"I had to make a very difficult decision," Bush said at a brief meeting with reporters after visiting wounded troops at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. "I felt like the jury verdict ought to stand, and I felt like some of the punishments that the judge determined were adequate should stand. But I felt like the 30-month sentencing was severe."

Bush's commutation wiped out Libby's 30-month prison sentence, but left intact his criminal conviction, a $250,000 fine, and the two years of probation Libby must serve. With some Republicans calling for a full pardon and many Democrats condemning Bush's action, the president said he does not regret making the controversial decision.

"I made a judgment, a considered judgment, that I believe was the right decision to make in this case," the president said. "And I stand by it."

While the commutation continued to generate heated debate yesterday, it also served as a reminder that presidents from both parties have made controversial decisions to grant clemency. Conservatives defending the Libby commutation point to President Clinton's 11th-hour pardon of billionaire fugitive Marc Rich. On his last day in office, Clinton granted clemency to Rich, who faced prison time for tax evasion; his former wife, Denise, contributed $70,000 to a fund supporting Hillary Clinton's Senate bid.

Senator Clinton, a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, issued a stinging rebuke of Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence. Leniency for Libby "sends the clear signal that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice," she said in a statement issued Monday.

Clinton, however, is continuing to deal with the fallout of her husband's decision to pardon a Tennessee couple who were represented by her brother, Anthony Rodham, who has said he talked to President Clinton about the pardons.

A US Bankruptcy Court in Nashville is slated next week to hear arguments that Rodham should pay more than $100,000 to the couple's estate; at issue is whether Rodham received the money as salary or as a loan that must be repaid. It is possible that Anthony Rodham could be called to testify about the matter, reviving questions about the role of Hillary and Bill Clinton in the pardon.

Lawyers for both sides in the case said they are in negotiations this week that could lead to a settlement.

Another of Senator Clinton's brothers, Hugh Rodham, represented two clients who received a pardon and a sentence commutation from President Clinton.

Her brothers' involvement in cases related to pardons and commutations her husband issued was an embarrassment to Senator Clinton during her first Senate bid and could resurface as she seeks the Democratic presidential nomination. She has denied playing a role in the clemency decisions.

Phil Singer, a spokesman for Clinton's presidential campaign, said there is no comparison between the Clinton pardons and Bush's grant of clemency to Libby. "What sets this incident apart," he said, "is the administration politicizing national security in an effort to intimidate its critics."

Libby, a White House insider and chief proponent of the Iraq invasion, was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to a grand jury and authorities as they tried to determine who leaked the name of a CIA operative -- part of a White House effort to undercut criticism of Bush's decision to go to war against Iraq.

After a federal judge sentenced him, Libby asked to remain free on bail while his case is on appeal. On Monday, a federal appellate court rejected that request, but Bush's commutation spared Libby any time behind bars.

At a press briefing yesterday, reporters asked White House spokesman Tony Snow whether Cheney -- who calls Libby a friend and who has enormous influence within the White House -- had pressed for Bush to commute Libby's sentence.

"I don't have direct knowledge," Snow said. "But on the other hand, the president did consult with most senior officials, and I'm sure that everybody had an opportunity to share their views."

A Justice Department spokesman said the Libby commutation is the only instance in which the president did not rely on a review from the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Bush issued 113 pardons but just three commutations of sentence before the Libby action, according to Justice Department officials.

Snow said Bush did not ask for a review of the case because, "It's not like people's memories are fuzzy about the details or the circumstances."

Bush has issued far fewer pardons and commutations than Clinton to date, although presidents tend to grant clemencies in bunches in their waning days in office. President George H. W. Bush, George Bush's father, granted 74 pardons and three sentence commutations during his four-year term, while President Clinton granted 396 pardons, 61 sentence commutations, and two remissions of fines during his two terms in office, according to federal records.

Both issued a number of controversial pardons: Besides pardoning Rich, the fugitive financier, Clinton pardoned his brother, Roger, who was charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine, while the elder Bush pardoned his former secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger, of charges related to the Iran-contra affair.

Margaret Love, the Justice Department's pardon attorney under both the elder Bush and Clinton, said that the current President Bush has used his clemency power sparingly. Of the more than 5,500 commutation requests Bush has received, Love said, he has denied 4,108 of them, left more than 1,000 cases pending, and granted just four cases -- including Libby's.

Similarly, Bush has received 1,399 pardon requests, denying 1,022 and granting 113.

Though she is "agnostic" about the merits of Libby's case, Love said she represents a number of individuals seeking clemency and hopes the Libby action is a positive sign.

"I would hope that this is a harbinger of greater use of the power by this president," Love said. "He has not been very eager to use it for ordinary people. A lot of people have applied and a lot of people are waiting and a lot of people are serving excessive sentences."

Chicago police are investigating whether three elderly patients, including two dead and the other in a coma, at the University of Chicago Medical Center were intentionally given insulin overdoses, according to media reports Wednesday.

Suspicions were raised after extremely high levels of insulin was found in a comatose hospital patient less than three weeks after a similar case.

"Right now we have not been able to determine criminal intent," said Chicago Police Department spokeswoman Monique Bond. "It's very early in the investigation."

On the other hand, the hospital spokesman John Easton said, "We haven't necessarily tied it to anyone. We don't know if it's medical error or product integrity or defective test results." "We just don't know yet."

All three patients were elderly women being treated in the same wing of the Hyde Park hospital, all were stricken between May 7 and June 5, and none had been prescribed insulin or was suffering from diabetes, Easton said.

