An appeals court has rejected a lawsuit against a gunmaker over a 1999 shooting rampage at a San Fernando Valley Jewish center.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Los Angeles ruled Monday that a federal law shielding gunmakers from suits over criminal use of their products was constitutional.

White supremacist Buford Furrow wounded five people, including three children, at a Jewish community center in Granada Hills. He later killed a postal carrier.

Furrow pleaded guilty and got life in prison.

Relatives of victims sued Georgia-based Glock Inc., RSR Wholesale Guns Seattle and a Chinese manufacturer. Monday's ruling said Glock and the Seattle dealer were immune. The case against China North Industries Corp. can proceed.

Jonathan Sheldon told a federal appeals court Tuesday that the failure of Muhammad's trial attorneys to tell a judge about their client's mental health issues violated his constitutional right to effective counsel.

A lawyer for the state of Virginia argued that Muhammad's competency was never an issue in his trial for one of the 10 murders committed by Muhammad and teenage accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo. Muhammad was sentenced to death, and Malvo is serving a life term for the 2002 Washington, D.C.-area shooting spree.

The federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., is expected to rule in several weeks.

Four group vice presidents and two vice chairmen sold nearly 205,000 shares Friday and Monday at prices ranging from $1.45 to $1.61 per share. GM shares closed Monday down 17 cents at $1.44.

Spokeswoman Julie Gibson says the sales don't show a lack of faith in the company. She says GM has disclosed publicly that shareholders run the risk of significant dilution or possibly losing their investments in a potential bankruptcy filing.

"They're not operating with any knowledge that other people don't have," she said. The executives had a short window of Friday through Tuesday to sell the shares, she added.

GM has offered bondholders 10 percent of the company's equity in exchange for wiping out $27 billion in debt. The company also is negotiating with the U.S. government for a potential 50 percent share of GM stock, and with the UAW to take 39 percent in exchange for half of the $20 billion that the company owes the trust fund.

The remaining 1 percent would go to those who hold the company's current 611 million outstanding shares.

If the bond exchange goes through, GM plans to issue 62 billion new shares and then do a 100-for-1 reverse stock split.

The White House confirmed the meeting but said it did not indicate a finalization of the president's review process.

"I don't think we're at the point where the president says, `What do you think about these two people?'" White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told The Associated Press on Monday. "The president pledged very early on to consult broadly, and I think Wednesday's meeting does that."

Obama is to talk at the White House with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, said the Republican leader hopes this is the start of the consultation process and that Obama "follows the lead of previous presidents and has many such meetings over the coming weeks before a nomination is announced."

The White House has ruled out that Obama will name his Supreme Court pick this week.

Souter is retiring in June, and Obama wants to have a nominee confirmed when the next Supreme Court session starts in October.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirms that Internet service providers such as Yahoo Inc. are generally protected from liability for materials published or posted on their sites by outside parties.

Cecilia Barnes had filed a lawsuit in 2005 in Portland, Ore., claiming her boyfriend not only posted nude photos, but also created a fraudulent profile and posed as her in an online chat room to solicit sex.

Although the court says Yahoo isn't liable for those actions, it left open the possibility that Barnes could sue Yahoo over whether it had promised to remove the photos and the profile.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent was sentenced to 33 months Monday. He was also fined $1,000 and ordered to pay $6,550 in restitution to the two women whose complaints resulted in the first sex abuse case against a sitting federal judge.

Kent could have received up to 20 years in prison after admitting to obstruction of justice, but prosecutors said they wouldn't seek more than three years under a plea agreement.

"Your wrongful conduct is a huge black X ... a stain on the judicial system itself, a matter of concern in the federal courts," U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson said as he imposed the sentence. Vinson is a visiting senior judge called in from Pensacola, Fla.

Kent pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in February as jury selection for his trial was about to begin. He had been charged with obstruction and five sex-crime counts alleging that he groped his secretary and his former case manager. Conviction on the most serious of those charges could have sent him to prison for life.

The European Commission is expected to make one of the most significant antitrust decisions in its history on Wednesday when it punishes computer chip-maker Intel for stifling competition from smaller rivals.


The official line is that the case is still ongoing, but one person close to the competition department said on condition of anonymity on Friday that the 27 commissioners will conclude the case, which has been under investigation since 2000, at their next weekly meeting on Wednesday. Intel is the latest giant from the IT industry to be slapped down by Europe's top competition regulator. Like Microsoft five years ago and IBM in the 1980s, Intel claims it is simply doing what any company would, only better. While IBM settled with the regulator, agreeing to change the way it competed in the market for mainframe computers, Microsoft and Intel have stuck to their guns. Consequently Microsoft was fined [euro]497 million (US$663.4 million) for abusing its dominant position in the software market, plus an additional [euro]1.2 billion for failing to respect the antitrust ruling.

Sun Microsystems shareholders filed three separate lawsuits last month in an effort to halt the company's pending sale to Oracle, according to a filing Sun made with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission Friday. The suits, filed in Santa Clara County, California, superior court, name Sun, some of its officials and Oracle as defendants. All three actions are aimed at blocking the US$7.4 billion sale, alleging the price tag is "unfair and inadequate." The defendants have yet to file answers to the complaints, according to Sun. More information about the lawsuits wasn't immediately available.