In an interview with Larry King, President Bill Clinton discusses health care, Afghanistan, the Middle East and his trip to North Korea.

For details on how you can register for the 2009 PLUS International Conference and hear President Bill Clinton speak live at the Conference Opening, please click here.

A federal judge has ruled that the government failed to adequately assess the environmental impacts of genetically engineered sugar beets before approving the crop for cultivation in the United States. The decision could lead to a ban on the planting of the beets, which have been widely adopted by farmers.

In a decision issued Monday, Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco, said that the Agriculture Department should have done an environmental impact statement. He said it should have assessed the consequences from the likely spread of the genetically engineered trait to other sugar beets or to the related crops of Swiss chard and red table beets.

Read the full story here on New York Times website.

Wayne Volkmuth learned what a "250 case" was while conducting research shortly after the loss of his 7-year-old son, Ryan, who died three years ago during a dental procedure at a Palo Alto clinic.

The "250" refers to $250,000, the most Volkmuth could recover in a medical malpractice claim over his disabled son's death, a limit set 34 years ago by California's landmark medical malpractice law. It's also the reason his case was turned down by most of the dozen medical malpractice attorneys he and his wife consulted.

"They basically said we can't do this. They said we believe you have a strong case and we could prevail at trial, but in economic terms it makes no sense for us to take it on," said Volkmuth of Foster City, who eventually found an attorney to sue the clinic and its staff for wrongful death and negligence. The case is set to go to trial Oct. 26.

Medical malpractice reform is getting its moment in the spotlight during the ongoing debate to overhaul the country's health care system.

Read this full article here on the San Francisco Gate website.

Malpractice reform has always been a resoundingly popular idea with Republicans, which made the topic a perfect one for President Barack Obama to talk about in his recent address to Congress. George W. Bush had a "good idea" on malpractice reform, the President said--one he intended to pursue as part of a health-care overhaul. Cue a rare moment of bipartisan applause.

Both sides agree that current malpractice law--under which doctors pay as much as $200,000 a year for liability insurance--is often unfair and inefficient. But when it comes to fixing the system, consensus is not so simple. Democrats oppose a federal cap on "noneconomic damages" in malpractice cases--money awarded for pain and suffering--that Republicans and doctors want. Supporters call the caps, already in place in some states, a quick and easy way to reduce malpractice-insurance premiums. An obstetrician in Texas, where such damages are capped, could pay 20% of what a colleague is charged in Florida, where awards are unlimited.

Read the full story here on the TIME Magazine website.

The lawsuit, filed in August of last year, alleged that Facebook and its Beacon affiliates like Blockbuster and Overstock.com violated a series of laws, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Video Privacy Protection Act, the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act and the California Computer Crime Law.

The proposed settlement, announced late on Friday, calls not only for Facebook to discontinue Beacon, but also back the creation of an independent foundation devoted to promoting online privacy, safety and security. The money for the foundation will come from a US$9.5 million settlement fund.

Read the full story here in the New York Times.

President Barack Obama tapped into a large vein of public support when he suggested recently that he is open to reforming medical malpractice laws. It's common currency in the U.S. that litigation drives medical inflation by forcing doctors and hospitals to resort to "defensive medicine," overtreating patients to avoid lawsuits.

The evidence suggests a much smaller effect. Study after study shows that costs associated with malpractice lawsuits make up 1% to 2% of the nation's $2.5 trillion annual health-care bill and that tort reform would barely make a dent in the total.

A comprehensive new report from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, using a database of employer-sponsored health plans covering 10 million Americans, looked at the impact of tort reform measures already enacted in more than 30 states. The authors concluded that comprehensive, nationwide reforms would lower overall health-care costs by 2.3% at most. "That's significant, of course, but still fairly small," says Kellogg professor Leemore S. Dafny, a co-author of the study. As President Obama told a joint session of Congress on Sept. 9: "I don't believe malpractice reform is a silver bullet."

Doctors see things differently. They pay malpractice premiums that can run up to $250,000 a year for specialties such as neurology or obstetrics. It's "a huge issue for us," says Dr. Steven M. Safyer, CEO of Montefiore Medical Center in New York. "I would say about 5% of our costs are directly attributable to malpractice premiums and another 5% to defensive medicine."

Read the full story here on the BusinessWeek website.

