The second Detroit mayor in a row is facing questions about possible perjury.

An attorney for Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. acknowledged Monday that his client met last week with state attorneys to discuss a document stating he didn't owe campaign fines in two previous city elections.

Cockrel has since paid $42,000 in fines. Lawyer Michael Hodge says Cockrel believed he didn't have to pay the fines because he was told they would be waived.

An Oregon man who was fatally shot as he wielded samurai swords and tried to attack guests at a landmark Scientology building was a former follower of the religion who had made at least a dozen previous threats against the church, officials said Monday.

Mario Majorski, 48, was shot once by a security guard as he tried to use the swords to attack guests Sunday at the Scientology Celebrity Centre in Hollywood, police said. Hundreds of people were eating brunch or doing other activities at the time, said Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis.

Majorski had threatened the church in incidents dating to at least 2005 that were reported to the Los Angeles Police Department, the FBI and Oregon authorities, Davis said. The threats were allegedly made through faxes and telephone calls, but police and the FBI could not immediately confirm how many were made.

"He was clearly disturbed," Davis said. "It's just a tragic incident. Our condolences go out to his family or friends."

Majorski had been a Scientologist in the early 1990s but appeared to have left the church about 15 years ago, Davis said.

The shooting will be reviewed by the district attorney's office, but police were treating the killing as justifiable.

"The security guard had to take action to prevent the deceased from killing or maiming people on the premises," Los Angeles police Detective Wendi Berndt said.

Security surveillance tape showed Majorski arriving around noon in a red convertible, then approaching the guards with a sword in each hand before he was shot, Berndt said. No other weapons were found in the car, which Berndt said she thought was a rental.

Majorski was pronounced dead at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center.

Public records show he was born in Los Angeles County and was associated with a string of addresses there and in Oregon, most recently living in Florence, Ore. He filed for bankruptcy in 2000.

Majorski called AAA after running out of gas on the road where he lived, Florence police reports show. The AAA driver, Doug Bushwar, described toy lined up in a row behind Majorski's truck, according to the police report.

When Bushwar approached, Majorski allegedly threatened him with an ax. He later threatened to shoot approaching police officers before running to his house, claiming there were hostages and explosives inside, according to the police report.

The two officers later arrested Majorski and found no hostages or explosives.

On Nov. 2, Majorski disrupted a Mormon church service in Florence by "cursing and moving around a lot," Florence police spokeswoman Sarah Huff said. Police arrested him on charges of disorderly conduct and criminal trespass.

Other Oregon arrest reports show Majorski was arrested for criminal trespass by the Eugene Police Department in May 2007, and the next month the Lane County Sheriff's Department arrested him for unlawful use of a weapon.

In 1993, Majorski and another man sued a University of California, Los Angeles, professor who had been speaking out against Scientology, Davis said. He said the men felt the professor was discriminating against them, but the case was found to have no standing and was dropped.

The Celebrity Centre is a turreted, castle-like landmark in Hollywood that serves as "a home for the artist, a place where he can come and learn, attend seminars, meet other artists and even perform at our many showcases and events," according to the Centre's Web site.

The Church of Scientology was established in 1945 by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard and claims 10 million members around the world. It likes to cultivate celebrity followers and among its more famed acolytes are Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

The four-unit shotgun house that Sandra Marshall bought after decades of double shifts has sat untouched since the flooding of Hurricane Katrina, while nearly $850 million in federal aid for her and thousands of other mom-and-pop landlords sits on a bureaucratic shelf.

"I have old tenants calling me all the time asking when I'm going to get the place back up and running. I wish I knew," said Marshall, 56, who worked days as a postal clerk and nights as a housekeeping manager to buy her property.

She has applied for a repair loan from the nearly forgotten Louisiana Small Rental Property Program, created in the aftermath of Katrina to provide financial help to as many as 13,000 live-in owners of the shotgun and cottage conversions that kept rents cheap here for generations.

So far, it has put money in the hands of only 352 landlords. The hurdles have been its flawed implementation, limited financial resources among applicants, and lately, the national credit crunch. Now, the state is seeking to overhaul the program and divert the funds.

Housing advocates say the program's failure has contributed to a 40-percent spike in rents citywide. That has forced the federal government to pour even more Band-Aid relief into the recovery, including a $28-million-a-month Disaster Housing Assistance Program that helps 31,000 families pay the inflated rents.

"The rental market in New Orleans will never be the same," said Annie Clark, co-author of a New Orleans housing report released in August by the research group PolicyLink.

The failure of the small rental program is one reason why, three years after Katrina, many blue-collar New Orleans residents find themselves no longer able to afford life in their beloved hometown. It also illustrates how the billions of taxpayer dollars thrown at the hurricane recovery effort have yielded limited progress.

The rental program was launched under former Gov. Kathleen Blanco as a companion to the $10.3 billion Road Home program, which has issued 120,000 rebuilding grants to Gulf Coast homeowners despite its own persistent errors and bureaucratic delays.

But if the Road Home has moved glacially, the Small Rental Property Program is dead in the water.

Unlike the Road Home, which grants money up front, the rental program works on reimbursements. Landlords who own rental properties with a maximum of four units are given a "commitment letter" that states the amount of aid they qualify for, which they must take to the bank as collateral for a loan. The loans are forgivable if the landlords rent their property below market rates. But they must get the loan first, and that's the rub.

