Continually in the tabloids, actress and model Anna Nicole Smith continues to make headlines after her death, as her legal disputes remain undecided and U.S. authorities probe the cause of her sudden death.

Authorities said she was rushed to hospital on Thursday afternoon after a private nurse found her unconscious and unresponsive at the Seminole Hard Rock Cafe Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Fla. Smith, the 39-year-old former Playboy model, died Thursday.

Deputy Police Chief Michael Browne said Friday that officials have interviewed everyone connected to the death and no one was under suspicion."Nothing about this death seems suspicious. We're not treating it that way," Browne said. "We're being very thorough. We're going to look at everything."

The medical examiner's office also said it began conducting an autopsy on Friday morning. Dr. Joshua Perper, who was scheduled to perform the autopsy, had said Thursday that if Smith died of natural causes, the findings would likely be released quickly. However, definitive results could take weeks, he added.

Legal Issues

Smith had been embroiled in several legal disputes prior to her death, including a paternity suit over her five-month-old daughter.

Attorney Howard K. Stern, Smith's most recent partner, is listed as the baby's father on the birth certificate. However, her former boyfriend Larry Birkhead has claimed to be the infant's biological father.

An emergency court hearing into the paternity suit was scheduled for Friday in Los Angeles.

Just last week, Smith had been included in a class-action lawsuit against TrimSpa, which produces a weight-loss pill for which she served as spokesperson. The suit alleges the marketing of the weight-loss supplement was false and misleading.

Most prominently, however, Smith — a former Playboy covergirl, playmate of the year and Guess model — was involved in a decade-long battle over the fortune of her former husband, J. Howard Marshall.

The Houston-born Smith, a former topless dancer, was notorious for her relationship with the 89-year-old oil tycoon after meeting him at a Texas strip club. They had been married for 14 months when he died in 1995.

A federal court in California initially awarded Smith $474 million US, but the decision was later overturned. However, in May 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that she could continue her fight for the Marshall fortune.

PETALUMA, Calif., Feb. 7, 2007 -- Primetime news program Lou Dobbs Tonight dropped an investigative story exposing the diversion of billions of dollars in federal small-business set-aside contracts to some of the nation's largest corporations and defense contractors just hours before the segment was to air on CNN.

As part of Dobb's series, "The Attack on the Middle Class,"
the show's producers spent several weeks researching and filming the segment featuring Lloyd Chapman, contracting expert and president of the American Small Business League. During his interview with CNN, Chapman discussed a series of 13 federal investigations by the Government Accountability Office, Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy and the SBA Office of Inspector General that found billions of dollars in federal small business contracts were diverted to Fortune 500 corporations. The Bush Administration reported these contracts - awarded to firms like L3-Communications, General Dynamics, Halliburton and major CNN advertisers Boeing and Lockheed - as "small business" awards.

CNN producers told Chapman that the segment had been pulled
in the wake of more pressing news stories but assured him
that it would air shortly. After three months of waiting, Chapman has concluded that the station abruptly pulled the story to avoid embarrassing its major advertisers and has no intention of ever airing the segment.

"CNN is never going to run that story," said Chapman. "I think they pulled it because it was unflattering to its major advertisers, Lockheed Martin and Boeing. CNN's
reputation as the most trusted name in news obviously doesn't apply when you're talking about its advertisers."

Chapman points to a story featured on the highly rated blog
The Daily Kos, "Advertising as Payola: Who really owns CNN," that also suggests firms like Lockheed and Boeing, who have no products to sell to the general public, advertise on major networks to gain influence over the media outlet.

The latest government figures report Boeing with 37 federal small business awards, totaling $495,319,668. Lockheed Martin received $223,210,917 in federal small business awards and Fortune 500 defense contractor L-3 Communications was the top recipient of small business contracts with $650,143,831. The ASBL projects that up to $65 billion a year in federal small business contracts are diverted to the top two percent of firms in the US.

For more information about the American Small Business
League, see http://www.asbl.com.

WASHINGTON – Vetco Gray Controls Inc., Vetco Gray Controls Ltd., and Vetco Gray UK Ltd., wholly owned subsidiaries of Vetco International Ltd., have pleaded guilty to violating the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty announced today.

At a hearing today before U.S. District Judge Lynn N. Hughes in the Southern District of Texas, the companies pleaded guilty to violations of the anti-bribery provisions of the FCPA, as well as conspiracy to violate the FCPA. Additionally, Aibel Group Ltd., another wholly owned subsidiary of Vetco International, simultaneously entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department regarding the same underlying conduct. As part of the plea and deferred prosecution agreements, it was agreed that Vetco Gray Controls Inc., Vetco Gray Controls Ltd., and Vetco Gray UK Ltd. would pay criminal fines of $6 million, $8 million, and $12 million, respectively, for a total of $26 million. This total fine amount represents the largest criminal fine to date in a FCPA prosecution by the Justice Department.

In the charging and plea documents, Vetco Gray Controls Inc., Vetco Gray Controls Ltd., and Vetco Gray UK Ltd. admitted that they violated and conspired to violate the FCPA in connection with the payment of approximately $2.1 million in corrupt payments over approximately a two-year period to Nigerian government officials. These corrupt payments were paid through a major international freight forwarding and customs clearance company to employees of the Nigerian Customs Service, and coordinated largely through Vetco Gray Controls Inc.'s offices in Houston. Additionally, Aibel Group Ltd. agreed in its deferred prosecution agreement to accept responsibility for similar conduct by its employees.

