AP - One of five Muslim immigrants convicted of conspiring to kill U.S. military personnel based at New Jersey's Fort Dix says he lied to an FBI informant.

Mohamad Shnewer wrote to the judge this month that he was "full of regret" that the "lies" he told got his co-defendants in trouble. The Philadelphia Inquirer published parts of the letter Wednesday.

None of the men testified at trial, and the letter contains the first words from one of them explaining their defense.

Shnewer writes that he didn't realize how many "boastful, ignorant" statements until he heard government recordings played in court.

Shnewer and his co-defendants were acquitted of attempted murder. They could face life in prison when sentenced in April.

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AP - Two men pleaded guilty Tuesday on the eve of a trial on charges they tried to supply missiles and assault weapons to militants involved in the civil war in Sri Lanka.

Jury selection had begun Tuesday when Sahilal Sabaratnam (SAH'-hee-lahl Sah-bah-RAHT'-nahm) and Thiruthanikan Thanigasalam (THEE'-roo-thah-nee-kahn THAH'-nee-gah-suh-lahm) entered their pleas. Two other defendants pleaded guilty on Monday to conspiring to provide material support to the Tamil Tigers, a rebel force the U.S. State Department labels a terrorist organization.

Three of the men face up to 25 years in prison. Nadarasa Yogarasa, 54, who pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy, faces up to 30 years. Sentencing was set for June.

Yogarasa attorneys Steve Zissou and Elizabeth Macedonio said in a statement they would ask for leniency, their most important argument "being that at no point did his actions threaten the security of the United States or any of its citizens."

Lawyers for the other men declined to comment or didn't immediately return telephone messages.

The Tamil Tigers have been fighting for an independent homeland since 1983. The 3 million mainly Hindu Tamils have long claimed persecution by the predominantly Buddhist Sinhalese majority in the nation of 19 million people.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands on the island off India's southern tip.

In 2006, three of the men met with undercover agents posing as black-market arms dealers. Prosecutors say they were caught on tape agreeing to buy 10 surface-to-air missiles and 500 rifles.

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AP - A slain toddler tried to stop her mother and stepfather from beating her to death by reaching out to her mother and saying, "I love you," a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday. The pleas from 2-year-old Riley Ann Sawyers didn't stop her mother, Kimberly Trenor, from continuing to brutalize her, assistant district attorney Kayla Allen said in her opening statement at Trenor's murder trial.

GALVESTON, Texas – Jurors wept Tuesday watching a woman describe how teaching her 2-year-old daughter proper manners turned into a daylong torture session in which the toddler was beaten with belts, dunked in cold water and flung across a room so violently that she died.

Kimberly Trenor, 20, detailed the abuse in a videotaped statement played for jurors during the first day of her capital murder trial.

Trenor, 20, told investigators in the statement that she hit her daughter with a thick leather belt to teach her to say "please" and "yes, sir."

The little victim was dubbed "Baby Grace" by investigators who worked to identify her decomposed remains after the body was found in a plastic container in October 2007 on a tiny island in Galveston Bay.

Trenor's 25-year-old husband, Royce Zeigler II, is to be tried separately on murder charges. His attorney argues that Trenor is responsible for the child's death.

But Trenor insisted it was her husband who became so enraged when the toddler didn't behave better that he hurled her several times across a room, ultimately fracturing her skull and killing her.

"I said we have to get her to a hospital. (Zeigler) said, 'No we can't. We'll go to jail,'" Trenor said in the videotape, crying. "There came a point where she stopped breathing. He started doing CPR on the floor. He took her ... and handed her over to me. I could just feel her going cold."

At the defense table, Trenor's eyes teared up as she watched the videotape on a large screen. Several jurors wiped away tears.

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Reuters - Florida fund manager Arthur Nadel, whose family reported him missing in early January, was arrested on Tuesday on criminal charges of securities fraud, U.S. officials said.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Florida fund manager Arthur Nadel, whose family reported him missing in early January, was arrested on Tuesday on criminal charges of securities fraud, U.S. officials said.

New York FBI spokeswoman Monica McLean said Nadel -- head of Scoop Management, overseeing six hedge funds he had valued at more than $300 million -- would make an initial appearance in a federal court in Florida.

"Arthur Nadel surrendered in the company of two lawyers to FBI agents in Tampa," McLean said.

In a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Nadel was charged with securities fraud and wire fraud related to his funds from around 2004 until at least January 14 this year.

The court document contains excerpts of a handwritten letter from Nadel, 76, to his wife. It says the letter was found by Scoop employees in an office shredding machine.

