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UBS AG, the Swiss bank battered by massive write-downs and its role in a U.S. tax-evasion scheme, announced the surprise departure of chief executive Marcel Rohner. Mr. Rohner's sudden departure comes after UBS agreed earlier this month to a $780 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department of a criminal inquiry into the bank's role in the tax evasion.

Before his execution, Socrates was visited in prison by his friend
Crito, who told him the bribes for the guards were ready and Socrates
could escape whenever he wished. Socrates refused to go.

More than 70 juveniles and their families filed a class-action lawsuit Thursday against two former judges who pleaded guilty this month in a scheme that involved their taking kickbacks to put young offenders in privately run detention centers. The two privately operated centers are run by PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care.

Phoenix-based gun dealer George Iknadosian of X-Calibur Guns will go on trial on charges he sold hundreds of weapons, mostly AK-47 rifles, to smugglers, knowing they would go to a drug cartel in the western state of Sinaloa. The guns helped fuel the gang warfare in which more than 6,000 Mexicans died last year.

The U.S. obsession with soft toilet paper has driven the growth of brands like Cottonelle Ultra, Quilted Northern Ultra and Charmin Ultra. But fluffiness comes at a price: millions of trees harvested in North America and in Latin American countries, including some percentage of trees from rare old-growth forests in Canada.

Glenn Spencer, executive director of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was in Denver on Monday to decry H.R. 800, federal legislation that would give workers greater rights to unionize. Spencer spoke at the offices of the Colorado Association of Commerce and Industry and warned of the "most radical rewrite of labor law in 70 years."

President Obama will almost certainly touch down in Baghdad and Kabul in Air Force One sometime in the coming year to meet his counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he will just as certainly pay a visit to a U.S. military base or two. Should he stay to eat with the troops, he will no less certainly choose from a menu prepared by migrant Asian workers under contract to Houston-based KBR, the former subsidiary of Halliburton.

For the past eight years, the oil giant formerly known as British
Petroleum has tried to convince the world that its initials stand for
"Beyond Petroleum." An announcement just issued by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency may suggest that the real meaning of BP
is Brazen Polluter.

The McArthur River winds through Australia's remote Northern Territory, home to four main Aboriginal linguistic groups: the Gurdanji, Yanyuwa, Garawa and Mara. Earlier this month Australian Minister for Environment Peter Garrett announced conditional approval for a bid by Swiss mining giant Xstrata to expand its zinc mining operations in the sacred McArthur River floodplain.

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