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For the first time in the four-week trial of two former Enron executives, the actions of the company's directors in a critical month in 2001 came under scrutiny during a cross-examination.

As much as this is a story of privatization and racism, it is also about cronyism. The New York Daily News notes that Dubai Ports World has at least two ties to the Bush Administration - Treasury Secretary John Snow who, a year after joining the administration, sold his company's port operations to the same Dubai firm; and David Sanborn, the head of the U.S. Maritime Administration who still runs Dubai Ports World's European and Latin American operations.

BOMBAY -- An exhibition of black-and-white photographs capturing the suffering of victims of the world's worst industrial accident is set to open in Johannesburg on Tuesday to coincide with the Earth Summit.

Three British bankers may be extradited to the United States to face Enron-related fraud charges, the High Court ruled on Tuesday in a ruling that was the first test case of laws introduced to speed the transfer of suspected terrorists.

A lawyer for Jeffrey K. Skilling, a former Enron chief executive, tried Wednesday to portray the head of the company's broadband unit as an out-of-touch manager who was criticized for his free-spending ways and did not even know how many employees were working under him.

A Republican staffer on the Senate foreign relations Committee tells CounterPunch the little-known Cambone, who like so many others on the Bush war team skillfully avoided military service, has quietly become one of the most powerful men in the Pentagon, rivaling even Paul Wolfowitz.

Enron Corp.'s former investor-relations chief grew tense Tuesday when challenged about his testimony that suggested former CEO Jeffrey Skilling participated in schemes to hike earnings estimates or minimize how much revenue stemmed from asset sales.

Now that Liberia is struggling to transition to peace and democracy, the US government cannot turn its back on this resource-rich, yet fragile country.

KENNETH L. LAY and his second in command, Jeffrey K. Skilling, were the public faces of Enron, painting a rosy picture of strong profits and healthy businesses. But as the facts began to tumble out, in the fall of 2001, the company swiftly collapsed, taking with it the fortunes and retirement savings of thousands of employees.

Sen. Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), who sits on the pivotal appropriations committee which oversees all major spending bills, compared fraud in Louisiana to fraud in Iraq.

"For the government, if they lose the Enron case, it will be seen as a symbolic failure of their rather significant campaign against white-collar crime," said John C. Coffee Jr., a professor at Columbia Law School. "It will be seen as some evidence that some cases are too complicated to be brought into the criminal justice process."

For Angelique Chappell, a former administrative assistant at Enron, it all now seems like a mirage.

Representatives of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal are opposed to the participation of US multinational Dow Chemical Company at the WSSD and condemned the company's attempts to ''greenwash the worst corporate crime in history.'' They also had harsh words for the UN for its failure to provide any support to the victims of the world's worst industrial disaster.

Mr Shaik was found guilty of receiving money from the French arms company, Thomson-CSF, to facilitate a deal worth more than $4bn.

Sean M. Berkowitz and a small group of government lawyers will be in the spotlight in the Jan. 30 trial of Enron's former leaders. The case is the capstone in the cleanup after an era of business misconduct that left investors billions of dollars poorer. The outcome could shape the public's -- and history's -- judgment of how effective it was.