Environmentalists and Hinkley residents have filed a lawsuit to stop an open-air sewage sludge composting plant from being built near that town, made famous by the move "Erin Brockovich."

The lawsuit filed yesterday against San Bernardino County alleges that supervisors approved the plant without fully analyzing its potential impact on air quality and public health.

The suit also contends that the project doesn't adequately protect the threatened desert tortoise and the Mojave ground squirrel.

The groups behind the suit say they're not trying to stop the plant. They say they just want to force the county to enclose it and filter its odors.

But officials with Nursery Products, the company building the plant, says that option is too expensive and that the county did a thorough job in evaluating the open-air project when it cleared its construction.

The city of Chula Vista has issued a response to a lawsuit filed by a police officer who wants to compete in beauty pageants.

Deana Mory is currently representing California in the Ms. United States beauty pageant. But she is also a police officer who patrols the streets of Chula Vista.

She told NBC police administrators said if she competes she could be reprimanded or fired because prize money and gifts from the pageants violate city police.

Mory said she would refuse the money if she won the national title, but the city did not accept her compromise.

As a result, Mory and the Police Officers Association filed a lawsuit against The Chula Vista Police Department.

Wednesday night, Liz Pursell from the city of Chula Vista released a statement saying, "There is no merit to the allegations. Ms. Mory did participate in the pageant. The city is in the process of responding to the second lawsuit. We anticipate filing a motion seeking a judgment in favor of the city."

The beauty pageant is in July, and Mory said she plans on taking part.

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan threw out a lawsuit brought on behalf of nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan . He said Rumsfeld cannot be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First had argued that Rumsfeld and top military officials disregarded warnings about the abuse and authorized the use of illegal interrogation tactics that violated the constitutional and human rights of prisoners.

"This is a lamentable case," Hogan began his 58-page opinion Tuesday.

"Despite the horrifying torture allegations," Hogan said, he could find no case law supporting the lawsuit, which he previously had described as unprecedented.

Allowing the case to go forward, Hogan said in December, might subject government officials to all sorts of political lawsuits. Even Osama bin Laden could sue, Hogan said, claiming two American presidents threatened to have him murdered.

Had the Rumsfeld lawsuit been allowed to go forward, attorneys for the ACLU might have been able to force the Pentagon to disclose what officials knew about abuses such as those at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and what was done to stop it.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment.

Karpinski, whose Army Reserve unit was in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison, was demoted and is the highest-ranking officer punished in the scandal. Sanchez, who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq, retired from the Army and said his career was a casualty of the prison scandal.

The accounting review meant Dell would not file its annual report with securities regulators by the April 3 due date, or by an extension date of April 18, the company added.

In its statement, Dell did not give details of the misconduct or of its other findings. A spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

"We still don't know the extent of the misconduct," said Sunil Reddy, senior portfolio manager at Fifth Third Asset Management, which oversees about $21 billion in assets, including Dell shares.

"This news creates uncertainty, but more important are the operational metrics, which need to change in the right direction," Reddy said. "That's going to take some time."

Dell will also review to see whether the control deficiencies "constitute a material weakness" in its internal control over financial reporting. 

Dell announced last August that it had been investigating its accounting for a year. Later in 2006, the company said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. federal prosecutors were investigating its past accounting.

Founder Michael Dell in January retook the helm of the company from Kevin Rollins, who left after the investigations were disclosed and a series of lower-than-forecast financial results. Also last year, the company lost the No. 1 PC market share ranking to rival Hewlett-Packard Co.

The company in December replaced former Chief Financial Officer James Schneider with former American Airlines chief Donald Carty. Dell, 42, has also made a series of changes to his senior management team, including the appointment of former Motorola Inc. executive Ron Garriques to oversee a new global consumer unit.

The stock fell 6.6 percent to $21.85 in after-hours trading following the announcement, though it recovered slightly and was last down 2.7 percent at $22.75.

The word is spreading among the thousands of cocktail waitresses, food servers, bartenders, busboys and bellhops who make most of their money from tips. The rank-and-file workers complain that they were not consulted on the new tip formulas.

If there really is more money in town, said Arturo Valadez, a sommelier at Mandalay Bay, it's not necessarily reaching workers' pockets.

"I'm not against paying (more) taxes, but the way they are doing it isn't necessarily the most accurate or effective," he said.

The issue is coming to a head as the IRS and Las Vegas casinos negotiate a new agreement on how much tip income workers should declare to avoid being audited by the government.

Since the early 1990s Las Vegas casinos and the IRS have agreed on how much tip income the employees should declare.

Since then, the IRS has struck similar agreements with other industries nationwide, including restaurants, hair salons and barbers. In total, tip agreements with employers have yielded billions of dollars in additional taxes for the government. Included in the voluntary participation are more than 47,000 establishments nationwide. That the agreements were born in the cash-rich casino industry is apparent in the IRS tip-reporting guide for taxpayers, which specifically mentions casino workers and features an illustration of a royal flush on its cover page.

The agreements, much like hard-won union contracts, are complex, site-specific and subject to change. Each tipped position at each participating Las Vegas casino has its own tip estimate because casinos individually negotiate rates, which differ by shift and job.

A food server in a coffee shop during the day shift, for instance, might be expected to declare $13,000 in tip income, whereas a swing-shift server in a full-service restaurant could be required to declare more than $20,000 in tip income. Employers withhold taxes on the estimated tips.

The agreements ease the paperwork burden for workers and the IRS. Workers don't have to track their tips, and the IRS doesn't spend time auditing workers.

And workers know a good deal when they see it: Many earn more in tips than the amount estimated by the IRS.

That's probably why, according to the IRS, 80 percent of Nevada's more than 100,000 tip-earning hotel workers participate in the agreement program, which is voluntary for employers and workers.

