Ricardo Ortiz was pronounced dead at 6:18 p.m. Thursday.

The 46-year-old was the fifth Texas inmate to die this year and the second of two executions in consecutive nights this week in the nation's most active death penalty state.

Ortiz was condemned for the retaliation slaying of 22-year-old Gerardo Garcia more than 11 years ago. Authorities say Garcia was killed so he couldn't testify about bank robberies the pair was suspected of carrying out.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal Thursday to delay the execution. Ortiz had argued he should get federal money to pay for help filing a state clemency request.

Prosecutor Christopher Lawson says McGowan was upset because the judge refused to remove public defender Jeffrey Martin from the case.

McGowan had smuggled a bag of feces into court and spread it on Martin's hair and face before flinging the excrement at jurors. No jurors were hit.

McGowan has pleaded not guilty to kidnapping for robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and other counts in connection with a 2007 home invasion.

Jim Rosendall's cooperation with the FBI led prosecutors to recommend a sentence of no more than 11 months in prison, well below the five-year maximum.

The company used cash and plane trips to Las Vegas to curry favor with Detroit officials and win the $47 million contract to recycle sludge, according to a criminal charge unsealed earlier in the day.

The city officials were not identified.

The influence-peddling game reached a climax in fall 2007 when a city council member accepted payments to vote in favor of a deal with Synagro Technologies, the government alleges. The contract was approved, 5-4, in November 2007.

"People expected me to give things to get their support," Rosendall, former president of Synagro of Michigan, said in court.

Earlier Monday, Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. addressed speculation about a federal investigation into the conduct of city government members. "I think we'll have to see how it plays out," he said.

Rosendall's guilty plea comes more than four months after Kwame Kilpatrick resigned as mayor and went to jail in a sex-and-text scandal after admitting he lied during a civil trial to cover up a torrid affair with his chief of staff.

The city council member involved in the bribery conspiracy case was not identified, nor is "City Official A," who with others was flown to Las Vegas in September 2003 at a cost of $20,000 to see a boxing match, the government said.

In court filings Tuesday, lawyers for the VA and the veterans said they had reached agreement to settle a class-action lawsuit originally filed by five veterans groups alleging invasion of privacy. The money, which will come from the U.S. Treasury, will be used to pay veterans who can show they suffered actual harm, such as physical symptoms of emotional distress or expenses incurred for credit monitoring.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson in Washington must approve the terms of the settlement before it becomes final.

"This settlement means the VA is finally accepting full responsibility for a huge problem that continues to worry millions of veterans, retirees, service members and families," said Joe Davis, spokesman for Veterans of Foreign Wars, which was not involved in the lawsuit.

VA spokesman Phil Budahn said: "We want to assure veterans there is no evidence that the information involved in this incident was used to harm a single veteran."

The lawsuit came after a VA data analyst in 2006 admitted that he had lost a laptop and external drive containing the names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of up to 26.5 million veterans and active-duty troops.

The laptop was later recovered intact, but a blistering report by the VA inspector general faulted both the data analyst and his supervisors for putting veterans at unreasonable risk. The data analyst had lost the information when his suburban Maryland home was burglarized on May 3, 2006, after taking the data home without permission.

The VA employee promptly notified his superiors, but due to a series of delays, veterans were not told of the theft until nearly three weeks later, on May 22. Then-VA Secretary James Nicholson later said he was "mad as hell" that he wasn't immediately told about the burglary.

"Perhaps my signature is not as good as it once was," Gerald Anderson, of St. Paul, told the three-judge panel hearing Coleman's lawsuit. "It gets cloudy and crooked. I am 75 years old."

But that shouldn't have disqualified his vote, he said: "I want it back. I'm entitled to my vote."

A statewide recount gave Democrat Al Franken a 225-vote edge. The personal stories that Anderson and five other voters told are just one front on Coleman's effort to have more votes counted.

Coleman's legal team had intended to submit copies of thousands of ballots as exhibits, but the judges disqualified them as evidence Monday because campaign workers had marked on some envelopes. On Tuesday, much of the panel's time was spent with state officials, lawyers and court staff working out a plan to get about 11,000 rejected absentees to St. Paul from counties throughout the state.

FBI spokesman Jim Margolin says Nicholas Cosmo surrendered at a U.S. Postal Inspection Service office in Hicksville on Monday night.

Cosmo runs Agape World Inc. in Hauppauge (HAW'-pawg). He's accused of taking in $300 million from investors and cheating them out of about $140 million.

A letter hanging in Cosmo's office window denies there was any Ponzi scheme, the type of fraud Bernard Madoff (MAY'-dawf) is accused of committing. A Ponzi, or pyramid, scheme promises unusually high returns and pays early investors with money from later investors.

Defense attorneys at the Herrick Feinstein law firm haven't returned telephone calls seeking comment.