"The Family Court has both staff and specialized programs in place to effectively and efficiently handle this serious problem facing our youth throughout the state," Jeremiah wrote in a letter to police chiefs.

The letter follows the death two weeks ago of a 17-year-old Barrington teenager who disappeared in a river while riding a kneeboard pulled by a motorboat. The boat operator, a classmate, faces charges including underage possession of alcohol and refusing to take a breath test.

The hearing boards handle juvenile cases in all but six of Rhode Island's 39 cities and towns, and police departments can decide whether to refer a teenager there or to Family Court.

Typically, Family Court handles more serious charges, and teenagers facing a second offense are also more likely to be sent there.

But Jeremiah is seeking to expand the reach of Family Court by asking police chiefs to refer all cases to Family Court that involve the juvenile equivalent of an adult misdemeanor offense, such as using fake identification to buy alcohol or underage possession of alcohol.

Among the Family Court services Jeremiah cited are organized trips to an emergency room to see the consequences of drunken driving and alcohol-related incidents.

"These deductions were a sham,'' Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said at a press conference. "Although the books and records of Cipriani USA reflected that the payments had been made, in fact no money was ever transferred or otherwise paid to Cipriani SA.''

The men will be placed on probation at their sentencing Oct. 10, said their lawyer, Stanley S. Arkin. They and their companies must pay $10 million in back taxes in the next 3 1/2 years, and a monitor will ensure the businesses pay the taxes they owe until 2011, prosecutors said.

"We're happy to have resolved our disputes with the state and the city and the district attorney,'' Arkin said in an interview. "It's time for this very unique and extraordinary brand to get back to doing what we're doing.''

At least one Cipriani business is being audited by federal tax-collectors, Arkin said.

Cipriani Restaurants

The Luxembourg-based restaurant empire owned by Arrigo Cipriani, whose age was reported as 73 by his lawyer and 75 by the government, traces its origins to 1931 when Giuseppe Cipriani Sr., Arrigo's father, opened Harry's Bar.

Beef Carpaccio and the Bellini, a drink made of peach puree and sparkling wine, are among "notable influences of Harry's Bar on the art of gastronomy,'' the company Web site says.

Cipriani New York restaurants and banquet spaces include Harry Cipriani in the Sherry-Netherland hotel, where a Bellini is $19.95; Cipriani Dolci in Grand Central Terminal, where it's $12.95; Cipriani 42nd Street; Downtown Cipriani; and Cipriani Wall Street, in a building at 55 Wall Street that once housed the Merchants' Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange.

Three Cipriani corporations pleaded guilty today through Arkin: Cipriani Fifth Avenue, doing business as the Rainbow Room; Downtown Cipriani New York; and GC Alpha LLC, doing business as Cipriani Dolci.

Tax Deductions

The tax deductions were for royalty payments supposedly made by the U.S. unit to the parent company, Morgenthau said.

Cipriani USA claimed to have paid $30.7 million from 1998 to 2004, 11.5 percent of sales, to the parent company in exchange for the right to use the family name and other trademarks, Morgenthau said.

"For tax years 2003 and 2004, New York State and New York City taxes were evaded in the amount of approximately $10,000,000,'' the elder Cipriani said in a statement read to the court. No royalties were actually paid for those years, he said.

In a press release, the Ciprianis said the case resulted from their failure to abide by a 2003 change in New York tax law that required a company paying royalty to a foreign entity to account for the difference in taxes between the two jurisdictions.

Arrigo Cipriani could have faced as much as four years in prison for the crime he admitted. Giuseppe Cipriani's offense has a maximum punishment of a year in jail.

Plea Bargain

Morgenthau said his office will recommend probation for both men. The plea bargain was struck because investigations involving other countries are difficult and time-consuming, the district attorney said.

The restaurant chain has been the subject of an investigation by the district attorney's office since November 2005.

