NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly.

Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.

The Associated Press learned about the NASA results from one person familiar with the survey who spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to discuss them.

A senior NASA official, associate administrator Thomas S. Luedtke, said revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence in airlines and affect airline profits. Luedtke acknowledged that the survey results "present a comprehensive picture of certain aspects of the U.S. commercial aviation industry."

The AP sought to obtain the survey data over 14 months under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

"Release of the requested data, which are sensitive and safety-related, could materially affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general aviation companies whose pilots participated in the survey," Luedtke wrote in a final denial letter to the AP. NASA also cited pilot confidentiality as a reason, although no airlines were identified in the survey, nor were the identities of pilots, all of whom were promised anonymity.

Among other results, the pilots reported at least twice as many bird strikes, near mid-air collisions and runway incursions as other government monitoring systems show, according to a person familiar with the results who was not authorized to discuss them publicly.

The survey also revealed higher-than-expected numbers of pilots who experienced "in-close approach changes" — potentially dangerous, last-minute instructions to alter landing plans.

Officials at the NASA Ames Research Center in California have said they want to publish their own report on the project by year's end.

Internet phone company Vonage Holdings Corp. suffered another blow, disclosing that a third major telecom company had filed a patent infringement lawsuit against it.

AT&T Inc. filed suit Wednesday in federal court in Wisconsin claiming Vonage is violating a single patent that lets users access an Internet phone system using a standard phone device, Vonage said in a regulatory filing.

Vonage's stock, which was down 13 cents to $1.54 in 4 p.m. New York Stock Exchange composite trading, was down another 24 cents to $1.30 in after-hours trading. Vonage went public in May of last year at $17.

One of the early players offering Internet telephone service, Holmdel, N.J.-based Vonage, has been reeling in the past year as it has lost two high-profile patent lawsuits. All the major phone companies have patents they claim cover aspects of voice over Internet phone technology.

Verizon opened the floodgates with the first suit months ago. A federal jury ruled that Vonage had illegally used Verizon patents, which concerned routing Internet calls through traditional phone switches. Vonage was ordered to pay $66 million and pay a 5.5% royalty fee. An appeals court recently upheld an injunction barring Vonage from using two of the Verizon patents but sent a decision on a third patent back for further review.

Earlier this month Vonage agreed to settle a lawsuit by Sprint Nextel Corp. and pay the carrier $80 million in a licensing deal that covers past and future use of patents related to connecting Internet phone calls. The deal came a couple of weeks after a jury in Kansas had found against Vonage and awarded Sprint $69.5 million in damages.

AT&T said it has been trying to arrange a settlement with Vonage for the past two years but was unable to negotiate a "reasonable licensing arrangement" with the company, an AT&T spokesman said.

"We were forced to file a lawsuit," the spokesman said.

In a statement, Vonage said the company had hoped to keep negotiating. "It's our preference to settle disputes through negotiation rather than litigation," said Vonage chief legal officer Sharon O'Leary in a statement. "We will continue to work toward an amicable solution."

Vonage, which has been losing customers since the legal disputes became known, said in the statement that its primary focus was to improve the quality of service to customers and maximize value for shareholders.

A senior official from the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union has appeared in the Perth Magistrates court to face a charge of trespass.

It is alleged the assistant secretary of the union, Joe McDonald, entered the Lakeside Shopping Centre building site at Joondalup in February and refused to leave when asked by site official.

The court has heard Mr McDonald had his state and federal tickets to enter building sites revoked in July last year.

Today his lawyer argued Mr McDonald was on the site lawfully and left within a reasonable time after he was requested to do so.

The Magistrate, Joe Randazzo, reserved his judgement until Thursday so he could consider relevant case law.

After more than a year of negotiations, Reed Smith LLP has completed the final piece of last year's merger with London law firm Richards Butler. Richards Butler Hong Kong will merge into the firm, effective Jan. 1.

The deal gives Reed Smith 110 lawyers in Hong Kong, plus an operation in Beijing. It will also seek a license to practice in Shanghai. Once the transaction is completed, Reed Smith will have 23 offices, more than 1,500 lawyers and revenue of more than $1 billion.

Reed Smith is Pittsburgh's eighth-largest private company and second-largest law firm. It is the second Pittsburgh-based law firm to enter China following Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP, which via a merger completed this past January, has offices in Hong Kong, Beijing and Taipei

Richards Butler Hong Kong is among that city's five largest firms.

Reed Smith firmwide Managing Partner Gregory Jordan said in a statement that the firm's strategic plan has been to develop a leading presence in commercial business centers most important to its clients.

"Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing are clearly among those key markets," Jordan said.

