Two women who had just rented an apartment in Franklin Square Sunday discovered digital spy cameras hidden in smoke alarms in their bedrooms, police said.

The landlord, Michael Muratore, 44, who lives on the first floor of the 849 Second Ave. home, was arrested and charged with unlawful surveillance.

The women were moving into the second-floor apartment and decided to have the smoke alarms checked to make sure they were in working order -- and that's when the cameras were found, at around 5 p.m. Sunday, Nassau police said.

Fifth Squad detectives arrested Muratore in front of his home at 6:40 p.m. Monday. He faces arraignment Tuesday in First District Court, Hempstead.

Parish, an economist who once taught at Charleston Southern, filed a financial affidavit last week seeking help in appealing his federal 24-year prison sentence.

An order filed Tuesday with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., assigns the Parish criminal appeal to the public defender.

Parish pleaded guilty last year to two criminal counts of fraud and one count of lying to investigators. Sentenced June 26 and now serving time in a federal prison in North Carolina, Parish has filed a notice of appeal with the 4th Circuit.

While he was also ordered to repay $66 million that investors lost, a judgment in a companion civil suit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission and filed in federal court last week indicates only a portion of the money went for his personal use.

Parish personally benefited from only $7.7 million, said Alex Rue, the senior trial counsel for the Securities and Exchange Commission office in Atlanta.

The court order requires him to repay that money, along with prejudgment interest, for a total of $8.3 million.

The judgment is in addition to the $66 million Parish was ordered to repay in the criminal case, said David Dantzler, the attorney helping tally Parish's assets. He said that, when everything is counted, investors will likely only recover a dime on the dollar.

Attorney Andy Savage, who represented Parish during the district court proceedings, said the $7.7 million is important.

City of Angels CEO Dr. Rudra (ROO'-druh) Sabaratnam (sab-ah-RAT'-nahm) entered the plea Monday in U.S. District Court.

He and the operator of a Skid Row health assessment center are charged with conspiring to receive and pay kickbacks for patient referrals.

An indictment says millions of dollars were improperly billed to government programs by City of Angels and two other area hospitals.

Sabaratnam was ordered to home detention after posting $700,000 bond. If convicted, he could face 50 years in prison. His trial date was set for next month.

China Arnold, 28, is charged with aggravated murder in the 2005 death of her daughter, Paris Talley, and could face the death penalty if convicted. She has pleaded not guilty.

Her retrial in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court comes six months after a judge declared a mistrial in her initial trial, saying new evidence had surfaced to bolster Arnold's innocence claim.

Visiting Judge John Kessler declared the mistrial Feb. 11, just as closing arguments were to begin, after he privately heard testimony from a juvenile who said he was at Arnold's apartment complex the night the baby died.

The judge did not give details about the juvenile's testimony. The Dayton Daily News reported that a man had told defense attorneys his 5-year-old son claimed to have found the baby in the oven and pulled her out. The newspaper said the boy identified an older child as the person who may have put Paris Talley in the oven.

Assistant Montgomery County Prosecutor David Franceschelli called defense claims that someone else may have been responsible a "fanciful" account contradicted by evidence.

Both prosecutors and defense attorneys have been barred by the court from talking publicly about the case.

During Arnold's first trial, prosecution witnesses said she admitted killing the baby by putting her in the microwave.

Arnold did not testify, but defense witnesses said she told them she had nothing to do with the baby's death, didn't know how it happened and had expressed shock when told the child may have been burned in a microwave.

Defense attorney Jon Paul Rion said other people had access to the baby, that people questioned about the case had changed their stories, and that Arnold was intoxicated to the point of blacking out when the child died.

Gerber Products Co. and the Food and Drug Administration have found no evidence of tampering with Gerber products. The company was flooded with complaints after people saw the videos, the FDA said.

Authorities said Anton Dunn caused to be posted on the Internet three videos of himself in which he boasted about the poisonings and said he could not be caught.

Dunn, 42, of New York, was charged with sending threats in interstate commerce and falsely claiming to have tampered with a consumer product, crimes that carry a potential penalty of 10 years in prison upon conviction.

A U.S. District Court judge ordered Dunn held until a bail hearing on Tuesday. His lawyer, Sarah Baumgartel, had no comment outside court.

In a statement, Gerber's parent company, Nestle Nutrition, said it believed the Internet postings were a "malicious hoax" and the company was cooperating with authorities.

"The safety of Gerber and Nestle Nutrition products is our top priority," it said.

In court papers, FDA agent Michael Felezzola wrote that a Gerber representative on April 20 reported a threatening video entitled "gerbersbabyfoodalert" had been posted on YouTube.

In the 10-minute video, apparently recorded in a shower stall, a man identified as Trashman said Gerber employees acting at his direction had poisoned millions of bottles of baby food with the intent to kill babies.

Authorities said the person appearing on the videos was Dunn and he sometimes wore a mask that partially covered his face. Subsequent videos stated that the poisoning would involve cyanide and rat poison, and that four babies had already died.

Dunn, who is black, claimed in a July 24 video that he was trying to kill black and Hispanic babies, though white babies also were likely to die, authorities said.

"Our main reason for doing this is we're trying to cut down on the black population," the video says.

Sharpton declined to plead guilty in exchange for time served. He was held for 5 1/2 hours on May 7 after he and scores of others were arrested for blocking intersections to protest the acquittals of three officers in the Sean Bell shooting.

He said outside court Monday that the plea offer was unfair and that the charges against him and others should be dropped.

A judge offered to drop charges against Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, friends of Bell who were wounded in the Nov. 25, 2006, shooting, provided they stay out of trouble for six months. Bell was killed in a hail of 50 police bullets as he left his bachelor party at a Queens topless bar.

Sharpton said his decision to go to trial was "a matter of law, not just a matter of principle."

He said that although all the defendants were arrested for doing the same thing, those who had records of civil rights activism were "singled out" and weren't given the opportunity to have their cases adjourned.

Barbara Thompson, spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney, said officials in her office "looked at each case individually."

Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Neil Ross scheduled a trial for Sharpton and about 10 others on Sept. 10.