A Florida appellate court again has rebuffed the NCAA's effort to prevent public release of documents on academic cheating at Florida State.

The 1st District Court of Appeal late Monday denied the college athletics organization's motions for a rehearing or certification of the case to the Florida Supreme Court.

The documents being sought by The Associated Press and other news media concern a proposal to take wins away from coaches and athletes.

That includes football coach Bobby Bowden who could lose 14 victories — diminishing his already dwindling chances of overtaking Penn State's Joe Paterno as major college football's winningest coach.

The Supreme Court has agreed to consider reinstating the sex trafficking and forced labor conviction of a man dubbed the "S&M Svengali."

The justices said Tuesday they will hear an appeal filed by federal prosecutors in the case of Glenn Marcus, convicted after a sensational trial that dealt with mutilation and extreme humiliation. Arguments will be held early in 2010.

Last year, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the conviction violated the Constitution because Marcus was convicted of breaking a law, the 2000 Trafficking Victims Protection Act, that wasn't in place when some offenses happened.

In September 2007, Marcus was sentenced to nine years in prison for abusing a woman he photographed for his Web site, which reveled in sadomasochism. She was identified only as "Jodi."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor took no part in the court's consideration of the case. She was on the appeals court panel that ruled in Marcus' favor and joined in the panel's decision. But she wrote separately to suggest that the ruling, though required by a string of 2nd Circuit cases, might not be in line with the Supreme Court's view of the case.

The ruling turned on authorities' use of the 2000 law to prosecute Marcus for incidents spanning from 1999 to 2001. Marcus' attorneys argued, and the court agreed, that the law was applied retroactively.

A court in China's far western Xinjiang region has sentenced six men to death for murder and other crimes committed during ethnic riots that killed nearly 200 people. A seventh man was given life imprisonment.

The sentences Monday were the first for any of the scores of suspects arrested in the July rioting between Muslim Uighurs and members of the Han Chinese majority in the regional capital of Urumqi. It was China's worst communal violence in decades.

The names of the convicted men seemed to identify them as Uighurs. The verdicts appeared aimed at placating Han Chinese who have rallied in Urumqi calling for swift justice. An overseas Uighur activist, however, said they were only likely to exacerbate the ethnic tensions.

Xinjiang has been under heavy security since the strife, and state TV showed paramilitary troops in riot gear surrounding the courthouse Monday.

The official Xinhua News Agency said seven people were convicted of murder, and some also convicted of arson and robbery. Six received the death penalty: Abdukerim Abduwayit, Gheni Yusup, Abdulla Mettohti, Adil Rozi, Nureli Wuxiu'er, and Alim Metyusup.

A 10-year analysis of prosecutions under a law meant to punish artifact looters shows most people convicted never go to prison.

Archaeologist and former academic Robert Palmer has found in his review of cases from 1996 to 2005 that of the 83 people found guilty, 20 went to prison and 13 of those received sentences of a year or less. Another study found only 14 percent of artifact looting cases are ever solved.

Jeanne and Jericca Redd were given probation after pleading guilty to several felonies related to a sweeping federal investigation into grave robbing and artifact trapping in the Southwest.

Read Street was a lively place for commenters last week, in the wake of President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize. And "lively" is an understatement. The comments were unusually vitriolic and polarized for this blog. They put me in the unusual role of censor, so I thought I should explain my thinking on the topic.

Comments must be approved by me or Nancy before they're posted on Read Street, and I'm usually pretty light-handed, killing only those that are obscene or slanderous. And the bounds of fair comment are broad when a political figure is the target. So I posted many harsh comments, even though there was obvious irony in those that said Obama's Nobel was premature, while skewering him for a host of political sins that he could not possibly have had time to commit in less than a year in office.

I admit to censoring one comment though. It was from a Holocaust denier. That, to me, was in its own way, obscene and slanderous to the memory of all who died, and all who remember them today.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee plans to conduct a hearing next month on the case of two professional football players whose suspensions were blocked by a federal appeals court.

Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., is concerned that the legal issues raised in the case "could result in weaker performance-enhancing drugs policies for professional sports," the committee said in a statement issued to The Associated Press Thursday.

The committee provided the statement after the AP reported the hearing, citing two people with knowledge of the committee plans. The two spoke on the condition of anonymity because the hearing had not yet been announced.

The NFL had attempted to suspend Minnesota Vikings Pat Williams and Kevin Williams four games each for violating the league's anti-doping policy.

But the players sued, arguing that the NFL's testing violated state workplace laws. A federal judge issued an injunction blocking the order, which was upheld last month by a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The decision troubled the NFL and professional sports leagues, which expressed concern about players being subjected to different standards depending on their state. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said after the ruling that the NFL was considering its next step, which could include an appeal, a trial in state court, or taking the issue to Congress. Subsequently, the league was granted more time to file documents asking the court to reconsider the suspensions.

"It's erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead," Scalia said of the cross that the Veterans of Foreign Wars built 75 years ago atop an outcropping in the Mojave National Preserve. "What would you have them erect?...Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Muslim half moon and star?"

Peter Eliasberg, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer arguing the case, explained that the cross is the predominant symbol of Christianity and commonly used at Christian grave sites, not that the devoutly Catholic Scalia needed to be told that.