The European Union's Court of Justice ruled Thursday that Greece illegally ignored an EU order to recover millions of euros (dollars) in aid it gave to the ailing Olympic national airline.

The Luxembourg-based court said Greece "had not fulfilled its obligations" to take back the handouts from Olympic Airlines SA and its predecessor Olympic Airways.

EU officials said last November that Olympic would have to repay 130 million euros ($189.6 million) to the Greek government.

The ruling confirmed three previous EU court decisions since 2002, which backed the EU's executive Commission's arguments that the millions of euros (dollars) in direct aid and subsidies violated state aid rules and gave Olympic an unfair advantage over competitors.

Greece and Olympic Airlines still have an appeal pending in a lower EU court to annul earlier Commission decisions against restructuring aid and subsidies given to the airline.

Olympic Airlines won a small victory last year at the EU court when it said the Commission failed to prove some of the funds violated EU state aid rules. Those funds involved unpaid taxes on fuel and spare parts, as well as unpaid fees to Athens International Airport.

For years, Greece supplied subsidies to the struggling national airline, which in 2001 had debts totaling some 120 million euros ($166 million). In 2003, the government incorporated the assets of debt-ridden Olympic Airways and two subsidiaries into the newly named Olympic Airlines.

U.S. District Judge Janet C. Hall awarded the payments to Gary Mastronardi, a former FBI agent turned lawyer, for his representation of Tristan Roberts, a 17-year-old Ansonia High School junior, and his mother, Paulette Bolling, last fall.

Michelle Laubin, a Milford lawyer representing the school system, challenged both the system's liability for legal fees and the $400 per hour Mastronardi requested for his work on the case.

The judge found that Mastronardi successfully obtained Roberts' return to school by convincing her to issue a temporary restraining order against the Board of Education's expulsion. That led to a Nov. 14 settlement in which the school board rescinded the Oct. 22 expulsion and allowed Roberts to return to school the next day.

Hall did reduce Mastronardi's hourly fee request to $350 for each of the roughly 51 hours he spent working on the case.

Roberts was suspended and then expelled from the high school after police arrested him in September on a marijuana possession charge in the Riverside Apartments housing project in Ansonia.

The incident occurred several hours after school closed for the day and several miles away from the high school. Police said they found eight small bags of marijuana and $13 in Roberts' possession during his arrest. The charges, however, were resolved under the youthful offender laws, with no incarceration and no criminal record.

Hall granted Mastronardi's request for a temporary restraining order against the expulsion.

At that time, Mastronardi said the judge advised schools that "they'd better make sure before expelling a student for engaging in after-hours, off-campus misconduct that the conduct disrupted the school's operation."

As part of the settlement, Bolling withdrew her federal lawsuit against the Board of Education, Supt. of Schools Carol Merlone and Ansonia High School Principal Susan H. McKernan.

Neither Laubin nor Mastronardi could be reached for comment Tuesday.

Who’s the hottest young female lawyer at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom? Last week that question sent the New York firm into a bit of a tizzy.

On Feb. 4, Skadden Insider, a blog written by two anonymous firm employees and dedicated, unofficially, to all things Skadden, announced the winner of its weeklong poll to decide the firm’s "Hottest Female Associate."

The American Lawyer notes that the contest was hardly Skadden Gone Wild - most of the photos of the eight contestants were relatively innocuous head shots. The winner, a blond litigator, drew 400 votes from Skadden cognoscenti.

The firm, however, was not amused. On Feb. 7, Henry Baer, the firm’s employment adviser, sent an e-mail to all Skadden lawyers in the United States, chastising the blog.

"Numerous attorneys at the firm have expressed their concern and, in some cases, embarrassment at such contests," wrote Mr. Baer, who said the competition was "inappropriate" and inconsistent with Skadden’s "values and standards of behavior."

The bloggers responded in a post titled "Not So Hot": "Damn, we feel like we were called to the Vice Principal’s office today and had our knuckles wrapped."

"The contest, although sophomoric, was done all in good fun," the writers continued. " We’re sorry if anyone was embarassed by it. We wish you had just chuckled, rolled your eyes or merely clicked away."

However, the lawyerly bloggers didn’t seem entirely abashed by the firm’s stern response.

"We’re not quite sure what Skadden’s "values" are (or, for that matter, the Firm’s "standards of behavior")," they said, adding that they had suspended nominations for the Hottest Male Associate.

The former police chief of Luthersville pleaded guilty Tuesday and was sentenced to five years in prison for charges stemming from sexual encounters with two women last year, prosecutors said.

The case against police Chief David Yates began with a rape accusation from a 21-year-old woman in August.

Then it grew when another Luthersville woman came forward, saying she twice had been coerced into sex with Yates in 2007 because the chief promised leniency against her husband in a drunken-driving case.

Yates pleaded guilty to one count of false imprisonment and two counts of violation of oath of office, said Pete Skandalakis, the district attorney for the judicial circuit that includes Meriwether County, 45 miles southwest of Atlanta.

After his prison term, Yates will be on probation for five years and has to register as a sex offender.

Another ex-Luthersville officer arrested in the case, Jason Hardegree, avoided prison but got five years probation after pleading guilty to giving false statements and violation of oath of office. He had agreed to testify against the chief if the case went to trial.

Skandalakis said both pleas were negotiated as the case was set to go before a grand jury next week.

In the rape case, on Aug. 24, Yates went to the 21-year-old woman's home in uniform and with his patrol car and threatened to have her young daughter taken from the home by child-welfare authorities if she didn't have sex with him, Skandalakis said. The chief admitted the sex took place, but said it was consensual, the prosecutor said.

A week or so earlier, he unsuccessfully tried to get her committed to a mental hospital after she made repeated unwanted calls to a friend of Yates' who she had just stopped dating.

After Yates was arrested, the other woman, 26, reported her story to authorities, Skandalakis said. She said that she had sex with Yates twice —- including once in a vacant home —- between March and July 2007 in exchange for leniency in her husband's DUI case.

Hardegree had a much lesser role in the incident involving the 21-year-old; he tried to prevent the woman from pursuing criminal charges against Yates and made a false statement to investigators, Skandalakis said.