Governor of Texas Signs a Hate Crimes Bill: Crime - December 18
Here’s a peek at the latest news from New York Times:
Mr. Perry said today, ‘’This law sends a signal to would-be criminals that if you attack someone because of their religion or race or gender, you face stiffer penalties.'’ As Mr. Perry signed the bill, he was surrounded by Mr. Byrd’s parents and lawmakers who had pushed for the legislation, As recently as Thursday, Mr. Perry said he had not decided whether he would sign the bill and was concerned it would ‘’create new classes of citizens.'’ Mr. Byrd’s mother, Stella Byrd, said before the signing that she was ‘’very pleased that he changed his mind and thank God for that, too.'’ ‘’I think he finally realized it was a good bill,'’ Mrs. Byrd said.
Forbes wrote:
Richard Scrushy, the co-founder and former chief executive of HealthSouth, turned his whole life into a crime, according to a federal indictment handed down yesterday. Finally, it says he committed a new crime when he certified HealthSouth’s annual report in 2002, making Scrushy the first CEO charged with violating the Sarbanes-Oxley law. Whatever false reporting occurred, much of which has been admitted in guilty pleas by five former HealthSouth chief financial officers, he knew nothing of it, Scrushy’s lawyer say. In an open letter on his Web site, Scrushy himself says: “I want to share my feelings of great sorrow in light of the recent allegations of fraud and criminal activity within HealthSouth. The indictment doesn’t say what got HealthSouth started on its alleged false financial reporting.
More news from New York Times:
The chief prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes tribunal today accused the ousted Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic of committing genocide and other crimes against humanity out of a pure lust for power that eventually wrecked his country and killed more than 200,000 people. Mr. Milosevic, the first head of state to be tried on such grievous charges, showed little emotion as prosecutors laid out the litany of Europe’s horror of the 1990’s: genocide against Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as crimes in two other wars in Croatia and Kosovo that tore a still-unsealed hole in the stability of the Balkans. Opening the case against Mr. Milosevic, Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, told the panel of three judges that ‘’today is clearly the most important trial to be conducted in the tribunal.'’ (Excerpts, Page A16.) Against the vast complexity of a trial expected to last for two years, she suggested that what drove Mr. Milosevic was elemental.