DAVID Hicks's sentence will be "substantially less" than 20 years in jail, the US military's chief prosecutor said today.

Hicks's sentencing will begin late tonight (Australian time) and both the defence and prosecution have been tight-lipped since Hicks's guilty plea on Monday about what sentence they will recommend.

Chief prosecutor Colonel Morris Davis declined to say today whether a plea deal had been reached with Hicks' defence lawyers, but he gave insight into what Hicks may receive.

John Walker Lindh, dubbed "The American Taliban", was sentenced to 20 years' jail in 2002 and for months Col Davis had used Lindh as a benchmark for Hicks' sentence.

However, Hicks's guilty plea would reduce the sentence prosecutors asked for, Col Davis said.

Asked today about Hicks' potential sentence, Col Davis said the sentence prosecutors will ask for would be much lower than Lindh's 20 years.

"I think you'll find when we get to argument we will argue for something substantially less than John Walker Lindh," Col Davis said at Guantanamo Bay military base.

Hicks's sentencing proceedings are due to begin tomorrow at 8am local time (10pm Friday AEDT).

Hicks, 31, on Monday pleaded guilty to a charge of providing material support for terrorism.

If convicted on federal charges, Christensen, 60, faces up to 30 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each of two charges. In the federal system prisoners are not eligible for parole until they complete 85 percent of their sentence.

"We're distressed they're going to these lengths," said Christensen's lawyer, Jeffrey Pine, of Providence. "This is overkill."

US Attorney Robert Clark Corrente announced the charges against Christensen last Friday at a press conference launching Project Safe Childhood, a Department of Justice program targeting exploitation of children over the Internet.

Corrente's spokesman, Tom Connell, declined to respond to Pine's accusation.

"Any action we take in the case will take place in court," Connell said. "We will not engage in repartee in the newspaper."

Last week, in US District Court in Providence, Christensen was arraigned on one charge each of interstate travel to entice a minor in sexual conduct and using interstate commerce to entice a minor, according to Corrente's office. The retired software engineer, who is married with two grown sons, pleaded not guilty and was released on a $10,000 bond. He is confined to his home with an electronic monitoring bracelet, and is not allowed access to computers or the Internet. He also is prohibited from any contact with minors.

A woman who answered the phone at Christensen's Granuaile Road home declined to comment.

Federal prosecutors took over the case from Rhode Island's attorney general, who had charged Christensen with one count of indecent solicitation of a minor.

"Our mutual goal is to use the best possible laws to prosecute cases. In this case the federal laws pack more punch than the state laws," said Mike Healey, spokesman for the Rhode Island attorney general.

In December, Christensen received five years probation after pleading guilty in Plymouth Superior Court to soliciting sex on the Internet from a person he believed to be a 13-year-old girl. As in the Rhode Island case, the person was in fact a police officer.

The chief executive of investment bank Rubin Investment Group pleaded guilty to securities fraud in connection with the acquisition and sale of shares of small-cap companies, U.S. prosecutors said on Thursday.

Dan Rubin, who was also the CEO of attorney referral service 1-800-ATTORNEY Inc., agreed to forfeit $2 million and pleaded guilty in a federal court on Wednesday, making it the final plea by the senior management of the investment bank that once had offices in Los Angeles, Manhattan and Florida, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Brooklyn said in a statement.

Three other former employees of the firm have already pleaded guilty to securities and conspiracy charges. Each defendant faces a maximum sentence of 25 years, prosecutors said.

Under Rubin's direction, a group of employees at 1-800-ATTORNEY induced several companies, or their big shareholders, to sell large blocks of stock to Rubin Investment Group at discounted prices, the prosecutors said.

After acquiring stock from dozens of small-cap public companies, Rubin sold the stock in the open market at a substantial profit, while simultaneously driving down the price of the stock, prosecutors said.

The fraudulent acquisition and sale of shares occurred between August 2002 and October 2003, prosecutors said.

Rubin admitted that he told his staff to promise the small-cap companies that he would recommend their stock to Rubin Investment Group's investors and that he would not sell their stock in the open market, prosecutors said.

"The defendants profited by victimizing small, publicly-held companies and the investing public," U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf said.

