The White House plans to nominate the judge who presided over the Bernard Madoff case to the appeals court that Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor served on, Sen. Charles Schumer said Wednesday.

Schumer said in a statement that his office told the White House that U.S. District Judge Denny Chin "would be an outstanding choice" for an appointment to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan.

One of the four openings on the appeals court was created Sotomayor was elevated to the U.S. Supreme Court. She heard her first case as a justice on Wednesday.

Chin, 55, sentenced Wall Street swindler Madoff earlier this summer to 150 years in prison for cheating thousands of people out of billions of dollars.

Schumer praised Chin in his two-sentence statement, saying: "Even in the most high-profile of cases, he has been unflappable, erudite and steadily applied the law." Chin did not comment publicly on Schumer's statement Wednesday.

Chin was widely celebrated for his decision to jail 71-year-old Madoff immediately after he pleaded guilty to fraud charges in March and for sentencing him to the maximum prison term in June. Yet Chin also has gained respect for his compassion on the bench.

In November 2007, he cited then-83-year-old Oscar Wyatt Jr.'s age and military service during World War II as he sentenced the Texas oilman to a year and a day in prison for his role in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal.

Nine months earlier, he reversed a jury verdict, saying evidence did not support the fraud conviction of a former New York Stock Exchange floor supervisor who once oversaw all trading in General Electric Co. stock.

An appeals court panel upheld on Wednesday the conviction of a pharmacist for conspiracy to unlawfully distribute prescription drugs through a Wichita-based Internet pharmacy.

But the panel from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver also threw out the conviction of a co-defendant who worked as a computer technician for Red Mesa Pharmacy.

Pharmacist Jerry Lovern and computer technician Robert Barron were convicted in February 2008 of one count of conspiracy and three counts of unlawfully distributing controlled substances.

Prosecutors said Red Mesa Pharmacy distributed more than 9,200 orders between December 2005 and March 2006 for prescriptions approved by doctors who did not physically examine the buyers or have any communication with them. The prescriptions cited included Ambien, a controlled drug used for insomnia; and phentermine, a stimulant that is sometimes contained in prescription drugs used for weight loss.

Red Mesa's owner, Dr. Wilbur Hilst of Wewoka, Okla., is serving a 33-month sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy to unlawfully distribute prescription drugs.

Finally, auction day has come for the Phoenix Coyotes. It's two days, actually.

The NHL franchise is to be sold at auction in a two-day hearing that began Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in downtown Phoenix.

Only two bids have been made.

One by Canadian billionaire James Balsillie is contingent on moving the team to Hamilton, Ontario, over the overwhelming opposition of the NHL.

The other is by the NHL, which says it will resell the team outside of the bankruptcy process, either to an owner who would keep the team in Glendale or, failing that, to someone who would relocate the franchise. Balsillie and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman were in the crowded courtroom when the hearing began.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

PHOENIX (AP) — Finally, auction day has come for the Phoenix Coyotes. It's two days, actually.

The NHL franchise is to be sold at auction in a two-day hearing that begins Thursday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in downtown Phoenix.

Only two bids have been made. One by Canadian billionaire James Balsillie is contingent on moving the team to Hamilton, Ontario, over the overwhelming opposition by the NHL.

The other is by the NHL, which says it will resell the team outside of the bankruptcy process, either to an owner who would keep the team in Glendale or, failing that, to someone who would relocate the franchise.

President Barack Obama will tell the nation in a prime-time address precisely how he wants to expand health care, pitching a fresh argument — but, to liberal disappointment, no demand — for a government-run insurance option.

"The president's going to speak clearly and directly to the American people about what's in this bill for them," press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday, hours before Obama appeared before a rare joint session of Congress and a live national television audience.

Opening a final push for his top domestic priority, Obama will push for a health care overhaul that provides new and crucial protections for people who already have insurance, affordable access to coverage to those without, and reduced spending for families, businesses and government.