The White House took the first steps on Thursday toward setting up demonstration projects intended to explore solutions to a problem that many doctors say is driving up health care costs: exorbitant malpractice claims and sky-high premiums for liability insurance.

President Obama directed the Department of Health and Human Services to announce within 30 days that it would begin accepting proposals from states, localities and various health organizations for  demonstration projects that would improve patient safety and doctor-patient communication, ensure timely payments to injured patients, and reduce insurance liability premiums for providers. The department intends to give out a total of $25 million, in grants of up to $3 million each, for projects that could run as long as three years.

Read the full story here on the New York Times website.

A House of Representatives panel has told Bank of America Corp that it cannot use attorney-client privilege to withhold from Congress details on its purchase of Merrill Lynch, The New York Times reported on Monday.

The chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Representative Edolphus Towns, has given the bank a deadline of noon EDT on Monday to provide answers and relevant legal documents about the merger, the Times said.

The bank late on Saturday asked Towns for a delay until after Tuesday. But a spokesman for Towns said on Sunday that he was sticking to the deadline, the newspaper reported.

Compliance with the panel's request would force Bank of America to reveal information that would affect a range of other investigations into the merger, according to the paper.

From the Mayer Brown website comes an opinion dealing with patent damages.  Authored by Brandon Baum and Sharon Israel.

On September 11, 2009, the Federal Circuit issued an opinion of importance in the area of patent damages in Lucent Technologies, Inc. v. Gateway, Inc. (consolidation of appeals 2008-1485, -1487, and -1495). At issue on appeal was Microsoft’s liability for the alleged infringement of a patent now owned by Lucent, and the award of damages to Lucent. Microsoft appealed from the denial of post-trial motions following a jury verdict that the patent in suit was infringed and not invalid, and that Microsoft was liable for damages based on a lump-sum reasonable royalty of approximately $358 million. The Federal Circuit affirmed the findings of infringement and validity, but vacated the damages award as not supported by substantial evidence and remanded to the district court for further proceedings.

The patent claims at issue are directed to a method for entering data using a graphical interface. The accused product that accounted for the vast majority of the damages award was Microsoft Outlook, which was found to incorporate the claimed method in a feature referred to as the “date picker.” In essence, infringement of the method occurred whenever a user entered a date field by clicking on the date in the Outlook calendar rather than by entering the date by keyboard, which was non-infringing.

With respect to the damages award, the Federal Circuit held that Lucent failed to present substantial evidence to support the jury’s damages award under the Georgia-Pacific factors for determining a reasonable royalty. At trial, Lucent argued that a lump-sum reasonable royalty should be calculated as approximately 8 percent of the sales price of the Outlook software. While Microsoft suggested that the district court had “abdicated” its role as a gatekeeper, the Federal Circuit made clear that “[t]he responsibility for objecting to evidence … remains firmly with the parties.”

Read the full story here on the Mayer Brown website.

The Bank of New York Mellon and the Russian government have agreed to settle a $22.5 billion lawsuit relating to a 1990s money laundering scandal, with the bank paying the government’s legal fees of about $14 million, Russia’s finance minister said Wednesday.

That was far less than the $1 billion that lawyers for the Russian government had sought and seemed to bring to a close the bank’s strange odyssey through the Russian legal system.

Separately, the Bank of New York agreed to offer a line of credit to Russian state banks to finance import and export business, the finance minister, Aleksei L. Kudrin, said in testimony to Parliament. The $400 million loan on favorable terms, though, would be an “act of good will” not formally linked to the settlement, he said. “It has nothing to do with costs of the court case, and is not an admission of guilt.”

Read the full story here on the New York Times website.

Attorneys for a woman who was awarded more than a million dollars after she received a botched face lift asked Georgia's top court on Tuesday to overturn a state law that caps damages in medical malpractice lawsuits at $350,000.

The case centers on a Georgia tort reform law passed in 2005 that caps the amount a jury can award for malpractice victims' pain and suffering. The laws were an attempt by lawmakers to ease the high malpractice insurance costs linked to large payoffs.

On Tuesday, attorneys debated before the Georgia Supreme Court whether the Legislature setting the limit overstepped their bounds.

Attorneys for Betty Nestlehutt, who was awarded more than $1.2 million after a 2006 facelift despite the law, said the law overturns a jury's centuries-old right to determine how much to compensate a victim. Nestlehutt was a real estate agent who wanted to improve her face to better compete with younger agents, according to her attorneys.