"The distinction between 'political' and 'performance-related' reasons for removing a United States attorney is, in my view, largely artificial," Kyle Sampson told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"A U.S. attorney who is unsuccessful from a political perspective ... is unsuccessful."

Democrats on the panel immediately rejected the concept of mixing politics with federal law enforcement. They accusing the Bush administration of cronyism and trying to circumvent the Senate confirmation process by installing favored GOP allies in plum jobs as U.S. attorneys.

"It corrodes the public's trust in our system of Justice. It's wrong," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy. "When anybody tries a backdoor way to get around the Senate's constitutional duty and obligation of advise and consent, it does not sit well."

After being sworn, Sampson, who quit earlier this month amid the furor, disputed Democratic charges that the firings were a purge by intimidation and a warning to the remaining prosecutors to fall in line. Nor, he said, were the prosecutors dismissed to interfere with corruption investigations.

"To my knowledge, nothing of the sort occurred here," Sampson told the committee.

Kaye Steinsapir said she thought she was feeding her cat, Lila, one of the healthiest, most nutritious cat foods available.

"Lila was a healthy, vibrant cat without any medical conditions," said the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court. But in recent weeks, Lila began vomiting, drinking an excessive amount of water and was eventually diagnosed with acute kidney failure, the lawsuit said.

Complete list of recalled brands of pet food.

Gregory Helmer, a Los Angeles attorney retained by Steinsapir and Lois Grady of Sacramento, Calif., who alleges her cat, Riley, also became ill after eating tainted cat food, filed the lawsuit "on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated."

Menu Foods recalled on March 16 several brands of dog and cat food products nationwide. Scientists at the New York State Food Laboratory last week identified the rodent poison aminopterin as the likely culprit in a scare that prompted the recall of 95 brands of "cuts and gravy" style dog and cat food by Menu Foods of Ontario, Canada.

A nonprofit provider of mental health services paid nearly $557,000 to settle allegations of improper billing to government health programs, the state attorney general's office said yesterday.

Tri-City Mental Health Center began reviewing employee complaints about irregularities in its government claims practices in 2003, and the nonprofit's board ordered an outside audit, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said.

Tri-City reported the improper billing to the government in late 2004, and was never charged.

State and federal investigators found Tri-City Mental Health billed the state Medicaid program and the state Department of Mental Health for psychiatric services that were never provided or couldn't be documented.

The improper billing occurred for more than two years, starting in Sept. 2001 at a center in Malden.

At least one manager at the Malden office was fired as a result of Tri-City's internal investigation, Coakley said.

Ellen Dalton, a manager at Tri-City, said the improperly received government payments were used to fund the nonprofit's operations, not for any personal use by its nearly 500 employees.

Dalton said Tri-City set aside cash from recent years' operations, and has paid the $556,687 settlement total in full.

"The agency is ready to move forward, and no services will be disrupted," she said.

The nonprofit, which began operations in the 1960s, runs mental health centers in the neighboring communities of Malden, Medford, and Everett.

The settlement total equals the amount of money that investigators found had been improperly billed, plus interest, according to Dalton.

Under the settlement, Tri-City agreed to ensure future compliance with rules governing Medicare reimbursement.

The settlement relieves Tri-City and its board of any civil or administrative liability.

Coakley said Tri-City "has cooperated fully with the investigation."

Chipmaker Intel Corp. said on Thursday it will set aside $275 million less than it had planned for taxes as a result of a settlement with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, and says its 2007 tax rate will be lower than expected.

The IRS told Intel on Tuesday it closed its examination of the chipmaker's tax returns for the years 1999 to 2002, resolving several issues, including the tax benefit for export sales. The two sides also agreed on the tax benefit for export sales for the years 2003 through 2005.

In connection with the settlement, the company expects to reverse previously accrued taxes, which will reduce the current quarter's tax provision and reduce the income tax rate for 2007 below the previous forecast of about 30 percent.

In February, Intel said it would appeal an IRS tax adjustment related to export sales that could increase its tax due by $2.4 billion from 1999 through 2006.

Intel has been contesting the issue since August 2003 when the IRS first gave it notice of the adjustment.