If corporate accountants got the chance to blow out the candles on the Sarbanes-Oxley birthday cake, they'd probably wish the birthday boy would go away.

Big Four firm Deloitte & Touche and international firm Grant Thornton lost their bid to dismiss a class-action suit brought against them by investors of now-bankrupt Italian dairy conglomerate Parmalat.A federal judge in New York recently ruled that the accounting umbrella organizations couldn't insulate themselves from the actions of local affiliates in Italy that audited the company before its collapse from financial mismanagement and fraud in 2003.

Internal auditors have always had a problem expressing an opinion - or rather, expressing an opinion that others take the right way, with a proper understanding of its scope and type and the criteria used to produce it.The issue has come to the forefront recently as more corporate officers and audit committees respond to the demands of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, especially Section 404, which requires officers to certify that their internal controls are sound and effective.

Barely a week after a federal jury found HealthSouth founder Richard Scrushy not guilty of participating in a massive accounting fraud, the Securities and Exchange Commission was preparing civil charges against the former chief executive.

In a divisive 3-2 vote, the Securities and Exchange Commission amended and re-approved a proposed rule requiring the directors of mutual funds to be independent that had been ruled against by a federal court in a lawsuit a little more than a week before.

President Bush nominated Roel Campos and Annette Nazareth as members of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the White House said in a statement Friday.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has scheduled a meeting for Tuesday and will vote on finalizing two rules proposed in December and March. One rule deals with auditor independence and tax shelters, while the second concerns weak internal controls.