A college professor accused of organizing a swingers club and holding private orgies in China was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison, officials said, in a case that touched off national debate about sexual freedom.

Ma Yaohai, 53, was convicted and sentenced on charges of group licentiousness for participating in group sex parties, said an official from the Qinhuai District Court in southeastern Nanjing. The official, who declined to give his name, refused to answer further questions.

Ma, along with 21 other people, was arrested and charged last year — the first time anyone has been charged under a 1997 law in a case that has snagged huge public interest with its titillating details. It also generated debate about sexual freedom in a nation trying to reshape its own modern morality.

Ma's attorney Yao Yong'an said his client, who was the only one to plead innocent, plans to appeal the verdict.

Connecticut's secretary of state ended her bid for attorney general Tuesday, hours after losing a lawsuit she filed against her own office in an effort to prove that she is qualified to be the state's top prosecutor.

Democrat Susan Bysiewicz said in a statement she is tremendously disappointed with the state Supreme Court's unanimous decision that she is not legally qualified to hold the job now occupied by Richard Blumenthal. She said she strongly disagrees with the decision but that she respects the rule of law.

Connecticut law requires the attorney general to have worked 10 years as a lawyer. Bysiewicz had argued that her 11 years as secretary of the state and six years as a corporate lawyer in Connecticut should count.

Republicans maintain that Bysiewicz's tenure as secretary of the state should not count. A lower court had ruled that Bysiewicz had met the requirement. The state GOP then appealed to the state's highest court.

A German man who called himself Clark Rockefeller and who spun fantastic stories about his past is appealing his sentence for kidnapping his 7-year-old daughter in Boston.

Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter is expected to appear before a tribunal in Suffolk Superior Court on Wednesday.

Gerhartsreiter was sentenced to four to five years in prison last year for kidnapping his daughter in 2008. They were found in Baltimore and the girl was unhurt.

Defense lawyers argued Gerhartsreiter was legally insane.

Gerhartsreiter used multiple aliases to move in wealthy circles in Boston, New York and Los Angeles after coming to the U.S. in the 1970s. At times, he claimed to be a physicist, an art collector, a ship captain and a financial adviser.

A federal appeals court on Friday granted Dish Network Corp. a rare, full-court review of a ruling it had earlier lost to TiVo Inc., one that could have resulted in the satellite TV company disabling millions of digital video recorders.

Instead, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington breathed new life into litigation that Dish has consistently lost to TiVo. Dish's decision to seek an "en banc" review was seen as CEO Charlie Ergen's last straw effort as damages mounted. Ergen had even believed that the appeals court was unlikely to grant it.

Shares of DVR pioneer TiVo fell by $6.52, or 37.5 percent, to $10.87 in midday trading. Dish rose by $1.22, or 5.6 percent, to $23.18.

But it's uncertain whether Dish will have eventual victory given that TiVo has prevailed in a series of other court rulings.

TiVo sued Dish in 2004 for patent infringement over a technology that stored and retrieved video on DVRs, which lets viewers pause, rewind and replay live TV. Dish lost the case on appeal, paid TiVo $104.6 million in damages and interest and was barred from using the technology.

A worldwide shortage of an anesthetic used in lethal injections almost kept Ohio from proceeding with an execution scheduled this week.

An attorney for the state warned a federal judge last week and again Monday the prisons department might not be able to find enough thiopental sodium for Thursday's execution.

Principal Assistant Attorney General Charles Wille (WIL'-ee) told U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost later Monday the prisons department eventually was able to get the proper supply of the anesthetic. That supply includes doses beyond what would be needed to put condemned inmate Michael Beuke (BYOO'-kee) to death for a fatal shooting.

Prisons spokeswoman Julie Walburn tells The Associated Press she doesn't think the shortage will affect other executions.

Beuke says he was brain-damaged at the time of the killing. He's asked for clemency.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Friday that journalists do not have a blanket right to shield confidential sources.

The court ruled 8-1 against the National Post and former reporter Andrew McIntosh, who sought to quash a search warrant issued almost a decade ago in a case dealing with a possibly forged document from a secret source linked to a political scandal.

In finding there is no broad protection for journalists to shield sources, the justices said claims of immunity can be argued on a case-by-case basis.

"The law should and does accept that in some situations the public interest in protecting the secret source from disclosure outweighs other competing public interests — including criminal investigations," Justice Ian Binnie wrote on the court's behalf.

"In those circumstances, the courts will recognize an immunity against disclosure of sources to whom confidentiality has been promised."

But Binnie wrote that in this situation, the needs of a police investigation trumped the right to keep sources confidential.

A federal appeals court on Thursday intervened to block the release of nine members of a Michigan militia accused of plotting to overthrow the government, dealing a setback to the defendants as they gathered in a courtroom hoping to rejoin their families.

A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati issued a temporary stay about 12 hours after a federal judge in Detroit said she would no longer freeze her Monday decision releasing the nine with electronic monitors and other restrictions.

With some already in street clothes, the militia members were transported to court to be processed for release Thursday. But they were returned to jail after a magistrate judge announced the appeals court decision.