A brother of fugitive drug lord Tony Mokbel has pleaded guilty to drug trafficking at Melbourne County Court.

Kabalan Mokbel, 45, was arrested in Melbourne on April 11, 2003, after detectives from the Victoria police Purana task force found a stash of methamphetamine in his car.

Mokbel, a truck driver from suburban Brunswick, appeared before Melbourne's County Court on Monday, pleading guilty to one charge of trafficking a drug of dependence.

Judge Philip Coish adjourned the matter to November 12 for a pre sentence hearing and remanded Mokbel in custody.

His brother Tony is in jail in Greece awaiting extradition to Australia after skipping the country last year near the end of his trial for trafficking cocaine.

Dawn Nyberg, 32, of Blaine, was charged with theft by swindle of public funds, forgery, and misconduct by a public officer. The first two charges are felonies; the last is a misdemeanor.

Hennepin County District Court Administrator Mark Thompson said he had not seen anything similar in his 13 years with the court.

Nyberg's tickets were issued near the Hennepin County Government Center, averaging one every 10 days over two years. "The presumption is she was parking the car around here and coming into work," Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Tom Fabel said.

The complaint alleges Nyberg used her access to a county computer system to expunge her citations or enter incorrect information about her vehicle. Most times, Nyberg used her personal login, but sometimes she used other employees' names, the complaint said.

Nyberg paid no fines on any citations except the final two tickets, which she paid when she resigned June 25, 10 days after the trouble came to light.

He's restricted to the home except under certain circumstances, including medical appointments and court appearances. He cannot own any firearms and cannot have contact with any witnesses or informants in the case.

Noting that T.I has a team of highly qualified attorneys, the judge said: "You shouldn't do anything that will undermine their ability to represent you."

Defense lawyer Ed Garland argued that based on the amount of money being put up, there's no reason not to release his client.

As part of a proposed class-action settlement, the Reston, Va.-based provider, with operational headquarters in Overland Park, Kan., has agreed to provide departing Sprint PCS customers with the code necessary to unlock their phones' software.

That would allow the phones to operate on any network using code division multiple access technology, or CDMA. Competitors using that technology include Verizon Wireless and Alltel Corp., although the Sprint handset would still have to meet those networks' technical standards to work.

The codes won't work for Sprint's Nextel-branded phones, which use iDEN technology, and don't allow switching to AT&T or T-Mobile, which use global system for mobile communication, or GSM, technology.

Sprint made the offer as part of the proposed settlement of a California class-action lawsuit, filed last year, accusing the company of anticompetitive practices.

The plaintiffs claimed the software "lock" forced customers wanting to switch carriers to have to buy a new phone, throwing up a barrier to competition. A similar lawsuit was filed in Palm Beach County, Fla., and is covered by the proposed settlement.

On Oct. 2, an Alameda County Superior Court judge gave the settlement his preliminary approval. A final approval hearing hasn't yet been scheduled, said Sprint Nextel spokesman Matt Sullivan.

"We believe this settlement is fair and reasonable," Sullivan said, adding that the company denies wrongdoing and settled the suit "so we can continue to focus on our business."

Sprint doesn't expect to pay any financial damages as part of the settlement, other than possible legal fees, Sullivan said.

Sprint said it will share the unlocking code with all current and former subscribers once their phones are deactivated and their bills are paid. The company also will add information about the locking software and how to obtain the unlocking codes in the list of terms and conditions of service given to new customers, and instruct its customer service representatives on how to connect a non-Sprint phone to the Sprint network.

The settlement covers customers who bought a Sprint phone between Aug. 28, 1999, and July 16, 2007.

The justices refused to review a U.S. appeals court ruling that dismissed the lawsuit because the descendants waited too long to bring their claims demanding that Taylor return van Gogh's "View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint-Remy."

Van Gogh painted the work in 1889. Less than a year later, he killed himself. Taylor's father purchased the painting on her behalf at a Sotheby's auction in 1963 in London for 92,000 British pounds -- about $257,000 at the time. The painting now is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars.

Four South African and Canadian descendants of Margarete Mauthner, a Jewish woman who fled Germany in 1939 for South Africa, sued Taylor in 2004 in federal court in California.

The lawsuit claimed the Nazis forced Mauthner to sell the painting under duress before fleeing Germany and that it should be returned to her descendants under the 1998 U.S. Holocaust Victims Redress Act.

Taylor said the record showed the painting was sold through two Jewish art dealers to a Jewish art collector, and that there was no evidence of any Nazi coercion or participation in the transactions.

A U.S. appeals court upheld the dismissal of the lawsuit.

It ruled the descendants had waited to long to bring the lawsuit and the claims under state law were barred by the statute of limitations.

It also ruled that the 1998 federal law refers to the United States and other governments working to return artworks confiscated during the Nazi rule to their rightful owners, but does not give individuals the right to sue private art owners.

Attorneys for the descendants appealed to the Supreme Court. "The issue is of pressing importance, given the advanced age of Holocaust survivors and their heirs," they said.

"There is a strong recent trend toward permitting claimants of Holocaust-era artwork to seek to recover them, regardless of the statute of limitations," the attorneys said in asking the Supreme Court to hear the case.

Taylor's attorneys opposed the appeal and said the appeals court's judgment was correct. They said the policy arguments by the descendants over the 1998 law should be directed to the U.S. Congress, not the Supreme Court.

In siding with Taylor, the high court turned down the appeal without any comment or recorded dissent.