As the charging and plea documents reflect, beginning in February 2001, Vetco Gray UK began providing engineering and procurement services and subsea construction equipment for Nigeria's first deepwater oil drilling project, the Bonga Project. Several Vetco Gray UK affiliates, including Aibel Group Ltd., Vetco Gray Controls Inc., and Vetco Gray Controls Ltd., supplied Vetco Gray UK with employees and manufacturing equipment for the project. From at least September 2002 to at least April 2005, each of the defendants engaged the services of a major international freight forwarding and customs clearing company and, collectively, authorized that agent to make at least 378 corrupt payments totaling approximately $2.1 million to Nigerian Customs Service officials to induce those officials to provide the defendants with preferential treatment during the customs process.

“This case represents the largest criminal penalty the Department of Justice has ever sought in a Foreign Corrupt Practices case and confirms our commitment to root out corruption,” said Deputy Attorney General McNulty. “The Department of Justice will continue its efforts to assure a level playing field for businesses operating abroad.”

This is the second time since July 2004 Vetco Gray UK has pled guilty to violating the FCPA. On July 6, 2004, Vetco Gray UK, previously named ABB Vetco Gray UK Ltd., and an affiliated company pleaded guilty to violating the antibribery provision of the FCPA in connection with the payment of more than $1 million in bribes to officials of NAPIMS, a Nigerian government agency that evaluates and approves potential bidders for contract work on oil exploration projects. ABB Vetco Gray UK Ltd. was renamed Vetco Gray UK Ltd. following an acquisition by a group of private equity entities of the upstream oil and gas businesses and assets of its parent corporation, ABB Handels-und Verwaltungs AG (“ABB”). The July 12, 2004 acquisition included the sale of Vetco Gray UK and the predecessors to the two other Vetco International subsidiaries that pleaded guilty today. In anticipation of the July 12, 2004 acquisition, the private equity acquirers requested and the Justice Department issued an FCPA Opinion Release (No. 2004-02) ( http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa/o0402.htm). The Opinion Release required the acquirers to effectively institute and implement a compliance system, internal controls, training, and other procedures sufficient to have deterred and detected violations of the FCPA, among other obligations. The corrupt payments underlying today’s guilty pleas continued unabated from the period prior to the acquisition until at least mid-2005, notwithstanding the acquirer’s commitments to the Justice Department under the Opinion Release. The sale to new owners, the prior directives issued by the Department of Justice, and Vetco Gray UK’s prior FCPA conviction were all taken into account under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines in calculating the $12 million criminal fine against Vetco Gray UK Ltd.

The resolution of the criminal investigation of Vetco International and its subsidiaries resulted, in large part, from the actions of Vetco International in voluntarily disclosing the matter to the Justice Department and Vetco International’s subsidiaries’ agreement to take significant remedial steps. In addition to the criminal fines, the plea agreements also require the defendants to: (1) hire an independent monitor to oversee the creation and maintenance of a robust compliance program; (2) undertake and complete an investigation of the companies’ conduct in various other countries as originally required under FCPA Opinion Release No. 2004-02; and (3) ensure that in the event that any of the companies are sold, the sale shall bind any future purchaser to the monitoring and investigating obligations.

The US military announced Friday it has drafted new charges against three high-profile Guantanamo Bay detainees. Col. Morris Davis (USAF), chief prosecutor for the Department of Defense Office of Military Commissions, said that the new charges against Australian David Hicks, Canadian Omar Khadr, and Yemeni Salim Ahmed Hamdan included murder, attempted murder, conspiracy and providing material support for terrorists under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA). The original charges against the three had to be dropped after the US Supreme Court ruled the original military commissions system established by President Bush unconstitutional without Congressional authorization.

The new charges will not be considered formal until they are approved, which Davis said is expected to take an additional two weeks. With regard to Hicks, who faces charges for attempted murder, Davis told the Melbourne Age that he did not intend to "argue for the maximum penalty of a life sentence". AP has more. The Age has local coverage from Australia on the Hicks charges. The Toronto Globe & Mail has local coverage on the charges against Omar Khadr.

Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen issued an executive order Thursday, directing the Tennessee Commissioner of Corrections to conduct a "comprehensive review of the manner in which death sentences are administered... and provide new protocols and related written procedures in administering death sentences in Tennessee" no later than May 2, 2007. Executive Order No. 43 also grants reprieves to four inmates on death row until May 2, 2007, and revoked existing procedures and related protocols used to administer the death penalty. Tennessee currently administers the death penalty by lethal injection and electrocution.

Last week, a North Carolina state judge issued an injunction blocking two executions until Governor Mike Easley issues new procedures to execute capital defendants without the presence of doctors. Capital punishment has also been suspended in Florida and California. In early-January, the New Jersey Death Penalty Commission recommended abolishing the death penalty and replacing it with a life sentence without the possibility of parole. An increased number of states have begun to review the administration of the death penalty following the botched execution of Angel Diaz in December 2006.

The woman who claims to be James Brown's fourth wife wants half of the singer's estate and to be allowed back into the South Carolina home she was locked out of soon after his death.

Tomi Rae Hynie's lawyer said she filed a petition in Aiken County probate court Thursday, claiming that she is the surviving spouse of the singer and entitled to part of his estate, according to court documents obtained by the Associated Press.

She wants the court to allow her to return to Brown's Beech Island home to retrieve "personal possessions" that belong to her and their 5-year-old son, including furniture she picked out for the home, according to the court papers.

"She's not asking the court to live there," said Robert Rosen, Hynie's attorney. "They locked her out and wouldn't let her in but she has a right to go in and get her stuff - furniture, her clothing, her son's toys. They keep saying that they're going to do it but they never do it so we're going to ask a judge to order them to do it."

Brown's attorney and trustee, Buddy Dallas, said Hynie never asked for any personal items from the singer's home.

"She never requested anything," Dallas said. "She's used a camera crew and a lawsuit. I'm sure the court will inquire into it and make a proper determination."