Attorney David Houston said Francis, his client, was targeted by the FBI after Washoe County Sheriff Mike Haley told federal agents that his internal probe turned up allegations of misconduct at the end of 2007.

Francis was awaiting trial for nearly a year on U.S. tax evasion charges in Reno in 2007.

Prosecutors accuse Francis associate Aaron Weinstein, a video and marketing executive, of bribing the law enforcement officials, including former deputy Michon Mills, with money and gifts that included a Cartier watch and Oakland Raiders tickets in exchange for preferential treatment for Francis.

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions says he doesn't think Sotomayor has the convictions to resist the pull of judicial activism once she becomes a justice.

His decision comes the day before the Judiciary panel is to vote on President Barack Obama's first high court nominee. Sotomayor is virtually certain to be confirmed by a vote of the full Senate by the end of next week, becoming the first Hispanic justice.

Most conservative Republicans are lining up against Sotomayor, but a handful of GOP senators are siding with majority Democrats to back her.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Ken Riley said Wednesday that there was enough evidence to try 15-year-old Brandon McInerney for the February 2008 shooting death of Larry King, also 15. McInerney will be tried as an adult.

Riley says he agrees with prosecutors that the shooting was premeditated and has added the special circumstance allegation that McInerney was lying in wait.

Authorities say McInerney shot Larry twice in the head during a computer lab at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard.

McInerney has pleaded not guilty to murder and a hate crime. He faces 53 years to life in prison if convicted.

Both sides agreed to head back to the bargaining table to prepare their duel in multihulls in February 2010 that is to settle the 33rd edition of the Cup, the oldest trophy in international sports following the ruling by Judge Shirley Kornreich of the Supreme Court of New York State.

Alinghi had asked the court to disqualify Oracle if the US syndicate did not provide a description the trimaran it has built for their duel.

For its part Oracle had accused Alinghi of wanting to unilaterally change the rules of the duel with the alleged complicity of the International Sailing Federation (ISAF).

The two syndicates expressed satisfaction on Tuesday the results of the hearing in New York.

Oracle noted that the judge had asked to see the agreement signed between Alinghi and the ISAF, while reserving any decision on whether an engine and moveable ballast can be used.

On the other side Alinghi was pleased that the judge did not accept the accusations against it by Oracle that it was in contempt of court.

The two sides are expected to meet in a duel in multihulls - Alinghi in a catamaran while Oracle will use a trimaran - in February 2010 at a site shich the Alinghi, as the defending champion, must announce before August 8.

The catamaran launched by Alinghi began sail on Monday in Lake Geneva while Oracle has tested its trimaran off the coast of San Diego in California.

The two sides have been locked in a legal battle over the rules of the America's Cup, the oldest trophy in international sports, since Alinghi won the 32nd edition in 2007 in Valencia in eastern Spain.

Aiden Quinn was arraigned Monday in Suffolk Superior Court on charges of gross negligence by a person in control of a train. He was released on personal recognizance after entering his plea.

Quinn did not speak to reporters after his appearance, but defense attorney James Sultan described Quinn as "very afraid" of the situation he's in.

Prosecutors said in court that Quinn made a cell phone call and admitted typing a text message to his girlfriend in the moments before his Green Line trolley crashed into the rear of another trolley beneath Government Center on May 8.

Tariq Ramadan, a professor sympathetic to Palestinian resistance to Israel, had his U.S. visa revoked in 2004 as he was about to take a tenured teaching job at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

His subsequent applications for a new visa were denied on the grounds that he had donated $1,336 to a charity that gave money to Hamas, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that it was legal for the government to bar Ramadan from the country, but said it had an obligation to inform him of the concerns about his donations and give him a chance to prove he didn't know his money would go to Hamas.

The three-judge panel said it was possible that a consular official had, in fact, given him that opportunity, but there was no record of it before the court.

The case will now return to a lower court and the government will be given a chance to figure out more about the exact details of the conversations between Ramadan and the consular staff in Bern, Switzerland that handled his visa application.

Ramadan could also reapply for the visa, the court said.

Jameel Jaffer, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who argued Ramadan's case before the appeals court, said he was hopeful the Obama administration would allow the professor to enter the U.S. without further litigation.

"Over the next few weeks, we'll be encouraging the administration to take a new look not only at Ramadan's case but at the cases of other foreign scholars and writers who were excluded by the Bush administration on ideological grounds," he said.

The high court's unanimous decision reversed lower court rulings that sided with the city of Woodinville's refusal to consider the Northshore United Church of Christ's land-use permit application for Tent City 4 in a largely residential area in 2006.

Woodinville officials violated a constitutional provision that guarantees "absolute freedom of conscience in all matters of religious sentiment, belief and worship," Justice James M. Johnson wrote.

Six other justices signed Johnson's ruling, which reversed findings by King County Superior Court Judge Charles W. Mertel and a state Court of Appeals panel. The majority faulted the church on some procedural grounds but nonetheless found the city mainly in the wrong.

The other two justices would have gone farther. Justice Richard B. Sanders wrote, and Justice Tom Chambers agreed, that the majority held an "errant and dangerous assumption that the government may constitutionally be in the business of prior licensing or permitting religious exercise any more than it can license journalists."

Neither group of justices ruled on whether federal religious freedoms were violated in the case, which was closely watched by civil rights advocates and churches.