"The avenues to money for you will likely be blocked soon," the letter quoted in an affidavit by FBI agent Kevin Riordan said. "You must use the trust (yours) to your benefit as much and as soon as possible."

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AP - A third trial is starting in Miami for six men accused of plotting with al-Qaida to destroy Chicago's Sears Tower and bomb FBI offices nationwide.

Two previous trials ended in hung juries. A seventh man was acquitted after the first trial.

Prosecutors say FBI recordings show the men were an emerging al-Qaida cell intent on toppling the U.S. government. No evidence indicates the group was close to committing any terrorist attacks.

Defense lawyers accuse the FBI of entrapping the men. The group's leader Narseal Batiste has testified he faked interest in the plot to get money from an FBI informant posing as an al-Qaida operative.

Jury selection could take two weeks.

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AP - A longtime organized crime figure accused by the government of helping to murder a friend to keep him from talking was sentenced Monday to 20 years in prison by a judge who called the punishment lenient.

Paul Schiro, 71, of Phoenix was the first to be sentenced among five men convicted in September 2007 at Chicago's biggest organized crime trial in decades.

"When somebody said we want you to help us kill your friend there was no evidence of hesitation," a stern U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel told Schiro.

Schiro, described by prosecutors as a career criminal, was sentenced to 5 1/2 years just seven years ago after pleading guilty to being part of a gang of jewel thieves led by the Chicago police department's former chief of detectives, William Hanhardt.

The Family Secrets trial was a major effort by the federal government to knock out some of the leaders of the Chicago Outfit, as the city's organized crime family calls itself, and bring them to justice for 18 murders that went unsolved for years.

The jury found Schiro guilty of being part of a racketeering conspiracy that included murder, gambling, loan sharking and squeezing business for "street tax."

Jurors, however, deadlocked on whether Schiro was to blame for the June 1986 murder in Arizona of Emil Vaci, the maitre d'hotel at a Phoenix restaurant. Vaci was a potential witness in an organized crime investigation, prosecutors said.

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AP - At a church where he's a deacon and the high school where he coaches football, David Jason Stinson is well-liked enough to find himself surrounded by supporters despite prosecutors charging him in a player's death.

On Monday, Stinson pleaded not guilty to reckless homicide in the death of 15-year-old Pleasure Ridge Park High School offensive lineman Max Gilpin, who collapsed at a sweltering Aug. 20 practice after running sprints, sometimes in pads and helmet.

"They're dragging a very good man through the mud and I don't understand why," football booster Rodney Daugherty said of the coach.

A judge released Stinson without bond at the courthouse that attracted at least a dozen community members voicing their support for the first-year head coach. Gilpin's family also was at the hearing, but did not speak to reporters.

However, Jeff Gilpin and Michele Crockett, the player's divorced parents, have jointly sued the school's coaching staff, accusing them of negligence and "reckless disregard," with details of their son's health made part of the lawsuit.

It includes statements by Crockett, who disclosed that her son had taken the dietary supplement Creatine for a time but stopped in July when football practice started.

Creatine is an over-the-counter supplement and among the side effects listed by the National Institute of Health are cramps or muscle breakdown, heat intolerance and electrolyte imbalances, although it is unclear if any of those came into play in Gilpin's death.

Jefferson County Commonwealth's Attorney David Stengel declined to address the use of the supplement or any possible evidence in the case.

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AP - Gov. Rod Blagojevich's historic impeachment trial began Monday without its defiant defendant, who refused to participate and spent the day in New York making television appearances to decry the trial as unfair.

Instead, David Ellis says the goal of impeachment is to protect citizens from someone who has "repeatedly and utterly abused the powers of his office."

Ellis was picked by the Illinois House to present the case in a Senate trial. Senators will decide whether to convict the governor and remove him from office.

In his opening statement Monday, Ellis said he won't try to prove Blagojevich committed a crime because it isn't a criminal trial. The question, he says, is whether Blagojevich abused his authority.

Blagojevich is refusing to take part in the trial. He says its rules are biased against him.

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AP - A former janitor accused of trying to sell broken nuclear weapons equipment from a shuttered Tennessee facility has pleaded guilty.

Roy Lynn Oakley pleaded guilty Monday to one count of disclosure of restricted data before a federal judge in Knoxville.

He will serve six years in prison and three years of supervised release.

Oakley was a contract worker at the former K-25 uranium enrichment plant in Oak Ridge when he was arrested in 2007 after offering the gear to an undercover agent.

Prosecutors say Oakley took home classified equipment he was supposed to be destroying and tried to sell it to the French government.

