The years-long scandal of Hwang Woo-suk, a former Seoul National University professor charged with fraudulent stem cell research, reached the end of its first chapter yesterday as the court handed down a suspended sentence of two years.

"Though Hwang fabricated the DNA photographs in his 2004 paper and the stem cell charts in his 2005 paper, he cannot be seen as having thus defrauded his sponsors or the public," said the ruling judge of the Seoul Central Court yesterday. The scientist received 2 billion won ($1.7 million) in research funds from corporations by displaying his seemingly successful research papers.

"The money was voluntarily donated by the corporations, regardless of the contents of Hwang's papers," ruled the court.

The prosecution and the court, however, decided that the scientific authenticity of Hwang's papers was to be judged by scientific circles and not by the court.

The scientist was also declared guilty of embezzling part of the money for personal use and illegal egg cell-trading by using borrowed name accounts, said the court.

Court records show a former government scientist accused of attempted espionage last week pleaded guilty earlier this year to overbilling NASA and the Department of Defense more than $265,000 for contracting work.

The January plea by 52-year-old Stewart Nozette of Chevy Chase, Md., was detailed in court records unsealed Friday. The records state the documents were sealed because Nozette was cooperating in unrelated government corruption investigations.

Nozette was arrested last week and accused of selling sensitive government secrets to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence operative.

The unsealed court documents say Nozette pleaded guilty in January to overbilling the government between 2000 and 2006 and spending the money on personal bills and maintaining his swimming pool.

Two U.S. Supreme Court justices are taking theatrics out of the courtroom — and into to a more suitable venue.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia will have nonspeaking roles Saturday night in a production by the Washington National Opera. They'll be dressed in black-tie attire and remain on stage for nearly 90 minutes during the opening performance of "Ariadne auf Naxos" (are-EE-AHD-nay off NACKS-ohs).

The opera depicts a serious opera company and a comedic troupe performing at the same time during a dinner party. The justices will play party guests.

Event organizers say Ginsburg and Scalia are opera lovers and have appeared in previous productions.

More than 6,000 people crowded outside a Tokyo courthouse Monday as Japanese actress Noriko Sakai pleaded guilty to drug use and prosecutors sought a prison sentence in a trial that has caused a media frenzy.

The 38-year-old Sakai was among the first Japanese actresses to gain popularity in Asia, and her arrest in August threatened to shatter her wholesome image.

The scandal has dominated headlines for months in Japan, and authorities have said they will crack down on drug use in the entertainment industry.

Prosecutors accused Sakai of inhaling amphetamines in July on the southern island of Amami Oshima, where she went with her husband and their son to view a lunar eclipse. Investigators also found a tiny amount of the drug in her Tokyo condominium. Sakai was arrested after turning herself in, following a weeklong disappearance.

If things had gone according to plan, Lindsay Murphy would be a big-city tax lawyer by now. Instead, the recent law school graduate found herself doing legal aid, listening to complaints about raw sewage bubbling up into the bathtubs of a Mississippi Delta housing project.

Murphy is among hundreds of newly minted lawyers who've been forced by the recession to take a detour on their way to the nation's top firms, spending up to a year helping out nonprofits for as little as a third of the salary they'd expected.

From San Francisco to New York, high-powered firms are postponing the start dates of new hires they recruited before the economic meltdown. Many are paying the "deferred associates" stipends to spend a year doing public interest work until the business slowdown ends.

For cash-strapped nonprofits and government law offices, the free help is an unexpected silver lining. And the young lawyers and the firms that pay them say they are benefiting from valuable training and hands-on experience.

Murphy, 25, started her public interest fellowship at the University of Mississippi's Civil Legal Clinic in August. She has helped poor clients with housing and tax problems and traveled this month to the poverty-ridden Delta with other attorneys and law students to investigate one low-income neighborhood's sewer problems.

"This is what this profession is for — it's for helping people," said Murphy, who focused on corporate tax early in law school at Ole Miss. "I had lost sight of that."

Nobody has an exact count of how many law firm associates have been deployed to public interest law offices, but experts say it's likely in the high hundreds.

The list of firms paying such stipends include some of the biggest legal names.

Murphy, for example, is one of 59 public interest fellows from Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, whose Dallas office she plans to join next year. Ropes & Gray is paying 51 incoming associates to do public interest work. Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe has 45 participants. All are international firms with large offices around the country.

The economic downturn has meant less work for law firms, fewer experienced attorneys leaving jobs and thousands of lawyers laid off. From August 2008 to August 2009, total law office employment fell by nearly 26,000 jobs, a mere 2 percent but striking for an industry accustomed to constant growth.

In Minnesota, bong water can count as an illegal drug.

That decision from Minnesota's Supreme Court on Thursday raises the threat of longer sentences for drug smokers in that state who fail to dump the water out of bong — a type of water pipe often used to smoke drugs

The court said a person can be prosecuted for a first-degree drug crime for 25 grams or more of bong water that tests positive for a controlled substance.

Lower courts had held that bong water is drug paraphernalia. Possession of that is a misdemeanor crime.

The case involved a woman whose bong had about 2 1/2 tablespoons of liquid that tested positive for methamphetamine. A narcotics officer had testified that drug users sometimes keep bong water to drink or inject later.

The Kentucky Supreme Court is deciding whether the state has the power to seize Internet domain names involved in online gambling after hearing arguments Thursday from lawyers on both sides of the issue.

At issue is whether the more than 100 domain names the state has tried to seize are tantamount to gambling devices such as slot machines, and whether the state has authority for the seizures.

An appellate court has previously ruled that the state can't seize the domain names.

"They have been using these to violate the law in Kentucky," Eric Lycan, a private attorney representing the Kentucky Justice Cabinet, said. "They are subject to forfeiture."

The state previously sued 140 Web sites after determining that they allowed Kentuckians to gamble illegally and asked a judge to either force the sites to block Kentucky users or allow the state to take possession of the domain names — essentially shutting them down. Most of the sites are offshore and serve gamblers in and outside of the state.

Kentucky already allows gambling on horse racing and bingo and has a state lottery.