When federal prosecutors begin to present evidence Monday against terrorism suspect Jose Padilla, their case is expected to rest heavily on a single document: his alleged application to become an Islamic warrior.

Prosecutors plan to call a covert CIA operative to testify in disguise about the document’s provenance and chain of possession, and will go on to introduce more than half of the 200-plus transcripts from wiretapped conversations among the defendants.

Nowhere in the indictment is there mention of the sensational charges leveled against Padilla when he was arrested at O’Hare International Airport in May 2002. Then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft said U.S. agents had thwarted a plot between Padilla, who is a U.S. citizen, and top Al Qaeda figures to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" or blow up apartment buildings in U.S. cities.

The case against Padilla, now 36, has come a long way since then, and illustrates how the administration’s policies of detaining suspects in the war on terrorism can backfire.

The allegations that Padilla was part of a dirty-bomb plot were dropped in November 2005, when the Pentagon transferred him out of a military brig in Charleston, S.C.

He had been held at the brig for 3 1/2 years as an "enemy combatant" with status more like the detainees at Guantanamo than a U.S. citizen incarcerated for the charges he would eventually face in federal court. Much of the time he was without human contact, daylight, any timepiece or a mirror. He was subjected to "stress positions" and extremes of heat, noise and light. And interrogations without an attorney present, the government has said, elicited information the Justice Department included in a widely publicized June 2004 report on Padilla’s alleged contacts with Al Qaeda.

The dossier on the dirty-bomb allegations was augmented by testimony that senior Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah gave while in a secret CIA prison overseas, according to court papers filed in November. Zubaydah is now being held as a "high-value detainee" at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But none of that will be admissible in his conspiracy and material-support trial. In pretrial rulings on defense claims that the government mistreated Padilla, U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke effectively severed the conspiracy case from the dirty-bomb allegations.

Timothy B. Hennis, a quiet father and grandfather retired from the Army after service in the first Gulf War and Somalia, has long been portrayed as an innocent victim of a biased, incompetent criminal justice system.

Hennis was tried twice for a grisly triple murder of a military family, and acquitted after 2 1/2 years on death row. No. 39 on the Death Penalty Information Center’s "Innocence List," the 49-year-old master sergeant has made public appearances with other freed inmates to demonstrate just how wrong the justice system can be. A book and a television movie chronicled his fight to prove his innocence.

Now the Army has called him back from retirement to face a possible court-martial and death sentence for the same crime for which he has twice been tried: raping and stabbing to death a woman and slicing the throats of her two little girls on a drizzly night in 1985 on Summerhill Road in Fayetteville, N.C. New laboratory evidence was strong enough for detectives to persuade the military to take on a case barred by double-jeopardy rules from returning to state court.

The results of tests on crime scene samples — stored for two decades — are expected to be unveiled this week in a military hearing at Ft. Bragg, N.C., where Hennis was recalled to duty Oct. 30 from his modest neighborhood in this lake-studded city near Puget Sound. The Army can recall a retired soldier to charge him with a crime anytime before the legal deadline for prosecution; murder has no statute of limitations.

A knowledgeable source said a DNA match came from semen; lawyers in the case have refused to confirm that.

A spokesman at Ft. Bragg said Hennis was assigned to supply duties commensurate with his rank. There was "no need to lock him up," the spokesman said. After retiring from the military, Hennis had taken a white-collar job.

Hennis is accused of raping and killing Kathryn Eastburn, 31, and killing Erin Eastburn, 3, and Kara Eastburn, 5, on May 9, 1985. Stationed at Ft. Bragg at the time and the father of a baby girl, Hennis two days before the slayings had answered a newspaper advertisement to buy the Eastburns’ dog. He left the home with the family’s English setter, Dixie.

According to Hennis, Kathryn Eastburn explained that the family was moving to England and that she wanted to find Dixie a good home because she feared the dog might not survive the trip. Hennis said he sat with Eastburn at the kitchen table and used the bathroom while he was there. He also said he exchanged phone numbers with Eastburn in case the dog didn’t work out.

The bodies were discovered three days later. A third daughter, a toddler, was found wailing in a crib. She was severely dehydrated but survived. Hennis and his wife went to the authorities after learning on TV that they wanted to interview the man who had adopted the Eastburn dog. Hennis gave biological samples and was released.

Hennis eventually was arrested and convicted, based largely on an eyewitness who said he saw him outside the Eastburn home on the night of the killings.

