The San Francisco-based credit card processor expects to see high demand for its stock, despite the housing-led credit squeeze that is threatening consumers' spending and their ability to keep up with debt payments.

But Visa, like its public rival MasterCard Inc., is a card processor, not a lender, and has a strong presence in other countries where many people are just starting to use plastic instead of cash. And Visa is the largest U.S. card company by market share — its transactions, in number and dollar amount, in 2006 outpaced those at MasterCard and American Express Co.

Visa said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing it will offer 406 million shares at $37 to $42 per share. There will be an option for underwriters to buy an extra 40.6 million shares to cover any excess demand.

The Visa IPO, even if it prices at the low end of the estimated range, would surpass the $10.6 billion AT&T Wireless raised in 2000 when it went public. And if demand is strong enough, it could be almost as big as the two largest past deals combined — AT&T's offering and Kraft Foods' $8.7 billion offer in 2001.

Visa would follow MasterCard from being a privately held interest to a publicly traded company. MasterCard raised $2.39 billion in its IPO nearly two years ago.

At a midpoint price, Visa could raise about $15.6 billion, or more than $17 billion if underwriters exercise their option to buy the entire lot of 40.6 million shares. Even at the low-end price of $37 a share, Visa would raise about $15 billion.

Shares of MasterCard have risen fivefold since going public and are now trading at more than $203 each. But Visa's offer comes at a time of ebbing appetite for new shares. MasterCard shares have fallen more than 5.5 percent since the beginning of the month.

Visa made its initial IPO filing in June with the SEC. The shares will be listed with the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker V.

Visa will be the last of the major U.S. card companies to go public. Discover Financial Services LLC became publicly traded last July, and since then has seen its shares tumble. But Discover, like American Express, is a true card lender. The responsibility for Visa and MasterCard cardholders' debt, in contrast, is held by the banks that issue them.

For their most recent quarters, MasterCard posted a huge increase in profit while AmEx reported a 10 percent drop in earnings and Discover posted a loss.

A successful Visa IPO would be a boon for member banks including Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., which have suffered big credit losses and are gearing up for more as consumer credit deteriorates.

More than $10 billion of the IPO's proceeds will go to the member banks. The rest will go toward Visa's legal costs and general corporate purposes.

Visa boasts the world's biggest retail electronic payments network. According to its filing, as of Sept. 30, banks and other customers said they had issued 1.5 billion Visa cards — which since 2006 have been advertised through the slogan, "Life Takes Visa."

The latest Nilson Report on card companies said that in 2006, Visa had 44 percent of the U.S. market share in cards and 48 percent of the U.S. market share in debit cards.

Visa said it intends to pay shareholders an annual dividend of 42 cents a share.

The justices declined to examine a trial procedure in which a jury first determines whether smokers as a group are entitled to punitive damages before establishing whether any single smoker is entitled to compensation.

Later, a new jury addresses issues unique to each alleged smoking victim who sued.

West Virginia courts are allowing the approach, which has been used in other types of lawsuits, including claims for asbestos exposure.

The second phases of such trials rarely occur, because the two sides usually settle once they know the value of the case.

Tobacco companies oppose use of the legal device, which lawyers call "reverse bifurcation."

The tobacco industry said a jury doesn't know until later in a case whether any smoker was actually harmed or how serious any injury was; which defendants if any were responsible; or the amount of compensatory damages any defendant owes to smokers.

In addition to helping resolve suits over asbestos exposure, reverse bifurcation has been applied to claims against makers of the dangerous diet drug fen-phen.

In asking the justices not to take the case, lawyers for the smokers said further delay would mean that most of their clients would die before their cases could be tried, "thus affording the defendants a free pass" for their alleged misconduct.

The smokers say the companies secretly agreed not to market a truly safer cigarette while publicly proclaiming the safety of their own particular brands.

The first phase of the trial was scheduled to begin March 18.

The businessman, Kazuyoshi Miura, was arrested Friday in the U.S. territory of Saipan as he tried to pass through immigration control at the airport to take a flight home. Miura, 60, was convicted in Japan in 1994 of killing his wife, Kazumi Miura, but the verdict was overturned 10 years ago.

"Given that this case has been closed in Japan, the Justice Ministry and Japanese police should no longer have to respond to requests from the police for evidence or to cooperate with the investigation," said Miuri's lawyer, Shinichiro Hironaka.

Miura and his wife were visiting Los Angeles on Nov. 18, 1981, when they were shot in a parking lot. Miura was hit in the right leg, while his 28-year-old wife was shot in the head. The shooting caused an international uproar, in part because he blamed the attack on robbers, reinforcing Japanese perceptions of America as violent.

The arrest came after cold-case detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department worked with authorities in Saipan and in Guam, police said in a statement. Police did not make details on the arrest available.

At a bail hearing Monday in Saipan, Miura told the court the killing "took place several decades ago, and it is unlikely that I will destroy evidence or run away," according to the Kyodo News Agency.

The court, however, denied him bail. A preliminary hearing was set for March 5, said Rosie Ada, deputy clerk at Superior Court. An arraignment was also slated for March 10, she said.

Sean Bell, who had been spending his last night as a single man partying, was killed in a barrage of 50 police bullets outside a strip club.

The three police officers indicted in the shooting were to go on trial Monday in a case that has sparked protests and debate over excessive force and police conduct in New York City.

Bell's fiancee was expected to be the first witness at the trial, and she has said she plans to be in court every day.