On July 2, Dennis Pappas, a former vice president of Cipriani USA, was sentenced to 1 1/2 to 4 1/2 years in prison for defrauding insurers of more than $1 million in disability payments.

William J. Comisky, deputy commissioner of enforcement for the New York Department of Taxation and Finance, said the state is increasing its efforts against tax cheats, quadrupling the number of investigators.

Morgenthau said the case should send a message to other companies. "You're not going to get away without paying taxes by hiding behind offshore jurisdictions,'' he said.

Archrival Virgin Atlantic Airways blew the whistle on BA last year after individuals at the two carriers discussed proposed changes to fuel surcharges for long flights.

Virgin won immunity in the UK, where the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) fined BA 121.5 million pounds in the OFT's biggest-ever civil penalty.

The U.S. Department of Justice fined BA 300 million dollars (148 million pounds) as part of a wider investigation that also resulted in a fine for Korean Air Lines and notice that Virgin and Germany's Lufthansa would have to pay restitution to customers.

"This resolves the OFT's and the DoJ's (U.S. Department of Justice) investigation of British Airways," BA said in a statement to the London Stock Exchange.

Virgin was not available for immediate comment.

The fines, already the biggest in BA's history, could have been higher if the airline had not admitted wrongdoing.

"Had BA not made admissions and cooperated from the outset, they would have been fined many millions of pounds more ... tens of millions of pounds," OFT director of cartel operations Simon Williams said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

"This is the largest civil fine ever imposed by the OFT," he said, adding that he hoped it would serve as a deterrent and encourage businesses to come forth with information before their rivals do. "Businesses up and down Britain have to ask themselves some very hard questions."

Two senior BA executives quit last October after being linked to the investigation and in May BA set aside 350 million pounds as a provision for possible fines.

BA said it expected that provision to cover the fines and any impact from a separate, widespread probe of the airline industry regarding cargo fuel surcharges which also involve authorities in Europe, Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand.

Analysts said the UK fine was in line with expectations, given the provision already taken, and noted BA could have fared far worse.

"The fine is less than the maximum 10 percent of revenue (850 million pounds) that could have been imposed," said Citigroup analyst Andrew Light in a research note that carried a 580 pence target price for BA and a "Buy/High Risk" investment rating.

"This news is already fully priced in," he said.

The price fixing related to surcharge increases which took place from 2004 until 2006.

Fuel surcharges soared from 5 pounds to 60 pounds per ticket on typical BA or Virgin long return flights during the period, but BA Chief Executive Willie Walsh defended the rises, which came as crude oil prices surged.

"I want to reassure our passengers that they were not overcharged," he said.

BA said both the OFT and the U.S. Department of Justice would continue with criminal investigations into the conduct of individuals involved.

A lawyer for the British plaintiffs, Michael A. Galpern, said they will be considering whether to appeal to the New Jersey Supreme Court.

"We believe today's decision took an unrealistic view of English Law, and entirely disregarded the plain fact that the United Kingdom's loser pays system means that pensioners must now run the risk that Merck may take their house if they lose this case," Galpern said.

He said it was ironic that Merck said New Jersey was an inconvenient location to defend itself.

"The effect of today's ruling will be to make it much cheaper and easier for American companies to injure and kill non-U.S. residents," Galpern said.

Merck lawyer Charles W. Cohen applauded the ruling, asserting that the lawsuits should be filed in Britain, where the plaintiff's medical records and witnesses are located.

He noted that a similar finding was reached last year by the judge handling all the federal lawsuits, who dismissed lawsuits from residents of France and Italy.

Merck pulled Vioxx from the market in 2004 after research showed it doubled cardiovascular risks. The number of pending personal injury lawsuits against Merck have declined recently, to about 26,950, as some claims were dismissed. The company maintains it will not change its strategy of fighting each lawsuit.

Cases filed in New Jersey are all being handled by one judge, state Superior Court Judge Carol Higbee in Atlantic City.

