As an attorney in private practice, White said he intends to reach out to people in the black community.

"One of my goals will be to use the experience and resources of this firm to ensure access to high-quality legal representation to people with serious cases who otherwise might not be able to afford it," White said in a statement appearing on the firm’s Web site.

The law firm said White will focus on civil trials, appeals and business litigation representing investors, shareholders and small-business owners.

Another co-founder, Stephen Lawrence, previously pleaded guilty to criminal conspiracy. In a plea deal, Mr. Lefebvre agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and testify if necessary. He also agreed to be partly responsible for the $100 million the government is seeking in restitution.

Although the conspiracy charge carries a potential prison term of up to five years, cooperation in the case is likely to greatly reduce any potential sentence.

The government has said that nearly all of the $5.1 billion in transactions processed in the first half of 2006 involved online gambling, and most of the revenue was generated by American customers.

The Commission said in February last year it had settled a monopoly abuse case with De Beers, which is 45 percent owned by mining conglomerate Anglo American, after the company agreed to halt the purchase of rough diamonds from Alrosa from 2009.

The Commmission said at the time the move would pave the way for more competition in the supply of rough diamonds.

"The Court takes the view in the present case that the complete prohibition of all commercial relations between the two parties with effect from 2009 is manifestly disproportionate," the court said.

The Commission said it would study the ruling carefully.

De Beers accounted for about half the world diamond market in 2005. Alrosa extracts nearly a quarter of the world's diamonds.

Ruiz was condemned for the July 14, 1992, fatal shooting of 29-year-old Theresa Rodriguez, killed in the garage at her home as she was getting out of her car and with her husband, Michael, and his brother, Mark, at the scene.

"I didn't think I was going to get a stay," Ruiz told prison officials. "I guess you could say I'm happy."

Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Michelle Lyons, who described Ruiz as "genuinely at a loss for words," said the prisoner "didn't seem like he had processed it yet.

"He apparently was expecting to go. He expected his execution to be carried out," she said.

Ruiz, who had a history of alcohol and drug dependency, implicated the brothers for hiring him for what authorities said was their plan to collect more than $250,000 in Theresa's life insurance.

The Rodriguez brothers eventually agreed to a plea deal, accepting life prison terms. But Michael Rodriguez later joined Ruiz on death row as one of the notorious Texas Seven, a group of inmates who escaped from a South Texas prison in 2000 and killed a Dallas-area police officer during a Christmas Eve sporting goods store holdup. He's awaiting execution and recently asked that all his appeals be dropped, but has no date for his lethal injection.

Ruiz's lawyers argued that a state-appointed lawyer in earlier appeals failed to identify Ruiz's substance abuse and poor childhood as mitigating evidence jurors should have been allowed to consider before they decided on a death sentence. A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit court, in a 2-1 vote, said in granting the stay that it needed more time to review the case.

The Ruiz case illustrated what lawyers Morris Moon and Chris Gober contended was the state's "knowing and deliberate indifference to a system" that failed to permit a proper review of death row convictions.

The arguments focusing on what they argued was shoddy legal help during crucial initial appeals failed to convince the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year refused to review his case.

"He's got rights but nobody ever talks about the victim and her rights because she's dead," said a disappointed Yolanda Dolmolin, the slaying victim's sister. "And all that's gotten lost in the last 15 years."

She and another sister and brother were among witnesses who had been waiting for several hours to see Ruiz die.

The shooting at the Rodriguez home in San Antonio came after Ruiz made two earlier unsuccessful attempts. After shooting her once in the head with a .357-caliber Magnum pistol, he ran to a car waiting for him on the street and drove off. Mark Rodriguez already had paid him $1,000, then gave him another $1,000 after the job was finished.

Joe Ramon, now 34, who accompanied Ruiz the night of the shooting, and Robert Silva, also 34, identified as the intermediary who put the Rodriguez brothers in touch with Ruiz, also wound up with life prison sentences.

Ruiz was arrested after a telephone tip to authorities and after Theresa Rodriguez's employer, the insurance firm USAA, offered a $50,000 reward for information about her slaying.

While in the Bexar County Jail awaiting trial, authorities believe Ruiz joined the Texas Syndicate, a notorious prison gang, and was involved in several disturbances resulting in assaults on officers and other inmates.

