Quan-Sheng Shu, 68, pleaded guilty to two counts of violating the federal Arms Control Act and one count of bribery at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Norfolk.

Shu is president of AMAC International Inc. of Newport News. He is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Shanghai.

Prosecutors said Shu, an expert in cryogenics, sold technology to China for the development of hydrogen-propelled rockets.

The Chinese government is developing a space launch facility in the southern island province of Hainan that will house liquid-propelled launch vehicles designed to send space stations and satellites into orbit.

Shu also was charged with bribing Chinese officials to award a $4 million hydrogen liquefier contract to a French company acting as an AMAC intermediary.

Shu received more than $386,000 in commissions for securing the contract, authorities said. He already had agreed to forfeit that money. His company also has offices in Beijing.

The scientist and his wife refused to comment as they left the courtroom. As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors agreed not to prosecute his wife for the role she allegedly played in the scheme.

Shu faces up to 10 years on each arms count and five years for the bribery charge and fines of up to $2.5 million. Sentencing is scheduled for April 6.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Alan M. Salsbury said Shu's conviction was the result of an ongoing FBI investigation, but he declined further comment after the hearing.

Federal authorities in recent years have prosecuted more than a dozen cases of either traditional spying or economic espionage related to China. U.S. officials have warned in the last year of increasing espionage efforts by Beijing.

Former state Sen. Wayne Bryant was found guilty on all 12 counts alleging he took a "low-show" job at a branch of the scandal-ridden University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey as a bribe for directing state money to the institution.

Later, U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie said Bryant was more brazen than other elected officials on the take.

"He stole in plain sight," Christie said of the Democrat who was one of the state's most powerful politicians. "He thumbs his nose at the public."

The scam was uncovered by a federal monitor assigned to investigate UMDNJ after it was discovered that UMDNJ double-billed for services covered by Medicare.

Prosecutors said Bryant had almost no legitimate responsibilities at UMDNJ's School of Osteopathic Medicine in Stratford, which is in the southern New Jersey legislative district he represented.

Witnesses testified that he showed up on some Tuesday mornings and was seen reading the newspaper and talking on the phone in his office — but doing no other work.

But between 2003 and 2006 — when he worked for the school — officials said he boosted its funding from the state by at least $10.5 million.

Michael Gallagher, the dean who hired Bryant for the $35,000-a-year job at the school, was also convicted on one bribery charge and five mail fraud charges. He was acquitted on one mail fraud charge. His lawyers, Ralph Jacobs and Jeremy Frey, said they expected to appeal.

Bryant was also convicted of boosting his pension by taking another public-sector job at the Gloucester County Board of Social Services. Associates at his law firm did thousands of hours of work there, but he received pension credit for it, authorities said.

The five charges dealing with the pension were more complicated because there is no law against New Jersey elected officials holding other public-sector jobs or getting pension credit for work done by subordinates.

Gregory Bryant-Bey, 53, died by lethal injection at 10:41 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

Bryant-Bey's execution proceeded after the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday denied his request for a 60-day reprieve. He had wanted more time to present additional information about his case to Gov. Ted Strickland, who denied clemency Tuesday.

Bryant-Bey was the second inmate put to death in Ohio since the end of an unofficial national moratorium on executions that began last year while the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Kentucky's lethal injection procedure.

Bryant-Bey was convicted in the Aug. 9, 1992, robbery and killing of Dale Pinkelman, who owned a sports collectibles and coin shop.

He also faced a death penalty in the Nov. 2, 1992, killing of Peter Mihas, owner of The Board Room restaurant in downtown Toledo.

After police arrested Bryant-Bey for Mihas' death, similarities between the two crimes led to charges in Pinkelman's slaying.

A jury recommended life in prison for Bryant-Bey in the Mihas killing.

"The petitions raise issues of statewide importance, implicating not only California's marriage laws but also the initiative process and the Constitution itself," Attorney General Jerry Brown argued in his filing.

"This court can provide certainty and finality in this matter," he said.

Proposition 8, which passed with 52 percent of the vote earlier this month, overturned the high court's May decision legalizing gay marriage in California. The measure inserts language into the constitution limiting marriage to one man and one woman.

Gay and civil rights groups, the city of San Francisco and other plaintiffs have asked the court to void the measure on the grounds that voters did not have the authority to make, what they say, is a fundamental constitutional change.

There is no deadline for the justices to decide whether they'll take the cases.

The litigation has made unwitting allies of supporters of the same-sex marriage ban and the attorney general, who voted against the proposition. Over the summer, anti-gay marriage groups sued Brown after his office changed the measure's wording to reflect that it would take away a right that same-sex couples then had.

About 60 people, led by a contingent from the New Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam, met at the Lamar County Courthouse on Monday to bring attention to the death of Brandon McClelland. The groups later returned with about 200 protesters. Afterward, dozens of people chanting "No justice, no peace!" marched to a nearby church for a meeting.

Authorities say two white suspects purposely ran over McClelland, who is black, following an argument on the way home from a late-night beer run in September. McClelland's body was torn apart as it was dragged some 70 feet beneath a pickup truck near Paris, a city about 95 miles northeast of Dallas with a history of tense relations between blacks and whites.

The death came 10 years after James Byrd was killed in Jasper, another eastern Texas town. Byrd was chained to the back of a pickup by three white men and dragged for three miles.

Bryan Stanley had claimed to be a prophet sent to cleanse St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Onalaska when he gunned down parish priest John Rossiter, lay minister Ferdinand Roth Sr. and church custodian William Hammes in 1985. He was angry the priest was allowing girls to give Scripture readings during Mass.

Stanley, who suffered from psychosis, was found not guilty by reason of mental disease and was committed indefinitely to Mendota, a state psychiatric hospital in Madison.

The District 4 Court of Appeals said state lawyers failed to prove that releasing Stanley, 53, would present a danger to himself or the public. The decision overturns a ruling by a La Crosse County judge who had denied Stanley's request for release.

Ferdinand Roth Jr., a retired police supervisor in La Crosse, Wis. and son of one of the victims, blasted the decision. He recalled that Stanley testified at a hearing last year there was not a 100 percent guarantee he would always take his medicine.