Fingerprints, an unidentified pubic hair in the living room, unidentified hairs in the sheets and other physical evidence from the crime scene did not implicate Hennis. A test on the semen during the first trial also did not point to Hennis, although full-blown DNA analysis was not yet in use.

Blue Cross of California agreed Thursday to stop canceling individual health coverage unless it can show policyholder deception — a major shift by the state’s largest health insurer that could lead to sweeping industrywide changes.

The move is part of an effort to settle a class-action lawsuit on behalf of as many as 6,000 people canceled since late 2001. It is an about-face for Blue Cross in what had become known as "use-it-and-lose-it" health coverage because the cancellations were often triggered by patients’ claims for treatment.

The insurer’s new stance is aimed at ending rescissions based on policyholders’ honest mistakes, inadvertent errors and other inconsistencies about their medical histories on applications for coverage. Consumers contend that the forms are purposely confusing, increasing the odds that applicants will make mistakes.

The deal is expected to send shock waves through an industry that had stood together in defense of insurers’ ability to retroactively rescind coverage for any application omission, even honest mistakes. Blue Cross is by far the largest insurer in California’s individual market, and its corporate parent, Indianapolis-based WellPoint Inc., is the nation’s largest provider of health benefits.

The practice was brought to light in a series of Los Angeles Times stories that detailed how rescissions were carried out and the hardships on canceled policyholders, including their inability to obtain needed medical care and financial woes caused by sudden debt.

Such cancellations are a potential problem for people who buy individual insurance because they do not have group benefits through an employer or other organization.

Group insurance is guaranteed to all members regardless of health, but insurers can deny individual coverage to people they deem too risky based on the applicant’s medical history and answers to detailed health questions.

Individual insurance is increasingly important now because rising costs are prompting employers to drop health benefits. It also is key to the proposal put forth by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to expand health coverage. He has publicly condemned improper retroactive cancellations and wants to require insurers to sell to all buyers, regardless of health.

Blue Cross parent WellPoint denied any wrongdoing.

A 2001 car accident that left Steven Hailey badly injured was the beginning of his continuing medical and financial calamity.

While Hailey was still recovering in his California home and with medical bills topping $450,000, Blue Shield of California suddenly canceled his coverage. That forced the former self-employed machinist to wait so long for surgery to repair an injured urethra, he says in a lawsuit against Blue Shield, that his bladder stopped working. Since then, he has depended on an implanted catheter that drains his urine into a bag strapped to his body.

Now, Hailey says, he and his wife, Cindy, can’t afford the care he needs because Blue Shield began garnisheeing her wages to recoup more than $104,000 it had paid for Steven’s medical care before canceling him.

The outcome of the Haileys’ case against Blue Shield could change the way insurers do business in California and influence reform efforts by state regulators and lawmakers. As the first case of its kind to reach an appellate court in California, it will test the legality of retroactive health policy cancellations, a controversial industrywide practice that has driven canceled consumers into debt and forced them to forgo needed medical treatment.

Blue Shield contends it was within its rights to cancel the Haileys because they failed to disclose Steven’s true weight and full medical history when the couple applied for coverage nearly seven years ago.

Blue Shield says it would not have covered Steven in the first place had it known that his weight was 285 pounds, not the 240 listed on the application, or that he had been treated for headaches, hypertension and other conditions.

The Haileys say that Cindy made an honest mistake when she filled out the application and that state law bans the rescission of health coverage without evidence that the policyholder intentionally misrepresented his or her medical history. Blue Shield disagrees, saying the law allows it to cancel policies for any misrepresentation, even inadvertent ones.

Whatever the 4th District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana decides could affect hundreds of suits challenging such cancellations as illegal and unfair.

Such retroactive rescissions have come under scrutiny in recent months because of the hardships they create for patients. A Los Angeles Times article detailed the turmoil of a Murrieta family whose daughter had an aggressive cancer-like tumor, a Riverside couple who sold their home to pay off medical debts and a Van Nuys small-business owner who was maxing out credit cards to get therapy for his disabled infant twins.

State regulators recently levied a $1-million fine against Blue Cross of California, the state’s biggest health insurer, over retroactive cancellations. Regulators say they are investigating other carriers, including Blue Shield.

But regulatory actions have failed to stop the cancellations, and none of the lawsuits has resolved the dispute over whether such actions violate the law. The Orange County court is poised to do that.

Noting the "broad public interest" in the test case, the appellate court invited consumer advocates, regulators and industry representatives to weigh in, an unusual move suggesting that the panel sees more at stake than just the case at hand. The court asked for briefs on the law and public policy "against improper health policy cancellations and post-claims underwriting."