Platinum Shield Association, a group that represents current and former franchisees seeking class-action status, alleges that the shipping company intentionally misled store owners into believing a new concept - The UPS (nyse: UPS - news - people ) Store - would be more profitable than their existing stores.

UPS acquired the Mail Boxes Etc. chain in 2001 and later renamed most of the stores as The UPS Store.

A copy of the decision was provided to The Associated Press by the group.

"This is a huge win for our organization," Howard Spanier, president of the association and a former franchisee, said in a statement. Spanier said franchisees were not given adequate information about the rebranding, which he said was "unavoidable and disastrous for many."

Franchisees involved in the suit are seeking damages and the chance to rescind their UPS Store contracts, the group said.

A call seeking comment from Atlanta-based UPS was directed to an attorney involved with the case. A voicemail message was not immediately returned.

The Brooklyn man pleaded guilty to a violation after spending a night in jail, but he later appealed. Courts have upheld his arrest so far.

His lawyer, Nancy E. Little, said Wednesday there was no legal justification for arresting Jones for simply standing on the street.

"You need something more," she said. "You need to be being verbally abusive, or really blocking lots of people, or lying down on the sidewalk."

But assistant Manhattan district attorney Paula Rose-Stark said the disorderly conduct arrest was warranted, noting that Jones' behavior stood out "amid the inevitable hustle and bustle of Times Square."

Prosecutors' arguments drew several questions Wednesday from judges — including Chief Judge Judith Kaye, who wondered aloud how bustling Times Square was when Jones was arrested around 2 a.m.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked Virginia's plans to kill Christopher Scott Emmett, 36, hours before he was to die by lethal injection. Courts in Nevada and Texas this week postponed executions scheduled before year's end, making 2007 one of the quietest so far for executions since the mid-1990s.

"Some courts are being prudent by waiting to see how the Supreme Court will go," said Lisa McCalmont, a consultant to the death penalty clinic at the University of California at Berkeley law school.

Fewer than 50 executions will take place this year, even if several states pushing ahead with lethal injections defeat legal efforts to stop them. The last time executions numbered fewer than 50 was in 1996, when there were 45.

Since executions resumed in this country in 1977 after a Supreme Court-ordered halt, 1,099 inmates have died in state and federal execution chambers. The highest annual total was 98 in 1999, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment.

In 2007, 42 people have been executed.

Texas, where 26 prisoners have been put to death this year, plans no more executions in 2007 after federal and state judges stopped four death sentences from being carried out.

Executions also have been delayed in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas and Oklahoma since the high court announced Sept. 25 it would hear a challenge to Kentucky's lethal injection method. Courts in California, Delaware, Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee previously cited problems with lethal injections procedures in stopping executions.

The last person executed in this country was Michael Richard, 49, who died by lethal injection in Texas the same day the Supreme Court agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injection procedures in Kentucky. A Texas state judge refused that day to accept an appeal from Richard's lawyers, saying it had arrived after office hours.

Kentucky's method of lethal injection executions is similar to procedures in three dozen states. The court will consider whether the mix of three drugs used to sedate and kill prisoners has the potential to cause pain severe enough to violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

"The U.S. is clearly in what amounts to a de facto death penalty moratorium," said David Dow, a lawyer who runs the Texas Innocence Network out of the University of Houston Law Center and represents death row inmates.

Josh Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore., and a death penalty supporter, said executions should continue even while the Supreme Court looks at lethal injection.

The reprieves for the dozen or so men whose dates to die had been set are likely to be only temporary. Even the lawyers for the Kentucky inmates acknowledged there are alternative drugs and procedures available that lessen the risk of pain.

Justice Antonin Scalia also has suggested that people are reading too much into the court's decision to take up the Kentucky case. Scalia said Tuesday night he would have allowed Arkansas to proceed with the execution of Jack Jones.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had earlier put off Jones' execution because of the high court review. That decision "was based on the mistaken premise" that the high court wants state and federal judges to intervene every time a defendant raises a court challenge to lethal injection, Scalia said in a statement accompanying the Supreme Court's order that kept the appeals court ruling in place.

State officials in Florida and Mississippi are continuing with plans to carry out death sentences despite the high court's review. In both states, high courts are considering pleas for a delay from condemned inmates.

Lawyers for Mississippi are arguing that there is no reason to wait for the Supreme Court's lethal injection ruling. Earl Wesley Berry has an Oct. 30 execution date for a 1987 killing.

In Florida, Mark Dean Schwab, 38, is scheduled to die Nov. 15 for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old. Executions had been suspended since December after it took twice as long as usual — 34 minutes — for a convicted killer to die. Gov. Gov. Charlie Crist ended the freeze in July by signing Schwab's death warrant.