Friday, May 16, 2008
LEGAL
Indictment in Internet Suicide
A federal grand jury indicted a Missouri woman for her alleged role in a MySpace hoax against a 13-year-old neighbor who committed suicide. Lori Drew of suburban St. Louis allegedly helped create a false-identity MySpace account to contact Megan Meier, who thought she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans, who did not exist. Megan hanged herself at home in October 2006 after receiving cruel messages, including one stating the world would be better off without her.
Drew was charged with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress on the girl. Drew has denied creating the account or sending messages to Megan. U.S. Attorney Thomas P. O'Brien said this was the first time the federal statute on accessing protected computers has been used in a social-networking case.
Red Cross Prevails in LawsuitA federal judge has tossed out most of a lawsuit in which the health-products maker Johnson & Johnson claimed that the American Red Cross was breaking the law by licensing its famous red and white symbol to other companies.
The ruling by U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, made public, is the latest blow to Johnson & Johnson in a bitter trademark battle launched in August over the use of the red cross logo, which the two entities have shared for more than a century.
Originally, the trademark infringement suit demanded that the Red Cross stop using its emblem on health care products sold to the public.
A good chunk of the lawsuit was dismissed in November, but Johnson & Johnson persisted with a claim that the Red Cross, in licensing its logo to third parties, broke a federal law making it a crime for anyone to use the insignia "for the fraudulent purpose of inducing the belief that he is a member of or an agent for the American National Red Cross."
TAXESIRS Errors Affect Thousands
Up to 350,000 households are not getting the $300 per child owed them as part of their economic stimulus rebate payments, the Internal Revenue Service said.
Human error by taxpayers and computer glitches were responsible for the problem affecting a tiny percentage of the 130 million taxpayers expected to benefit from the refunds the government began sending out last month, the IRS said.
Spokesman Terry Lemons said the agency was confident it had identified all the people affected by the mistake. He said the IRS will send letters to those who missed out on the refund and that checks for the child credit will be mailed out in July.
People need not contact the IRS or file additional paperwork, he said.
AIRLINESUnited Mistakenly Drops Fee
Passengers booking flights on United Airlines got a one-day reprieve from the carrier's fast-rising fuel surcharge due to what United says was an error. The mistake saved some customers as much as $130 per round trip on United's domestic flights.
United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski said the fuel surcharge was eliminated for domestic flights due to a clerical error. She said any customer who booked a flight without the usual surcharge will not be charged for it later.
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONSIAC Buys Dictionary Site Operator
InterActiveCorp agreed to buy Lexico Publishing Group, owner of the Dictionary.com word-search site, to bolster its Ask.com search engine. The deal will increase users of IAC advertiser-supported sites by 11 percent, the companies said. Terms of the cash purchase were not disclosed.
Ask.com, the fifth-largest U.S. search engine, is reorganizing, and IAC will buy more companies and develop features in health-care and entertainment search, said Jim Safka, who runs the unit. IAC, led by chairman Barry Diller, is expected to split into five companies later this year. It will keep its ad-supported Web sites, whose first-quarter profit almost tripled. A new deal with Google, which sells advertising for New York-based IAC, gave the company a bigger split of revenue.
REGULATORSWhite House Warns on Reforms
The Bush administration yesterday reiterated its opposition to portions of sweeping product safety reform legislation pending in Congress.
In a letter to House Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.), National Economic Council director Keith Hennessey said a proposed ban of phthalates, a chemical component in many plastics, from children's products, would be "short-sighted" and could lead to "the introduction of unregulated substitute chemicals that harm children's health."
He said provisions that would allow state attorneys general to enforce federal product safety laws and that would create a database of product-related injuries and complaints would promote frivolous lawsuits. And he called mandatory independent testing of certain children's products "an excessive burden" to some manufacturers.
The House and Senate passed separate product safety bills and talks are underway to reconcile them.
EARNINGSBlockbuster said its earnings after preferred dividends totaled $42.6 million, or 20 cents per share, in the three months ended April 6. That compared with a loss of $51.8 million, or 27 cents per share, a year earlier. A 2.9 percent increase in same-store sales in the United States included a jump of nearly 20 percent in merchandise sales.
Nordstrom said its profit fell 24 percent in the first quarter to $119 million, or 54 cents per share, from $157 million, or 60 cents per share in the comparable three months last year. Revenue slipped 4 percent, to $1.88 billion from $1.95 billion a year ago.
Blackstone Group reported its second straight quarterly loss. The firm says it lost $251 million, or 97 cents per common unit, during the first quarter. Blackstone earned $1.13 billion a year ago. Deterioration in credit and equities markets caused Blackstone to lose $188.7 million in performance fees and post a $215.6 million loss from fund investment activities.
Beazer Homes USA reported two consecutive quarterly losses as the company wrote down the value of unsold homes and abandoned options to buy land. The loss was $229.9 million, or $5.96 a share for the quarter ended March 31. The loss was $138.2 million, or $3.59 a share for the period ended Dec. 31.
Compiled from reports by Washington Post staff writers, the Associated Press and Bloomberg News.
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