For the second straight month, nervous employers got rid of jobs nationwide. In February, they sliced payrolls by 63,000, even deeper than the 22,000 cut in January, the Labor Department reported Friday.

The grim snapshot of the country's employment climate underscored the heavy toll the housing and credit debacles are taking on companies, jobseekers and the economy as a whole.

"It sounds like the recession bell is ringing for the U.S. economy, although it is still faint," said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group.

A federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit seeking to halt sales of the only "morning-after" contraceptive pill available in the United States without a prescription.

The suit was filed against U.S. health regulators over their decision to allow non-prescription sales of Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc's Plan B pill.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Barr were sued by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons and other groups seeking to overturn the FDA decision.

The pill can reduce the risk of pregnancy when taken within three days of intercourse.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted the FDA's and Barr's motion to dismiss the suit, saying the plaintiffs had failed "to identify a single individual who has been harmed by Plan B's OTC (over-the-counter) availability," according to the ruling.

Backers of reproductive rights applauded the decision.

"They still don't have any evidence in terms of why they think it is harmful," said Janet Crepps, deputy director for domestic programs at the Center for Reproductive Rights. "This is the right decision for women."

Plan B was approved in 1999. The FDA broadened the approval in 2006 to allow sale to adults without a prescription.

The pills must be kept behind pharmacy counters and can be sold to girls under the age of 18 years only with a doctor's order.

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.