The documents were backdated to 1999. The false documents attempted to portray the funds as loans in an effort to avoid criminal charges.

Obstruction of justice is punishable by up to three years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

Under terms of the plea agreement, prosecutors will recommend a 15-month prison term for Laura Cook. Her sentencing date has not been set.

In February, Wade Cook was found guilty of tax evasion, filing false and fraudulent tax returns and obstruction of justice. He is scheduled to be sentenced on June 22nd. The jury could not reach a verdict regarding Laura Cook's criminal conduct.

The US Supreme Court refused to review the decision of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit.

A 2005 law, however, allows the detainees to ask the appeals court to check whether the Combatant Status Review Tribunal, created by the Defense Department in 2004, had followed procedures.

During the review tribunals, handcuffed detainees appear without an attorney before three military judges.

Only one person, called a recorder, has access to all elements of a case and presents the documents and witnesses that he or she deems pertinent for the review.

The detainee, meanwhile, can request under certain conditions documents and witnesses, but under such limitations most requests have been rejected.

The government argues that the appeals court can only have access to minutes of the review board hearings and documents presented to the panel.

But detainee attorneys want the court to be able to determine whether the recorder indeed presented all relevant documents for a case and if the military judges were right to reject certain witnesses or documents requested by the detainee.

President George W. Bush's administration has argued that unlawful enemy combatants captured in the "war on terror" do not have the same rights as US criminals or prisoners of war, arguing the detainees are not associated with conventional armies.

Kaplan, along with 10 other executives from the online gambling industry were indicted by U.S. District Court in St. Louis on charges that the company took billions in illegal bets from U.S. residents. The company BetOnSports stopped taking bets from US citizens as a result of a civil settlement last November, and agreed to return the money back to the American bettors, something that has not happened as of yet. The criminal charges, however, are still pending.

The 48-year-old Gary Kaplan was arrested in March in the Dominican Republic, after fleeing the country to avoid prosecution.

A former Joliet Catholic Academy student pleaded guilty Monday to selling crack cocaine to undercover police officers in an investigation that netted 14 teens, including 8 pupils at the school.

David M. Caiafa, 18, of the 500 block of Northfield Drive faces up to 60 years in prison or as few as six years, if Will County Judge Daniel Rozak accepts the prosecution's sentencing recommendation. Rozak is scheduled to sentence Caiafa on July 25.

The charges stemmed from Operation After-School Special, a Joliet police probe focusing on the sale of cocaine and Ecstasy that initially targeted students at the Catholic school.

Caiafa told Rozak he continued to pursue his high school diploma after he was expelled from Joliet Catholic.

Caiafa said he takes anti-depressants and some medications, but Rozak determined the prescription drugs would not affect Caiafa's ability to understand the charges against him.

Caiafa pleaded guilty to selling, or helping to sell, one to four grams of cocaine on four dates in early 2006. Two of the charges cited the sales' proximity to a school. But Assistant State's Atty. Chris Regis amended them to eliminate reference to the location.

Outside the courtroom, defense attorney Frank Andreano said the change in charges, which eased the sentencing guidelines, made the plea bargain possible.

Regis said Caiafa's chances of entering the county's drug court treatment program are "less than zero."

Caiafa is the third teen to plead guilty to drug charges in connection with the investigation.

Last month, Benjamin J. Dilday, 18, of Joliet pleaded guilty to unlawful delivery of a controlled substance. He is awaiting sentencing. In March, Alexander Bulanda, 19, of Shorewood pleaded guilty to two counts of delivery of a controlled substance and was sentenced to 4 years.

Fowler was arrested after detectives used Department of Motor Vehicle records to trace broken headlight lenses found at the accident scene to his vehicle, said Nassau County police officer Thomas Blanchard.

Police said Nina Sharma, 49, was struck by the vehicle as she stood at the foot of the family driveway, waiting for her husband, Raj, to bring trash cans to the curb, before they took a late-night walk.

Homicide detectives said the impact threw or dragged her about 65 feet. She was pronounced dead at Nassau University Medical Center.

The couple, who have three children, own a clothing business in Hicksville.

The Supreme Court Monday turned down an appeal from an Iowa telecommunications company that claimed Qwest Communications International Inc. owed it money for wireless phone calls that Qwest connected to its network.