Cases filed in various federal courts have been sent to New Orleans, where they are before U.S. District Judge Eldon E. Fallon.

Merck has won nine cases and lost five that have reached verdicts; it is appealing all its losses and faces retrials involving three other plaintiffs.

On Tuesday, the House voted 411-to-8 to approve the bill with only 2 Republicans voting against the bill, despite criticism from GOP leaders. In the Senate, Democrats predict they, too, will have the votes to pass the measure because few lawmakers want to go home to explain a vote against a measure whose title is the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act.

Still, House Republican leaders called the bill a "hollow shell of reform" and complained that they had been blocked from any role in drafting final language, which was released Monday.

"The legislation is far from perfect, but the fact that they were able, finally, after all these efforts, to get it together to do this is highly significant," says Norman Ornstein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington and a longtime critic of congressional ethics.

The House and Senate have each already voted some version of ethics and lobby reform. In the House, some reforms were adopted as rules, during the first 100 hours of the new Congress. But reformers say it's essential that the new standards be passed as law in both the chambers.

"There was a strong temptation on the part of many to say, 'We've done this, let's move past it,'" says Mr. Ornstein. It's significant that much of the drive to pass a new law came from the former and current chairs of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Reps. Rahm Emanuel (D) of Illinois and Chris Van Hollen (D) of Maryland, he says.

"What does that tell you? Nobody is closer to the ground [than they are] in understanding what you want your candidates to run on." In the wake of congressional corruption scandals in the last Congress, Democrats knew they needed "a credible case that Congress has cleaned up its act or they couldn't ask voters to send them back," Ornstein adds.

In the run-up to this week's vote, public-interest groups who had rallied behind lobby and ethics reform fell out over whether the reform had gone far enough. A key sticking point is proposed language over how lawmakers will disclose member-sponsored projects, or earmarks.

The legislation requires that earmarks included in bills and conference reports, and their sponsors, be identified on the Internet at least 48 hours before the Senate votes. But the revised bill leaves it to the Senate majority leader or committee chairmen, rather than the Senate parliamentarian, to certify that all earmarks have been identified. The original Senate language allowed members to raise a point of order against individual earmarks on the floor of the Senate. Under the proposed new law, they could raise objections only if the required list were not provided.

"Americans are fed up with special interest earmarks that have been at the center of recent scandals," says Sen. Jim DeMint (R) of South Carolina, who blocked moves to a conference on lobby and ethics reform until he had assurances from Senate majority leader Harry Reid that strong earmark provisions would remain in the final bill. "It is ironic that Senator Reid has seen fit to rewrite a bill in secret that is supposed to provide transparency and sunlight. I'm especially disappointed in Speaker Pelosi, who started this debate with strong rhetoric for earmark disclosure. She completely yielded to Reid and pressure from lobbyists," he said in a statement.

Some public interest groups are backing Senator DeMint in what they see as a lively floor fight in the Senate, expected on Thursday. "The taxpayers' worst fears have been realized. Prototypical of Washington backroom deals, House and Senate Democrats have conjured up a deal that benefits only the powerful appropriators and the special interests that game the system at the expense of average Americans," said Tom Schatz, president of the Council of Citizens Against Government Waste.

But many other open-government groups praise the legislation for moving reform further than it has gone in any previous Congress.

"If you compare where we were in 2006, it's a giant step forward. It could have been two giant steps forward," says Bill Allison, senior fellow for the Sunlight Foundation, a public interest group that promotes transparency in government.

A key provision that was dropped in the final version of this bill would have made lists of congressional earmarks available on a searchable database. The new version makes that requirement only "if technically feasible."

"This is something Amazon.com does every day with its eyes closed," says Mr. Allison. "We're still going to be in a situation where public interest groups are going to have to get earmarks in a form that's usable. Congress should have done this itself and didn't."

Arberg said that the chief justice, who has presided over the court for two terms, received minor scrapes from the fall but that a "thorough neurological evaluation . . . revealed no cause for concern."

