California voters embraced the idea of building the nation's first real high-speed rail system, which promised to whisk travelers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in under three hours, a trip that can take six hours or more by car. Eight years after they approved funding for it, construction is years behind schedule and legal, financial and logistical delays plague the $68 billion project.

The bullet train's timeline, funding and speed estimates are back in the spotlight for a longstanding lawsuit filed by residents whose property lies in its path.

In the second phase of a court challenge filed in 2011, attorneys for a group of Central Valley farmers will argue in Sacramento County Superior Court on Thursday that the state can't keep the promises it made to voters in 2008 about the travel times and system cost. Voters authorized selling $9.9 billion in bonds for a project that was supposed to cost $40 billion.

In recent months, rail officials have touted construction of a viaduct in Madera County, the first visible sign of construction. Though officials have been working for years to acquire the thousands of parcels of land required for the project, they currently have just 63 percent of the parcels needed for the first 29 miles in the Central Valley.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday suspended serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's attorney for two months over a series of ethics violations tied largely to an attempt to help a client recover money spent on fake John Lennon memorabilia.

The justices also ordered Gerald Boyle to take courses in law office management and to pay $24,900 to cover the costs of the disciplinary proceedings against him.

Boyle rose to prominence in southeastern Wisconsin law circles after he defended Dahmer. The serial killer was sentenced to life in prison after confessing to 17 murders. Another inmate killed Dahmer in 1994. Boyle also gained fame for defending former Green Bay Packers star Mark Chmura against sexual assault charges. Chmura was ultimately acquitted in 2001.

Boyle didn't immediately return a voicemail left Wednesday at his Milwaukee office.

According to court documents, the state Office of Lawyer Regulation brought six misconduct counts against Boyle last year. Five counts were connected to a man who paid out-of-state galleries tens of thousands of dollars for a microphone Lennon had used and sketches the Beatles front man had drawn.

The man, identified only as D.P. in the documents, hired Boyle to represent him in efforts to recover his money after he learned the memorabilia was fake.

Boyle improperly deposited $65,000 in advance fees from D.P. in his office's operational account rather than in a client trust fund, according to court documents. The attorney also failed to prepare written fee agreements or explain in writing the basis for the fees.

A federal appeals court is again considering the fate of 10 rare gold coins possibly worth $80 million or more that the government says were illegally taken from a Philadelphia mint and wound up in a jeweler's hands.

A lawyer for jeweler Israel Switt's heirs told the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday that authorities erred by seizing the coins without filing a required civil forfeiture action.

A jury found the seizure legal because the coins hadn't been circulated and must therefore have been stolen, but a three-judge appellate court reversed that decision in April. Federal prosecutors then asked for Wednesday's hearing before the full appeals court.

They say returning the rare $20 Double Eagles to Joan Langbord and her two sons would reward the family of a thief.

The Supreme Court said Monday it won't hear the Obama administration's appeal of a lower court ruling that made it tougher to prosecute people for trading on leaked inside information.

The justices let stand a decision by the federal appeals court in New York last year that threw out insider trading convictions of two high-profile hedge fund managers.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the convictions of Anthony Chiasson, of Manhattan, and Todd Newman, of Needham, Massachusetts, after finding they were too far removed from inside information to be prosecuted.

Prosecutors warned the ruling could hinder the government's campaign to curb insider trading on Wall Street, a crackdown that has resulted in more than 80 arrests and 70 convictions over several years.

Chiasson, who co-founded Level Global Investors based in Greenwich, Conn., and Newman, who had worked for Diamondback Capital Management based in Stamford, Conn., traded on tips from insiders on stock in technology companies Dell Inc. and Nvidia Corp. that generated $72 million in profits. The former portfolio managers were both convicted in December 2012.

The appeals court said prosecutors failed to present enough evidence the men willfully engaged in insider trading or conspired to break the law. It ruled that the government must show a person receiving a tip knew that an insider disclosed confidential information and that the tipster passed the information expecting a personal benefit.

In legal briefs filed with the court, Solicitor General Donald Verrilli said leaving the appeals court ruling in place would "hurt market participants, disadvantage scrupulous market analysts and impair the government's ability to protect the fairness and integrity of the securities markets."

Both men have denied insider trading. Their lawyers argued that they believed they were making trades based on legitimate research.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan told reporters on a conference call Monday that the Supreme Court's decision means "that there's a category of conduct that arguably will go unpunished going forward."

"If you have a CEO who has access to material, non-published information about earnings or anything else of a very sensitive nature and decides he wants to tip a relative or a buddy or a crony, knowing that person is going to trade on it to the tune and profit of millions of dollars, we would have to think long and hard, given Newman, whether to prosecute a person like that," Bharara said.

Clerk Mike Johnston prays twice a day, once each morning and once each night, and asks the Lord to understand the decision he made to license same-sex marriage.

“It’s still on my heart,” said Johnston, whose rural Carter County sits just to the east of Rowan County, where clerk Kim Davis sparked a national furor by refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, a decision that landed her in jail.

Johnston is one of Kentucky’s 119 other clerks, many of them deeply religious, who watched the Kim Davis saga unfold on national television while trying to reconcile their own faith and their oath of office. Sixteen of them sent pleading letters to the governor noting their own religious objections. But when forced to make a decision, only two have taken a stand as dramatic as Davis and refused to issue licenses.

And others say they find the controversy now swirling around their job title humiliating.

“I wish (Davis) would just quit, because she’s embarrassing everybody,” said Fayette County Clerk Don Blevins, whose office serves the state’s second-largest city, Lexington.

After the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in June, Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear ordered clerks across the state to issue licenses, launching them along markedly different paths. The clerk in Louisville, Bobbie Holsclaw, issued licenses that very day and the mayor greeted happy couples with bottles of champagne.

A federal appeals panel has upheld the convictions and sentences of a couple charged with enslaving a mentally disabled woman in their northeast Ohio home for nearly two years through intimidation, threats and abuse.

The three-judge 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Cincinnati agreed unanimously Tuesday that the federal charges were appropriate and that the prison sentences of at least three decades each were warranted.
A federal jury in Youngstown convicted Jessica Hunt and boyfriend Jordie Callahan last year on counts of forced labor, conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and conspiracy to illegally obtain prescription drugs.

Among other challenges in their appeal, the couple contended that the case should have been a state matter since federal forced labor prosecutions typically involve people brought to the U.S. for domestic servitude or sex trade.

The woman "was compelled to perform domestic labor and run errands for defendants by force, the threat of force, and the threat of abuse of legal process," Judge Eric Clay wrote.

"Because this is a distinct harm that is a matter of federal concern pursuant to the Thirteen Amendment, it matters little that defendants' conduct may have also violated various state laws," Clay wrote, citing the U.S. constitutional amendment that abolished slavery.

The couple was accused of holding the woman captive from early 2011 to late 2012. Prosecutors alleged that they threatened to harm the woman's young daughter if the woman did not do chores, shop and clean up after their pit bull dogs. The couple also used the dogs and a python to threaten the woman into complying, prosecutors said.