Critics of the prosecution of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Afffairs Committee had accused the federal government of trying to criminalize the sort of back-channel discussions between government officials, lobbyists and reporters that are commonplace in the nation's capital. AIPAC is an influential pro-Israel lobbying group.

Acting U.S. Attorney Dana Boente said the government moved to dismiss the charges in the drawn-out case after concluding that pretrial rulings would make it too difficult for the government to prove its case.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III had made several legal rulings that prosecutors worried would make it almost impossible to obtain a guilty verdict. Among them was a requirement that the government would have to prove that Rosen and Weissman intended to harm the United States by trading in sensitive national defense information.

The trial had been scheduled to start June 2 in a case that has dragged on for four years.

Rosen and Weissman had not been charged with actual espionage, although the charges did fall under provisions of the 1917 Espionage Act, a rarely used World War I-era law that had never before been applied to lobbyists.

A former Defense Department official, Lawrence A. Franklin, previously pleaded guilty to providing Rosen and Weissman classified defense information and was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison.

The court will hear arguments Tuesday in an Oregon case in which a local school district contends that students should at least give public special education programs a try before seeking reimbursement for private school tuition.

A federal appeals court sided with a high-school student identified in court papers only as T.A. The student enrolled in a $5,200-a-month private program and sought reimbursement from the Forest Grove School District.

The Supreme Court heard a similar case from New York in 2007, but split 4-4 on the outcome.

The case is Forest Grove School District v. T.A., 08-305.

The Supreme Court, acting Monday, rejected an appeal from Salvador Magluta, who was convicted of laundering at least $730,000 in drug money and bribing a juror at an earlier trial. The federal appeals court in Atlanta threw out the bribery count, but otherwise upheld the lengthy sentence.

Magluta asked the high court to take his case to consider whether the government should have been barred from trying him again after a jury acquitted him in 1996 of charges based on the same conduct. He also disputed the sentence's length since the judge acknowledged he took into account money laundering charges on which the jury found Magluta not guilty.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney ruled after hearing three days of testimony that detailed a scheme to recruit men who would claim they were rendered sterile by exposure to a pesticide in the 1970s.

Witnesses and investigators told of being in fear for their lives for exposing the fraud.

The judge denounced the lawyers who hatched the scheme and said there was a group of corrupt Nicaraguan judges "devouring bribes" to make judgments and aid the scheme.

The lawsuits ended up in the California court seeking enforcement of extravagant damages determined by Nicaraguan judges.

The men say in court papers filed Monday in New York City that the Rev. Frank Genevive abused them between 1978 and 1987, when they were teens.

The Associated Press doesn't normally name rape victims. But Mark Lyman of Stillwater and David Landfear of Cohoes asked to be identified.

They say the abuse included oral sex and sodomy. The 53-year-old Genevive and his Franciscan supervisors are named as defendants.

Genevive and Franciscan Superior Robert Campagna didn't reply Tuesday to messages seeking comment.

In July 2008, Genevive pleaded guilty in Boston to raping Lyman, Landfear and others. He received a suspended sentence.

Jurors reviewed a biblical passage relating that a murderer who used an iron object to kill "shall surely be put to death." They were deciding whether to impose a death sentence on Khristian Oliver for fatally shooting and bludgeoning his victim with the barrel of a gun.

The court previously has said that jurors should base their verdicts only on evidence presented in the courtroom.

But state and federal courts upheld Oliver's sentence, despite testimony that some jurors consulted the passage that described a killing similar to the one Oliver committed.