She said he experienced a similar event in 1993 but had no recurrence until Monday.

Seizures are any sudden, abnormal electrical activity in the brain. While some are focused in one part of the brain, others can be generalized. Not all seizures involve convulsions. Arberg's description of a benign idiopathic seizure indicates an episode whose origins are unknown.

Newsweek reported in November 2005 that Roberts suffered a seizure in January 1993 while golfing. "It was stunning and out of the blue and inexplicable," Larry Robbins, a Justice Department colleague, told the magazine. Robbins said Roberts was not allowed to drive for several months after the seizure and took the bus to work. The magazine quoted a senior White House aide as describing the episode as an "isolated, idiosyncratic seizure."

There is no record of any discussion of the 1993 seizure or of Roberts's health in general during his confirmation hearings. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who chaired the hearings, told CNN on Monday night that senators were told about the previous episode but did not find it serious enough to ask Roberts about. Roberts has no known history of major illness.

Roberts, the youngest member of the Supreme Court, took office as chief justice in September 2005 after being nominated by President Bush to replace the late William H. Rehnquist.

Roberts's seizure occurred around 2 p.m., Arberg said, when he was stepping off a boat after doing errands near his home on Hupper Island, which is about halfway up the Maine coast.

Hupper Island is part of the village of Port Clyde, which is contained in the town of St. George, according to Town Manager John M. Falla. He said that the island is not connected to the town by bridge, and that Roberts was brought by private boat to the mainland and taken by ambulance to the hospital, about 20 miles away.

St. George Fire Chief Tim Polky told the Associated Press that Roberts was "conscious and alert when they put him in the rescue [vehicle] and took him to Penobscot Bay Medical Center."

The chief justice was admitted by an emergency room doctor and seen by Judd Jensen, a staff neurologist, said Chris Burke, the hospital's director of marketing and communications.

He said Roberts was "aware and alert" when he arrived at the community medical facility, which is nestled among trees on the edge of Rockport, a picturesque Maine village about 90 miles northeast of Portland. He declined to say what the chief justice's full neurological evaluation entailed.

Burke said some of Roberts's aides had visited the hospital more than a year ago, when the chief justice bought the nearby vacation home. "Folks came by and checked out the facilities. That's a normal precaution for anyone in his position," he said.

Burke said he thinks doctors consulted with Roberts's regular physicians in the Washington area during the chief justice's evaluation.

Roberts was resting in a regular patient room on Monday night and had some friends with him, Burke said.

"Most seizures last from 30 seconds to two minutes and do not cause lasting harm," according to background information posted online by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, part of the National Institutes of Health. "However, it is a medical emergency if seizures last longer than 5 minutes or if a person has many seizures and does not wake up between them."

While seizures can be the result of a brain disorder such as epilepsy, the institute notes that they can also be a consequence of fevers, head injuries or even medication side effects.

Roberts and his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, bought the Hupper Island house last summer from Steve Thomas, former host of the PBS home-improvement series "This Old House."

The Bangor Daily News reported last year that the house is about 225 feet from shore, with a right of way to the beach and a water view toward Port Clyde General Store on the mainland. The island has 20 to 30 homes and more than a mile of shoreline.

When Roberts was confirmed by the Senate on Sept. 29, 2005, by a vote of 78 to 22, he became the youngest chief justice in more than 200 years and the third-youngest ever to assume the office.

Since the court adjourned in late June, Roberts has taught at a law school summer program in Europe and attended an international judicial conference in Paris. He was back in Washington last week, and on Friday left work early to attend a party celebrating his daughter's seventh birthday. The Robertses have two young children.

Roberts was originally nominated to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who announced in July 2005 that she was retiring. But upon Rehnquist's death, Bush decided to make Roberts his nominee for chief justice and later nominated Samuel A. Alito Jr. to replace O'Connor.