A man accused of a dismemberment killing has lost a unique legal challenge of Manitoba’s jury system in which he claimed the right to be tried by a jury composed mostly of natives like himself.

Queen’s Bench Chief Justice Marc Monnin handed down a decision Wednesday, ruling Sydney Teerhuis’ rights are not being violated by the current system.

Teerhuis, 35, argued last fall the jury selection process doesn’t allow for a true representation of the public to hear a criminal case and is a violation of his charter rights.

Teerhuis is accused of dismembering, beheading and castrating Robin Greene, 38, inside a Winnipeg hotel in the summer of 2003. Police were led to the body after a man walked into the Public Safety Building and allegedly confessed.

Investigators initially believed they were responding to a prank call and were stunned to find the victim inside the bathtub of a hotel suite on July 2, 2003 — cut into eight pieces.

Police have been unable to locate some internal organs  — including the heart and intestines — and their disposition remains a disturbing mystery.

Police also recovered inside the suite a necklace that had been stolen one day earlier from the set of the Hollywood movie, Shall We Dance?, starring Jennifer Lopez, Susan Sarandon and Richard Gere.

The movie was being filmed in Winnipeg. The $4,000 necklace belonged to Sarandon but played no role in the killing in terms of motive, according to police.

The celebrity link to the gruesome case sparked interest in the United States from gossip magazines, tabloid newspapers and entertainment talk shows.

Greene and his alleged killer weren’t known to each other, but apparently met just prior to the homicide and agreed to return to the hotel for consensual sex.

One of Teerhuis’ main arguments about the jury process was that aboriginals are unfairly barred from jury duty because of a rule that states jurors can’t have criminal records.

Teerhuis cited statistics that show 61 per cent of people in prison are native.

Defence lawyer Greg Brodsky claimed justice officials have created a system where the only people selected for jury duty are “the elderly and the unemployed.”

Jury co-ordinator Gail Hildebrand told court that about 1,600 jury notices were sent out in anticipation of the Teerhuis trial, which was set to begin last September.

She said the list of names was randomly generated through provincial health records and she didn’t know how many people on it were native.

Crown attorney Deborah Carlson said there is no evidence anything improper occurred when dismissing prospective jurors.

LG Electronics has filed suit against Taiwanese manufacturer Quanta Computers alleging infringement of its DVD patents.

LG is seeking an injunction to prohibit Quanta's use of this technology as well as monetary compensation. The suit was filed in the US District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin on 3 July.

The claims include infringement of four DVD patents which LG says Quanta has been using without permission to produce notebook computers supplied to US computer companies.

"LG's proprietorship of DVD technologies is widely recognised throughout the industry, and the unlicensed use of our intellectual property is not acceptable under any circumstances," said Jeong Hwan Lee, executive vice president and head of LG Electronics' Intellectual Property Centre.

Quanta said in an official statement: "The company has assigned its legal representatives to work on this matter. R&D is crucial to Quanta's success, and the company values and respects intellectual property rights.

"Quanta is committed to defending its reputation and acting in the best interest of its shareholders."

LG filed a lawsuit against Quanta for alleged patent infringement of its personal computer technology in a Californian District Court in 2000.

In July 2006, the US Court of Appeals overturned and handed back the decision of the trial court, which had originally decided that the Taiwanese company did not infringe on LG's patents.

The companies are currently awaiting the court's final decision, which is expected to be handed down during the first half of 2008. LG said that it expects the final ruling to be in its favour.

Notice is hereby given that Finkelstein Thompson LLP has filed a Class Action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of a class (the "Class") consisting of all persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired the common stock of Telik, Inc. ("Telik" or the "Company") between March 27, 2003 and June 4, 2007, inclusive (the "Class Period"), including purchasers in the Company's November 5, 2003 and January 28, 2005 stock offerings.

A copy of the Complaint is available from the court or from Finkelstein Thompson LLP. Please contact us by phone to discuss this action or to obtain a copy of the Complaint at (202) 337-8000 or Toll Free at (877) 337-1050, by email at info@finkelsteinthompson.com, or visit our website at http://www.finkelsteinthompson.com.