Read the full story here on the Ledger-Enquirer website.

A gang of organized cyber criminals that has stolen millions from businesses across the United States over the past month appears to have turned its sights on public schools and universities.

On the morning of Aug. 17, hackers who had broken into computers at the Sanford School Districtinitiated a batch of bogus transfers out of the school's payroll account. Each of the transfers was kept just below $10,000 to avoid banks' anti-money laundering reporting requirements, and went out to at least 17 different accomplices or "money mules" that the attackers had hired via work-at-home job scams. in tiny Sanford, Colorado

A school employee spotted the bogus payments on the morning of the 19th, when the school district learned that $117,000 had been siphoned from its coffers by cyber crooks.

Sanford Superintendent Kevin Edgar said the school successfully reversed two of the transfers totaling $18,000, but that rest of the stolen money remains in limbo.

"We've been told that if we do get any more of these reversed, it may take 30 to 45 days to get that money back," Edgar said. Meanwhile, the school district's bank is playing hardball, insisting that the school is at fault for the unauthorized transfers.

Read the full story here on the Washington Post website.

From The Securities Docket, a breakdown of the decision to reject the $33 Million settlement between the SEC and Bank of America.

With a few keystrokes, computer security expert Esteban Farao can find all the wireless networks in use in a half-block radius from a Starbucks on Brickell.

Farao, of Coral Gables-based Enterprise Risk Management, said the security of any of those networks could be compromised -- a la Albert Gonzalez.

``It's a matter of time,'' Farao said, even for networks that are encrypted and password protected.

Gonzalez, of Miami, pleaded guilty last month to 19 felony charges in a Massachusetts indictment for tapping into the computer networks of T.J. Maxx, OfficeMax and other stores, stealing customers' data and selling it overseas. Federal prosecutors say he stole 40 million credit card numbers as a part of that scheme. He faces charges that he stole millions more from other companies.

Read the full story here on the Miami Herald website.

Merrill Lynch will pay the state of Texas $12.7 million to settle an investigation into the brokerage firm's marketing and sale of auction rate securities, state officials said Monday.

It concludes the state investigation into Merrill Lynch's role in promoting and selling auction rate securities when it knew the market for these securities was failing, endangering investors' money, the state's securities board said in a statement.

Merrill Lynch and other firms marketed auction rate securities as cash-like instruments that could be accessed at almost any time. Auction rate securities are long-term bonds subject to a complex auction process that, upon failure, can result in accounts being frozen and lower interest rates on the bonds.

Read the full story here on the SunNews website.

The early registration cutoff for the 2009 PLUS International Conference is today!

Nearly 1100 of your colleagues have already registered!  If you're planning on attending, there is no reason to pay more for your registration and hotel room.

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A hacker accused of stealing tens of millions of credit and debit card numbers in one of the largest computer break-ins in U.S. history pleaded guilty Friday to fraud, identity theft and other charges.

As part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami, also agreed to forfeit more than $2.7 million, a Miami condo, a 2006 BMW 330i, a Tiffany diamond ring and Rolex watches. He faces up to 20 years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 8.

A U.S. judge Friday dismissed a lawsuit against Citigroup Inc brought by buyers of auction rate securities, a $330 billion market that collapsed in early 2008.

Five consolidated putative class action lawsuits were included in the ruling by Manhattan federal court Judge Laura Taylor Swain who granted Citigroup's application for dismissal on grounds plaintiffs could not prove a claim for fraud or market manipulation.

The investors bought the Citigroup auction rate securities (ARS) between Aug. 1, 2007 and Feb. 11, 2008.

The $330 billion market for mortgage-backed ARS (debt reset at periodic auctions by Wall Street firms that had touted it as a safe, cash equivalent) collapsed in February 2008. Several investigations have led to settlements in which banks and firms paid back investors.

Read the full story here on the CNN website.

This is an interesting look back, provided by the New York Times, of the week that began the catastrophic downturn of the global economy.

Read the full article here on the New York Times website.

Henry Olszewski was stoked in 2008 when he, along with millions of Americans, drafted New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to his fantasy football team.

About eight minutes into the season, a 220-pound safety was blocked into Brady's knee, tearing two of the quarterback's ligaments. Brady's season ended, as did Olszewski's.

