The declaration by the winners of Feb. 18 elections immediately heightened expectations that the unpopular, U.S.-allied president could be on the way out. "Moment of Truth for President Musharraf," read a headline in the respected Dawn newspaper.

But the parties of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and another ex-premier, Nawaz Sharif, still lack the two-thirds parliamentary majority needed to impeach the president. It was also unclear exactly how they could reinstate the sacked justices.

Tariq Azim, a former minister and a Musharraf ally, predicted the victorious parties would ease their rhetoric against the president as they settle into government.

"They will have to first stabilize themselves. In the process of stabilizing themselves, they will deal with the president and maybe the long-running rift between them and the president gets a thaw," Azim told The Associated Press.

By agreeing to send their ministers to be sworn in by Musharraf, the politicians have "faced the reality that there is a president and he is not going anywhere," Azim said.

Musharraf seized power in a 1999 coup and turned Pakistan into a close U.S. ally after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. He has faced mounting pressure to resign since his supporters were routed in the elections last month. Bhutto and Sharif's parties finished first and second.

A state court security officer on Friday admitted taking cash payments from bail bondsmen, the latest development in a continuing investigation of the Connecticut bail bond industry.

Jill D'Antona, a judicial marshal employed at the Superior Court on Elm Street in New Haven, pleaded guilty in federal court to soliciting and accepting a gratuity. In her position, which her superiors said she is in the process of resigning, D'Antona, 37, of Seymour, was assigned to courthouse security and prisoner transportation duties.

D'Antona is accused of taking thousands of dollars over at least five years from Robert and Philip Jacobs, two of the three principals in a family-owned bail bond business operating in greater New Haven. The Jacobses, who were charged earlier in connection with the same investigation, have admitted paying D'Antona for using her official position to get them business.

China keeps secret the number of prisoners it executes, but international human rights observers have no doubt it judicially kills more than any other country -- with estimates of executions somewhere between 1,000 and 12,000 a year in recent times.

But from the start of 2007, China's Supreme People's Court took back power of final approval on death penalties, relinquished to provincial high courts in the 1980s, and promised to apply the ultimate punishment more carefully.

In a rare glimpse into how the new rule is working, the president of the top court's criminal law chamber, Huang Ermei, said that in 2007 it rejected 15 percent of death sentences passed by lower courts, according to the China News Service on Saturday. She gave no hint of the overall number of executions.

Sandlin, 56, of Sherman, Texas, was released without bail after his arraignment in U.S. District Court in Tucson. He and his lawyer declined to comment.

Renzi pleaded not guilty to the charges on Tuesday. Both are due back in court April 29.

The indictment accuses Renzi of telling groups seeking to get the surface rights to an Arizona copper deposit that they would have to buy land owned by Sandlin to win required congressional approval for the land exchange.

After an investment group agreed to buy the land, Renzi received $733,000 from Sandlin, the indictment said. Sandlin had owed Renzi money from a previous land deal.

Renzi and another co-defendant are also charged with eight other counts.

Renzi will stay in office, his lawyer Reid Weingarten said. Renzi, a three-term Republican whose 1st Congressional District covers most of northeastern Arizona, announced last year that he would not seek re-election.

The group asked the judge on Thursday to demand an explanation regarding alleged inconsistencies between testimony at a congressional hearing last week and what the White House told a federal court in January.

"This evidence demonstrates defendants' blatant disregard for the truth and the processes of this court," Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy in court papers.

CREW wants the judge to compel the Executive Office of the President to explain why it should not be held in contempt of court.

In a sworn declaration, White House official Theresa Payton told the court on Jan. 16 that "substantially all" e-mails from 2003 to 2005 should be contained on back-up computer tapes.

However, at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Feb. 26, the panel's Democrats released a White House document that called that claim into question.

E-mail was missing from a White House archive for the period of Sept. 30-Oct. 6, 2003 from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, the White House document states. The backup tape covering that seven-day period was not created until Oct. 21, 2003, raising the possibility that e-mail was missing from the earlier period. That time span was in the earliest days of the Justice Department's probe into whether anyone at the White House leaked the CIA identity of Valerie Plame. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was eventually convicted by a jury of four felonies in the leak probe.

The congressional panel also released written statements by a former White House technical supervisor saying that a 15-person team conducted an extensive multi-phase assessment that resulted in a final 250-page analysis on the problem of missing White House e-mail.

In her sworn declaration to the federal court in January, the White House official said she was aware of a chart created by a former employee regarding missing e-mails, but said nothing about the 250-page analysis.