These artist renderings show four designs under consideration to replace the "tails" side of the Abraham Lincoln penny. during the 2009 observance of the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth and 100th anniversary of the introduction of the coin. "Heads" will be unchanged.

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NEW ORLEANS — Episcopal leaders, pressured to roll back their support for gays to keep the world Anglican family from crumbling, affirmed Tuesday that they will "exercise restraint" in approving another gay bishop and will not authorize prayers to bless same-sex couples.

The statement mostly reiterated earlier pledges by the church, and it will not be known for some time whether the bishops went far enough to help prevent an Anglican schism.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said she believed the document met the requests of Anglican leaders. But some Episcopal conservatives immediately rejected the statement as too weak, because it does not bar gays and lesbians from becoming bishops.

Bishops released the statement in the final hour of an intense six-day meeting and at a crucial moment in the decades-long Anglican debate over how the Bible should be interpreted.

The 77 million-member world Anglican Communion has been splintering since 2003, when Episcopalians consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. The Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the U.S.

MEMPHIS — Communications equipment failed Tuesday at a regional air-traffic control center, shutting down all airline traffic within 250 miles of Memphis and causing a ripple effect across the country that grounded dozens of passenger and cargo flights.

The problem started when a major telephone line to the Memphis center went out at 12:35 p.m. EDT. The Federal Aviation Administration said air-traffic control operations were back to normal about three hours later.

Air-traffic control centers in adjacent regions handled flights that were already in the air when the problem was discovered.

"The airspace was completely cleared by 1:30 (p.m.) Eastern time," FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said.

High-altitude flights through the region — which includes parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee — were discontinued while the equipment was being fixed.

"What we did is put a ground stop in place for any flight that would transition through that airspace. We held them on the ground wherever they were, whether it was Miami, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston," Bergen said.

BOSTON — A well-known South African scholar and political commentator is being kept out of the United States because he has been a critic of the war in Iraq and the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the American Civil Liberties Union charged Tuesday.

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, the ACLU said the U.S. government's decision to revoke the visa of Adam Habib, 42, last year has forced him to turn down invitations to speak to various political organizations, violating the First Amendment rights of U.S. citizens who were prevented from hearing his views.

Habib, a Muslim, is currently deputy vice-chancellor of Research, Innovation and Advancement at the University of Johannesburg. He lived in the United States from 1993-95, earning a doctorate in political science from the graduate center of City University of New York and had traveled once or twice a year between the United States and his home in South Africa since then.

MAIDEN — A man who bought a smoker Tuesday at an auction of abandoned items might have thought twice had he looked inside first.

Maiden police said the man opened up the smoker and saw what he thought was a piece of driftwood wrapped in paper. When he unwrapped it, he found a human leg, cut off 2 to 3 inches above the knee.

The smoker had been sold at an auction of items left behind at a storage facility, so investigators contacted the woman who had rented the space where the smoker was found.

The woman explained that her son's leg was amputated after a plane crash and he kept the leg. The mother said her son plans to reclaim his amputated leg, police said.

YAPHANK — A paroled sex offender linked to the notorious case of a girl who was kidnapped and hidden in a dungeon more than a decade ago has been arrested in North Carolina, police said.

Sal Inghilleri was arrested Monday, hiding in a closet of a home he shared with a woman in Rockingham, N.C., said Suffolk County Deputy Inspector Robert Oswald.

Police said Inghilleri, 54, violated New York state's Sex Offender Registration Act, also known as Megan's Law, by failing to notify authorities that he had moved from New York earlier this year. An arrest warrant was issued in July.

Inghilleri served 12 years for molesting Katie Beers, who at the age of 9 was kidnapped and stashed in a dungeon for 16 days in 1991 at a Bay Shore home by John Esposito. During the investigation into the kidnapping, authorities discovered that Inghilleri had sexually abused the girl before she was abducted. He was convicted of two counts of sexual abuse.

Inghilleri appeared in court Tuesday in Richmond County, N.C., and was charged with one count of failing to notify authorities that he changed his address. Bail was set at $250,000 pending another court appearance on Oct. 11, Oswald said.

A 13th-century copy of the Magna Carta, a milestone of English freedom, will be offered for sale in New York in December, Sotheby's auction house said Tuesday.

The vellum manuscript owned by the Perot Foundation is expected to sell for $20 million to $30 million, Sotheby's said.

The document was on display at the National Archives in Washington for more than 20 years.

King John was forced by barons to agree to the charter in 1215. It guaranteed that freemen would not be imprisoned or deprived of property without due process, including a right to a speedy trial before a jury.

Versions of the Magna Carta were issued in 1216, 1217, 1225 and 1264 by John's son, King Henry III. The copy offered by Sotheby's for sale on Dec. 10 is dated 1297, the year it was incorporated into the statute rolls of King Edward I.

ANCHORAGE — A former state legislator was convicted Tuesday of trading his legislative influence for bribes from a company that was seeking to profit from a proposed natural gas pipeline.

Former Rep. Pete Kott, a Republican who was House speaker for part of his 14-year tenure, was found guilty of accepting nearly $9,000, a political poll and the promise of a job from VECO Corp., an oil-field services company.

Kott was convicted of conspiracy to solicit financial benefits, extortion and bribery but was acquitted of wire fraud.

The two-week trial included testimony by VECO chief Bill Allen that he doled out more than $400,000 in bribes to various officials and had company workers remodel the home of Sen. Ted Stevens, who is under federal investigation.

The FBI in July raided the home of Stevens, who has said he paid all bills he received for the remodeling project.

Allen and a company vice president, Rick Smith, have pleaded guilty to bribing Kott and other lawmakers. VECO stood to make millions in contracts if the Legislature approved a revised crude oil tax that encouraged investment.

NEW LONDON — Nooses were left in a black Coast Guard cadet's bag and in the office of a white officer who conducted race-relations training after the incident, leading a congressman to call Tuesday for a thorough military investigation.

A Coast Guard probe was unable to determine who left the nooses, said Chief Warrant Officer David M. French, a spokesman for the Coast Guard Academy.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, a Maryland Democrat and chairman of the House Transportation subcommittee on Coast Guard and maritime transportation, on Tuesday asked Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen to to order a more intensive probe.

"Racial discrimination and intolerance have no place in either the academy or the Coast Guard, and these incidents run directly against the efforts being made to increase diversity throughout the Coast Guard," Cummings said in a statement.

SPOKANE — A pet rabbit named Sugar Bunny was stolen from a preschool and fliers protesting circus animal acts were left in its empty cage.

The preschool's children gathered in a circle Monday to remember Sugar Bunny.

"We talked about how some people have different ideas about animals," said teacher Lori Peters. "Some people don't think they should be in cages."

Sugar Bunny vanished from the Community Building Children's Center on Saturday, teachers said.

The fliers expressed protests against the Ringling Brothers Circus, which was in town during the weekend, and had a picture of a bear trying to escape from a cage. The fliers bore the names of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the Northwest Animal Rights Network.

Daphna Nachminovitch, director of PETA's domestic-animal department, said the group would not endorse stealing a pet bunny.