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AP - The mother of infamous Branch Davidian sect leader David Koresh has been stabbed to death, and Koresh's aunt was in custody on a murder charge Saturday.

Bonnie Clark Halderman, 60, was found Friday afternoon at the home of her sister, Beverly Clark, in a rural area near Chandler, Henderson County Sheriff Ray Nutt said. Chandler is about 175 miles north of Houston.

"It's still under investigation, and we really don't know what the motive was or what caused this to happen," Nutt said Saturday.

He said deputies were called to the home Friday and the two women were the only people in the house when deputies arrived. A knife believed to be the murder weapon was found.

Clark, 54, was being held without bail pending a court appearance. Jail officials said she did not yet have an attorney to speak for her.

Halderman wrote a 2007 autobiography, "Memories of the Branch Davidians: The Autobiography of David Koresh's Mother," that described how her son, Vernon Howell, became David Koresh, leader of the Branch Davidian cult.

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AP - An American student must stay in solitary confinement, under conditions reserved for the most dangerous inmates, while awaiting trial on terrorism charges, a judge ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska rejected Syed Hashmi's request to have his prison conditions relaxed. The judge cited the seriousness of the charges against Hashmi and an encounter he had last summer with guards when he was practicing martial arts in his cell at a federal jail in New York.

Lifting the restrictions would pose a threat to guards, Preska said.

Hashmi, 28, an American citizen born in Pakistan, was arrested in London in June 2006 and extradited to the United States a year later on charges of conspiracy to aid a terrorist group. He has pleaded not guilty.

If convicted, he could face up to 70 years in prison.

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AP - A former mental hospital psychologist who said he became interested in child pornography while treating sex offenders was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison.

Joseph Belanger, 61, of Jamestown, pleaded guilty last year to charges of receiving and possessing materials involving the sexual exploitation of minors.

Belanger, who had worked at the North Dakota State Hospital in Jamestown for more than 20 years, paid for access to Internet pornography sites and downloaded thousands of sexually explicit images and more than 200 videos. He subscribed to the Web sites for more than six years, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Klemetsrud Puhl said.

Prosecutors said Belanger told authorities that his interest in child pornography began while he was counseling sex offenders at the hospital.

U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson said Belanger should have taken advantage of his experience and background to seek treatment for himself.

"He, of all people, should have known there was help available," Erickson said.

Belanger faced a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and a mandatory minimum term of five years.

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Reuters - A U.S. federal judge on Friday refused to lift strict prison conditions placed upon an American student who was the first person extradited to the United States from Britain on terrorism charges.

A lawyer for Syed Hashmi, 28, who is charged with supporting al Qaeda, argued at a hearing held Friday that he is likely to suffer psychological problems from harsh prison restrictions, including being held in solitary confinement and limited family visits.

Hashmi was arrested in June 2006 at London's Heathrow airport and extradited to New York. He has pleaded not guilty to supporting al Qaeda, including holding ponchos, raincoats and waterproof socks in his London apartment for use by al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan.

U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled Friday that the special prison conditions were appropriate, citing the case against him that includes pledging allegiance to al Qaeda, as well as statements Hashmi made to British authorities.

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Reuters - The brother of jailed Colombian drug kingpin Diego Montoya, head of the Norte del Valle cartel, pleaded guilty on Friday to charges of conspiracy to import cocaine and obstruction of justice, U.S. prosecutors said.

Eugenio Montoya Sanchez was a high-ranking member of the cartel and had primary responsibility for managing its finances, according to U.S. authorities.

He was arrested by Colombian authorities in January 2007 following a shootout and extradited to Florida last June.

U.S. prosecutors said the cartel often kept up to $20 million in cash from drug sales in stash houses maintained and overseen by Montoya Sanchez.

As the cartel's money manager, he used drug proceeds to fund cocaine labs, pay employees including lab workers, drug couriers and security personnel, and invest in real estate and other businesses. In 2003, his role expanded to coordinating cocaine shipments, they said.

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AP - Facing almost certain defeat in a Senate impeachment trial, Gov. Rod Blagojevich might ask the courts to step in and block a proceeding that he considers "a sham," a lawyer for the Democratic governor said Thursday.

Attorney Samuel E. Adam told The Associated Press on Thursday that a lawsuit challenging what he called "completely unfair" Senate trial rules is being prepared and could be filed to the state Supreme Court within days, pending a final decision on whether to move forward.

Blagojevich's trial is set to begin Monday.

The governor told the AP he has no intention of mounting a defense unless rules are changed before the Senate trial that will determine whether he's thrown out of office.

