A Brazilian doctor charged with manslaughter in an immigrant's liposuction death tried to plead guilty Wednesday, but the judge instead set the case for trial after the doctor contradicted prosecutors.

Luiz Carlos Ribeiro appeared in Superior Court to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter in a case that exposed an underground cosmetic surgery network used by Brazilian immigrants.

Prosecutors were giving a standard recitation of the facts they could have proved at trial when Ribeiro, 51, told the judge he didn't agree with many of them, insisting he had a sterile surgical area and the proper resuscitation equipment when he performed the fat-removal surgery on Fabiola DePaula in the basement of a suburban condominium in July 2006.

DePaula, a 24-year-old Brazilian immigrant, died of complications from the surgery, including pulmonary fat emboli, or fat particles in the lungs.

Ribeiro insisted there was nothing that could have saved the woman.

"If I had 100 years, I would swear that I didn't kill anybody because I would never kill," Ribeiro told the judge. "Fabiola's death was sudden. I had no chance to do anything."

Prosecutors say Ribeiro performed liposuction, nose jobs and Botox injections for several years in the Framingham area, mostly for the town's large Brazilian immigrant population.

The procedures were performed on a massage table, under unsanitary conditions and without any emergency oxygen in place, authorities allege.

Judge Wendie Gershengorn scheduled the trial for April 3.

In September, Ribeiro's ex-wife, Ana Maria Miranda Ribeiro, was sentenced to one year in prison when she pleaded guilty to manslaughter and admitted acting as a nurse for her husband.

Luiz Ribeiro was a licensed doctor in his native Brazil, but neither he nor his ex-wife was licensed to practice medicine in the United States, authorities said.

His lawyer, Jeanne Earley, said after the hearing she was stunned the plea was not accepted. She was going to ask for a 2- to 2 1/2-year prison term. Prosecutors had planned to seek 6 to 8 years. He's already served about 18 months since his arrest.

"He's horrified as any doctor would be about the death of somebody. But he is a good doctor, has practiced medicine for many years in Brazil," she said.

Prosecutors said if the procedure had been monitored in a hospital, DePaula's death could have been prevented.

"We are confident that we have a strong case against the defendant and intend to prove that case in court," District Attorney Gerry Leone said in a statement Wednesday.

Calls for a windfall tax on oil companies have been reignited after Royal Dutch Shell posted record UK company profits of almost £14 billion.

The Unite union said profits in the industry were "obscene" and urged the Government to take action, especially because of rising energy prices.

Royal Dutch Shell reported a surplus of 27.6 billion US dollars (£13.9bn) in 2007, equivalent to £1.5 million an hour and 9% higher than a year ago.

It benefited from rising crude oil prices of more than 90 US dollars, a factor which also left motorists with average petrol costs of more than £1 a litre.

Unite joint general secretary Tony Woodley said: "Shell shareholders are doing very nicely whilst the rest of us, the stakeholders, are paying the price and struggling.

He added: "This Government took the brave step of putting a windfall tax on the greedy privatised utilities to fund the New Deal. With pensions injustices still to be addressed, fortune should favour the brave again and the greedy oil companies should be asked to contribute for the common good."

Shell rejected the windfall tax calls, arguing that the profits figure is almost matched by the amount of money it spends on securing new energy sources. Most of its haul comes from exploration and production, rather than UK forecourts.

Chief executive Jeroen van der Veer said: "If you get additional taxation, in the end it means you can invest less. The money has to come from somewhere and over time it will impact on our production."

The oil firms, including Shell, insist they already pay high levels of tax to the Treasury. In 2005, Chancellor Gordon Brown increased a North Sea tax on energy companies from the 10% he introduced in 2002 to 20%.

Independent charity the RAC Foundation said anger over rising petrol costs needed to be directed towards the Government, adding that a flexible fuel duty would compensate for varying crude prices.

A U.S. official confirmed last week that waterboarding was used in the past but had not been used for several years.

"The interrogation techniques currently authorized in the CIA program comply with the law," Mukasey wrote Leahy. "A limited set of methods is currently authorized for use in that program. ... Waterboarding is not, and may not be, used in the current program."

Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, and other lawmakers repeatedly pressed Mukasey in his confirmation hearings last year and afterward to say whether he considered waterboarding an illegal form of torture, as do many human rights groups and other critics.

If Mukasey agreed, it could open the door to prosecution of officials involved in CIA's interrogation program launched after the Sept. 11 attacks. Mukasey, who had said in a letter to the committee before his confirmation that waterboarding is "repugnant to me," said he would review the interrogation program.

But Mukasey told Leahy on Tuesday that since waterboarding was not now in use, he did not feel it appropriate to give an opinion.

A panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled there was no basis to John Demjanjuk's challenge of a December 2005 ruling that he could be deported to his native Ukraine or to Germany or Poland.

The government initially claimed Demjanjuk was the notoriously sadistic guard at the Treblinka camp known as "Ivan the Terrible." Officials later concluded that he was not, but a judge ruled in 2002 that documents from World War II prove Demjanjuk was a Nazi guard at various death or forced labor camps.

Demjanjuk, 87, lives in the Cleveland suburb of Seven Hills. He has steadfastly denied that he ever helped the Nazis, arguing that he served in the Soviet Army and was captured by Germany in 1942 and became a prisoner of war.

As part of a settlement to a federal antitrust suit, the NCAA agreed Tuesday to make available $10 million that will provide supplemental money above the standard athletic grant-in-aid to athletes who have competed in Division I-A football and in 16 Division I men's basketball conferences between Feb. 17, 2002, and the present. The agreement, subject to approval by a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, is in response to a class-action suit filed in February 2006 on behalf of former football players Jason White of Stanford and Brian Polak of UCLA, former San Francisco basketball player Jovan Harris and Chris Craig, a former Texas-El Paso basketball player.

The suit argued that restricting a scholarship to the cost of tuition, books, housing and meals was an unlawful restraint of trade because of the billions of dollars the NCAA earned through broadcast and licensing deals. NCAA general counsel Elsa Cole said she expects the court to approve the agreement.

The settlement says the $10 million will be made available over a period of three years to qualifying student-athletes — which the NCAA says could number 12,000 — to reimburse them for "bona fide educational expenses hereafter incurred, such as tuition, fees, books, supplies and equipment."

An NCAA study estimated athletes on full scholarships averaged $2,500 a year in out-of-pocket expenses. The settlement allows athletes to apply for as much as $2,500 a year for up to three years.

Cole said the $10 million will come from the NCAA's reserve fund. "That's money that's been set aside for emergency uses or unanticipated contingencies … maybe something like this," she said.

Stephen Morrissey, who represented White in the case said, "We think $2,500 is a significant chunk of the educational cost.

"We wanted terms defined as broadly as we could so even a kid who didn't graduate could pursue something like culinary school if he wants to, and this can allow him to get reimbursed. And teachers can pursue continuing education."

Morrissey said the case got within "a couple of months" of trial.

"This was a hard-fought case," he said. "They have really good lawyers, and a lot of them, and they were fighting every step of the way."

Athletes also will have easier access to another $218 million of existing funds with the settlement.