According to the DOJ, Sapsizian admitted to paying the bribes to a director at Costa Rica's Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad, in order to secure mobile telephone contracts for his company. Alcatel was eventually awarded a $149 million mobile phone contract in August 2001, the department said.

Sapsizian had been employed by Alcatel and its subsidiaries for more than 20 years. Alcatel merged with Lucent Technologies in late 2006 and the joint company is now known as Alcatel-Lucent.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation continues to investigate the matter, the DOJ said.

Lawyers for former US vice-presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby asked a federal judge Thursday to delay Libby's prison sentence because they felt they have a good chance of winning an appeal of his conviction. Libby was found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice in March, and sentenced to 2 1/2- years in prison on Tuesday.

Defense lawyers filed papers with the court Thursday arguing that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald did not have the authority to bring charges against Libby, and that they were wrongly barred from questioning NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell about certain aspects of the Valerie Plame scandal. Earlier this week, US District Judge Reggie B. Walton said there was no reason that Libby should not begin serving his sentence while his case is on appeal.

Senior Circuit Judge Donald Walter presented the hypothetical situation about Hitler to American Civil Liberties Union attorney JoNel Newman, asking her if a school board would be allowed to remove that book from library shelves.

Newman answered by saying that the book about Cuba was a geography book about daily life on the island, not about Castro.

"The political reality in Cuba is not what the book is about, " Newman said. "The School Board can't remove it because it wishes to inject a political message into it."

Board members voted last year to remove the book after a parent who spent time as a political prisoner in Cuba complained. Cuban-Americans, most of them anti-Castro, have significant political sway as the largest ethnic group in Miami.

In seeking to remove the book, the board overruled the decision of two academic advisory committees, as well as the county school superintendent.

But another parent and the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida challenged the removal. A federal judge ruled last summer that the board's opposition to the book was political and that it should add books of different perspectives to its collections instead of removing the offending titles. The ACLU contends that diverse opinions should be represented in school libraries.

Circuit Judge Ed Carnes presented his own hypothetical, asking Newman if a book about North Korea could be pulled from shelves because it failed to mention problems in that Communist government.

Newman countered by saying such political discussions shouldn't be required for books for elementary students, arguing whether a book about the Great Wall of China must mention Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse-tung.

On another issue, the third member of the appeals panel, Circuit Judge Charles Wilson, asked if a book had to be part of the curriculum or required reading in order to be removed from school libraries, where it was available for checkout on a voluntary basis.

"If a book is educationally unsuitable, it can be removed, " said Richard Ovelmen, the School Board's attorney.

Also at issue is whether the ACLU has standing to file its legal challenge.

The court hasn't indicated when it would rule.

The panel created by Governor Tim Kaine to study the Virginia Tech shootings has hired an outside law firm for advice.

The international law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom will work with the panel on a pro bono basis. The states' attorney general's office has been advising the panel, state police and Virginia Tech.

According to the panel's chairman Gerald Massengill, because of the independent nature of the panel, outside counsel was necessary to provide legal advice.

Governor Kaine created the panel in order to study the circumstances and responses surrounding the April 16 tragedy.

A former civilian employee of the Department of Defense (DOD) and former member of the California Army National Guard, has pleaded guilty to defrauding the United States and conspiring with four other individuals to do the same, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division announced today.

Jesse D. Lane Jr. pleaded guilty in federal court in Los Angeles before U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson to one count of conspiracy and one count of honest services wire fraud. As part of his plea, Lane admitted that he and his co-conspirators were members of the 223rd Finance Detachment, a unit of the California National Guard that processes pay for Army National Guard members, and were deployed together to Iraq and Kuwait from March 2004 until February 2005, when they returned to their home drilling post in Compton, Calif. Beginning in March 2005, and continuing through August 2005, Lane accessed a DOD pay-processing computer system and inputted thousands of dollars in unauthorized DOD pay and entitlements for himself and his co-conspirators. In return, Lane’s co-conspirators kicked back at least half of the money they received to Lane.

Lane faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison for conspiracy, 20 years in prison for honest services wire fraud, and three years of supervised release. Sentencing was set for Sept. 24, 2007.

On Nov. 13, 2006, Lane’s co-conspirators Jennifer Anjakos of Chula Vista, Calif., Lomeli Chavez of Oceanside, Calif., and Derryl Hollier and Luis Lopez of Los Angeles each pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud on related charges arising from this scheme. Their sentencings have been scheduled for Sept. 10, 2007.

These cases are being prosecuted by trial attorney John P. Pearson of the Public Integrity Section of the Criminal Division, which is headed by Section Chief William M. Welch II. These cases are being investigated by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division, the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division, the FBI, and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, in support of the Justice Department’s National Procurement Fraud Task Force and the International Contract Corruption Initiative. The prosecution has received substantial assistance from the California National Guard and the U.S. Army Audit Agency.

The National Procurement Fraud Initiative was announced by Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty in October 2006, and is designed to promote the early detection, identification, prevention and prosecution of procurement fraud associated with the increase in contracting activity for national security and other government programs. As part of this initiative, the Deputy Attorney General has created the National Procurement Fraud Task Force, which is chaired by Assistant Attorney General Fisher.

Under Bush, the FCC has expanded its indecency rules, taking a much harder line on obscenities uttered on broadcast television and radio.

While the court sent the case back to the commission to rewrite its indecency policy, it said that it was "doubtful" that the agency would be able to "adequately respond to the constitutional and statutory challenges raised by the networks."

The networks hailed the decision.

Martin, the chairman of the commission, attacked the court's reasoning.

He said that if the agency was unable to prohibit some vulgarities during prime time, "Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want."

Beginning with the FCC's indecency finding in a case against NBC for an obscenity uttered by the U2 singer Bono during the Golden Globes awards ceremony in 2003, Bush's Republican and Democratic appointees to the commission have imposed a tougher policy by punishing any station that broadcasts a fleeting expletive.

That includes profanities blurted out on live shows like the Golden Globes or scripted shows like "NYPD Blue," which was cited in the case.

Reversing decades of more lenient policy, the commission had found that the mere utterance of certain profane words implied that sexual or excretory acts were carried out and therefore violated the indecency rules.

But the court said vulgar words were just as often used out of frustration or excitement, and not to convey any broader obscene meaning.

"In recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities," the court said

Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the court then cited examples in which Bush and Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain.

Three years ago, Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry profane version of "get lost" to Sen. Patrick Leahy on the floor of the U.S. Senate.