Blue Shield is one of the California’s largest sellers of individual policies, the type of coverage at issue. Unlike with employment-based group coverage, which is issued to all group members regardless of health, carriers in California and some other states are allowed to reject applicants for individual policies based on their medical histories.

Blue Shield says it was conducting a routine and legal claims review when it discovered that the couple’s application had purportedly shaved 45 pounds off Steven’s weight and failed to disclose his health history. The health plan says it immediately mailed the couple a letter rescinding coverage.

But the letter didn’t reach the Haileys before a vendor showed up at their Cypress home and repossessed Steven’s wheelchair and adjustable hospital bed.

The Haileys, both now 45, declined to discuss the case on a lawyer’s advice. But in court documents, they accuse Blue Shield of launching a secret investigation while Steven was hospitalized to search for an excuse to dump them and avoid paying his bills.

The Haileys say they never tried to conceal anything. In a sworn deposition, Cindy testified that she was confused by the application and mistakenly thought it was seeking only her medical history.

Consumer advocates say the forms routinely trip up people such as Cindy because they use a single set of medical history questions for all family members.

Paris Hilton, her long blond hair tied back in a ponytail and oversized sunglasses shading her eyes, pulled up to L.A. traffic court near downtown Friday more than 15 minutes late for her probation violation hearing.

It was perhaps a moment when being prompt would have proved more fashionable.

Two hours later, Hilton departed with a 45-day jail sentence and a verbal comeuppance from the judge, who told her the time had come to take responsibility for her own actions. She has until June 5 to report to Century Regional Detention Center in Lynwood to serve her time or risk a total of 90 days behind bars.

On the stand, the socialite blamed her handlers for her being caught behind the wheel twice while her driver’s license was suspended for a drunk-driving conviction.

Asked whether she had understood the terms of the drunk-driving plea that she agreed to Jan. 22, Hilton, 26, said: "I just sign what people tell me to sign…. I’m a very busy person."

The Judge made it clear that he wanted no special treatment for Hilton — an heiress to the Hilton hotel fortune and a successful entrepreneur in her own right — ordering her to spend her sentence in a county jail and not a privately run "glamour slammer" where other celebrities have done their time.

Hilton, who made the sign of the cross in the moments before the judge gave his verdict, sobbed afterward.

Until late last year, overcrowded jail facilities in the county had led Sheriff Lee Baca to release most inmates early, including immediately processing out anyone sentenced to less than 90 days in jail. That is no longer true, and Hilton is likely to serve the full 45 days.

Hilton pleaded no contest to driving under the influence after she was pulled over in Hollywood Sept. 7 by LAPD officers for speeding and making an illegal left turn.

After she failed a field sobriety test, her blood alcohol level was measured at 0.08, just over the legal limit.

Within hours of her arrest, she dismissed the incident as "nothing" to radio host Ryan Seacrest, explaining: "I was just really hungry, and I wanted to have an In-N-Out burger."

As part of her plea, Hilton’s driving privileges were suspended from Nov. 30 to March 31.

As Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa returned to Los Angeles on Friday in hopes of quelling anger over the LAPD’s use of force at an immigration rally, he and other officials questioned why officers ignored rules established after a similar incident outside the 2000 Democratic National Convention.

The department ended up paying reporters and demonstrators more than $4 million for actions during the convention and agreed to a sweeping series of restrictions on how officers deal with large crowds.

The restrictions ban officers from using "less-than-lethal" weapons on individuals and crowds unless they are combative, require police to give protesters time to clear out of an area before force is used and establish "safe areas" where the media can operate without LAPD interference.

The department’s failure to adhere to the rules will be a major issue in what potentially could be dozens of lawsuits against the city, the first of which were filed Friday.

The Justice Department said Wednesday that it had launched an internal probe into whether a chief figure in the U.S. attorneys affair had violated policy — and possibly federal law — by injecting party politics into the selection of career prosecutors.

The investigation of Monica M. Goodling, once the Justice Department’s White House liaison, widens the probe into allegations of partisan hiring and firing at the agency and complicates the Bush administration’s efforts to weather the scandal.

Goodling has become a focus of congressional investigators because she played a central role in identifying eight U.S. attorneys who were fired last year. The latest disclosure that she also was involved in the hiring of assistant U.S. attorneys shed new light on her clout at the Justice Department and raised more questions about how the agency has operated under Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales.