Neal Capria, an environmental lawyer and a pioneer in Democratic politics who helped bring his party to power in Brookhaven in the 1970s, was found dead in his Port Jefferson Station condominium Tuesday morning. He was 66.

Capria, who last month began work as an aide to the Suffolk legislature, was found in his bed by his son Justin who came by to drive his father to work.

"He was one of the trailblazers," said Richard Schaffer, Suffolk Democratic chairman. "People should know who he was because he is partly responsible for where we are today," referring to recent party victories in the county and various Suffolk towns.

Capria served as part of the Democratic majority on the Brookhaven Town Board from 1978 to 1982. He was the last elected Democratic town board official until the party regained power in 2006. For the past 18 months, Capria worked as an assistant town attorney, but was let go last month when Republicans regained control of the town board.

From 1982 to 1987, Capria was also a law partner of the late state and county Democratic chairman Dominic Baranello. He continued to share offices with him until 1995. He also served as a counsel to the state Senate minority for five years in the 1980s.

Capria also made his mark as an environmental attorney. In 1991, he won a $7.2-million settlement for 550 South Setauket homeowners who were damaged by a 1-million gallon spill - the largest in Long Island history - caused by leaks in a Northville Industries pipeline.

Brookhaven Supervisor Brian X. Foley, a Democrat, lauded Capria as "very principled" throughout his career. "What clearly came across with Neal was his sense of decency, his concern for his community," Foley said.

For the past four years, friends said Capria had problems with his eyesight, requiring him to use a large screen computer, and make large print copies of documents.

"He was never negative about it and used the right kind of tools," said Mark Grossman, a Foley aide. But the eye problems, he added, "Gave him a real sensitivity to the special needs issue and had him advocating for other employees."

Born in Brooklyn, Capria attended public schools, moved to Freeport at age 16 and later graduated from C.W. Post College, and later Chicago Kent College of Law.

He also served in the Navy and later became a reservist in the Navy. He worked in New York City for several years as a Legal Aid attorney, before moving to Suffolk. He married in 1970 and had two children. He and his wife Denise, divorced in 1994.

"We was a very nice man, who always listened to you," said his son Justin of Holbrook. "Only a few weeks ago, we watched the Super Bowl together. We bonded and had a great time together."

One of Kentucky's oldest law firms, Stoll Keenon Ogden, has announced changes in its top management position.

William M. Lear Jr., managing director for 18 years, will step down to return to full-time law practice.

The new managing director will be J. David Smith Jr., a lawyer with the firm.

Lear will remain with Stoll Keenon and continue as chairman of its board of directors for the next two years. Kendrick Riggs is vice chairman.

The managing director functions as the chief operating officer of the firm, Smith said, dealing mostly with financial issues. "We've got 150 lawyers in four cities. Managing director is, basically, a full time job." Smith said Lear "did an incomparable job."

Lear will concentrate on constitutional law cases, economic development and government relations. In the past five years, Lear has become a major downtown developer with several projects in the South Hill neighborhood, including Center Court loft condominiums.

In the community, Lear served as a state representative from 1985 to 1994. He is vice chairman of economic development for Commerce Lexington, and he serves on the board of the Speed Museum in Louisville. He is listed in Best Lawyers in America and Super Lawyers for Kentucky.

Smith, also included in Best Lawyers in America, has been with Stoll Keenon since 1982, and is active in the Kentucky Historical Society and the YMCA.

Takafumi Horie, former CEO of Internet service provider Livedoor, was found guilty last March of inflating earnings reports and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison. Four other former executives were also found guilty.

Horie was not present Friday for the first hearing of his appeal at the Tokyo High Court, court spokesman Takahiro Ito said, refusing to release any further details of the court session.

Horie pleaded not guilty through his lawyers, according to head lawyer Yasuyuki Takai.

"First of all, (Horie) is not guilty," Takai said he told the court.

Horie and other top executives were arrested in January 2006, sparking a sell-off on the Tokyo Stock Exchange dubbed "Livedoor shock" over the downfall of the company and Horie, who had become a celebrity for his gutsy takeover attempts and flashy lifestyle.

The executives were accused of setting up a number of funds to do stock swaps and other stock trading to pad their books. Prosecutors said the complex schemes fabricated $46.2 million in profits.

Takai said Horie had no intention of evading the law in setting up the funds.

Although Horie's prison term was shorter than the four years demanded by prosecutors, it was considered harsh by Japanese standards, as executives charged with such white-collar crimes generally avoid prison terms.

Horie, a college dropout, became a millionaire by selling Livedoor stock at the height of their value. He drew widespread media attention for his aggressive get-rich-quick schemes, which struck a sharp contrast with the staid conformity of Japan's traditional business elite.

Horie was absent Friday "to prevent turmoil" in the court, Takai said. He said Horie plans to remain absent throughout his appeal trial, which is legal.

At its height, Livedoor drew a large number of individual investors, partly because of Horie's fame. Those investors, many of them amateurs at the stock market, suffered big losses when Livedoor shares nose-dived after Horie's arrest. The shares were later delisted.

The Livedoor case has prompted calls for clearer laws about stock trading and heavier penalties for falsifying earnings reports.

The issue in the LaRue case was whether the Employee Retirement Income Security Act permits an individual account holder to sue plan administrators for breaching their fiduciary duties.

The language of the law refers to recovering money for the "plan" rather than for an individual, raising the question of whether a participant can sue solely for himself.

Justice John Paul Stevens, in his opinion for the court, said that such lawsuits are allowed. "Fiduciary misconduct need not threaten the solvency of the entire plan to reduce benefits below the amount that participants would otherwise receive," Stevens said.

The decision overturned a ruling by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.

Unlike people enrolled in traditional pension plans, employees in 401(k) plans, which have exploded in number in the past two decades, choose from a menu of options on where to invest their money. That puts workers squarely in the middle of decision-making about their pensions and inevitably leads to the kind of disputes LaRue has with his plan's administrators.

"Defined contribution plans dominate the retirement plan scene today," unlike when ERISA was enacted in the mid-1970s, Stevens said.

Many traditional pension plans guaranteeing a fixed monthly benefit have either been frozen or terminated, and 401(k) plans are the main source of retirement income, said the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents 60,000 pilots at 41 air carriers.

The Bush administration argued in support of workers. The government said the appeals court ruling barring LaRue's lawsuit would leave 401(k) participants without a meaningful remedy from any federal, state or local court when plan administrators fail to live up to their duties.

Business groups supported LaRue's employer. They argued that ERISA is aimed at encouraging employers to set up pension plans, while guarding against administrative abuses involving the plan as a whole. The law doesn't permit individual lawsuits like LaRue's, the business groups said.

Congress enacted ERISA after some widely publicized failures by companies and labor unions to pay promised pensions. Workers in class-action lawsuits have long relied on the law, most recently in the scandal-ridden collapses of companies like Enron and its 401(k) plan for workers.

The term 401(k) refers to a section of the Internal Revenue Code.

Participants in 401(k) plans do not know how much money they will receive in retirement. Employees invest a certain amount each month and how much they get back depends on how well their chosen investments have performed.

"I'm very disappointed in the article. It's not true," the likely Republican presidential nominee said as his wife, Cindy, stood beside him during a news conference called to address the matter.

"I've served this nation honorably for more than half a century," said McCain, a four-term Arizona senator and former Navy pilot. "At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust."

"I intend to move on," he added.

McCain described the woman in question, lobbyist Vicki Iseman, as a friend.

The newspaper quoted anonymous aides as saying they had urged McCain and Iseman to stay away from each other prior to his failed presidential campaign in 2000. In its own follow-up story, The Washington Post quoted longtime aide John Weaver, who split with McCain last year, as saying he met with lobbyist Iseman and urged her to steer clear of McCain.

