In a soft voice, she pleaded guilty to one count each of conspiracy, access device fraud, bank fraud and money laundering and two counts of aggravated identity theft. Robreno has scheduled sentencing for Oct. 17.

Kirsch has been in custody for more than a week since deciding to skip house arrest in favor of jail in anticipation of a prison sentence.

Her attorney, Ronald Greenblatt, has said that Kirsch faces a mandatory sentence of at least two years in prison. Kirsch has captivated an international audience since photos of her - looking well-endowed and flirtatious and sometimes in a bikini - circulated on the Internet after her arrest.

Kirsch and her one-time boyfriend, Edward K. Anderton, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, are accused of stealing identification of friends, co-workers and neighbors to get fake ID used to finance a lavish lifestyle. They are accused of stealing more than $116,000 from their victims. Anderton pleaded guilty and is scheduled to be sentenced in September.

The Atlanta office of the Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a lawsuit against wireless software company Mobile Ready Entertainment Corp. and its former CEOs, alleging they ran a "micro-cap pump-and-dump" scheme using false press releases.

The suit claims Michael H. Magolnick and Craig A. Mora sent 16 separate press releases with false revenue projections, made-up contracts for future business and fake new profitable business relationships to boost the price of Alpharetta, Ga.-based Mobile Ready's stock.

In one example from January 2007, a press release from the company claimed the launch of a new text messaging service that would let Mobile Ready business clients market directly to mobile phones through text messaging.

"Mobile Ready subsidiary, Complete Identity has already been working closely with companies in the Direct Selling Association" and "company executives are confident that the industry relationship will yield several million dollars in new business," the release said.

Mobile Ready's (Pink Sheets: MRDY) stock trading volume jumped 300 percent the day after the release, giving Mora and Magolnick a better market in which to sell their restricted shares, the SEC said. But the SEC argues the defendants knew the company had no relationship with the Direct Selling Association and no reason to claim several million collars in new business.

In another release in February 2007, the company said it was projecting $10.1 million in revenue for 2007 and $14.8 million in 2008. The day after that release, the company's stock trading volume skyrocketed 550 percent, while the stock's value rose 57 percent to 11 cents a share.

The suit alleges that as the price of the stock increased following the fraudulent releases, Magolnick and Mora obtained bogus Rule 144 Opinion letters and improperly sold Mobile Ready shares for their personal gain.

Between April and July 2007, Magolnick sold about 2.1 million shares for $69,949. In the same period, Mora sold about 2.2 million shares for $72,589.

Magolnick was co-CEO of the company from December 2006 until his resignation in December 2007. Mora was co-CEO with Magolnick, but is now the company's chairman and CEO.

The SEC complaint wants antifraud injunctions against Mobile Ready, Magolnick and Mora, and registration injunctions, disgorgement, prejudgment interest, and O&D and penny-stock bars against Magolnick and Mora.

The members of the Supreme Court, by age:

John Paul Stevens, 88

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 75

Antonin Scalia, 72

Anthony Kennedy, 71

Stephen Breyer, 69

David Souter, 68

Clarence Thomas, 60

Samuel Alito, 58

John Roberts, 53

The last 10 justices to leave the Supreme Court, with their age and date of retirement:

Sandra Day O'Connor, 75, Jan. 31, 2006

William Rehnquist, 80, Sept. 3, 2005-x

Harry Blackmun, 85, Aug. 3, 1994

Byron White, 76, June 28, 1993

Thurgood Marshall, 83, Oct. 1, 1991

William Brennan, 84, July 20, 1990

Lewis Powell, 79, June 26, 1987

Warren Burger, 79, Sept. 26, 1986

Potter Stewart, 66, July 3, 1981

William Douglas, 77, Nov. 12, 1975

The filing marked the first time prosecutors at the world's first permanent, global war crimes court have issued charges against a sitting head of state.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked a three-judge panel at the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for Al-Bashir to prevent more deaths. Some 2.5 million people have been forced from their homes in Darfur and are still under attack from government-backed janjaweed militia.

"Genocide is a crime of intention — we don't need to wait until these 2.5 million die," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Moreno-Ocampo was undeterred by concern that his indictment against al-Bashir might lead to vengeance against Darfur refugees and the closing of Sudan's doors to relief agencies and possibly peacekeeping troops.

The oldest two justices — half the court's liberal wing — top the list of those considered likely to retire during the next presidential administration. Despite Stevens' and Ginsburg's apparent vigor, change on the Supreme Court is more likely than not over the next four years.