"We do intend to get something done this year," Obama said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Even as the president prepared to speak — and continued Wednesday to write and hone the approximately 35-minute address himself — the leader of the influential Senate Finance Committee raced to broker an overhaul proposal with both Democratic and Republican input.

And Republicans pressed their case that Obama's sweeping approach won't wash.

"The status quo is unacceptable. But if August showed us anything, it's that so are the alternatives that the administration and Democrats in Congress have proposed," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky in prepared remarks. "That means sensible, step-by-step reforms, not more trillion-dollar grand schemes."

Discussing Obama's thinking on what is sure to be one of the most closely watched portions of the address, a senior administration official said the president will make a case for why he still believes a public insurance plan is the best way to introduce greater competition into the system.

A New York City man arrested for running onto the court at the U.S. Open to kiss Rafael Nadal will be charged with trespassing and faces possible jail time if convicted, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Noam U. Aorta dashed out of the stands at Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens just after midnight Wednesday after Nadal advanced to the quarterfinals by beating Gael Monfils, prosecutors said. Aorta ran onto the court, then hugged and kissed the Spanish star as he was changing shirts on the sideline before security guards took him into custody, they said.

"For me, it wasn't a problem. The guy was really nice," Nadal said. "He said, 'I love you,' and he kissed me."

District Attorney Richard Brown, however, called it "particularly disturbing" because Aorta made physical contact with Nadal. Brown noted that Monica Seles was stabbed in the back in 1993 by a spectator on a tennis court in Hamburg, Germany.

Aorta, 23, of Queens, will be charged with third-degree criminal trespass and interfering with a professional sporting event, prosecutors said. If convicted, he faces a maximum one year in jail and $5,000 in fines.

Barring an instrumental performance of a Christian hymn at a high school graduation did not violate students' First Amendment rights and was within the school superintendent's discretion, a divided federal appeals panel ruled Tuesday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision in what Judge Richard C. Tallman described as "the legal labyrinth of a student's First Amendment rights" will be appealed to the Supreme Court, a lawyer said.

The case arose a year after a choral performance of the song "Up Above My Head" at the 2005 commencement for Henry M. Jackson High School in Everett, 25 miles north of Seattle. The song, with references to God, angels and heaven, drew complaints and protest letters to The Herald, the town's daily newspaper.

Administrators raised red flags when wind ensemble seniors, who had played Franz Biebl's uptempo 1964 rendering of "Ave Maria" without controversy at a winter concert, proposed a reprise at their graduation in 2006.

School officials said the title alone identified "Ave Maria" — Hail Mary in Latin — as religious and that graduation should be strictly secular.

One of the students, Kathryn Nurre, sued Everett Public Schools Superintendent Carol Whitehead, claiming unspecified damages from infringement of First Amendment rights, but U.S. District Judge Robert T. Lasnik in Seattle rejected that assertion in a summary judgment on Sept. 20, 2007.

Tallman and a second judge from the San Francisco-based appeals court, Robert R. Beezer, agreed with Lasnik across the board.

OPEC appeared poised to hold oil production quotas unchanged Wednesday, with its ministers voicing satisfaction with current global crude prices.

Instead, the focus at the organization's meeting in Vienna was to be on persuading members not to sell more oil than their quotas permit.

Kuwait's oil minister, Sheik Ahmed Al Abullah Al Sabah, said OPEC's markets monitoring committee would suggest to the 12-country group that oil output targets be held steady at the organization's meeting Wednesday in Vienna. The gathering is being held in the evening since it falls during the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims must fast from dawn to dusk.

The recommendation offers further indication that ministers from the bloc — supplier of roughly 35 percent of the world's crude — are turning their aim toward encouraging member discipline. Compliance with the output limits, which are designed to support prices, has been waning.

Prices are now roughly double their levels from December, when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries announced its record 4.2 million barrel per day cuts from September 2008 levels. The price rally has been welcome news for cash-hungry member governments, but also a temptation to sell more oil.

U.S. benchmark light sweet crude for October delivery was hovering at around $71 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The level is well within the range that OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia, and others, have said it would like to see.