According to experts, insulin is produced by the pancreas and controls blood sugar levels, which can cause serious complications including coma and death if they're too high or too low.

Insulin also is given as a medicine to treat diabetes and some other conditions that affect blood sugar control. A normal insulin level ranges from fewer than 10 to 50 micro international units per micro-liter.

The test found that two of the victims had insulin levels "thousands of times higher than normal levels," -- over 2,600. The third was not tested for insulin levels but was hypoglycemic at the time of her death, officials said.

Easton said the hospital has strengthened the security of its insulin storage procedures and increased oversight of how insulin is administered to patients, but that no staffs have been reassigned.

Doctors were alerted to the problem on June 6 when they first saw a high-insulin test result, Easton said. Test results for a second victim were seen on June 14. The hospital notified police after a June 22 staff "root cause" meeting at which internal investigators could not explain the deaths, Easton said.

U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been notified, Easton said, in case there were problems with the insulin itself.

No class has yet been certified in the above action. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. If you purchased Plexus shares between January 25, 2006 and July 27, 2006, you have certain rights, and have until August 24, 2007, to move for Lead Plaintiff status. To be a member of the class you need not take any action at this time, and you may retain counsel of your choice.

If you wish to discuss this action or have any questions concerning this Notice or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Howard G. Smith, Esquire, of Law Offices of Howard G. Smith, 3070 Bristol Pike, Suite 112, Bensalem, Pennsylvania 19020, by telephone at (215)638-4847, Toll-Free at (888)638-4847, by email to howardsmithlaw@hotmail.com or visit our website at http://www.howardsmithlaw.com.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed the issue and agreed that both sides would continue talks 'with a view toward early results,' a joint statement said.

The new push came from Presidents George W Bush and Vladimir Putin, who held two days of talks ending Monday at the Bush family estate in Maine.

Both sides want to reduce strategic nuclear arsenals 'to the lowest possible level consistent with their national security requirements and alliance commitments,' the statement said.

The START pact, negotiated by the US and the Soviet Union but formally in force since 1994, limits the United States and Russia to 6,000 deployed nuclear warheads. It also scrapped Soviet-era nuclear arsenals in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine.

Joseph cited confidence-building and 'transparency,' such as data exchanges and site visits, as issues for the post-START talks.

Meanwhile, Moscow views the effort as 'a continuing process of nuclear reduction,' Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Kislyak told a joint news conference in Washington.

Separately, Bush and Putin agreed to boost US-Russian cooperation in promoting civilian nuclear power, especially in poorer countries, while avoiding the spread of nuclear materials and weapons.

One part of the effort is for both countries to provide nuclear fuel services, including international nuclear fuel cycle centres that enrich uranium under safeguards of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the two leaders said in a joint statement.

'This expansion of nuclear energy should be conducted in a way that strengthens the nuclear nonproliferation regime,' they said.

Three men have admitted using the internet to urge Muslims to wage holy war on non-believers, police said, in what is believed to the first prosecution of its kind in Britain.

Tariq Al-Daour, Younes Tsouli and Waseem Mughal had close links with Al-Qaeda in Iraq and thought there was a 'global conspiracy' to wipe out Islam, London's Woolwich Crown Court was told.

UAE-born Al-Daour, 21, admitted a charge of 'inciting another person to commit an act of terrorism wholly or partly outside the UK which would, if committed in England and Wales, constitute murder'.

Moroccan-born Tsouli, 23, and British-born Mughal, 24, admitted the same charge on Monday.

The guilty pleas came two months into their trial.

Al-Daour and Tsouli, who lived in west London, and Mughal, from Kent, in southeast England, also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud banks, credit card and charge card companies.

The trial was told the computer experts spent at least 12 months trying to encourage people to follow the extreme ideology of Osama bin Laden using email and radical websites.

Films of hostages and beheadings were found among their possessions, including footage of British contractor Ken Bigley, who was killed in Iraq in 2004; and US journalist Daniel Pearl, killed in Pakistan in 2002.

CDs containing instructions for making explosives and poisons were also found, with other documents giving advice on how to use a rocket-propelled grenade and how to make booby traps and a suicide vest.

Police also discovered online conversations in which Al-Dour talked of sponsoring terrorist attacks, becoming 'the new Osama' and justifying suicide bombings.

A Manhattan federal judge has rejected Parmalat SpA's (PLT.MI: Quote, Profile , Research) request to dismiss an investor class-action lawsuit stemming from the company's December 2003 collapse in an accounting scandal.

The ruling is a defeat for the Italian dairy company and Chief Executive Enrico Bondi. Both have been trying to distance themselves from prior management, and are seeking billions of dollars of damages from the company's former bankers.

Parmalat had filed Europe's largest bankruptcy under about 14 billion euros ($19.07 billion) of debt, after uncovering a 4 billion euro ($5.45 billion) hole in its accounts.

In a June 28 ruling, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan concluded that the reorganized Parmalat "expressly agreed" when it emerged from insolvency proceedings in 2005 to assume the old Parmalat's liabilities for fraud alleged by the investors.

"New Parmalat asserts that it did not assume the pre-insolvency acts," Kaplan wrote in a 30-page opinion. "But the issue is not the assumption of acts. It is the assumption of liability for those acts."

Kaplan also rejected Bondi's contention that the investors waited too long after learning of the alleged fraud to file claims, saying procedural developments in the case pushed back the filing deadline.

Stuart Grant, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, in a statement said Kaplan's decision paves the way for a "substantial recovery" against Parmalat.