An African-American attorney is suing the Los Angeles law firm founded by the late Johnnie Cochran over alleged racial discrimination.

The Los Angeles Times said Saturday that Shawn Chapman Holley has said that after Cochran's death in 2005, the firm's leadership was turned over to "white men who began to discriminate against black lawyers and black clients."

Prior to Cochran's death, the law firm gained notoriety for the acquittal of 1994 double murder charges against O.J. Simpson. The lawsuit has stunned members of the city's black establishment, the Times said.

Public affairs consultant Kerman Maddox, told the Times, "I'm shocked; if true, that would be a devastating blow to the legacy of Johnnie Cochran."

Randy McMurray, a black partner in the firm, denied Holley's charges. "We probably have the most diverse law firm in California; I don't know what race we would be discriminating against," he said.

Holley worked for the firm for some 17 years before she says she was demoted by Caucasian males and then fired in January of 2006, an allegation the firm has denied.

The firings have sparked arguments about the power of the US Attorney General to indefinitely appoint replacement prosecutors, and also allegations that the firings were politically charged. Earlier this week Iglesias told reporters that federal lawmakers pressured him to speed up indictments of local Democrats in time for the November elections. In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty denied that the removal of the attorneys was motivated by political considerations.

A three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit threw out a lawsuit challenging Ohio's death penalty procedure Friday on the grounds that the claim was filed too late. In the 2-1 opinion, judges Richard Fred Suhrheinrich and Edward Eugene Siler decided that the statute of limitations on the inmate's 42 USC 1983 method of execution challenge would have run at the latest two years following the 2001 decision that made lethal injection Ohio's only form of execution. Plaintiff Cooey did not file his challenge until December of 2004.

Last year Ohio executed its first prisoner using modified lethal injection procedures aimed at preventing extreme pain during an execution. The procedures were changed last June following a difficult May execution where staff struggled to find a vein to administer the lethal injection cocktail, and the one they did use collapsed before injection.

The US Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS) Thursday agreed to extend by 18 months the compliance timeline for the REAL ID Act until December 31, 2009. In addition to the extension of the deadline imposed on states, DHS will allow states to use as much as 20 percent of the money allocated by the agency to ensure compliance. The proposed changes follow resistance by state and federal lawmakers, who questioned the feasibility of implementing uniform driver's license standards under the act before the original May 2008 deadline, and aim at assuaging concerns over the cost of the new regulations.

The REAL ID Act, initially drafted after the Sept 11 attacks and designed to discourage illegal immigration, attempts to make it more difficult for terrorists to fraudulently obtain US driver's licenses and other government IDs by mandating that states require birth certificates or similar documentation and also consult national immigration databases before issuing IDs. The law is also meant to make it more difficult for potential terrorists to board aircraft or enter federal government buildings. After controversy and strenuous opposition from civil libertarians it finally passed in 2005 as part of an emergency supplemental appropriations defense spending bill.

A federal judge in California on Thursday dismissed all claims in the second of four patent infringement lawsuits filed by Alcatel-Lucent against Microsoft Corp. . The case, which was scheduled to begin trial March 19, concerned speech recognition technology. The ruling, issued by US District Judge Rudi Brewster, will be appealed by Alcatel-Lucent.

Last Thursday, a federal jury in California awarded Alcatel-Lucent $1.52 billion in damages for violations of two of Alcatel-Lucent's digital music patents committed by Microsoft. Microsoft indicated it might appeal the verdict. Two additional patent suits between Microsoft and Alcatel-Lucent are pending, with the next trial scheduled to begin May 21.

Belgium has become the first country to criminalize investment in companies that make cluster bombs. Legislation passed the Belgian Senate on Thursday, and the Parliament plans to publish a list of companies that manufacture cluster munitions. Belgian banks KBC and Fortis have already terminated their investments in such companies, and KBC has published its own list of manufacturers. The new law will prohibit Belgian banks from owning shares in cluster bomb manufacturers or offering them credit.

Last week, 46 countries pledged to develop a new international treaty to ban the use of cluster bombs by 2008 at the Oslo Conference on Cluster Munitions. Last year, Belgium was the first country to ban cluster bombs. Although the US did not attend the Oslo conference, top Democratic lawmakers recently introduced a bill in the US Senate that would ban federal funds for the use, sale or transfer of cluster bombs. Cluster munitions, which have been used by at least 23 countries, are considered by many to be inaccurate weapons designed to spread damage indiscriminately and could therefore be considered illegal under multiple provisions of Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions (1977).

Morgan Stanley agreed to pay a $10 million settlement to the Securities and Exchange Commission last June without admitting or denying allegations made by the SEC that the corporation had failed to protect against potential misuse of insider trading information as required by law.