A court in southern China has rejected a claim by Apple Inc. that a Hong Kong-headquartered tech company has violated its iPad trademark, in the latest development in a case that could affect the U.S. company's financial prospects in the country.

Apple's Beijing-based spokeswoman Carolyn Wu declined to comment Thursday on the decision by the Municipal Intermediate People's Court in the southern city of Shenzhen.

The court said on its website that it dismissed a lawsuit Monday by Apple against Shenzhen Proview Technology over the ownership of the iPad trademark. The company is a subsidiary of LCD screen maker Proview International Holdings Ltd., headquartered in Hong Kong.

The court ruled that the Shenzhen company is not bound by a 2009 agreement that its Taiwanese affiliate, Proview Taipei, made with Apple to transfer the trademarks to the Cupertino, California-based company for $54,700.

Proview in Taiwan had registered the trademark in various countries as early as 2000, while Proview in Shenzhen registered the trademark in China in 2001.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday that France did not violate George Soros' rights when convicting him of insider trading, defeating a years-long effort by the billionaire financier to clear his name.

Though Soros has faced criticism for other investment decisions before and since, the French conviction over trades in 1988 left a particular stain on the Hungarian-born businessman and philanthropist's five-decade career.

He was fined euro2.2 million in 2002, or $2.92 million at current rates, for purchasing shares in French bank Societe Generale in 1988, days after being informed about a planned takeover bid for the bank.

That was the amount he was accused of making when he sold the shares shortly afterward. France's highest court reduced the fine in 2007 to euro940,000 ($1.25 million at current rates).

Soros argued that France's insider trading rules at the time were unclear, and that the length of the investigation — from 1993 until his indictment in 2000 — made it difficult to call reliable witnesses, violating his right to a fair trial under the European Convention on Human Rights.

The human rights court, based in Strasbourg, France, disagreed. In a 4-3 decision, the panel of judges argued that "the law applicable in 1988 was sufficient for Soros to have been aware that his conduct might be unlawful."

The Soros Foundation in Paris would not comment on the decision, and Soros' lawyers could not immediately be reached.

The leader of the International Monetary Fund, a possible candidate for president of France, was yanked from an airplane moments before it was to depart for Paris and arrested in the alleged sexual assault of a hotel maid, police said.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, 62, was arrested on charges of a criminal sex act, attempted rape and unlawful imprisonment. He had been taken off the Air France flight at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Saturday afternoon by police officers.

Strauss-Kahn's lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, told The Associated Press that his client will plead not guilty at his expected Sunday afternoon arraignment.

"He denies all the charges against him," Brafman said. "And that's all I can really say right now."

France woke to the news Sunday with a measure of surprise.

Strauss-Kahn was expected to be the main challenger against President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose political fortunes have been flagging, in next year's presidential elections. The arrest could shake up the race and throw the long-divided Socialists back into disarray about who they could present as Sarkozy's opponent.

Investigative documents in the WikiLeaks probe spilled out into the public domain Saturday for the first time, pointing to the Obama administration's determination to assemble a criminal case no matter how long it takes and how far afield authorities have to go.

Backed by a magistrate judge's court order from Dec. 14, the newly disclosed documents sent to Twitter Inc. by the U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria, Va., demand details about the accounts of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence analyst who's in custody and suspected of supplying WikiLeaks with classified information.

The others whose Twitter accounts are targeted in the prosecutors' demand are Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic parliamentarian and one-time WikiLeaks collaborator; Dutch hacker Rop Gonggrijp; and U.S. programmer Jacob Appelbaum. Gonggrijp and Appelbaum have worked with WikiLeaks in the past.

Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller declined comment on the disclosure in the case, which intensified following WikiLeaks' latest round of revelations with the posting of classified State Department diplomatic cables. The next day, Nov. 29, Attorney General Eric Holder vowed that anyone found to have violated U.S. law in the leaks would be prosecuted.

With the new tax cuts, rating agencies should downgrade U.S. government debt to junk.

Economists, pundits and politicians had little choice but to endorse the tax deal between President Obama and Congressional Republicans, because snapping back to pre-Bush tax rates would crush the economic recovery. But Washington exhibited not even the shadow of self-restraint and cut taxes far beyond what is needed or smart.

Newly emboldened Republicans demanded all the Bush tax cuts be extended. President Obama argued the country couldn't afford those for families in the highest tax brackets, but failed to apply such reasoning to temporary benefits bestowed on Democratic constituencies by his 2009 stimulus program.

Instead of compromising, with each side getting half of what it wanted, Washington feasted-everyone got everything they wanted and more. Business got its R&D tax credit and a temporary tax holiday on new investments. The wealthy got Bush-era tax rates and even lower rates through temporary elimination of income-triggered phase outs on deductions and personal exemptions. The poor and middle class got a temporary 33 percent cut in social security taxes.

Since Nancy Pelosi became speaker in 2007, government spending and the federal deficit have jumped from 19.6 percent of GDP and $161 billion to 25.1 percent and $1.5 trillion in 2011. Unfunded, increases in health care spending, the regulatory bureaucracy and fanciful experiments in industrial policy-windmills, electric cars and batteries, and the like-have bloated federal spending without credible plans to pay for it all.

Now Congress and the President compound those sins by both enacting additional "temporary" tax cuts that will be very difficult to ever let lapse. For example, thanks to Clinton and Bush tax cuts, the Social Security tax is the principal tax low- and middle-income workers pay-many pay zero or minimal personal income taxes.

Fitch Ratings downgraded Ireland's credit rating to A+ from AA- and put it on a negative outlook, pointing to the bigger-than-expected cost of cleaning up the country's banks and uncertainty over economic recovery.

"The downgrade of Ireland reflects the exceptional and greater-than-expected fiscal cost associated with the government's recapitalization of the Irish banks, especially Anglo Irish Bank," Fitch said in a statement on Wednesday.

"The negative outlook reflects the uncertainty regarding the timing and strength of economic recovery and medium-term fiscal consolidation effort."

Global stock markets surged Tuesday after a better than expected U.S. economic survey gave a big boost to investor sentiment, which had earlier been buoyed by the Bank of Japan's surprise decision to ease monetary policy further.

Rising expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve will soon join the Bank of Japan in enacting fresh stimulus measures, despite the better than expected survey from the Institute for Supply Management, hit the dollar, which slid to an eight-month low against the euro.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares closed up 79.79 points, or 1.4 percent, at 5,635.76 while Germany's DAX rose 81.62 points, or 1.3 percent, to 6,215.83. The CAC-40 in France ended 82.12 points, or 2.3 percent, higher at 3,731.93.

In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average was up 163.67 points, or 1.5 percent, at 10,914.94 around midday New York time, while the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 20.25 points, or 1.8 percent, to 1,157.28.

Stocks in Europe and the U.S. had been up all day after Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average reversed early losses to close 1.5 percent higher at 9,518.76. The rally came after the country's central bank cut its key interest rate to a range of zero to 0.1 percent and said it may set up a 5 trillion yen ($60 billion) fund to buy government bonds and other assets in its latest attempt to prop up the faltering Japanese economy.