Banks, lacking confidence in the program, have ignored the commitment letters. The financial crisis has magnified the problem, and now none of the 13 lenders recommended by the program use a letter as collateral.

"Basically, it's no more than a piece of paper," said Wayne Turner, of Mortgage Market Inc. in nearby Metairie, one of the 13 lenders contacted for this story.

Other lenders said many of the landlords relied on their renters as a main source of income and did not have the credit to receive a loan even before the financial downturn.

Bradley Sweazy, state supervisor of the rental program, acknowledged the problem with banks.

"A lot of times you look at a property owner as someone with the financial record," needed to qualify for a loan he said. "The small mom and pops didn't have the same finance ability as was thought."

State records show the Small Rental Property Program did not issue a single rebuilding grant in its first year.

Like the larger Road Home program, the rental effort is run by Fairfax, Va., contractor ICF International, and overseen by the Louisiana Recovery Authority, the state's hurricane rebuilding arm.

ICF spokeswoman Gentry Brann referred inquiries to the LRA, where spokeswoman Christina Stephens said the program suffered from a computer system that limited caseworkers' ability to update and examine files.

"They were building the ship while you sailed it," Stephens said. "They were developing software as the program moved forward."

Still, the Road Home Web site optimistically states: "the Rental program has nearly $594 million in outstanding conditional awards, which will produce 12,792 units, including 10,951 affordable rental units in a total of 6,835 rental properties."

Sweazy and Stephens said the numbers reflect commitment letters, not aid actually given to landlords.

The most direct measure of the program's impact is the number of grants issued, found in monthly progress reports by the state. That number was 352 in the most recent report at the beginning of November, accounting for about $23 million in the hands of Katrina victims. That leaves $846 million of the $869 million allocated to the rental program in traction.

Ideas abound for what to do with that money.

The state is now trying to divert about $115 million into programs for low-income, first-time homeowners. Sweazy said other possible uses include cutting out bank middlemen and giving money directly to landlords; a rent stabilization program; or having the government buy up the properties and sell them off to developers who commit to build affordable housing.

But the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has strict guidelines for how the money can be used, including a requirement that 50 percent be spent on lower-income applicants, and one that prohibits a "duplication of benefits" with other recovery efforts, meaning Sweazy's idea of giving the money directly to landlords could face obstacles because it would mirror the upfront grants of the Road Home.

Critics also caution against creating another program that would take months to administer, while the gutted rentals contribute to blight across the city.

None of the proposals will help Marshall any time soon.

Her credit scores are too low to qualify for a loan that will cover the $180,000 in repairs contractors say her property needs.

So she lives in the restored front living room of her property in the spottily rebuilt Gentilly neighborhood. The rest of her owners' quarters and the apartments remain gutted from a storm that hit 39 long months ago.

"I'm in limbo, after all I put into buying this place," Marshall said.

A federal appeals court established a legal precedent Monday that U.S. citizens overseas can face searches without a warrant, ruling that three Osama bin Laden followers convicted in the deadly 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies received fair trials.

"There is nothing in our history or our precedents suggesting that U.S. officials must first obtain a warrant before conducting an overseas search," the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote.

The three-judge panel added, however, that the searches must meet the Fourth Amendment's requirement of reasonableness, saying an individual's expectation of privacy must be weighed against the government's need for certain information.

Defendant Wadih El-Hage of Arlington, Texas, had argued that his right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures was violated when U.S. authorities searched his home in Nairobi, Kenya, and tapped his telephone lines without a warrant.

The appeals court responded that the searches' intrusion on El-Hage's "privacy was outweighed by the government's manifest need to monitor his activities as an operative of al-Qaida because of the extreme threat al-Qaida presented, and continues to present, to national security."

El-Hage, 48, was convicted in 2001 with three others in the Aug. 7, 1998, bombings at U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and prompted President Bill Clinton to launch cruise missiles on bin Laden's Afghan camps two weeks later.

The four men were charged with conspiracy and accused of playing key roles to carry out bin Laden's edict to kill Americans wherever they are found. All were sentenced to life in prison.

Besides El-Hage, the appeals court also upheld the convictions of Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-'Owhali, 31, and Mohamed Sadeek Odeh, 43.

A fourth man convicted at the trial - Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, 35 - had dropped his appeal after the trial jury decided against ordering the death penalty for the men convicted of direct roles in the bombings.

Bin Laden has been indicted in the case, which has revealed the inner workings of al-Qaida during weeks before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

El-Hage was described at trial as bin Laden's former personal secretary who served as head of the Nairobi al Qaida cell after bin Laden publicly declared holy war against the United States in 1996. Authorities said he conveyed a message from bin Laden in early 1997 directing the Nairobi cell to prepare for military activity.

Al-'Owhali rode in the bomb-carrying truck to the embassy in Nairobi, testimony showed. Mohamed helped to pack explosives and rode in the bomb truck to the embassy in Dar es Salaam.

Odeh joined al-Qaida in 1992 and was trained in explosives and small arms in Afghanistan training camps, trial evidence showed. Authorities said he advised the Nairobi cell on how to build and place the bomb to maximize fatalities.

Lawyers for Odeh and El-Hage said they will appeal Monday's decision to the Supreme Court. A lawyer for Al-'Owhali did not immediately respond to a message for comment.

Besides bin Laden and the four who were convicted, 17 others were indicted in the case. One of them, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, has been sentenced to 32 years in prison for stabbing a prison guard in the eye in Manhattan with a sharpened comb.