A federal appeals court on Monday dealt another body blow to Delaware's plans for a new sports betting lottery, saying it must be limited to parlay bets on professional football games.

A three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared last week that Delaware's sports betting plan, which included single-game bets and wagering on a variety of professional and collegiate sports, violated federal law but it did not expressly say why.

On Monday, the panel outlined its reasoning in a 23-page opinion. The court said it interpreted language that exempted Delaware from a 1992 federal ban on sports gambling — known as the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act — as precluding any type of betting beyond what it had offered in a failed National Football League lottery in 1976.

That lottery allowed only parlay bets, which means bettors had to pick the winners of at least three separate NFL games in a single wager.

"Thus, any effort by Delaware to allow wagering on athletic contests involving sports beyond the NFL would violate PASPA," Judge Thomas Hardiman wrote for the court. "It is also undisputed that no single-game betting was 'conducted' by Delaware in 1976, or at any other time during the time period that triggers the PASPA exception."

A man accused in a scheme to illegally ship nearly $300 million in Chinese-made ammunition to the Afghan military has agreed to a plea deal that recommends he serve just two years of probation.

Under the deal, prosecutors will drop 84 counts of wrongdoing in exchange for 23-year-old Efraim Diveroli of Miami Beach pleading guilty to a conspiracy charge. He will also be fined $500,000.

Diveroli's AEY Inc. was awarded a $298 million U.S. Army contract to provide the ammuminition to Afghanistan. The contract forbade exporting Chinese ammunition, but prosecutors say the company did it anyway and claimed the rounds were from Albania.

Sentencing is scheduled for November 10.

A rural Virginia sheriff accused of taking bribes in exchange for promising not to interfere with a cockfighting ring has pleaded guilty to racketeering.

According to court documents, former Page County Sheriff Daniel Presgraves entered the plea Friday. He faces up to 20 years in prison.

Presgraves had faced racketeering, conspiracy and other charges, including that he sexually assaulted and harassed female employees. Another indictment in June charged him with lying to an FBI agent.

Those charges were dropped as part of the plea agreement.

Nathaniel Nicholson pleaded guilty on Thursday to conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Jim Nicholson was the highest-ranking CIA official ever convicted of espionage when he pleaded guilty in 1997 to a conspiracy charge that sent him to prison for more than 23 years. He had been accused of selling information to the Russians about the CIA agents he trained and passing along other secrets.

Both Nicholsons were indicted in January on new charges of conspiracy, money laundering and acting as an agent of a foreign government. Jim Nicholson was accused of sending his son back to his Russian handlers from 2006 to 2008 to squeeze more money out of them.

Under the plea agreement, the 25-year-old Nicholson admitted taking money from the Russians and promised to testify, if required, against his father in the new case. In return, federal prosecutors have agreed to recommend a sentence that could result only in probation.

During a hearing before U.S. District Judge Anna Brown, Nathaniel Nicholson admitted traveling to San Francisco, Mexico City, Lima, Peru and Nicosia, Cyprus, to meet with agents of the Russian Federation on behalf of his father.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the cap, imposed by the Federal Communications Commission, was "arbitrary and capricious," and threw out the restriction.

Fearing a cable monopoly, Congress in 1992 directed the FCC to set limits on how many customers cable TV operators could reach nationwide.

The FCC set the 30 percent limit, but that was thrown out twice before by the courts. Two years ago the cap was reinstated, prompting the new challenge from Comcast.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said he had disagreed with the commission's decision to re-impose the cap in 2007 because he felt the rule was vulnerable to a challenge given that it was already overturned in 2001. He said that the commission's cap was based on "aging data and questionable assumptions" that didn't adequately reflect the entry of new competitors to cable operators.

James Davis, 60 years old, is cooperating with federal prosecutors, who are mounting a case against the chief executive of Stanford, R. Allen Stanford. Mr. Stanford was hospitalized Thursday morning because of a rapid heart beat.

Mr. Davis is facing up to 30 years in prison on charges of conspiracy to commit mail, wire and securities fraud as well as mail fraud and conspiracy to obstruct a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation. The government is seeking $1 billion from Mr. Davis.

"I did wrong. I'm sorry," Davis, the former Stanford chief financial officer said outside a Houston courthouse, after pleading guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges. "I apologize. I take responsibility for my actions."

Mr. Davis doesn't have the money, his attorney David Finn said.

Mr. Davis's assets have been frozen. He is living in Michigan and working a $10-an-hour manual labor job on a family farm in order to pay for his legal fees, Mr. Finn said.