The longtime girlfriend of reputed Boston crime boss James "Whitey" Bulger pleaded not guilty Thursday to helping him elude authorities during his 16 years as a fugitive.

Catherine Greig, 60, entered her plea in a brief appearance in federal court in Boston that lasted less than five minutes. She also waived a reading of the indictment.

Greig was indicted last week on a charge of conspiracy to harbor and conceal a fugitive, a crime that carries a maximum sentence of five years. Greig has been jailed since she and Bulger were captured in June in Santa Monica, Calif. Bulger has pleaded not guilty to participating in 19 murders.

Prosecutors say Greig actively helped Bulger escape capture, but her attorney says she's a subservient woman who wasn't aware of the extent of Bulger's alleged crimes when she fled with him.

On Thursday, Greig smiled at her twin sister when she entered the courtroom. She did not speak during the hearing, except to tell the judge she understood the charges against her and was ready to enter her plea.

After the hearing, Greig's attorney Kevin Reddington was asked if Greig was cooperating with authorities against Bulger.

A Nigerian man who fled to his homeland after being accused of defrauding dozens of lawyers and law firms of more than $31 million dollars has been extradited to the U.S., Nigeria’s anti-graft agency said Friday.

Emmanuel Ekhator was arrested in Nigeria’s Benin City by the country’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission in August. He was handed over to U.S. marshals in New York on Thursday, said Femi Babafemi, the anti-graft body’s spokesman.

“With the latest extradition, ... the message should be clear to anyone who travels abroad to commit crime and run back home to hide that Nigeria is no longer safe for them,” Farida Waziri, the anti-graft body’s chief, said in a statement. “We will get them and hand them over to face the law.”

Court records show Ekhator has yet to be assigned a lawyer. He remained in custody on Friday.

Charging documents from the U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Pennsylvania show that Ekhator and others are accused of mail and wire fraud after using bank accounts in South Korea, Singapore, China and Japan to collect the stolen money.

Federal prosecutors say the complicated scam involved multiple players, with a fraudster calling a U.S. or Canadian law firm posing as someone usually in Asia who needed to collect a debt from a person or organization based in North America. Another scammer poses as the debtor and agrees to pay off the debt — using a fake check, authorities say.

The law firms or lawyers collect the fake check, which gets validated by a third scammer posing as a bank employee over the telephone. Before the victims realize the check is fake, they’ve already used their own money to pay the fake settlement amount to their supposedly Asia-based client.

A court in Ukraine on Friday refused to consider an appeal to release former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from jail, where she has been kept for a week while her abuse-of-office trial proceeds.

Tymoshenko was jailed on Aug. 5 for violating court procedures at her trial, including refusing to rise when requested by the judge. She says her resistance is a protest of a trial she contends is politically motivated.

On Friday, the Kiev Appeal Court refused to hear an appeal, saying the country's criminal code does not allow appealing a preventive measure.

Tymoshenko attorney Yuriy Sukhov said that ruling will be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Tymoshenko is charged in connection with a natural gas deal with Russia in 2009 that prosecutors claim was disadvantageous to Ukraine.

The United States and the European Union have condemned court cases against Tymoshenko and several of her top allies as selective prosecution of political opponents. Tymoshenko was a key figure in the 2004 Orange Revolution protests that forced annulment of a presidential election purportedly won by Viktor Yanukovych.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer faces a Wednesday deadline for asking the U.S. Supreme Court to accept her appeal of a ruling that put on hold key parts of the state's immigration enforcement law.

The Republican governor lost her first attempt to throw out a district court's decision that blocks, among other portions of the law, a provision requiring police, while enforcing other laws, to question the immigration status of those they suspect are in the country illegally, when a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected her motion in April.

Brewer vowed three months ago to take her argument before the nation's highest court, which has discretion on whether to hear her case.

The 9th Circuit said the federal government is likely to be able to prove the law is unconstitutional and likely to succeed in its argument that Congress has given the federal government sole authority to enforce immigration laws.

Brewer's lawyers have argued that the federal government hasn't effectively enforced immigration law and that the state's intent in passing its own regulations was to assist federal authorities, as Congress has encouraged.

They also have argued the district court judge erred by accepting speculation by the federal government that the law might burden legal immigrants and by concluding the federal government would likely prevail.

A federal appeals court has sided with an Atlantic City casino dealer who says he was targeted because he was involved in union organizing.

Bally's Park Place fired Jose Justiniano in 2007. The casino claimed he misused family medical leave time by attending a pro-union rally on a day he took time off to care for his daughter.

Justiniano had been active in casino unionizing efforts.

A judge upheld the firing, but the National Labor Relations Board disagreed and said it was unlawful.

Friday's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., agreed with the NLRB. It noted that Justiniano attended the rally for 20 minutes. It also said Bally's policy on family leave didn't justify the firing.

A message was left seeking comment from an attorney representing Bally's.

A month after the Connecticut Supreme Court reinstated murder convictions against two men who had been exonerated, a judge on Monday ordered one of them back to prison but allowed the other to remain free while fighting cancer.

George Gould was sent back to prison while Ronald Taylor, whose lawyer says he has terminal colon cancer, was allowed to remain out on bail. Both men await a new appeal trial connected to their murder convictions in the 1993 fatal shooting of New Haven grocery shop owner Eugenio Deleon Vega.

Gould and Taylor were both sentenced to 80 years in prison for the killing. They filed habeas corpus appeals, challenges to imprisonment that typically come after other appeals fail.

They were freed in April 2010 after 16 years behind bars when Superior Court Judge Stanley Fuger ruled they were victims of "manifest injustice" and declared them "actually innocent." Fuger's ruling came after a key prosecution witness recanted her trial testimony. He ordered both men released.

Prosecutors appealed to the state Supreme Court, which issued a unanimous decision last month saying that Fuger was wrong to overturn the convictions because Gould and Taylor hadn't proven their innocence. The high court ordered a new habeas corpus trial for the two men.