"I feel like I need to know. I need to know why this happened," said Paultre Bell, who had her maiden name legally changed after her fiance's death. "I wake up one day and my world is turned upside down. I have to know why this happened; my family deserves to know."

Sean Bell, 23, was killed Nov. 25, 2006, hours before he was to marry the mother of his two children. He and two friends were confronted by undercover officers investigating reports of drugs and prostitution.

Detective Michael Oliver fired 31 shots, including the one that killed Bell. Detective Gescard Isnora squeezed off 11 rounds, and Detective Marc Cooper fired four times. Oliver and Isnora have pleaded not guilty to manslaughter; Cooper has pleaded not guilty to reckless endangerment.

Police union officials and defense lawyers have said the detectives believed Bell and his friends were going to get a gun, though no weapon was found. The officers opened fire after the car the three men were in lurched forward, bumped Isnora and slammed into an unmarked police minivan, authorities said.

After years in Fidel's charismatic shadow as Cuba's number two and defense minister, Raul Castro faces massive challenges, including preparing the transition of power to a newer generation and reforming the economy.

"Fidel is irreplaceable; the people will continue his work when he is no longer with us physically, though his ideas always will be here," Raul Castro, 76, told lawmakers in his acceptance speech late Sunday.

In the 19 months since he took over as temporary leader, Raul Castro has made some minor adjustments in the economy, while promising bigger changes.

But he has made it clear that everything will take place "within socialism" and that solutions to the country's problems will come "little by little."

People in the street voiced hopes that the new president would usher in long-sought economic reforms to improve their daily lives.

"This is the best that could have happened to Cuba," Carlos Muguercia, a 78-year-old craftsman said. "Raul already knows the situation. He knows how to solve problems, in any case the most serious ones."

Others were less enthusiastic at the dynastic succession.

"Raul is Fidel without a beard," argued one young man enjoying a beer at a bar in Havana's historic center.

In a sign that change may take time, Raul Castro said he would consult with his brother on major issues. And he vowed to be on guard against Cuba's powerful northern neighbor the United States.

Law firm Bell, Boyd & Lloyd LLP, which has offices in Chicago and Washington, D.C., opened an office in San Diego on Feb. 13 that will serve as the center for its life sciences group.

The local office’s 13 attorneys and credentialed specialists offer corporate, patent procurement and patent portfolio management services to biopharmaceutical and other venture-funded and emerging companies.

Leading the team are Stephanie Seidman, a prominent biotechnology patent attorney who joins Bell Boyd as a partner from Fish & Richardson P.C., and partner David Fisher, who formerly managed San Diego’s Fisher Thurber LLP. He will lead the corporate and emerging company practice in the office.

Mike Abernathy, managing partner in the Chicago office, said the firm noticed a steady growth in corporate and venture capital clients during the last two and a half years as it developed its life sciences practice. Last year, he said the firm made in excess of $6 million in that area.

“We were looking to further that growth and started looking at other areas that had life sciences and were venture-funded, and we very quickly got to San Diego,” he said.

Seidman said the firm has “an excellent client base” mostly composed of emerging and startup companies that have received some venture funding and some that have been funded by Big Pharma.

Initial clients include Catalyst Biosciences Inc., the Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation and Ligand Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Bell Boyd’s San Diego office is located at the Gateway at Torrey Hills, 3580 Carmel Mountain Road.

“We should see some movement of pent-up demand by this summer, but higher loan limits need to be implemented fully and promptly to have maximum benefit,” said Richard Gaylord, president of the realtors group and a broker with Re/Max in Long Beach, Calif.

"It is significant that plaintiffs nowhere allege that the government intended to harm human beings through its use of Agent Orange," the three-judge panel said.

Jonathan C. Moore, a lawyer for the Vietnamese plaintiffs, said he was deeply disappointed.

"It's both an unjust and an immoral outcome," he said, and promised to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A lawyer for the companies did not immediately return a telephone call seeking comment.

Monsanto, Dow Chemical and more than a dozen other companies, including Hercules Inc., Occidental Chemical Corp, Thompson Hayward Chemical Co., Harcros Chemicals Inc. and Uniroyal Chemical Co. Inc., were named in the case.

In November 1961, President Kennedy approved the launch of Operation Trail Dust, a campaign of military herbicide operations in Vietnam designed to prevent the enemy from using vegetation for cover and sustenance.

Lawyers for Vietnamese people sued U.S. companies, saying the program caused miscarriages, birth defects, breast cancer, ovarian tumors, lung cancer, Hodgkin's disease and prostate tumors.

They said the military's use of Agent Orange violated international, domestic and Vietnamese law and that companies aided the violations or committed their own by helping the military. They sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages and an environmental cleanup program.

Lawyers for the companies and the U.S. government had argued that there was no evil intent when Agent Orange was used to clear the Vietnamese landscape for troops.

Agent Orange has been linked to cancer, diabetes and birth defects among Vietnamese soldiers and civilians and American veterans.

In 2002, the United States and Vietnam signed a memorandum of understanding providing for scientists from both governments to work together to determine the effects of Agent Orange on people and ecosystems, along with methods and costs of treatment and environmental remediation.

The United States, though, has never agreed it has a legal duty to provide funds or assistance to remediate harms allegedly caused by Agent Orange.

In a separate opinion, the appellate court also said companies are protected from lawsuits brought by U.S. military veterans or their relatives because the law protects government contractors in certain circumstances who provide defective products.