"That Monday, [Olszewski] came in the office, and he was bummed out," said Anthony Giaccone, president of Intermarket Insurance. "He asked, 'Why can't we buy insurance for fantasy team players?' "

Thus spawned the brainchild for Fantasy Sports Insurance, which guarantees that NFL players won't miss a certain number of games. FSI will reimburse a fantasy player's entry fee if they do.

It's one of a blitz of bizarre businesses cropping up in the $800 million industry of turning quarterback stats to greenbacks, said Paul Charchian, president of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.

Read the full story here on the CNN website.

From the Littler Mendelson blog comes an article reviewing the first ruling setting forth elements for Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblower claims.

Written by Patrick Hicks and Deborah Westbook, it details how the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that employees do not have to prove that actual shareholder fraud has occurred to maintain such a suit. Rather, plaintiffs need only establish that they had an actual and objectively reasonable belief that shareholder fraud occurred.

Read the full analysis of the decision here on the Littler Blog.

The UC Board of Regents has quietly settled a dozen lawsuits stemming from fertility fraud uncovered nearly 15 years ago -- drawing closer to an end a scandal that has dogged UC Irvine and left behind dozens of heartbroken couples.

Shirel and Steve Crawford recently deposited their $675,000 settlement, minus legal fees, but it brought them little peace. In the late 1980s, in the midst of what many consider the country's worst fertility scandal, the Crawfords believe their embryos were given to a woman referred to in documents as "Mrs. S." Mrs. S gave birth to a boy and a girl in two separate pregnancies while Shirel Crawford -- out of money and embryos -- never had a baby.

"I don't think it will ever be over," Shirel Crawford said. "Our children are still out there somewhere. Maybe someday they will find us."

The Crawfords' case was among a dozen settled in recent months for a total of $4.23 million. The payments ranged from $45,000 to the Crawfords' $675,000. In all, the University of California has paid out more than $24 million for 137 separate incidents in which eggs or embryos were either unaccounted for or given to other women without consent. Three cases are still pending.

Read the full article here on the Los Angeles Times website.

A new nationwide poll reveals that a strong majority of America’s voters want Congress to include lawsuit reform in any overhaul of the health care system. The survey found that:

83 percent of the nation’s electorate want Congress to address reform of the medical malpractice system as part of any health care reform plan.

72 percent of voters think the fear of being sued often changes the way doctors deal with patients.

67 percent of voters favor special health courts deciding medical malpractice cases rather than the regular court system.

Only 43 percent of Americans have confidence that a lawsuit “without merit” that was filed against them would be resolved in their favor, and only 30 percent have confidence it would be resolved quickly and efficiently.

The poll was conducted by Clarus Research Group for Common Good, a nonpartisan legal reform coalition, and the Committee for Economic Development (CED). It was conducted via live telephone interviews August 14-18, 2009, with a sample of 1,003 registered voters and a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.

See the full survey results here on the Philip K. Howard website.

Commercial insurance buyers are showing growing interest in liability protection for directors and officers of a company who are not indemnified by their organization, a Towers Perrin survey finds.

But while popularity of what is known as Side A coverage continues to grow, the firm found independent director liability coverage draws little interest.

The information was contained in the Towers Perrin release of its 31^st Directors and Officers Liability survey of purchasing trends for 2008. The Stamford, Conn.-based consulting firm said it received responses from 2,599 participants, an 11 percent decrease from the 2007 survey, the firm said.

Tower Perrin’s poll found a 33 percent increase in the number of purchasers of Side A only coverage by repeat public company survey participants. This raised the total percentage of public companies who say they are buying the coverage to 43 percent.

Few private companies purchase Side A only coverage, a total of 1 percent, according to the survey. Only one nonprofit of 343 participants said they purchase the coverage.

Organizations with assets over $10 billion were the largest purchasers of the coverage, a total of 73 percent. However, many of these organizations also purchased Side B or C coverage (which cover the company itself), with 15 percent purchasing only Side A and not the other two coverages.

Read the full story here on the National Underwriter website.

The deadline for early registration for the PLUS Conference is September 14, 2009.  To take advantage of the discounted pricing, register on or before this date. Both Conference Fees and Hotel Room Rates will increase after September 14, so book now and SAVE. Why pay more if you don't have to?