The Complaint charges Telik and certain of the Company's executive officers with violations of sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Plaintiff alleges that Defendants' material omissions and dissemination of materially false and misleading statements concerning the Company's business and prospects caused Telik's stock price to become artificially inflated, causing damage to investors. Telik is a biopharmaceutical company that engages in the discovery and development of small molecule therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and inflammatory diseases. The Company's lead product candidate is TELCYTA, a small molecule cancer drug product candidate designed to be activated in cancer cells. The Complaint alleges that during the Class Period defendants misled investors about the effectiveness and safety of TELCYTA and the conduct of certain clinical trials for TELCYTA.

Specifically the Complaint alleges that when the Company issued preliminary results from its Phase III clinical trials of TELCYTA, defendants materially misled the investing public by concealing that patients in those trials were dying much sooner than patients receiving the standard chemotherapy treatment.

On June 3, 2007 the Company announced additional details concerning the negative results of the Phase III clinical trials of TELCYTA. This news caused the Company's stock to open on Monday, June 4, 2007 more than 15% lower than the previous trading day's closing price. By the end of trading that day, the stock had dropped even further. The Company further announced on June 4 that the FDA had initiated a clinical hold on the New Drug Application for TELCYTA, causing Telik stock to fall more than 25% on June 5, 2007.

Plaintiff seeks to recover damages on behalf of Class members and is represented by Finkelstein Thompson LLP. Finkelstein Thompson LLP has spent almost three decades delivering outstanding representation to institutional and individual clients in connection with securities and other finance-related litigation, and has been appointed as lead or co-lead counsel in dozens of shareholder class actions. Indeed, in the past decade, the firm has served in leadership roles in cases that have recovered over $1 billion for investors and consumers.

If you are a member of the class, you may, no later than August 6, 2007, request that the Court appoint you as lead plaintiff of the class. A lead plaintiff is a class member appointed by the Court to direct the litigation on behalf of the class. Although a class member need not be appointed as a lead plaintiff to receive a proportionate share of any proceeds of the litigation, lead plaintiffs make important decisions that could affect the prosecution of the class claims, including decisions concerning settlement. The securities laws create a rebuttable presumption that the plaintiff with the largest financial interest in the litigation is the most adequate to serve as a lead plaintiff.

If you are a Telik shareholder and wish to discuss the case or have information relevant to the investigation, please contact our Washington, DC office toll-free at (877) 337-1050, or by email at contact@ftllaw.com.

A San Diego Superior Court judge has granted class-action status to a lawsuit accusing Scripps Health hospitals of overcharging uninsured patients.

The suit alleges that uninsured Scripps patients pay as much as four times more than patients covered by Medicare or private insurance for the same procedures.

Judge Steven Denton made the class-action designation.

The suit seeks refunds that may exceed $100 million for 100,000 uninsured patients who allege they were overcharged by Scripps' five San Diego hospitals since 2002.

The suit also seeks penalties.

Scripps spokesman Don Stanziano said the company strongly objects to the accusations.

"Scripps is proud of our service to the community," Stanziano said.

A young German entrepreneur won a legal battle Thursday against Internet behemoth Google on the use of its "Gmail" brand for free electronic mail service.

The regional court in the northern city of Hamburg ruled that Google may not use the name in Germany, upholding 33-year-old businessman Daniel Giersch's claim to have a copyright on the name for an e-mail service he has been developing for seven years.

Giersch says he has used the name "G-Mail" since 2000, four years before the US giant launched its "Gmail" product.

Eble said Google had subjected his client to a costly three-year legal marathon that is still ongoing because the company has suits pending against him in Spain, Portugal and Switzerland.

Giersch denied speculation he was trying to extort a princely sum from the company for the brand name.

"Neither G-Mail nor I can be bought," Giersch said in a statement.

Google could not immediately be reached for comment

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles is the rightful owner of the buildings and other property of a conservative La Crescenta congregation that broke away from the diocese last year, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday.