Scheduled to die next is Lonnie Johnson, 44, set for lethal injection July 24 for the shooting deaths of two Harris County teenagers and theft of their truck almost 17 years ago.

The first surgeon-general appointed by US President George Bush has accused his Administration of political interference and muzzling him on issues such as embryonic stem cell research.

Dr Richard Carmona, a Bush nominee who served from 2002 to 2006, is one of a growing list of present and former Administration officials to charge that politics often trumped science within what had previously been largely nonpartisan government health and scientific agencies.

Dr Carmona told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that political appointees routinely scrubbed his speeches for politically sensitive content and blocked him from speaking out on public health matters.

The Administration, he said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells; emergency contraception; sex education; or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to water down a landmark report on second-hand smoke, he said.

Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke can cause immediate harm.

Dr Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican candidates.

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is often ignored, marginalised or simply buried," he said. "The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalising the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds."

A former professor of surgery and public health at the University of Arizona, Dr Carmona said he was told not to speak out during the national debate over federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, which President Bush opposes.

"Much of the discussion was being driven by theology, ideology, (and) preconceived beliefs that were scientifically incorrect," he said. "I thought, this is a perfect example of the surgeon-general being able to step forward, educate the American public … I was told the decision had already been made — 'stand down, don't talk about it.' That information was removed from my speeches."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto rejected claims of political interference, saying Dr Carmona had all the support he needed to carry out his mission. "As surgeon-general, Dr Carmona was given the authority and had the obligation to be the leading voice for the health of all Americans," Mr Fratto said. "It's disappointing to us if he failed to use his position to the fullest extent in advocating for policies he thought were in the best interests of the nation."

Dr Carmona said that when the Administration touted funding for abstinence-only education, he was prevented from discussing research on the effectiveness of teaching about condoms as well as abstinence. Officials even discouraged him from attending the Special Olympics because, he said, of that charitable organisation's longtime ties to a "prominent family" that he refused to name.

"I was specifically told by a senior person, 'Why would you want to help those people?' " Dr Carmona said.

When asked after the hearing if that "prominent family" was the Kennedys, Dr Carmona responded: "You said it. I didn't."

The Supreme Court also has issued recent rulings that could make it tougher for investors to bring class-action claims against corporations. In one case, the court said that plaintiffs must show convincing evidence that fraud occurred or else a lawsuit can be dismissed at the pre-trial stage.

Fifty-nine federal securities cases requesting class-action status were filed in the first six months of this year, down 42 percent from an average mid-year filing rate of 101 from the 1996-to-2005 period, according to the study by legal research firm Cornerstone Research and Stanford University Law School.

Courts must certify lawsuits as class-actions. Many cases end up getting tossed out by judges before they reach that stage. If class-actions do get certified, the vast majority end up getting settled rather than going to trial.

The number of filings this year was up slightly from 53 cases in the same period in 2006, but it still marks the fourth consecutive six-month period with below average filings, the report found.

"We've now had two years worth of extremely low filing activity," said Joseph Grundfest, a Stanford University law professor. "This is starting to look like a permanent shift, not a transitory phenomenon."

"The laws authorizing NSLs, as well as specific rules set down by the FBI and by me, established strict policies for how they would be issued and carried out....

I was upset when I learned this, as was Director Mueller.  To say that I am concerned about what has been revealed in this report would be an enormous understatement.

Failure to adequately protect information privacy is a failure to do our jobs. And although I believe the kinds of errors we saw here were due to questionable judgment or lack or attention, not intentional wrongdoing, I want to be very clear: there is no excuse for the mistakes that have been made, and we are going to make things right as quickly as possible.

I have told the Director that I will not accept the problems identified in the report, and I will not be satisfied until procedures and policies that should have been followed are being followed, to the letter."

Read the full speech here.

DOJ spinmeisters are already trying to smooth things over, claiming that it was unclear whether Gonzales had actually read the reports about legal violations and civil liberties abuses. All the abuses reported to Gonzales were, however, grave enough to also be submitted to an independent intelligence oversight board designed to safeguard civil liberties. A story today in the Washington Post quoted DOJ spokesman Brian Roehrkasse as saying that just because a violation is reported to the oversight board "does not mean that a USA Patriot violation exists or that an individual's civil liberties have been abused."

