I was halfway through a post on the $456 million settlement between the federal government and big-whatever accounting firm KPMG. I wondered whether the feds had a good case (the underlying advice has not been found illegal) or just a bludgeon in the form of a threat of a corporate indictment.
Then news broke of Hurricane Katrina building to a potential killer category 5 storm. The post-mortem on KPMG can wait.
Google has a homepage link to news updated in real time. NPR also has a dedicated page (listen to the “environment” story when it becomes available). A hurricane tracker is provided by MSNBC.
You can help jump-start relief efforts by donating online to the American Red Cross (I tried it and it works).
One of the first legal weblogs I started reading was Ernest Svenson’s Ernie the Attorney. A New Orleans resident, Mr. Svenson is doing his best to ride out Katrina and live-blog the process as technology permits.
I’m keeping Ernie, his family and everyone in the Gulf Coast area in my thoughts.
Update (Monday PM): As to Katrina; it was a killer; the devastation and flooding are horrible. If power and other utilities are out for weeks, it will be extraordinarily difficult for people trying to put their lives back together. Ernie is OK and has mobile-phone weblog updates; perhaps as long as his battery lasts.
In the comparatively mundane world of alleged tax fraud, the feds announced indictments against eight former KPMG employees (and a former outside counsel)–four of the KPMG group are lawyers.