In addition to informative educational sessions and a host of networking opportunities, PLUS is pleased to present several insightful keynote addresses this year,

• Malcolm Gladwell, best selling author of Blink, The Tipping Point, Outliers, and Staff Writer for the New Yorker Magazine (view video clip here)
• Walter Bond, Former NBA player and "America's Accountability Leader"
• Corbette S. Doyle, Lecturer of Leadership and Organizations, Vanderbilt University (view video clip here)
• Dr. Robert Hartwig, President of the Insurance Information Institute
• Marvin Zonis, Professor Emeritus, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago Business School (view video clip here)

We know that this year, more than ever, there is competition for your support.  To that end, we've put together a program rich in information and networking opportunities that will deliver on your expectations. You won’t want to miss it!

Register now by following this link!

A former Securities and Exchange Commission lawyer who recommended questioning discrepancies in records from Bernard Madoff's firm five years ago says supervisors derailed her efforts by excluding her from key conference calls with the convicted Ponzi-scheme fraudster.

Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a former SEC lawyer and lead investigator in a probe of Madoff's firm in 2004, raised questions to her supervisors about trading abnormalities she noticed in Madoff's records.

She told Dow Jones Newswires in a telephone interview that an initial conference call between Madoff and other members of her examination team on Feb. 4, 2004, occurred without her knowledge or a request from a supervisor for Walker-Lightfoot to participate.

Walker-Lightfoot, who also doesn't recall participating in another telephone conference between her team and Madoff in March 2004, says her absence from the conversations meant she couldn't ask questions that could have contributed to uncovering the fraud years earlier.

Her version of the events reveals possible gaps in the 477-page report by the SEC's inspector general, H. David Kotz, about his investigation into the agency's repeated bungling of its multiple Madoff probes. Walker-Lightfoot says the report too broadly paints the examiners as inexperienced and of limited expertise, and focuses too little on the actions of higher-ups and the culture of the organization.

Kotz, in his analysis of the 2004 investigation, wrote that the February 2004 call to Madoff was made by "the examination team," a four-person unit in the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, or OCIE. It doesn't mention Walker-Lightfoot's absence.

The report also discusses a call with Madoff on March 18, 2004. Kotz wrote that "it appears that" Walker-Lightfoot, Mark Donohue and two other team members were on the call. But Walker-Lightfoot says she doesn't recall being on the call. She told Dow Jones Newswires that she would have asked Madoff nine follow-up questions about his operation that she suggested to Donohue in an email on March 10, 2004.

Read the full story here on the Wall Street Journal website.

From the Associated Press:

Attorney General Richard Cordray says $475 million in settlement money is ready for distribution to Merrill Lynch investors in Ohio and elsewhere.

Cordray on Tuesday announced the completion of the financial company's settlement with the State Teachers Retirement System. The deal was first announced in January.

In a class action lawsuit, the pension fund and other investors had accused Merrill Lynch of artificially inflating its stock price. The investors took substantial losses on the stock after the company wrote down billions of dollars in assets backed by subprime mortgages.

The attorney general's office says the settlement will be shared by investors who bought Merrill Lynch stock in late 2006 and during all of 2007 and 2008.

Jailed, disgraced former financier Allen Stanford may have more to fear than U.S. investors who lost everything in an alleged fraud prosecutors describe as a $7 billion Ponzi scheme. There's also Libyan strongman Muammar el-Qaddafi and his government, which reportedly invested $500 million with Stanford's firm as late as 2008.

This and other international displeasure has begun to bubble up through news reports, as well as reaction to a U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission report summary issued Sept. 3 about its failings in detection of the Bernard Madoff financial scandal.

Court documents state Stanford and his fiancee, Andrea Stoelker, flew to Tripoli in January 2009 -- just weeks before the SEC put the clamps on his company, Stanford Financial Group, and its scores of affiliates worldwide.

He and four executives, plus an Antiguan regulator, face multiple criminal charges in a Houston, Texas, federal court that they forged a scheme to defraud certificate of deposit investors out of billions. Although the regulator has not been extradited to answer the charges, the others pleaded not guilty.

Read the full story here on the individual.com website.

This study examines how insurers can avoid bad faith exposure when policy limits are insufficient to accommodate multiple claimants or insureds.  Insurers regularly encounter situations where the applicable policy limit is insufficient to satisfy.  They include: multiple claims against an insured; a single claim against multiple insureds; and multiple claims against multiple insureds.

