Monday's testimony

Paul Waldie of the Globe and Mail has a report out on the cross-examination of Marie-Josée Kravis. It notes that Edward Greenspan tried taking Mrs. Kravitz to task, after the report relates the more detailed cross-examination of Patrick Tuite. As prompted by the latter's cross, "Ms. Kravis said that she did not notice a paragraph in an annual mailing to shareholders in 2002 that outlined several non-competition payments paid to Lord Black and other executives."

An updated version of the same report has more details on Csr. Greenspan's forthright cross-examination: "'We just can't rely on your memory for anything,' Mr. Greenspan said after asking Ms. Kravis about a document that she could not remember seeing." The updated report ends with Judge St. Eve chiding Csr. Greenspan for arguing with the witness, after intervening at a point when "Mr. Greenspan and Ms. Kravis were nearly shouting at each other."

On a BNN interview, aired at 1:55 PM ET, Mr. Waldie reported that Mrs. Kravis faced some "really aggressive questioning" from Csr. Greenspan. He showed her, by his count, eleven documents in which the individual non-compete payments were disclosed. Judge St. Eve admonished Csr. Greenspan twice for arguing with the witness. He's almost finished, as of the end of the morning, but more cross-examination of Mrs. Kravis is coming this afternoon. It's almost certain that David Radler will not be on the stand this week. Former Gov. Thompson will probably be on the stand for the rest of the week, as he was the chair of the Hollinger International audit committee. After him, a relatively unimportant witness is scheduled, and then Mr. Radler will appear.

A report from Bloomberg is out, written by Andrew Harris and Bob Van Voris. It discloses that the Hollinger Int'l "audit committee kept watch over company finances for four years without any financial experts," according to Mrs. Kravis' testimony under cross-examination. The report does note that "Kravis said the board members were financially literate while not having any specific accounting or financial management expertise" - even though having an expert on the board with "financial experience [was] required by its governing charter." The first expert fitting this criterion was Gordon Paris. [An updated version reports that Mrs. Kravis testified, with regard to the documents shown her, that the individual non-competes "'were only partly disclosed in most of those cases.''']

WQAD.com has webbed a brief Associated Press report, which describes the spat between Csr. Greenspan and Mrs. Kravis as "a testy courtroom duel." A version with some background added has been webbed by 680 News.

The report from Reuters has been webbed too; it starts off with a description of Csr. Greenspan "repeatedly [shouting] down" Mrs. Kravis and ends with him saying to her, after being rebuked by Judge St. Eve for doing so, "'I won't [argue] if you won't." It concludes by passing along Mr. Greenspan's point, made in his cross-examination of her, that her fiduciary duty as a board and audit-committee member made it reasonable to expect her to read those eleven documents he had shown her in court during his cross, whether or not the individual non-compete payments were brought up to the committee orally by Mr. Black.

An updated version ends with a question by Csr. Greenspan which makes the point that Mr. Asper requesting the individual non-compete agreement was reasonable: "Asper wrote of his concerns that Black would buy the Toronto Sun and related newspapers in cities across Canada.... Kravis responded that she did not understand the [associated] question."

AP also has a "Summary Box" with one paragraph covering today's cross-examination of Mrs. Kravis and the next noting that the cross-examination will continue tomorrow.

And finally, the Telegraph has a report out on today's trial action, which starts with Patrick Tuite's cross-examaination of Mrs. Kravis and briefly recounts Csr. Greenspan's fireworks-ridden questioning. It specifies that she "acknowledged to the jury in Lord Black's fraud trial yesterday that she did not completely read a key company document.'

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Yes, Mark Steyn has jumped right on the sparring match between Csr. Greenspan and Mrs. Kravis. He makes an interesting note near the end of his latest trial-blog post about the prosecution team's apparent lack of class consciousness.