Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich would claim his 5th Amendment right against self incrimination if asked to testify in a civil lawsuit spurred by his federal corruption indictment, his lawyer says.

Attorney Jay Edelson told The Associated Press on Thursday night that the former governor also would assert legislative privilege. That right protects state lawmakers and other officials from being bombarded by suits over legislation.

Four Illinois gambling casinos have filed suit to recover $90 million they were forced to pay Illinois racetracks under measures signed by Blagojevich.

The federal indictment says Blagojevich conspired to squeeze a racetrack owner for a campaign contribution in exchange for signing one of the measures in 2008.

An Indiana teenager accused of strangling his 10-year-old brother and dumping his body in a park has pleaded not guilty to murder.

Seventeen-year-old Andrew Conley showed no emotion during Friday's court appearance in Ohio Circuit Court in Rising Sun, the teen's hometown along the Ohio River about 90 miles southeast of Indianapolis.

His parents were at a viewing for his brother Conner Conley's body and did not attend the hearing.

Prosecutors say Conley confessed to police that he intentionally strangled his brother while they were wrestling at the family home on Sunday. They say Andrew Conley told investigators he had dreamed of killing someone since he was in eighth grade.

If convicted of murder, Conley could be sentenced to up to 65 years in prison.

A federal appeals court has temporarily  A 2008 Supreme Court ruling giving Guantanamo Bay prisoners the right to challenge their indefinite detention does not apply in the case of two detainees who committed suicide, the Obama administration says in newly filed court papers.

The Justice Department made the argument in a lawsuit brought by the families of two Saudi detainees who, according to the U.S. government, hanged themselves at the island prison on the same day in June 2006 after more than four years in captivity.

A year and a half ago, the Supreme Court overturned part of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that had stripped federal courts from hearing challenges to the indefinite detention of hundreds of Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

The decision "had no effect" on another provision of that act that says no court has jurisdiction to hear a challenge "relating to any aspect" of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner's detention, the department said in court papers filed Friday.

blocked construction of a massive gold mine project in northeast Nevada that critics say would harm the environment and ruin a mountain several tribes consider sacred.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed part of an earlier decision denying a preliminary injunction sought by conservationists and tribal leaders. The groups had sought the injunction to force Barrick Gold Corp. to postpone digging a 2,000-foot-deep open pit at the Cortez Hills mine 250 miles east of Reno.

The 17-page ruling issued Thursday in San Francisco said the U.S. Bureau of Land Management failed to adequately analyze the potential for the mine on Mount Tenabo (tuh-NAH'-boh) to pollute the air with mercury emissions and dry up scarce water resources.

A condemned Ohio man asked a federal judge Thursday for an emergency order to stop next week's planned execution, arguing the state is rushing too fast to use its new, one-drug lethal injection process.

Kenneth Biros said the untested method announced last month could jeopardize his right to an execution that does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

Biros, 51, says moving ahead with the process would amount to human experimentation with a system never used before in the United States "or any other civilized country."

Biros is concerned the method "will not result in the dignified, humane, quick, and painless death that is required by the federal and state constitutions," his attorneys said in Thursday's court filing.

Biros has also challenged the one-drug method in federal court and also asked a federal appeals court in Cincinnati to delay Tuesday's execution.

Biros killed 22-year-old Tami Engstrom near Warren in 1991 after he offered to drive her home from a bar, then scattered her body parts in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The state opposes any delay, and Gov. Ted Strickland on Thursday denied Biros' request for clemency.

Condemned killer Kenneth Biros could become the first person in the country put to death with a single dose of an intravenous anesthetic instead of the usual — and faster-acting — three-drug process if his execution proceeds Tuesday.

The execution could propel other states to eventually consider the switch, which proponents say ends arguments over unnecessary suffering during injection. California and Tennessee previously considered then rejected the one-drug approach.

Though the untested method has never been used on an inmate in the United States, one difference is clear: Biros will likely die more slowly than inmates put to death with the three-drug method, which includes a drug that stops the heart.

Lethal injection experts on both sides of the debate over injection say thiopental sodium, which kills by putting people so deeply asleep they stop breathing, will take longer.

How much longer is unclear: Mark Dershwitz, an anesthesiologist who advised Ohio on its switch to the single drug, has written death should occur in under 15 minutes.

Ohio inmates have typically taken about seven minutes to die after the three-drug IV injection, which combines thiopental sodium with the drugs pancuronium bromide — which paralyzes muscles — and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest. Dershwitz also said in a court filing last week that a single dose of thiopental sodium would take longer than the three drugs, though he didn't specify a time.

Nortel Networks Corp. said late Wednesday it won court approval in the U.S. and Canada to sell two of its business units.

The larger unit, Nortel's global optical networking and carrier ethernet businesses, is going to Ciena Corp. The business is one of the most sought-after assets of Nortel, a once-dominant network gear maker that is selling itself off in pieces after filing for Chapter 11 protection in January.

The deal gives Ciena all products, contracts, and intellectual property, including technology that improves the speed and capacity of fiber optic networks.

Bankruptcy courts in Delaware and Ontario approved the deal over objections by Finnish rival Nokia Siemens Networks, which said that it would be willing to pay $810 million in cash for the business with its partner, One Equity Partners.