Attorneys for 28-year-old Ingmar Guandique (gwan-DEE'-kay) had argued he would not get a fair trial in Washington because of the extensive publicity. But Judge Gerald Fisher denied a motion Friday to change the venue of Guandique's trial in October.

Levy disappeared in May 2001 and her remains were found a year later in Rock Creek Park. Guandique faces a first-degree murder charge in her death.

The judge still has to rule on another defense request to suppress statements Guandique made to authorities in 2008.

A former enforcement attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission was sentenced Friday to eight years in prison for his role in a a series of multimillion dollar pump-and-dump stock fraud schemes.

Dallas-based attorney Phillip Offill Jr., 51, was convicted by a jury earlier this year on 10 counts of wire fraud and conspiracy. He testified that he was acting within the law, but the jury rejected his defense, and so too did U.S. District Judge Liam O'Grady.

"Your testimony ... was an affront to justice," O'Grady told Offill at Friday's sentencing hearing. "It was one of the biggest pack of lies I've ever heard."

Offill, who worked at the SEC for 15 years before taking a job at the Godwin Gruber law firm in Dallas, aided schemes that by conservative estimates cheated more than 1,500 investors out of at least $2.4 million. The fraudsters would pump up the value of dubious penny stocks and then sell the shares at inflated prices to unwitting buyers.

Eight other coconspirators have already been convicted and sentenced in a case that has been under investigation for more than three years. Most of the illegal transactions took place in 2004.

The eight-year term imposed on Offill was one of the most severe. Prosecutor Ed Power said the tougher sentence was deserved because Offill lied on the witness stand and because his status as a respected attorney helped provide cover for the fraud.

A federal immigration officer who was recorded demanding sex from a woman in exchange for a green card has pleaded guilty.

Isaac Baichu pleaded guilty to all the charges against him Wednesday in Queens. The 48-year-old is expected to receive a prison sentence of 1 1/2 to 4 1/2 years.

The case involved a Colombian woman married to an American citizen. The woman said she gave in to one sex demand in December 2007 because she was afraid, but she used a mobile phone hidden in her purse to record the encounter.

She took the recording to The New York Times and to the Queens district attorney's office.

Baichu was arrested in March 2008 after meeting with the woman again, this time with prosecutors listening in.

Gun control advocates are hoping they can win by losing when the Supreme Court rules on state and local regulation of firearms.

The justices will be deciding whether the right to possess guns guaranteed by the Second Amendment — like much of the rest of the Bill of Rights — applies to states as well as the federal government. It's widely believed they will say it does.

But even if the court strikes down handgun bans in Chicago and its suburb of Oak Park, Ill., that are at issue in the argument to be heard Tuesday, it could signal that less severe rules or limits on guns are permissible.

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence is urging the court not to do anything that would prevent state and local governments "from enacting the reasonable laws they desire and need to protect their families and communities from gun violence."

By some estimates, about 90 million people in the U.S. own a total of some 200 million guns.

Roughly 30,000 people in the United States died each year from guns; more than half of them are suicides. An additional 70,000 are wounded.

The new lawsuits were begun almost immediately after the court's blockbuster ruling in 2008 that struck down the District of Columbia's handgun ban. In that case, the court ruled for the first time that individuals have a right keep guns for self-defense and other purposes. Because the nation's capital is a federal enclave, that ruling applied only to federal laws.

Goodwin Liu, 39, the son of Taiwanese immigrants, learned English in kindergarten and later became an honors graduate at Stanford and a Rhodes Scholar. He has taught at Berkeley since 2003 and was named associate dean of the law school in 2008.

He also worked as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and as a special assistant to the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Education.

Liu is one of two Asian Americans nominated by Obama to the federal appeals courts, which now have no active Asian American judges. The Ninth Circuit handles federal cases from California and eight other Western states and has three vacancies among its 29 authorized judgeships.

"Goodwin Liu is an outstanding teacher, a brilliant scholar and an exceptional public servant," said the law school's dean, Christopher Edley.

The nomination also won praise from Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and from Tom Campbell, a UC Berkeley business professor and former congressman who is seeking the Republican nomination to run against Boxer.

Campbell said Liu would bring "scholarly distinction and a strong reputation for integrity, fair-mindedness and collegiality to the Ninth Circuit."

But Senate confirmation may not be routine. Some of Liu's positions could draw conservative opposition, which has held up other judicial nominees.

Liu testified in January 2006 against President George W. Bush's nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, saying Alito's judicial opinions were well-reasoned but indicated a tilt in favor of prosecutors and the government. He did not testify against Chief Justice John Roberts but told a reporter before the 2005 confirmation hearing that he thought Roberts would move the court to the right.

The state Finance Department has refused to pay the legal fees of a Montgomery law firm that was hired by a legislative oversight committee to stop the state from proceeding with an unbid $13 million computer contract.

State Comptroller Thomas White has written to House Clerk Greg Pappas saying the committee didn't have the authority to hire the firm of Thomas, Means, Gillis & Seay. White said the state can't pay the $26,740 bill submitted by the law firm

The Legislature's Contract Review Committee hired the firm to represent the panel in a lawsuit seeking to stop the unbid contract signed by Gov. Bob Riley with Paragon Source LLC. The lawsuit was dismissed by a Jefferson County judge.

Samsung Electronics will pay Rambus Inc. $700 million over five years, and invest another $200 million in the chip design company as part of a settlement ending their legal disputes, the two companies said Tuesday.

Samsung will make an upfront payment of $200 million, and a quarterly payment of about $25 million for the next five years as part of the agreement, the companies said. Samsung also will invest $200 million in Rambus stock.

Under the agreement, Samsung also will license Rambus' patent portfolio "covering all Samsung semiconductor products, including a perpetual fully-paid license to certain DRAM products," the companies said in a release.