The Internal Revenue Service announced Tuesday a plan to reduce penalties for executives and companies that admit to using an abusive tax shelter designed to avoid taxes on stock options. IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said that the agency had identified 42 well-known corporations with executives who failed to report more than $700 million in income. [...]

Leading Tuesday's corporations and securities law news, supermarket giant Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. and 23 of its US subsidiaries have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York . The company announced it has secured an $800 million credit facility from Wachovia Bank to pay for the [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit heard oral argument Tuesday morning concerning a challenge to the FCC-imposed broadcast flag for digital television. Two of the three panel judges noted that the FCC never received permission from Congress to enact the broadcast flag rule. "You're out there in the whole world, regulating. Are [...]

In Tuesday's international brief, state prosecutors for South Africa have appealed to the Constitutional Court for permission to retry Dr. Wouter Basson, a scientist allegedly employed by the apartheid government to create a "smart virus" that would only target black South Africans. Basson was acquitted in 2002 on charges of conspiracy, drug trafficking, and murder. [...]

The US Supreme Court issued opinions in two cases Tuesday. In the first, Smith v. Massachusetts, the Court ruled that a trial judge's reversal of a mid-trial ruling to dismiss a firearm charge constituted double jeopardy. Justice Scalia wrote the opinion in the 5-4 decision, with Justice Ginsburg authoring the dissent. According to the Court, [...]

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a former high school valedictorian in Virginia, has been charged with conspiring to assassinate President Bush and with supporting al-Qaida. Abu Ali made an initial appearance in federal district court Tuesday to face charges. The indictment alleges that Abu Ali plotted with an unidentified person in 2002 and 2003 on several [...]

KGW.com in Portland, OR, is reporting that the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear a Bush administration challenge to Oregon's Death with Dignity Act , which allows assisted suicide. The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals previously upheld the law against a federal challenge and later refused to rehear the case. The Court had [...]

UK Home Secretary Charles Clarke announced Tuesday a revised version of proposed anti-terror laws that place suspects under house arrest in an attempt to rush the legislation through Parliament. Under the Prevention of Terrorism Bill , terror suspects may be ordered under house arrest by the home secretary, but they are entitled to an automatic [...]

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan defended the UN as being of "vital importance to humanity" as the body struggles to emerge from the cloud of the Oil-for-Food Program scandal. Annan's views were published in a Tuesday op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, in which he addressed charges of wrongdoing in the oil program in Iraq [...]

Iraqi women face increased violence and more restrictions on freedom in the period after Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled, according to an Amnesty International report released Tuesday. Amnesty found that systematic repression of women common under Saddam's government has ended, but it has not yet yielded marked improvements in Iraqi women's lives. Amnesty's report showed [...]