"One would think that over the course of the next four years the actuarial tables would catch up with the oldest members, as they do for us all," said Pepperdine University law professor Douglas Kmiec.

With five justices 70 or older by the time the court meets again in October, interest groups and commentators have been talking about the court's role in the presidential election. One change on a court that divides 5-4 in key cases can alter the results.

But their forecasts depend on three factors: Who wins the presidency, who leaves the court and who is appointed.

Democrat Barack Obama would most likely be replacing liberal justices with like-minded successors. Republican John McCain could get the chance to fulfill a campaign pledge and put a conservative justice on the court in the mold of Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Samuel Alito.

Alito, among President George W. Bush's two selections, repeatedly has demonstrated the difference one justice can make on a closely divided court. The result in disputes over abortion, religion and school desegregation almost certainly would have been different had Sandra Day O'Connor not retired in 2006.

"Given the likely retirements, the next election probably will determine whether the court gets more conservative or stays ideologically the same," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at University of California, Irvine.

The Supreme Court rarely becomes a big issue in the presidential campaign and this year — with $4-a-gallon gas, steep declines in the stock market and two wars — appears to be no exception.

The one case decided recently that could have elevated the court's importance in the campaign came out in favor of Americans' gun rights, placating the highly energized and politically effective gun rights groups.

If the case "had come out the other way, we'd be having a very different conversation," Thomas Goldstein, a Supreme Court watcher and advocate, told a Federalist Society meeting a week after the guns decision.

The unpredictably of Supreme Court retirements is another reason why the court rarely becomes an issue in presidential campaigns.

What if the justices decide to grow even older together?

It has happened before. Nine of the last 10 justices who retired or died in office were at least 75; six of those were 79 or older.

No one left the court during President Carter's four years in office, President Clinton's second term or Bush's first.

On the other hand, six justices ranging in age from 76 to 85 stepped down between 1986 and 1994, spanning three presidencies.

Bush had two appointments in the space of three months in 2005. He filled them with two men in their 50s, Roberts and Alito.

Goldstein predicts only Stevens will retire during the next four years and not before he surpasses Oliver Wendell Holmes — who stepped down two months shy of his 91st birthday, in 1932 — to become the oldest sitting justice. That would happen in February 2011.

Goldstein's views shifted as he watched the court over the past year. He used to expect the retirement of three justices — Stevens, Ginsburg and Justice David Souter. Though only 68, Souter has made no secret that he prefers New Hampshire to Washington and intends to return there someday.

But justices find it hard to leave the court unless they're in poor health, Goldstein said.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist didn't retire even after he was diagnosed with cancer. His death in 2005 created the second vacancy for Bush.

The FEC convened for the first time in more than six months, a period of inactivity caused by a confirmation standoff in the Senate.

With four of six commissioners new to their jobs, the FEC faces a backlog of work that has accumulated during an election year marked by a hard-fought and financially record-breaking presidential campaign.

Among the top issues the FEC must sort through are a Supreme Court decision invalidating a campaign finance law that governs congressional contests involving wealthy candidates who spend large sums of their own money. It also is behind schedule in writing rules addressing candidate air travel as well as new rules on lobbyist fundraisers.

McGahn, general counsel to the National Republican Congressional Committee since 1999, also represented former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, on a number of federal campaign finance related matters. DeLay is awaiting trial in Texas on unrelated state campaign finance charges.

Watchdog groups such as Common Cause opposed McGahn's nomination, citing his association with DeLay.

But McGahn also had support from Democrats, including campaign election lawyer Robert Bauer, who is counseling Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

In a 2-1 decision, a panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected condemned inmate Christopher Scott Emmett's argument that Virginia's procedure was unconstitutional.

Emmett's lawyers claimed the procedure risks substantial harm because it does not allow for a second dose of anesthesia to make sure an inmate is unconscious before paralyzing and heart-stopping drugs are injected.

The appeals court said there is no evidence that the first dose of anesthesia has ever failed to render an inmate unconscious.

The ruling came on the day another Virginia inmate — Kent Jermaine Jackson — was executed by lethal injection for killing his 79-year-old neighbor. The 26-year-old Jackson, sentenced to death for the 2000 killing of Beulah Mae Kaiser, was pronounced dead at 9:18 p.m.

Emmett is scheduled to be executed July 24 for the 2001 bludgeoning death of a co-worker in Danville.

The appeals court said Virginia's protocol for administering the three-drug concoction is "largely identical" to that of Kentucky, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in April.