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The Executive Director of Greenpeace, John Passacantando, the president of Rainforest Action Network, Randy Hayes, and nearly a dozen other activists locked themselves inside of the main entrance of the Environmental Protection Agency today. This protest was the latest in a series of pre-Earth Day activities against Bush's recent greenwashing of his anti- environmental agenda. All were arrested.

A once-obscure accounting rule was changed Thursday to give banks more discretion in reporting the value of mortgage securities. Apparently under political pressure, the five-member Financial Accounting Standards Board approved a controversial change that makes it possible for banks to keep some declines in asset values off their income statements.

American International Group, which has received more than $170 billion in taxpayer bailout money, is to pay executives in the business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year $165 million in bonuses. The bonuses will go forward because lawyers say the firm is contractually obligated to pay them.

Physicists and other scientists have flooded Wall Street in recent years, known as "quants" because they do quantitative finance. They arrived on Wall Street in the midst of a financial revolution. Galloping inflation had made finances more complicated and risky, and it required sophisticated mathematical expertise to parse even simple investments like bonds.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Morgan Stanley said it had fired an executive in its China real estate division after uncovering evidence that he might have violated the United States Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which bars American business people from bribing foreign officials.

The auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers is overhauling its operations in India two months after starting an investigation into fraud at Satyam Computer Services, a software and outsourcing firm whose chairman said in January that he had falsely claimed assets of $1 billion in cash and overstated operating margins.

Bank of America chief executive, Kenneth D. Lewis, is trying to bridle Merrill Lynch traders, whose rush into risky investments nearly brought down the brokerage firm. But questions over the Merrill losses - in particular, who knew about them, and when - keep swirling.

The band that loves to rail against global corporate malfeasance is being criticized at home over allegations of tax dodging. The controversy stems from 2006, when the band moved its publishing company to the Netherlands to avoid a potential multi-million-euro tax bill after the Irish government capped artists' tax-free earnings at €250,000 ($315,000).

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.

Crito, angered, argued Socrates would a) leave his children orphans
and b) bring shame on his friends, because people would assume they
were too cheap to finance his escape. (Apparently, this sort of thing
was common in Athens in those days.)

ATLANTA (March 30) -- Just in time for April Fool's Day, Earth Day 2000, the consumer clearinghouse for the environmental decade, released ''Don't Be Fooled,'' its annual report highlighting the top 10 greenwashers of the previous year.

The Bank of New York Mellon was named the master custodian firm overseeing the Treasury Department's $700 billion bailout fund. It will hold and track the distressed assets that the government will buy as well as run and report on the auctions used to buy the assets. Government officials called it the "prime contractor of the purchase program."

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.

Prosecutors pursuing the fraud at Satyam Computer Services Ltd. said Tuesday the Indian technology outsourcer's founder, B. Ramalinga Raju, should be denied bail because he could slow the investigation if released.

As Bank of America's board meets next week, shareholders have turned up the pressure on CEO Kenneth D. Lewis. Their scrutiny has also turned an unusual spotlight on the oversight role played by the bank's board members.

In the wake of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme scandal, the SEC has brought cases involving losses of over $200 million since the beginning of October last year, including one against the disgraced Democratic donor Norman Hsu and North Carolina-based Biltmore Financial.

Robert Rubin will resign from the beleaguered Citigroup. As Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration, Mr. Rubin helped loosen Depression-era banking regulations that made Citigroup's creation possible. He also helped beat back tighter oversight of exotic financial products during that time.

Judge Louis L. Stanton of United States District Court has established Wednesday as the deadline for Bernard L. Madoff, who is accused of operating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, to provide federal securities regulators with a full accounting of his and his New York firm's assets - from real estate to art works to bank accounts.