At issue in the case, which was brought by Iowa Network Services Inc., is whether federal regulators have the final say on telecom rates or whether local call rates can be set by state officials.

Lower federal courts ruled in Qwest's favor and gave Iowa's state utilities board a role in resolving the dispute. By declining to take the case, without comment, the Court let stand the lower court rulings in Qwest's favor, which will save Qwest tens of millions of dollars in charges and interest that INS had sought.

James Troup, Iowa Networks' attorney, said the rulings undermined the ability of the Federal Communications Commission to enforce uniform rates across the country and could also affect other federally regulated industries, such as electric and gas utilities and railroads.

The quarrel began in the late 1990s, when INS sought to bill Qwest for wireless telephone calls that Qwest transmitted to INS's networks, which INS then sent to local phone companies. The calls were originated by third-party wireless carriers, not Qwest.

INS argued that Qwest did not provide them with enough information to determine which wireless companies originated the call, making it impossible to bill firms for the use of their network. At that point, INS sought payment from Qwest, based on rates that had been approved by the FCC.

Qwest, though, had sought a ruling in 2000 from the Iowa Utilities Board, which said that since the calls in question are local, rather than long-distance, they would not be subject to the FCC-approved rates.

Iowa Network Services said in its petition to the Supreme Court that the board's ruling overrides federally approved rates that require telecom carriers to charge the same rates to all customers, INS said.

A federal district court and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, however, agreed with much of the utility board's analysis. The 8th Circuit said that rather than nullifying the rates, the utilities board's ruling meant they didn't apply to local traffic.

The case is Iowa Network Services Inc. v. Qwest Corp., 06-1217.

Iowa Network Services owns a stake in Newton, Iowa-based Iowa Telecommunications Services Inc., whose shares dropped a penny to $21.88 in early trading. Qwest shares rose 9 cents to $9.86.

Also, in a rare move, three executives of Purdue Pharma — President Michael Friedman, top lawyer Howard Udell and former medical director Dr. Paul Goldenheim — pleaded guilty Thursday to misbranding charges, a criminal violation.

They agreed to pay a total of $34.5 million in fines.

The fines will be distributed to state and federal law enforcement agencies, the federal government, federal and state Medicaid programs, a Virginia prescription monitoring program and individuals who had sued the company.

The plea agreement settled a national case and came two days after the company agreed to pay $19.5 million to 26 states and the District of Columbia to settle complaints that it encouraged physicians to overprescribe OxyContin.

"With its OxyContin, Purdue unleashed a highly abusable, addictive, and potentially dangerous drug on an unsuspecting and unknowing public," U.S. Attorney John Brownlee said.

"For these misrepresentations and crimes, Purdue and its executives have been brought to justice."

Purdue spokesman James Heins objected to any suggestion of ties between the plea agreement and the abuse of OxyContin. "We promoted the medicine only to health care professionals, not to consumers," he said in a statement.

Purdue Pharma said it accepted responsibility for its employees' actions and has taken steps to ensure "similar events" do not occur again.

OxyContin is a powerful, long-acting narcotic that provides relief of serious pain for up to 12 hours. Initially, Purdue Pharma contended that OxyContin, because of its time-release formulation, posed a lower threat of abuse and addiction to patients than traditional, shorter acting painkillers like Percocet or Vicodin.

That claim became the lynchpin of the most aggressive marketing campaign ever undertaken by a pharmaceutical company for such a drug. Just a few years after its debut in 1996, annual sales hit $1 billion.

Purdue Pharma heavily promoted OxyContin to doctors who had little training in the treatment of serious pain or in recognizing signs of drug abuse in patients.

But both experienced drug abusers and novices, including teenagers, soon discovered that chewing an OxyContin tablet or crushing one and then snorting the powder or injecting it with a needle produced a high as powerful as heroin.

By 2000, several parts of the U.S. began to see skyrocketing rates of addiction and crime related to the drug's use.

In a proceeding Thursday morning in U.S. District Court, both Purdue Pharma and those executives acknowledged that the company fraudulently marketed OxyContin for six years as a drug that was less prone to abuse as well as one that also had fewer narcotic side effects.

Federal officials said that internal Purdue Pharma documents show that company officials recognized even before the drug was marketed that they would face stiff resistance from doctors concerned about OxyContin's potential to be abused.

As a result, company officials developed a fraudulent marketing campaign to promote OxyContin as a time-released drug less prone to such problems.