After bitter wrangling, Africa's leaders agreed Friday to denounce the International Criminal Court and refuse to extradite Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, who has been indicted for crimes against humanity in Darfur.

The decision at the African Union summit says AU members "shall not cooperate" with the court in The Hague "in the arrest and transfer of President Omar al-Bashir of the Sudan to the ICC."

Sudan welcomed the move, and other Africans said it was a signal to the West that it shouldn't impose its ways on Africa. A human rights group said the decision was a gift to a dictator.

The 13th AU summit of heads of state, which concluded Friday in Sirte, Libya, also "expresses its preoccupation about the behavior of the ICC prosecutor" Luis Moreno Ocampo, whom African officials describe as too hard on Africans. The ICC has launched investigations into four cases since it was created seven years ago — all of them in Africa.

Sudan rejoiced at the AU's rebuttal of the ICC. "It's the confirmation of what we always said: The indictment is a political thing, not a legal thing," Foreign Minister El Samany El Wasila told The Associated Press just after the decision was made public.

El Wasila declined to comment on whether al-Bashir would now feel free to travel to the 30 African countries that are party to the ICC. "We don't even want to think about it anymore," he said of the international court.

Deborah Rowe, the ex-wife of Michael Jackson and the mother of two of his children, has not reached a final decision on whether to seek custody of the children, a lawyer said Thursday.

Attorney Eric M. George made the disclosure on a telephone conference call but declined to take questions.

"The truth is that Debbie has not reach a final decision concerning the pending custody proceedings," he said. "When Debbie does take a position in the public forum of the court, those positions will of course be conveyed to all interested persons."

Earlier in the day, Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff rescheduled a guardianship hearing for July 13 at the request of attorneys for Rowe and for Katherine Jackson, the singer's mother, who has temporary guardianship of her son's three children.

The legal documents filed in connection with the request were not accompanied by any petition for custody by Rowe.

The reputed underboss of the New England mob has pleaded guilty to federal bribery charges in a plea deal that will send him to prison for six years.

Carmen "The Cheeseman" DiNunzio pleaded guilty Wednesday to bribing an undercover FBI agent posing as a state highway department official in an attempt to win a $6 million contract on the Big Dig highway project.

DiNunzio is expected to plead guilty next week to separate state gambling and extortion charges.

Prosecutors have agreed to wrap both cases together under one plea agreement and to recommend a sentence of six years in federal prison. Sentencing was scheduled for Sept. 24.

Authorities say the 51-year-old DiNunzio has been underboss of the New England branch of the Mafia since 2004.

Judge Michael Kupersmith issued the sentence to 51-year-old Louise Desnoyers (day-noy-AY') on Wednesday in Grand Isle County after hearing her apology to family, friends and the court.

Desnoyers pleaded no contest this year in the death of Nicholas Desnoyers-Langlois. She had originally pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

The judge says he determined that Desnoyers knew what she was doing when she drowned the 8-year-old boy in August 2006.

She told authorities she held her son under water so he wouldn't have to suffer through her impending breakup with his father.

Phoenix-based Mesa had said that the termination of the contract, if successful, would cripple its airline.

Mesa said last year that the contract amounted to $20 million in monthly revenue for the parent company, or about 20 percent of its total sales for 2007.

Mesa won a preliminary court injunction from the federal district court in Atlanta to block the contract termination, and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, also in Atlanta, affirmed that decision Wednesday.

Delta says it will continue to fight to preserve its right to terminate the contract.

Leslie Schuler, 36, is accused of repeatedly beating Nathaniel Turner, culminating in a brutal assault on June 21, when he's alleged to have slammed the boy's head into a wall so hard it left a dent.

The boy was declared brain dead two days later.

Schuler, of Worcester, originally was charged with multiple counts of assault, but a murder charge was added when the boy died on Saturday after being removed from a hospital ventilator.

A not guilty plea was entered on Schuler's behalf during his arraignment in Central District Court.

The boy's mother, Alicia Turner, sobbed as she watched the arraignment from the front row of the courtroom with relatives including Christine Taylor, the boy's maternal grandmother. The boy had lived with his grandmother most of his life in Eufaula, Ala., but had moved to Worcester, the second-largest city in New England, around Memorial Day to stay with his father for the summer.