Bankruptcy proceedings have begun for Mt. Gox, a move that was widely expected after the Tokyo District Court decided earlier this month that the bitcoin exchange would not be able to resurrect itself.

An administrator will try to sell the company's assets, but many creditors, including those who had bitcoins with the exchange, might not get their money back.

After Mt. Gox went offline in February, its CEO said tens of thousands of bitcoins worth several hundred million dollars were unaccounted for.

Mt Gox has suggested the bitcoins were stolen. The company has not been able to confirm the bitcoin balances of its users.

Bitcoins, created in 2009, are used for transactions across borders without third parties such as banks and have become a popular investment.

A German court has rejected an ultraconservative British bishop's appeal against his conviction and fine for denying the Holocaust in a television interview.

The state court in Nuremberg said Friday it found no legal errors in a January 2013 decision by judges in nearby Regensburg to convict Richard Williamson of incitement and fine him 1,800 euros ($2,500).

It was Williamson's second appeal against the ruling and follows a lengthy legal saga — an earlier conviction was overturned on procedural grounds.

Williamson told a Swedish TV station in during a 2008 interview conducted near Regensburg that he didn't believe Jews were killed in gas chambers during World War II. Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany.

A traditionalist breakaway Catholic group, the Society of St. Pius X, expelled Williamson in 2012.

The European Union's top court says key legislation allowing governments to collect data on citizens' communications for law-enforcement purposes is invalid.

The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg on Tuesday ruled the so-called data retention directive is too far-reaching and offers too few safeguards to protect people's right to privacy, creating an impression that "private lives are the subject of constant surveillance."

The legislation allows the storage of phone calls or online communication records for at least six months to help prevent serious crimes such as terrorism. The data typically reveal who was involved in the communication, when and how often, but not its content.

The court says the 2006 legislation represents a "particularly serious interference with fundamental rights."

The Supreme Court is considering whether to abandon a quarter-century of precedent and make it tougher for investors to band together to sue corporations for securities fraud.

The justices hear arguments Wednesday in an appeal by Halliburton Co. that seeks to block a class-action lawsuit claiming the energy services company inflated its stock price.

A group of investors says it lost money when Halliburton's stock price dropped after revelations the company misrepresented revenues, understated its liability in asbestos litigation and overstated the benefits of a merger.

Justices threw out the company's first attempt to block the lawsuit in 2011. But Halliburton is now urging the court to overturn a 25-year-old decision that sparked a tidal wave of securities-related, class-action lawsuits against publicly traded companies and has led to billions in settlements.

The court's 1988 decision in Basic v. Levinson says shareholders who claim they were defrauded by false statements in securities filings don't have to prove they actually relied on the statements. Rather, the court reasoned that any misrepresentation would be reflected in the current stock price. Even if investors are not aware of the misstatements, they are presumed to be aware of them because they affect the stock price.

This presumption, known as the "fraud-on-the-market theory," has become the driving force for modern class-action securities cases. But some economists have questioned whether this theory makes sense anymore, saying it doesn't account for the sometimes random and arbitrary nature of stock trading.

The overturning of Virginia’s gay marriage ban places the legal fight over same-sex unions increasingly in the hands of federal appeals courts shaped by President Barack Obama’s two election victories.

It’s no accident that Virginia has become a key testing ground for federal judges’ willingness to embrace same-sex marriage after last year’s strongly worded pro-gay rights ruling by the Supreme Court. Judges appointed by Democratic presidents have a 10-5 edge over Republicans on the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, formerly among the nation’s most conservative appeals courts.

Nationally, three other federal appeals courts will soon take up the right of same-sex couples to marry, too, in Ohio, Colorado and California. The San Francisco-based 9th circuit is dominated by judges appointed by Democratic presidents. The Denver-based court, home of the 10th circuit, has shifted from a Republican advantage to an even split between the parties, while the 6th circuit, based in Cincinnati, remains relatively unchanged in favor of Republicans during Obama’s tenure.

U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen’s ruling Thursday, that same-sex couples in Virginia have the same constitutional right to marry as heterosexuals, represented the strongest advance in the South for advocates of gay marriage. She put her own ruling on hold while it is being appealed.

A 16-year-old San Francisco Bay Area boy has pleaded not guilty to charges that he set a male teen's skirt on fire on a public bus.

Richard Thomas is facing aggravated mayhem and assault charges with hate crime allegations in connection with the Nov. 4 attack.

Authorities say Thomas told investigators he attacked 18-year-old on Luke Fleischman on a bus in Oakland because he was homophobic. Relatives and friends have said Fleischman identifies as "agender," a designation sometimes adopted by people who see themselves as neither male nor female.

Fleischman was sleeping when he was attacked and suffered second and third-degree burns.

The Oakland Tribune reports that Thomas, who has been charged as an adult, entered the plea on Thursday.

His attorney, William Du Bois, says Thomas was playing a prank that went wrong.