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Saab files for bankruptcy after Chinese deal fails
Legal Business |
2011/12/18 11:28
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Saab Automobile filed for bankruptcy on Monday, giving up a desperate struggle to stay in business after previous owner General Motors Co. blocked takeover attempts by Chinese investors.
Saab CEO Victor Muller personally handed in the bankruptcy application to a court in southwestern Sweden, ending his two-year effort to revive the carmaker that over more than six decades has become known for its rounded sedans and quirky design features.
The Dutch entrepreneur told reporters he had to pull the plug after GM, which still owns some technology licenses for Saab, rejected a last-ditch financing plan involving a Chinese company.
That basically was the last nail in the coffin of this beautiful company, Muller said in webcast news conference at the Saab plant in Trollhattan, southwestern Sweden. |
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Court tells UK to release Pakistani in US custody
Legal Business |
2011/12/14 13:04
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An appeals court issued a landmark ruling Wednesday ordering the British government to free a Pakistani detainee who has been held in U.S. custody for nearly eight years without charge.
It was unclear whether Yunus Rahmatullah would be released as required, however, because the U.S. government is not bound by the ruling. It announced that it was reviewing the ruling.
Britain has seven days to produce Yunus Rahmatullah, who is being held by American forces in Afghanistan, according to the Appeals Court's ruling.
Although Rahmatullah, 29, is not a British national, the UK-legal charity Reprieve filed a habeas corpus petition claiming that his detention lacked sufficient cause or evidence, and that British forces violated international law when they rendered him to U.S. custody.
British forces in Iraq seized Rahmatullah in 2004, but then handed him over to the Americans who sent him to the U.S. Air Base in Bagram, Afghanistan — a sprawling base that includes the Parwan detention facility where some 1,900 detainees are being held.
Wednesday's ruling marks one of the first times that a habeas corpus petition has been successful for a detainee at the U.S. base. It puts the United States and Britain in an awkward position — Britain is bound by the ruling, but the United States is not because the decision was handed down by a foreign court. |
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Egyptian military court jails blogger for 2 years
Legal Business |
2011/12/14 13:03
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An Egyptian military court has sentenced a political activist to two years in prison after convicting him of criticizing the armed forces and publishing false information.
Maikel Nabil Sanad was arrested in March and sentenced to three years, but the case was appealed and sent for retrial.
Sanad was arrested following posts on his blog comparing the military to the former regime of President Hosni Mubarak, toppled in February by a popular uprising. He also charged he was tortured by military police during an earlier detention.
He is one of 12,000 civilians who have faced military trials this year, a practice critics say deprives the accused of their rights.
Amnesty International considers Sanad a prisoner of conscience, and the U.S. has expressed concern about his detention. |
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Bank of America settles mortgage suit for $315 mln
Legal Business |
2011/12/07 10:58
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Bank of America agreed to pay $315 million to settle claims by investors that they were misled about mortgage-backed investments sold by its Merrill Lynch unit.
The settlement was disclosed in court papers filed late Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan and requires the approval of a judge.
The class action lawsuit was led by the Public Employees' Retirement System of Mississippi pension fund. The fund claimed that the investments were backed by poor quality mortgages written by subprime lenders Countrywide Financial Corp., First Franklin Financial, and IndyMac Bancorp, a bank that failed in 2008.
The settlement represents another attempt by Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp. to put its legal issues behind it. In the first half of the year alone the bank put up $12.7 billion to settle similar claims from different groups of investors.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff has to approve the settlement, something that could prove difficult since the settlement includes no admission of guilt from Bank of America.
Just last week, Rakoff struck down a $285 million settlement that Citigroup Inc. reached with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The settlement would have imposed penalties on Citigroup even as it allowed the company to deny allegations that it misled investors. |
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Court: State prisoners count at home in redistricting
Legal Business |
2011/12/05 10:23
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A state court ruled Friday that prisoners must be counted among voters back in their home neighborhoods rather than in upstate prisons for the purpose of redrawing state legislative districts, a likely blow to the slim Republican majority in New York’s Senate.
Although prisoners cannot vote, the decision means more voters will be counted as living in heavily Democratic New York City and other urban areas as part of the redistricting process, which is tied to the census. That would reduce the population upstate and likely result in fewer seats in the Assembly and Senate representing sparsely populated upstate areas where prisons are located.
The Senate’s Republican majority says it will appeal the ruling by a trial level judge in Albany.
The immediate practical result of the decision could be minor. The state redistricting commission is already redrawing legislative districts by following a 2010 law requiring prisoners to be counted in their latest home neighborhoods. |
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