Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s ex- Chief Executive Officer Richard Fuld asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit accusing him and his colleagues of failing to disclose Repo 105, a financing method allegedly used to conceal billions of dollars of debt, according to court records.

Separately, Ernst & Young LLP, the Lehman auditor, also asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit in a court filing June 4, saying its work met all applicable professional standards.

The class-action lawsuit, based on a 2,200-page report by Lehman bankruptcy examiner Anton Valukas, was filed April 23 on behalf of retirement funds including the Alameda County Employees’ Retirement Association in Oakland, California, and the Government of Guam Retirement Fund.

The Lehman executives denied in court papers that the investors had lost money on Lehman securities because of misstatements and omissions in offering documents. Lehman’s accounting for Repo 105 transactions conformed to generally accepted accounting principles and was approved by Ernst & Young, they said.

“Plaintiffs’ effort to turn the report into a basis for securities law violations fails,” they said in a filing in federal court in Manhattan.

Two young New Jersey men are scheduled to appear in federal court in Newark Monday morning on charges of trying to join a terrorist group.

The two were arrested Saturday at John F. Kennedy International Airport before they could board separate flights to Egypt, where they hoped to continue on to Somalia to join the terrorist group al-Shabab, a militant organization with links to Al Qaeda.

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Mohamed Mahmood Alessa, 21, and Carlos Eduardo Almonte, 23, had gone to Jordan in 2007. From there, they tried to get into Iraq but were turned back.

"It's a cause for concern," Kelly told reporters during a press conference on Sunday.

"It's not unlike other cases that we've seen recently where individuals who express an interest to do 'jihad' go overseas and then are turned around" and "come back to attempt acts of violence in the United States," he said, citing other high-profile cases, like Najibullah Zazi and Faisal Shahzad, both charged with plotting separate acts of terror inside the United States.

A lesbian couple wed Monday in Portugal's first same-sex ceremony since the predominantly Catholic country introduced a law allowing gay marriage last month.

Teresa Pires and Helena Paixao, divorced Portuguese mothers in their 30s who have been together since 2003, married in a 15-minute ceremony at a Lisbon registry office.

"This is a great victory, a dream come true," Pires said as the couple kissed and hugged.

"Now we're a family, that's the important thing," Pires said, adding they would continue to fight for equal rights for homosexuals, including adoption.

The ceremony came less than a month after Portugal's conservative president ratified a gay marriage law passed by Parliament in January. His approval made Portugal the sixth in Europe to let same-sex couples wed.

The center-left Socialist government said the law is part of its effort to modernize Portugal, where homosexuality was a crime until 1982. Three years ago the same government lifted Portugal's ban on abortion, despite church opposition.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs's briefing, which normally comes in the afternoon, takes place at 10 a.m., and will be conducted by Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander in charge of the response to the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

The briefing is happening early to make way for a Facebook video chat with energy czar Carol Browner, who has become one of the go-to oil spill people at the White House in the past week.

President Obama also plans to hold a full meeting of his Cabinet -- not a common event during his first year and a half in office -- to discuss what the administration is doing to stop the leak and to clean up the coastlines of several states.

Over the weekend, even as BP appeared to have some success diverting a bit of the oil from the broken undersea gusher, it became clear that the crisis above water will be just as difficult to deal with.

More images of oil-covered animals began emerging, and there were increasing complaints about the lack of cleanup effort at beaches . One local official wondered aloud why Obama didn't order workers from other oil companies to help BP clean up the spill.

A federal appeals court has ruled against pilots from the old America West airlines in their dispute with their union at US Airways.

The two airlines combined in 2005, but their pilots are still fighting over seniority rights. Six pilots from the old America West sued their union, saying it planned to ignore an arbitrator's decision that it believed had favored the America West pilots. Last year a judge agreed with the America West pilots and ordered the union to follow the arbitrator's decision.

Friday's decision from a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says it's too soon to say that the union has harmed the America West pilots because a new contract would have to be ratified first.

A federal jury has found an Illinois couple guilty of defrauding Best Buy out of $41 million by over-billing the Richfield-based company for computer parts.

Russell Adam Cole, 50, and Abby Rae Cole, 53, of Deerfield, Ill., were found guilty Thursday of mail fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy, tax evasion and conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with the scheme.

The IRS led the investigation into the case.

According to prosecutors, Best Buy created a repair service on products in the early 2000s and solicited vendors to submit bids on certain parts they wanted to supply for the repair service.

The Coles owned and operated a computer parts distribution company called the Chip Factory, Inc. For about four years ending in August 2007, Best Buy accounted for most of Chip Factory's sales.

But court records showed that the Coles made Chip Factory quote fraudulently low prices in Best Buy's auction system to obtain computer repair parts. After winning bids, the Coles billed Best Buy prices that were higher than the ones quoted in the bidding process.

Over time, prosecutors said the Coles billed Best Buy for more than $41 million than had been agreed to in the bidding process.

A former Best Buy employee, 39-year-old Robert Paul Bossany of Prior Lake, helped carry out the scheme. Bossany pleaded guilty in January 2009 to accepting bribes from Chip Factory and conspiring to defraud Best Buy while working as Best Buy's primary contact with Chip Factory.

BP shareholders are fleeing the company’s stock amid growing uncertainty about the ultimate bill for cleanup costs, lawsuits, fines and damage to the oil giant’s reputation.

BP’s shares fell an additional 15 percent on Tuesday, as investors reacted to news that the latest effort to stem the gushing oil in the Gulf of Mexico failed over the weekend. It is the steepest drop in shares in about two decades.

Also on Tuesday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that federal authorities had opened criminal and civil investigations into the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

Since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, the company has lost a third of its market value, or about $75 billion.

The company said Tuesday that it had spent almost $1 billion on cleanup efforts. But that bill is likely to rise as oil continues to spill into the gulf, with no guarantees that any of the new plans to contain the spill will work.

Investors are also grappling with potential damage to the company’s reputation.

“Financially they can survive this crisis, but politically they will be punished for a very long time,” said Fadel Gheit, an oil analyst at Oppenheimer & Company.

The prospect of billions of dollars more in legal payouts and fines is also weighing on the company.

BP officials say they have already paid $36 million to settle claims of economic loss and damage under the Oil Pollution Act, a 1990 law passed in the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster, and that more than 26,000 claims have been submitted.