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.

Terry Childs has been jailed since July 13 on four felony counts of computer tampering. He is accused of creating secret passwords that gave him exclusive access to the city's new multi-million-dollar computer network, which stores records such as officials' e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail bookings.

Authorities said Childs initially refused to reveal correct passwords to them, but that he turned them over to Mayor Gavin Newsom during an unusual jailhouse visit Tuesday.

The city is still experiencing computer problems, said San Francisco Deputy District Attorney Conrad del Rosario. He told San Francisco Superior Court Judge Lucy McCabe that the Sheriff's Department is "locked out" and that other city departments are having problems.

Defense attorney Erin Crane said her client was the subject of a smear campaign by co-workers jealous of Childs' computer savvy and work ethic.

In arguing for reduced bail, Crane said in a motion that Childs was merely trying to protect the network after "co-workers and supervisors had in the past maliciously damaged the system themselves, hindered his ability to maintain it ... and shown complete indifference to maintaining it themselves."

Crane also said Childs, 43, posed no danger to the public.

She declined to comment outside court other than to say she was disappointed about the bail. She said his incarceration before trial will hinder her preparation of a complex case.

The unusual request is based on the failure of anyone involved in the case — lawyers on both sides as well as the justices — to take account of a change in federal law in 2006 that authorizes the death penalty for members of the military who are convicted of child rape.

The court almost never grants such requests, but lawyers for Louisiana said their situation was different because the 5-4 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy relied in part on what Kennedy called a "national consensus" against executing convicted rapists.

The ruling on June 25 drew harsh criticism from politicians in Louisiana and other states where executing those who rape children was authorized or under consideration. Presidential contenders John McCain and Barack Obama also said they disagreed with the outcome of the case.

But only in the days following the decision did anyone point out that Congress changed the law and that President Bush signed an executive order in September 2007 that implemented the change. It was first discussed on a military law blog.