Read this full report from Swiss Re here in PDF Format.

Last month a federal court preliminarily approved a $55.95 million settlement involving securities claims against outside directors in In re Peregrine Systems, Inc. Securities Litigation, Case No. 02-CV-0870- BEN (S.D. Calif.). Pursuant to this settlement, one of the largest ever recorded involving outside directors, six former Peregrine directors agreed to settle claims for $55.95 million.

While the outside directors’ counsel has stated that the insurers did contribute to the settlement, and the outside directors purportedly are pursuing coverage from the excess insurers, the payment terms of the settlement tend to confirm that a large portion of the settlement will be funded out of one or more directors’ personal assets.

News of this settlement may lead to questions from your outside directors regarding the adequacy of your company’s D&O insurance.  This client alert briefly summarizes the facts of the Peregrine Systems case, and offers suggestions your company may want to consider when renewing its D&O coverage.

Read the full story here on the King & Spaulding website.

When a patient shows up at a doctor's office with a bruise after falling and bumping his head, the physician might order a CT scan even if she believes the injury is superficial.

Worries about a malpractice lawsuit might prompt her to take steps that aren't medically necessary. "If I don't get a CAT scan, this is that one case where I'll end up in court," the doctor might think, says Cecil Wilson, a physician who is president-elect of the American Medical Association.

This is defensive medicine -- a careful, fretful approach to treating patients, in which doctors authorize tests in part to reduce the risk that they will be sued. In the national debate over health care, doctors and policy makers often point to spending on defensive medicine as a key driver of soaring costs.

Calculating how much defensive medicine actually costs is extremely difficult, because medical professionals often have many motivations for ordering tests and other procedures. The U.S. spends a higher percentage of its gross domestic product on health care than any other nation in the industrialized world. Legal expenses contribute to the bill.

Read the full story here on the Wall Street Journal website.

Toyota spent years concealing evidence from victims of hundreds of rollover accidents that resulted in death and injury, a former top lawyer for the automaker says.

The accusation, spelled out in a lawsuit filed in federal court, has the potential to reopen cases that Toyota Motor Corp. won or settled for two decades, legal experts said.

Dimitrios P. Biller of Pacific Palisades, a former managing counsel for Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc., said in the suit that the company repeatedly forced him to illegally withhold information from opposing lawyers and made him resign in September 2007.

Read the full story here on the Los Angeles Times website.

Chevron has released videos it says implicate a judge in Ecuador and a senior official of the country's ruling party in a $3 million bribery scheme related to a lawsuit alleging that the U.S. oil company should be held liable for $27 billion in environmental damages in Ecuador's Amazon region.

The case has drawn attention because of the size of the claim against Chevron and the damage the proceedings could do to Ecuador's bid for most-favored-nation status if the oil giant convinces members of Congress and the Obama administration that the country's legal system lacks integrity.

Chevron said Monday that it had been given videos of three meetings, including one in which the judge, Juan Núñez, appears to say he will rule against Chevron, and that the company's appeals would be denied even though the trial is still in progress. The company posted the videos and transcripts in English and Spanish on its Web site.

Read the full story here on the Washington Post website.

The smell of death was overpowering the moment a relief worker cracked open one of the hospital chapel’s wooden doors. Inside, more than a dozen bodies lay motionless on low cots and on the ground, shrouded in white sheets. Here, a wisp of gray hair peeked out. There, a knee was flung akimbo. A pallid hand reached across a blue gown.

Within days, the grisly tableau became the focus of an investigation into what happened when the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina marooned Memorial Medical Center in Uptown New Orleans. The hurricane knocked out power and running water and sent the temperatures inside above 100 degrees. Still, investigators were surprised at the number of bodies in the makeshift morgue and were stunned when health care workers charged that a well-regarded doctor and two respected nurses had hastened the deaths of some patients by injecting them with lethal doses of drugs. Mortuary workers eventually carried 45 corpses from Memorial, more than from any comparable-size hospital in the drowned city.

Read the full story here on the New York Times website.

Insurance companies have agreed to pay $118 million to settle a lawsuit by Broadcom investors over the company's $2.2 billion accounting restatement.

A federal court must approve the settlement for it to take effect, the Orange County Register reported Monday. The deal would pay $11.5 million to plaintiffs' attorneys and create a settlement fund.