More than four years ago the casino industry fought to keep down proposed tip rates that lobbyists said would have doubled, tripled and even quadrupled workers' claimed tips. Both sides wrangled over rates in the years leading up to the three-year tip agreement reached in 2003. Hoping to capture even more unreported tips, the IRS expanded the template of the Nevada agreement to casinos nationwide.

The local tip agreements expired Dec. 31, although the old rates apply until a new agreement is reached in coming weeks.

Even though tip rates probably will go up for many Las Vegas casino workers, the alternative to participating in the tip agreement isn't all that appealing.

The IRS requires tipped workers who don't participate in the agreements to track daily tips and report the aggregate on their tax returns - and risk being audited. The IRS offers a worksheet with spaces for tips earned each day, a separate column for tips shared with others and spaces for co-workers' names.

After spending eight hours on their feet at work, most are unlikely to spend their free time logging tips on a spreadsheet.

That's why the IRS negotiated rates that might be less than actual tips yet guarantee a stream of tip taxes - up to $900 million annually in Nevada - that might otherwise go uncollected.

The American Gaming Association, which helped casinos negotiate the 2003 agreement, is involved in the latest round of discussions with the IRS.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who has assisted the industry in the negotiation process, said the IRS has agreed to phase in tip-rate increases over the three years of the new agreement rather than hit workers with a bigger tax bill all at once. The phased-in increase would extend beyond Nevada to include New Jersey, the Gulf Coast and other U.S. casino markets.

The second step of the process - determining the tip rates for each casino - has been more time consuming and contentious, with the IRS "pushing for substantial increases for certain positions," Reid spokesman Jon Summers said.

IRS, American Gaming Association and Culinary Union representatives are meeting this week to iron out a compromise.

The Culinary, which began union contract negotiations with Strip casinos two weeks ago, isn't taking any chances. The union, which represents 55,000 tip-earning workers, is proposing that employers contribute to a "defense fund" to assist employees who choose not to participate in the upcoming agreement and therefore might become subject to IRS audits.

"A coffee shop waitress on graveyard can be audited after she decides not to participate because she thinks rates are too high. We don't think that's fair," Culinary Union Secretary-Treasurer D. Taylor said. "A casino executive who gets called in for an audit and is questioned has legal representation. An individual worker should not have to take on the IRS by himself."

For now, the casinos appear to have the upper hand in this high-stakes game. The industry has threatened to chuck the program entirely - a potential tax loss in the billions for the IRS - unless the agency can agree to a smaller increase in tip rates.

"The rates (the IRS is) talking about are quite scary to folks," Taylor said.

Distributed by Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, www.scrippsnews.com.

Dallas law firm Jenkens & Gilchrist will close and pay a $76 million fine to settle a federal criminal tax-shelter probe, government officials said Thursday. 
 
The penalty stems from the firm's "promotion of abusive and fraudulent tax shelters in violation of the tax law," the Internal Revenue Service said.

Jenkens & Gilchrist, which had more than 600 attorneys until recently, intends to close its main office in Dallas at the end of the month, after having already closing other offices, the U.S. Attorney's office said.

The firm was shutting down because it realized its illegal activities had "caused serious damage to its reputation, revenues and stability," the U.S. Attorney's office said.

The law firm did not have an immediate comment, but in an earlier statement said, "We deeply regret our involvement in this tax practice, and the serious harm it caused to the United States Treasury."

The IRS said some 1,400 high-net-worth investors followed Jenkens & Gilchrist's advice "and will owe interest and penalties on their underpayment of tax."

The law firm of Godfrey & Kahn, S.C. is pleased to announce that it has established the Diversity Scholars Program as part of the firm’s ongoing diversity initiatives. The program offers a $2,500 scholarship to first-year minority law students at the University of Michigan, the University of Iowa, and Northwestern University for use as a partial tuition payment during the student’s first year of law school. Godfrey & Kahn also offers full-tuition fellowships at the University of Wisconsin and Marquette University law schools. The 2007 Diversity Scholars Program award winners include:

Jacqueline Nicole James (Northwestern University). She is also in the process of earning a master’s degree in Business Administration through the Kellogg School of Management.

Jacqueline earned her bachelor’s degree in Engineering and Management Systems from Columbia University, where she was on the Dean’s List and was a Citigroup Scholar. She is currently a participant in Management Leadership for Tomorrow MBA Prep Program 2006.

Robyn Nicole Lewis(University of Michigan). She received her master’s degree in Sociology and her bachelor’s degree in Human Biology from Stanford University, where she received the Black Community Services Deans Award for Academic Excellence. Robyn was awarded the NCAA women’s volleyball full scholarship and was the Stanford Athletic Board Award winner for outstanding female senior.

Rupal Vijay Vora (University of Iowa). She is a first-year representative for the Organization of Women Law Students and Staff. Rupal received her bachelor’s degree with dual honors in Political Science and Gender Studies from Northwestern University and was on the Dean’s List.

"We are delighted to award these well-deserved scholarships as part of our firm’s ongoing efforts to promote diversity in our profession," said Mark Witt, a shareholder and member of the firm’s Corporate Practice Group, as well as co-chair of the firm’s recruiting committee and a member of the scholarship selection committee. "We hope that the scholarships provide these talented individuals with recognition for their achievements and some financial assistance for their future endeavors."

Founded in 1957, Godfrey & Kahn maintains offices in Milwaukee, Madison, Appleton, Green Bay, and Waukesha, WI; Washington, DC; and Shanghai, PRC. With more than 190 attorneys, Godfrey & Kahn provides legal and business advice to clients ranging from small businesses and governmental entities to large privately and publicly held national and international companies.

http://www.gklaw.com