brussels - Javier Ruiz Calzado
Javier Ruiz Calzado is a member of the Global Antitrust and Competition Practice and concentrates his practice on European Community (EC) and Spanish competition law, particularly in the area of cartel defense work and merger control.  Prior to joining Latham, he served for six years as senior law clerk to Judge García-Valdecasas at the Court of First Instance of the European Communities (CFI). He played an active role in preparing the CFI's landmark judgments in leading cases in the field of competition, including Airtours/First Choice (one of the first ever annulments of a Commission merger decision) and Bayer-Adalat (a ground-breaking case interpreting the principle of unilateral conduct and the legality of parallel trade restrictions under EC competition rules). He received his J.D. from Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona in 1987 and his LL.M from the College of Europe in Bruges in 1988.  He is fluent in English, French, Italian, Spanish and Catalan.

Washington, D.C. - Susan E. Seabrook
Susan Seabrook is a member of the Tax Department, and practices tax controversy law analyzing federal tax issues and resolving tax controversies at all levels of tax administration. Before joining Latham, Seabrook served as an Attorney Advisor with the Internal Revenue Service's National Office of Chief Counsel, Financial Institutions and Products, Branch 4, where she had primary responsibility for technical advice memoranda, private letter rulings and published guidance. She also was tax counsel to the Life Insurance Industry Specialization Program. Seabrook currently serves as Vice Chair of the Insurance Companies Committee of the Tax Section of the ABA.  Seabrook received her J.D. from Gonzaga University in 1985 and her LL.M from University of Denver in 1990.

New York - Jeffrey A. Tochner
Jeffrey Tochner specializes in intellectual property and technology matters in the firm's Corporate Department and is the head of the Technology Transactions Practice Group in the firm's New York office.  He is experienced in a wide variety of technology-related transactions including: outsourcing; joint ventures, strategic alliances and research and development; technology transfers; equipment manufacturing and installation agreements; software licensing and distribution; co-branding agreements; and e-commerce, internet and website agreements. He also routinely handles the intellectual property and technology aspects of mergers and acquisitions, as well as corporate finance transactions.  Prior to joining Latham in 1997, Tochner served as a judicial clerk for the Honorable Emmett Ripley Cox, of the United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.  Tochner received his J.D. from the University of Florida in 1993.

About Latham & Watkins
Latham & Watkins is a global law firm with more than 1,900 attorneys in 24 offices, including Barcelona, Brussels, Chicago, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Milan, Moscow, Munich, New Jersey, New York, Northern Virginia, Orange County, Paris, San Diego, San Francisco, Shanghai, Silicon Valley, Singapore, Tokyo and Washington, D.C. For more information on Latham & Watkins, please visit the Web site at www.lw.com.