But Caroline Fredrickson, the Director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office condemned Gonzales' actions today in a statement:

"Congress has been hoodwinked by the Attorney General and it's time for consequences.  From the US Attorney scandal to warrantless wiretapping, this administration has misled the American people time and again.  We know now that Mr. Gonzales provided false testimony in order to build a case for reauthorization of the Patriot Act.  It is now apparent that Congress and the public simply cannot afford to take anything this administration says about the war on terror at face value.

No government should have these broad powers in the first place and it has become painfully obvious that our government cannot be trusted to police itself.  This administration seems to think that the end justifies the means and when it comes to the means, it's anything goes.  Without Mr. Gonzales' false testimony, the Patriot Act may not have been authorized in its current form.  Now, more than ever, is the time to reopen and re-examine the Patriot Act."

Congress may also decide it's time to re-examine the possibility that Gonzales shut down a DOJ probe into the administration's NSA warrantless wiretapping program because he knew it would target his actions as former White House counsel. Murray Waas of the National Journal first reported the story here.

As expected, Democratic lawmakers are outraged. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York), the chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, quickly called for Gonzales' resignation, along with the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Gonzales' statements to Congress and whether the AG and other officials broke the law with the NSA wiretapping program.

"Attorney General Gonzales has shown an apparent reckless disregard for the rule of law and a fundamental lack of respect for the oversight responsibilities of Congress," Nadler said. "The man entrusted with enforcing our nation's laws must also abide by them, and Mr. Gonzales has apparently failed in that duty. Providing false, misleading or inaccurate statements to Congress is a serious crime, and the man who may have committed those acts cannot be trusted to investigate himself."

A former Alaska lawmaker was convicted Monday of taking thousands of dollars from a corrections company consultant in exchange for his help in the Legislature.

"I'm devastated," former state Rep. Tom Anderson said after the federal jury announced its bribery verdict.

Anderson, 39, was accused of conspiring to take money he thought was coming from a private prison firm, Cornell Industries Inc.

The money was supplied by the FBI through an informant working for Cornell who secretly recorded his conversations with Anderson and a coconspirator, former municipal lobbyist Bill Bobrick.

Anderson was one of four current or former state lawmakers facing federal bribery indictments. The other three face trial this fall for charges related to Anchorage-based oil field services company VECO Corp.

"I think the prosecution has criminalized being a legislator over the last year," Anderson said. "I think I fell victim to that."

Minutes after Anderson's conviction, Gov. Sarah Palin signed into law an ethics reform package for state officials was signed into law.

Palin said the law will help re-establish the public's trust, noting Anderson's case revealed a broader problem with public officials.

"I believe it could be a precursor for what's to come, and it's unfortunate," she said.

Anderson's family, including his wife, state Sen. Lesil McGuire, were not present for the verdict.

Anderson said they couldn't get to the downtown Anchorage courthouse in time after it was announced the jury had reached a verdict.

Judge John Sedwick ordered Anderson to surrender his passport and scheduled sentencing for Oct. 2.

Anderson was arrested Dec. 7 and charged with seven felonies, including conspiracy, bribery, money laundering and interfering with commerce, a charge connected to a demand for payments. He faces a maximum penalty of 115 years in prison and a $1.75 million fine.

Department of Justice officials in Washington said Anderson was held accountable for his crimes.

Anderson "corrupted his elected office when he took official actions in exchange for bribery payments," Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher said. "His illegal conduct impaired the integrity of the oath he took to represent citizens of the state of Alaska."

Bobrick pleaded guilty in May to bribing Anderson. He agreed to testify against Anderson in exchange for prosecutors' request for lenience at sentencing.

Anderson was accused of accepting nearly $26,000 he thought was coming from Cornell through Frank Prewitt, a former corrections department commissioner and an FBI informant was a $150,000-per-year consultant for Cornell.

The Houston-based company operated halfway houses in Alaska and hoped to build a private prison and a juvenile psychiatric treatment center in Alaska.

The defense argued that Anderson backed Cornell without being on the take and that Prewitt wore a wire to bag a legislator and deflect investigators from his legal problems.

Prosecutors contend Bobrick and Anderson trolled for cash in conversations with Prewitt, using a phony Web-based newsletter as a front for Cornell to funnel payments to Anderson.

Anderson, finishing his first term as a Republican legislator from east Anchorage, was strapped for cash, prosecutors said, as he romanced McGuire, who was then a state representative.

He owed child support payments and was looking for a payoff of about $3,000 per month when the Legislature was not in session.