"Give me a right to call witnesses, give me a right to subpoena witnesses and documents, to properly prepare a case — and I'll be the first one there," said Blagojevich, whose voice rose as he spoke. Otherwise, "I'm not going to be a party to a process like that.

"And if it means I have to sacrifice myself to a higher cause, for the people of Illinois and for the principle of due process and the right to call witnesses, then so be it," Blagojevich said.

But Blagojevich added he does not intend to resign.

"I'm not going to resign, of course not," he said. "I've done absolutely nothing wrong."

In an outline of potential arguments provided to the AP, Adam critcized House impeachment proceedings for denying Blagojevich's attorneys the right to cross-examine witnesses. It also said senators must accept House evidence that assumes various claims against the governor are true, such as federal corruption charges and allegations Blagojevich illegally expanded a health care program.

But the trial rules gave Blagojevich a chance to challenge whether there was sufficient evidence for impeachment, which he rejected when he didn't file anything by the deadline Tuesday.

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AP - A three-judge panel in Minnesota's contested Senate election has denied Democrat Al Franken's motion to dismiss his opponent's recount lawsuit, clearing the path for the trial to start next week.

The judges rejected Franken's argument on Thursday that their review should be confined to determining if the recount was mathematically correct, saying the court has jurisdiction to determine whether votes were legally cast.

Republican Norm Coleman is suing over a recount that ended with Franken up by 225 votes. Coleman's lawsuit alleges that it's an artificial lead based on the double-counting of some ballots and other inconsistencies in some precincts.

The judges did not validate those allegations in refusing to dismiss the case, saying: "It is immaterial whether or not the plaintiff can prove the facts alleged."

Coleman's attorney, Ben Ginsberg, called the decision a "stinging defeat" for Franken.

"We look forward to the trial commencing on Monday," Franken's attorney, Marc Elias, said in a statement.

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AP - Prosecutors would recommend a prison term of four-and-a-half to five years if the man who calls himself Clark Rockefeller agrees to plead guilty to kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter, they said Thursday.

Under a proposal discussed by lawyers and Superior Court Judge Carol Ball, Rockefeller — whose real name is Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter — would plead guilty to parental kidnapping, assault and battery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and giving a false name to police. The conversations occurred during a sidebar conference, which was overheard by reporters.

After the conference, Gerhartsreiter's defense attorney, Jeffrey Denner, said they hadn't decided whether to plead guilty. But he said Gerhartsreiter was considering it.

"We are thinking it through very carefully," Denner said.

Gerhartsreiter, 47, was charged with snatching his daughter, Reigh Boss, during a supervised visit in Boston in July and taking the girl to Baltimore, where he was captured a week later.

He also was charged with assault for pushing a social worker who was overseeing the visit. Gerhartsreiter jumped into a waiting car and the worker received minor injuries when he tried to grab onto the car and fell to the ground.

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AP - A tuberculosis patient who failed to take precautions to avoid spreading the illness will be tracked by GPS and could go to jail if he violates court orders requiring him to remain isolated.

Champaign County Circuit Judge John Kennedy imposed those conditions on 20-year-old Clasance Botembe (CLAY-sahnce bo-TEM'-bay) on Tuesday.

Health officials and prosecutors say Botembe failed to take precautions to avoid spreading the disease. Court records say his girlfriend got TB after being exposed to him.

Botembe is being treated at home. He, the judge and others wore masks during the hearing.

Botembe will be isolated for 30 days. He could be charged with a Class A misdemeanor if he defies the judge's order.

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AP - A Chinese court has handed down a death penalty to a man convicted of endangering public safety in the first sentencing connected with a contaminated milk scandal that shocked the country.

The Intermediate People's Court in Shijiazhuang gave the death sentence to Zhang Yujun. He was convicted of running a workshop that was allegedly China's largest source of melamine, the substance responsible for the health crisis.

A court spokesman said a second man, Zhang Yanzhang, was given a life sentence, also for endangering public safety.

The court is expected to hand down a sentence later Thursday for Tian Wenhua, the general manager of the dairy company at the heart of the scandal.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

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AP - A former child welfare agency spokesman accused of taking nude photos of at least two teenage boys has pleaded guilty to producing child pornography.

Al Zimmerman entered the plea Wednesday, less than a week before his trial. The charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years and a maximum of 30 years in federal prison. A sentencing date has been set for April 23.

Zimmerman was arrested in February and accused of taking the photos for distribution overseas. He was fired by the Department of Children and Families. One of the boys has been identified as a foster child of the agency.

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