The decision by Judge John Shepard Wiley Jr. against St. Luke's of the Mountains came more than a week after an appeals court panel in Orange County ruled in favor of the six-county Los Angeles Diocese in a similar property dispute with three other parishes.

The judge said Tuesday that he could not ignore the higher court's extensive June 25 ruling on comparable issues, but said he expected an appeal in the St. Luke's dispute as well.

"This case is far from over, but it's over in this court," he said.

In February 2006, a majority of St. Luke's congregants voted to pull out of the diocese and the 2.3-million-member Episcopal Church because of differences over biblical authority and interpretation, including the Episcopal Church's 2003 decision to consecrate an openly gay priest as bishop of New Hampshire.

The other dissident congregations — St. James Church in Newport Beach, All Saints Church in Long Beach and St. David's Church in North Hollywood — broke away in August 2004 over largely the same issues. Each has placed itself under the authority of a conservative Anglican bishop in Uganda.

The diocese sued, arguing that the congregations held their buildings and other property in trust for the diocese and the Episcopal Church as a whole. An Orange County trial judge, in separate decisions, had ruled in favor of the three parishes.

But a three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana overturned those opinions last week.

In Tuesday's hearing, Wiley said that before the appellate court's detailed, 77-page ruling, he had been leaning toward a decision for St. Luke's. But after the appellate ruling, he was obliged to defer to the higher court and its analysis of church property precedents in California and elsewhere, he said.

Outside the courtroom, officials and attorneys for St. Luke's said they were disappointed by the judge's decision, but not surprised.

"This doesn't change our decision to withdraw from the diocese and the Episcopal Church, and to uphold the decisions of the wider Anglican Communion," said the Rev. Ronald W. Jackson, the church's rector. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the 77-million-member worldwide Anglican Communion.

Jackson said he continued to believe that the St. Luke's property was owned by the congregation itself, not the diocese.

"We're a vibrant, growing congregation and we're going to continue the ministry that Christ has called us to," he said.

Eric Sohlgren, lead attorney for St. Luke's and the other dissident local parishes, said St. Luke's officials were expected to quickly decide whether to appeal. Sohlgren repeated his view that the appellate ruling was contrary to three decades of legal precedent in California and that it probably would be overturned.

But the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, bishop of the Los Angeles Diocese, said he was happy with Tuesday's decision and eager to reconcile with St. Luke's parishioners and leaders, many of whom he has known for years.

"We want to sit down with them, to understand their pain, have them understand ours and come back together," Bruno said.

The Southern California parishes are among about four dozen congregations that have seceded from the Episcopal Church since the consecration of the gay bishop in 2003. Many of those are in similar legal struggles over church property.

Three men have admitted using the internet to urge Muslims to wage holy war on non-believers, police said, in what is believed to the first prosecution of its kind in Britain.

Tariq Al-Daour, Younes Tsouli and Waseem Mughal had close links with Al-Qaeda in Iraq and thought there was a 'global conspiracy' to wipe out Islam, London's Woolwich Crown Court was told.

UAE-born Al-Daour, 21, admitted a charge of 'inciting another person to commit an act of terrorism wholly or partly outside the UK which would, if committed in England and Wales, constitute murder'.

Moroccan-born Tsouli, 23, and British-born Mughal, 24, admitted the same charge on Monday.

The guilty pleas came two months into their trial.

Al-Daour and Tsouli, who lived in west London, and Mughal, from Kent, in southeast England, also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud banks, credit card and charge card companies.

The trial was told the computer experts spent at least 12 months trying to encourage people to follow the extreme ideology of Osama bin Laden using email and radical websites.

Films of hostages and beheadings were found among their possessions, including footage of British contractor Ken Bigley, who was killed in Iraq in 2004; and US journalist Daniel Pearl, killed in Pakistan in 2002.

CDs containing instructions for making explosives and poisons were also found, with other documents giving advice on how to use a rocket-propelled grenade and how to make booby traps and a suicide vest.

Police also discovered online conversations in which Al-Dour talked of sponsoring terrorist attacks, becoming 'the new Osama' and justifying suicide bombings.