The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the prosecution of Chief of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), Som Mittal, for not providing adequate security to a female employee who was raped and murdered in 2005.

“If you are the head of a company, you are responsible for the safety of your employees,” the apex court said.

Pratibha Srikant Murthy, an employee of Hewlett-Packard (HP) GlobalSoft's BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) unit was raped and murdered in Bangalore by a cab driver who was dropping her home after work.

Mittal was the Managing Director of Hewlett-Packard GlobalSoft Pvt Ltd at that time.

However, Hewlett-Packard said in a statement: “In the matter concerning the order passed by the Hon'ble Supreme Court in response to a petition filed by Som Mittal, HP India would like to clarify that the Hon'ble Court has not pronounced either Mittal or HP guilty on any count. It has only directed Mittal to urge all the contentions as available under law, including maintainability of the complaint, before the trial court. However, since the matter is sub-judice, HP would not like to comment on any specifics related to the case at this point,” it added.

NASSCOM, which is a body representing Indian IT companies and BPO firms, refused to comment.

Overturning a lower court decision that AIG could withhold the documents as privileged, a unanimous five-judge panel of the Appellate Division of New York State Supreme Court ruled that the two former AIG executives are entitled to the legal memoranda, which include some related to AIG’s allegedly fraudulent 2000 loss portfolio reinsurance deal with General Re Corp.

Yesterday’s appeals ruling stems from then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s 2005 lawsuit charging Messrs. Greenberg and Smith with fraud related to the Gen Re deal and other allegedly sham transactions designed to manipulate AIG’s financial statements. AIG itself was originally a defendant, but settled with regulators in 2006, paying $1.6 billion.

Messrs. Greenberg and Smith have argued in part that they relied on the advice of legal counsel in the transactions cited in the attorney general’s lawsuit, and have sought copies of all legal memoranda related to the transactions prepared at the time they were AIG officers.

AIG refused to turn over the documents, and a New York judge ruled that they were protected by AIG’s attorney-client privilege.

The Appellate Division panel reversed that ruling, though, finding that the two former executives have a qualified right to inspect the memoranda.

Wilyum Henderson, 50, entered the plea Tuesday in federal court in Beaumont.

The U.S. Attorney's Office said Henderson filed a fake claim with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for disaster housing and individual assistance for losses from the hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. He received $2,000 in assistance.

Henderson could be sentenced to up to five years in prison and fined up to $250,000. A sentencing date hasn't been set.

The order in the U.S. came after a Swiss bank, the Julius Baer Group, filed a complaint earlier this month against the site and San Mateo, Calif.-based Dynadot LLC, Wikileaks' domain name registry, for posting several hundred of the bank's documents.

Some of those documents allegedly reveal that the Julius Baer Group was involved in offshore money laundering and tax evasion in the Cayman Islands for customers in several countries, including the U.S.

The court ordered that "Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS-hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name," according to court documents. It also said that Dynadot should prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org Web site, or any other Web site or server other than a blank park page until further notice.

A spokesman for the Julius Baer Group could not be reached for comment Monday.

According to its Web site, the purpose of Wikileaks, founded in 2006, is to develop "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis."

Wikileaks has been plagued by controversy since its inception, coming under fire from institutions whose confidential documents have been posted on the site and from critics who have questioned the motives of the site's founders. Still, others have praised the site for supporting the free dissemination of information.

Wikileaks posted a press statement on its site about the U.S. order, calling it "clearly unconstitutional" and said it "exceeds its jurisdiction."

The justices rejected the case of Ronnie Cottrell and Ivy Williams without comment.

Cottrell and Williams sued the NCAA and recruiting analyst Tom Culpepper for defamation, claiming they were unable to find comparable employment following the NCAA's investigation of Alabama. The football program was placed on probation and received other sanctions for rules violations.

Cottrell won a $30 million judgment against Culpepper, but the trial judge threw out the verdict and ordered a new trial. The Alabama Supreme Court upheld that ruling, as well as others that eliminated Williams as a plaintiff and the NCAA as a defendant.

Cottrell still is entitled to a new trial, but could find it harder to prove his claims under the Alabama high court ruling.

Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett has been declared dead by a Chicago judge five months after his plane disappeared.

The 63-year-old went missing on September 3 after taking off in a single-engined plane from a Nevada airstrip.

His wife had asked for him to be declared legally dead.

The judge heard testimony from Mr Fossett's wife, Peggy, and a family friend, as well as from a search-and-rescue expert, before deciding there was sufficient evidence to declare him dead.

Mr Fossett earned millions of dollars trading futures and options on Chicago exchanges.

Attorneys representing his estate had filed a petition to have him declared legally dead so his assets could be distributed according to his will.

Mr Fossett was a record-setting balloonist, sailor and pilot who completed non-stop flights around the world.

Mrs Fossett's lawyer, Michael LoVallo, said: "It was very sad and at first she hoped and sort-of envisioned him walking down the road the next day with another story to tell.

"But as the days went on, she realised it wasn't going to happen as it had on other occasions when he'd had close calls."

Mr Fossett was on a pleasure flight when he vanished and was not looking for a dry lake bed to use as a surface on which to set the world land speed record, as was initially reported.