Accounting giant KPMG avoided a prospective death knell Monday by agreeing to pay USD 456 million to settle charges that it promoted fake tax shelters, with the specter of Arthur Andersen hanging over its head.

Criminal indictments also were filed next to eight former KPMG executives, but the firm itself runaway a criminal charge. The conclusion was applauded by outside observers, who said it was tough adequate to deject misbehavior while still preserving one of the four remaining major inspection companies.

Tanina Rostain a law professor at New York Law School who has studied the KPMG case said, “these firms are pretty unique in their ability to audit Fortune 500 companies, we need a convinced number of them around”.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales acknowledged at a news conference in Washington that prosecutors have to consider the “security consequences. Gonzales said the conclusion with KPMG “reflects the reality that the confidence of an organization can affect innocent workers and others associated with the organization and can even have an impact on the national economy.”

Prosecutors were criticized that their actions, although aimed at abuses by a relative handful of people, demolished a whole company.

Moreover, the U.S. Supreme Court on May 31 generally overturned Andersen’s certainty on obstruction of justice. The high court said the trial judge was wrong to agree to the government’s request to lower the standard of proof needed for a responsible verdict.

The deal accepted Monday calls for KPMG to pass a series of reforms and to be overseen by an outside monitor, Richard Breeden, a former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman who filled a like role at WorldCom Inc. after its accounting scandal.

In a statement Monday, KPMG said that it regretted its “past tax practices” and that it had “learned much from this experience.”

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According to a study, Statin drug may put aside the risk of heart attack in patients.

Pfizer Inc.’s Lipitor stated that the world’s best selling prescription drug, within 24 hours of admission for a heart attack could markedly diminish the risk of early complications and of fading in the hospital.

Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow, from the University of California Los Angeles said this is the largest study to look at whether very near the beginning use of Statin therapy after a heart attack can influence clinical outcomes”.

The research led by Fonarow involved comparing records of more than 170,000 patients in the National Registry of Myocardial Infarction.
The registry has collected data on more than 2.3 million heart-attack patients since 1990.

Fonarow said, “The benefits of the therapy carry on for several years beyond discharge.

Wright, a cardiologist who took part in the study said, “It shows enhanced long-term survival and as the current report deals only with survival in the hospital, analysis of the data from the study, is published in a different journal.

Home Secretary of India And Pakistan discuss on terrorism in India to look for expulsion of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim from Pakistan.

The meeting is part of the ongoing complex dialogue process. The Indian side will lift up security concerns.

The Home Secretary level talks between India and Pakistan on terrorism and drug trafficking will be held here on August 29 and 30 in New Delhi. The talks are part of the ongoing complex dialogue process between the two countries. The last talks were held in Islamabad in August last year.

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Computer bugs, continued to slow down company computers and stayed one step ahead of anti-virus software

Finnish software security firm F-Secure said Wednesday, that the Computer worms that have brought down systems around the world.

Mikko Hypponen said, “There emerge to be three different virus-writing gangs spinning out new worms at an alarming rate, as if they were challenging to construct the biggest network of infected machines.”

Hypponen said in a declaration that varieties of three worms — “Zotob,” “Bozori” and “IRCbot” — were still exploiting a gap in Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 2000 operating system on computers that had not had the error repaired and were not protected by firewalls.

The worms were responsible for major system mess at some media outlets and companies in the United States, causing personal computers to resume repeatedly and potentially making them susceptible to assault.

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