Weaver told the Times he arranged the meeting before the 2000 campaign after "a discussion among the campaign leadership" about Iseman.

But McCain said he was unaware of any such conversation, and denied that his aides ever tried to talk to him about his interactions with Iseman.

"I never discussed it with John Weaver. As far as I know, there was no necessity for it," McCain said. "I don't know anything about it," he added. "John Weaver is a friend of mine. He remains a friend of mine. But I certainly didn't know anything of that nature."

His wife also said she was disappointed with the newspaper.

"More importantly, my children and I not only trust my husband, but know that he would never do anything to not only disappoint our family, but disappoint the people of America. He's a man of great character," Cindy McCain said.

The couple smiled throughout the questioning at a Toledo hotel.

The published reports said McCain and Iseman each denied having a romantic relationship. Neither story asserted that there was a romantic relationship and offered no evidence that there was, reporting only that aides worried about the appearance of McCain having close ties to a lobbyist with business before the Senate Commerce Committee on which McCain served.

Overall, the number of individual income-tax audits reached a 10-year high in 2007 – and the IRS plans to increase that number this year.

The push comes as the agency faces heavy pressure from Congress to raise additional revenue and shrink the nation's $290 billion "tax gap," the difference between what's collected and what should be collected.

IRS research indicates that much of the tax noncompliance is committed by self-employed workers, such as consultants and small-business owners, whose taxes aren't withheld from their pay and whose income isn't reported separately.

This year, "we will continue to focus on audits of high-income individuals," said Linda Stiff, the IRS's acting commissioner.

In addition, agents have increased audits of taxpayers involved in partnerships and businesses organized as "S corporations."

For the vast majority of taxpayers, the odds of getting audited remain low. Only about 1 percent of all individual returns filed in recent years have been audited. But the chances now are higher than just a few years ago.

The IRS relies on numerous techniques to choose which returns to audit. Many are selected using a secret computerized-scoring system that the IRS recently updated, which is based on a continuing research project involving in-depth audits of thousands of returns. Computer programs assign each tax return a score that evaluates the potential for inaccuracies, based on the IRS's experience with similar returns.

Others are picked because of "mismatches" – which means that something a taxpayer reported doesn't match what was reported separately to the IRS by employers or financial institutions.

Some returns get audited because they were done by a tax preparer the IRS suspects of wrongdoing.

Then there are those that get selected because of a tip from confidential informants, such as a former business partner or ex-spouse.

The Supreme Court yesterday protected the makers of medical devices that have passed the most rigorous federal review standards from lawsuits by consumers who allege that the devices caused them harm.

The court ruled 8 to 1 against the estate of a New York man who was seriously injured when a balloon catheter manufactured by Medtronic burst during an angioplasty in 1996. Charles Riegel, who died three years ago, and his wife sued under New York law, alleging that the device's design was faulty and its labeling deficient.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, said federal law preempts the imposition of liability under state laws for devices that have undergone the Food and Drug Administration's pre-market approval process, the most rigorous of the FDA's testing procedures.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the lone dissenter. Congress did not intend the preemption clause, Ginsburg wrote, "to effect a radical curtailment of state common-law suits seeking compensation for injuries caused by defectively designed or labeled medical devices."

Courts are filled with lawsuits over preemption, which New York University law professor Catherine M. Sharkey called "the fiercest battle in products liability litigation today."

The Supreme Court this year took several cases that invoke federal preemption. Cases still to be heard include lawsuits in state courts that seek to punish cigarette makers and drug manufacturers.

The court ruled in 1996 that devices approved by the FDA under a less-rigorous process were not protected from state lawsuits. The agency agreed with that.

In 2004 the government reversed its position, and when the case decided yesterday was argued in December, the government said such suits undermine the FDA's authority.