The merger unfolding between two western Pennsylvania public school systems with sharply declining enrollments is the state's first district consolidation in at least 20 years, and most notably, its first voluntary one.

Officials say the move will save money and improve educational offerings, yet parents in both districts worry that some losses will accompany any gains. In any case, the consolidation is expected to be closely watched.

The willingness of two school districts to dissolve boundary lines is rare in states where local school board control is sacrosanct and school traditions that define a community are deeply ingrained. In recent years, at least a few states have tried to force mergers, with mixed results.

Yet the marriage of the Center Area and Monaca school districts northwest of Pittsburgh is part of a gradual, ongoing national progression toward fewer districts educating public school students.

Over roughly the last two decades, the number of school districts nationwide has declined 10 percent, from 15,714 in 1985-86 to 14,166 in 2005-06, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

With local school boards facing spiraling prices for fuel, employee health insurance and other operating costs — and opposition to increases in property taxes that largely pay for them — the idea of consolidating to save money is becoming an increasingly common discussion topic.

Therin Gartrell, 28, was arrested Sunday, just before the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Authorities said he was pulled over in the suburb of Aurora in a rented truck that contained rifles, a bulletproof vest, wigs and fake IDs, and that Gartrell and two other men had talked about killing Obama.

The U.S. attorney's office later said the men were drug users who made racist threats but had no firm assassination plot and no ability to carry one out. No one has been charged in relation to the alleged threats.

Aurora police say Gartrell had been on crutches when they arrested him. Handcuffed to his crutches in court Thursday, he spoke little and did not enter a plea.

Public defender Ed Harris was appointed to represent him. Harris was not present and did not immediately respond to a telephone message seeking comment.

Arapahoe County prosecutors had planned to charge Gartrell Thursday with state drug and weapons violations, but that was put on hold without explanation.

U.S. attorney's spokesman Jeff Dorschner said it was "best from a coordination standpoint" if the cases against Gartrell and the two other men were in federal court.

State prosecutors sometimes defer to their federal counterparts if a suspect can get a stiffer sentence in federal court.

A federal conviction for methamphetamine possession carries a prison term of up to two years with no time off for good behavior. Penalties under the state charges were not immediately available.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent is charged with two counts of abusive sexual contact and one count of attempted aggravated sexual abuse.

A former case manager at the U.S. District Court in Galveston accused Kent of twice touching her under her clothing and repeatedly making obscene suggestions during the six years she worked with him.

The indictment, first reported by the Houston Chronicle, alleges the criminal conduct happened on Aug. 29, 2003, and March 23, 2007, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich said in a statement.

Kent's attorney, Dick DeGuerin, called any sexual contact that may have happened between Kent and his accuser consensual.

"He's angry and ready for a fight. He is innocent. We will try this case. It is nothing but a false accusation," said DeGuerin said.

Kent's accuser issued a statement Thursday saying she felt vindicated by the grand jury's decision.

Jane Daniel says she never would have been ordered to pay Defonseca and her ghost writer $32.4 million over her handling of profits from "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years" had the jury known the book was filled with lies.

Defonseca never lived with wolves to escape the Nazis, never killed a German soldier in self-defense, never walked 3,000 miles across Europe in search of her parents. Contrary to the book's claims, Defonseca admitted in February that she isn't even Jewish.

Daniel is asking a judge to throw out the verdict; a hearing is set for Thursday in Middlesex Superior Court.

"This is a case where everyone was so enamored and felt so much sympathy for the Holocaust survivor, it just overwhelmed everyone in the case, including the jury," Daniel said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Now to find out that the book was not true, that is fraud on the court."

Defonseca and her ghost writer, Vera Lee, said the truth of the 1997 book had no bearing on the jury's finding that Daniel cheated them out of profits.

A grand jury on Thursday indicted Mayra Lizbeth Rosales, 27, on one count of first-degree murder and on one count of injury to a child in the death of Eliseo Gonzalez Jr. She previously had been charged with capital murder.

Rosales weighs nearly 1,000 pounds and cannot fit through a door to leave her home, leaving prosecutors wondering how to bring her to court. As of Thursday evening, she was not in custody.

Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino said holding her at the county jail for her trial would be impossible because she needs extensive medical care.

"She would die," said Trevino in Thursday's online edition of The Monitor in McAllen.

The grand jury indicted Rosales after an autopsy confirmed investigators' suspicions that the child died March 18 because he had been struck. Investigators believe the toddler was struck at least twice, crushing his head.

Authorities recommended Rosales' bond be set at $150,000.

The boy's mother Jaime Rosales, was charged earlier with injury to a child because she allegedly left her son alone with his aunt. Her bond has been set at $100.000.

Justice Joyce Kennard wrote that two Christian fertility doctors who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian have neither a free speech right nor a religious exemption from the state's law, which "imposes on business establishments certain antidiscrimination obligations."

In the lawsuit that led to the ruling, Guadalupe Benitez, 36, of Oceanside said that the doctors treated her with fertility drugs and instructed her how to inseminate herself at home but told her their beliefs prevented them from inseminating her. One of the doctors referred her to another fertility specialist without moral objections, and Benitez has since given birth to three children.

Nevertheless, Benitez in 2001 sued the Vista-based North Coast Women's Care Medical Group. She and her lawyers successfully argued that a state law prohibiting businesses from discriminating based on sexual orientation applies to doctors.

The law was originally designed to prevent hotels, restaurants and other public services from refusing to serve patrons because of their race. The Legislature has since expanded it to cover characteristics such as age and sexual orientation.

During the penalty phase of Juan Alvarez's trial, jurors cried openly as survivors of the dead came forward to describe the anguish of their losses and the emptiness of their lives since the accident in 2005 robbed them of spouses, sisters, fathers and mothers.

Superior Court Judge William Pounders, who has presided over many high profile trials in a long career on the bench, admitted outside the jury's presence that he also had been affected by the survivors' testimony.

"I've never been so emotionally affected by evidence," said Pounders, who does not have the option to increase the penalty to death at the sentencing hearing Wednesday.

The prosecution described Alvarez as a remorseless, smirking defendant who didn't think of the case as a tragedy.

The defense painted the 29-year-old as a mentally disturbed man who was almost aborted by his mother, was shaped by a childhood of horrific abuse and became a methamphetamine addict. They said he drove his sport utility vehicle on the railroad tracks in a misguided attempt to get the attention of his estranged wife. They said he changed his mind at the last minute but it was too late to get the vehicle off the tracks.