"I can tell you that the president has confidence in him," said Deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino. President Bush "believes the attorney general can overcome the challenges that are before him," she said.

On Thursday, former Gonzales aide Kyle Sampson told a Senate hearing that rather than merely signing off on the firings, as Gonzales has repeatedly stated, Gonzales was in the middle of things from the beginning.

"I don't think the attorney general's statement that he was not involved in any discussions of U.S. attorney removals was accurate," Sampson told a Judiciary Committee inquiry into whether the dismissals were politically motivated.

"I remember discussing with him this process of asking certain U.S. attorneys to resign," Sampson said.

Sampson also told the panel that the White House had a large role in the firings, with one-time presidential counsel Harriet Miers joining Gonzales in approving them. And under questioning from Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sampson said that looking back, he should not have advocated the firing of one prosecutor in particular, New Mexico's David Iglesias.

Congress began its spring break Friday, but there were intense activities taking place behind the scenes.

Michael Elston, chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, and three other Justice Department officials arrived on Capitol Hill Friday morning for what aides said would be a five-hour closed meeting with House and Senate Judiciary Committee officials.

McNulty in early February testified before Congress that seven of the U.S. attorneys were fired for performance reasons, and that one, Bud Cummins in Little Rock, Ark., was being moved out so that he could be replaced by a former aide to White House political adviser Karl Rove.

Gonzales was upset with McNulty's testimony afterwards and would have preferred that he said all eight were fired for performance reasons, according to Justice Department e-mails forwarded to the two committees. Bush has since criticized the department for not giving Congress an accurate account of the firings.

The Maryland Senate passed a bill Wednesday to ignore the US Electoral College in presidential elections, instead awarding the state's 10 electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. Currently, the state's 10 votes go to the candidate who won the popular vote in Maryland.

The Senate approved SB 634 by a 29-to-17 vote, and it now goes to the state House. The plan would only go into action if enough states representing a majority of the nation's 538 electoral votes adopt it, making it unlikely that it would be in effect by next year's presidential election.

Other states are also considering the plan as a way to avoid a situation where a candidate wins the popular vote but loses the election, as happened with Democrat Al Gore in 2000.

A Japanese court threw out a lawsuit by a group of Japanese abandoned in China as children after Japan's defeat in World War II, officials said Thursday. Plaintiffs had alleged that the government was responsible for delaying their return to Japan by decades and, upon their return, denying them adequate state support. They sought 5.54 billion yen in compensation, according to a court spokesman. Presiding Judge Nobuaki Watanabe held that attempts to bring Japanese children at the close of the war were indeed "insufficient," but that government policy toward the orphans could not be considered "extremely irrational."

In January, a Tokyo District court denied compensation to 40 war orphans, and a similar claim was rejected by an Osaka court in 2005. In December 2006, a group of 61 former war orphans won a suit demanding 468 million yen in compensation. Thousands of Japanese children were abandoned in China as their parents fled the country to escape the approach of former Soviet troops at the end of the war in 1945; many children were later adopted by Chinese citizens. In 1972, about 2,500 "war orphans" returned to Japan after after the country normalized relations with China. In 1994, the Japanese government passed legislation providing financial assistance to Japanese nationals who returned to Japan. The 168 plaintiffs were among 2,200 war orphans who have filed suits in 15 courts in Japan.

Environmentalists and Hinkley residents have filed a lawsuit to stop an open-air sewage sludge composting plant from being built near that town, made famous by the move "Erin Brockovich."

The lawsuit filed yesterday against San Bernardino County alleges that supervisors approved the plant without fully analyzing its potential impact on air quality and public health.

The suit also contends that the project doesn't adequately protect the threatened desert tortoise and the Mojave ground squirrel.

The groups behind the suit say they're not trying to stop the plant. They say they just want to force the county to enclose it and filter its odors.

But officials with Nursery Products, the company building the plant, says that option is too expensive and that the county did a thorough job in evaluating the open-air project when it cleared its construction.

The city of Chula Vista has issued a response to a lawsuit filed by a police officer who wants to compete in beauty pageants.

Deana Mory is currently representing California in the Ms. United States beauty pageant. But she is also a police officer who patrols the streets of Chula Vista.

She told NBC police administrators said if she competes she could be reprimanded or fired because prize money and gifts from the pageants violate city police.

Mory said she would refuse the money if she won the national title, but the city did not accept her compromise.

As a result, Mory and the Police Officers Association filed a lawsuit against The Chula Vista Police Department.

Wednesday night, Liz Pursell from the city of Chula Vista released a statement saying, "There is no merit to the allegations. Ms. Mory did participate in the pageant. The city is in the process of responding to the second lawsuit. We anticipate filing a motion seeking a judgment in favor of the city."

The beauty pageant is in July, and Mory said she plans on taking part.

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan threw out a lawsuit brought on behalf of nine former prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan . He said Rumsfeld cannot be held personally responsible for actions taken in connection with his government job.

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First had argued that Rumsfeld and top military officials disregarded warnings about the abuse and authorized the use of illegal interrogation tactics that violated the constitutional and human rights of prisoners.

"This is a lamentable case," Hogan began his 58-page opinion Tuesday.

"Despite the horrifying torture allegations," Hogan said, he could find no case law supporting the lawsuit, which he previously had described as unprecedented.

Allowing the case to go forward, Hogan said in December, might subject government officials to all sorts of political lawsuits. Even Osama bin Laden could sue, Hogan said, claiming two American presidents threatened to have him murdered.

Had the Rumsfeld lawsuit been allowed to go forward, attorneys for the ACLU might have been able to force the Pentagon to disclose what officials knew about abuses such as those at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and what was done to stop it.

The Justice Department had no immediate comment.

Karpinski, whose Army Reserve unit was in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison, was demoted and is the highest-ranking officer punished in the scandal. Sanchez, who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq, retired from the Army and said his career was a casualty of the prison scandal.

The accounting review meant Dell would not file its annual report with securities regulators by the April 3 due date, or by an extension date of April 18, the company added.

In its statement, Dell did not give details of the misconduct or of its other findings. A spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

"We still don't know the extent of the misconduct," said Sunil Reddy, senior portfolio manager at Fifth Third Asset Management, which oversees about $21 billion in assets, including Dell shares.

"This news creates uncertainty, but more important are the operational metrics, which need to change in the right direction," Reddy said. "That's going to take some time."

Dell will also review to see whether the control deficiencies "constitute a material weakness" in its internal control over financial reporting. 

Dell announced last August that it had been investigating its accounting for a year. Later in 2006, the company said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. federal prosecutors were investigating its past accounting.

Founder Michael Dell in January retook the helm of the company from Kevin Rollins, who left after the investigations were disclosed and a series of lower-than-forecast financial results. Also last year, the company lost the No. 1 PC market share ranking to rival Hewlett-Packard Co.

The company in December replaced former Chief Financial Officer James Schneider with former American Airlines chief Donald Carty. Dell, 42, has also made a series of changes to his senior management team, including the appointment of former Motorola Inc. executive Ron Garriques to oversee a new global consumer unit.

The stock fell 6.6 percent to $21.85 in after-hours trading following the announcement, though it recovered slightly and was last down 2.7 percent at $22.75.