A former associate professor at Rochester Institute of Technology admitted Wednesday that he strangled his wife last year and took her body to a suburban Rochester park because it was her favorite place.

Timothy Wells, 58, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Monroe County Court while friends of the couple looked on.

Prosecutors said Wells strangled Christine Sevilla, 58, on Nov. 30 at their home in suburban Perinton. Police said he put her body in the trunk of his car and drove to a park in the nearby town of Mendon, just south of Rochester.

Wells later called 911 and said he had killed his wife, authorities said.

Wells taught computing and information sciences courses at RIT. Sevilla was a photographer and environmental activist who had also taught at the institute.

The watchdog of the Securities and Exchange Commission has found no hard evidence that the SEC timed the announcement of its fraud case against Goldman Sachs to eclipse negative news about a separate case.

Inspector General David Kotz's report Wednesday was a response to demands from congressional Republicans who had questioned the timing of the Goldman charges. The SEC announced the charges on April 16, the same day it released Kotz's blistering report on the agency's failure to catch R. Allen Stanford's alleged Ponzi scheme.

But the report says that the way the SEC managed the Goldman case showed it was trying to maximize positive press coverage. Kotz's report says the agency didn't want a congressional panel to break the news first.

Kotz found that the SEC's timing of its Goldman announcement was delayed a day so as not to overshadow its announcement of a settlement with investment firm Quadrangle Group. He said the SEC wanted to maintain a positive relationship with New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who was announcing his own settlement with Quadrangle that day

Kotz's investigation also found no evidence that SEC officials coordinated the timing of actions on Goldman with anyone in the Obama administration or Congress to help speed passage of the financial overhaul law.

In his investigation of the agency's handling of the Stanford case, Kotz found that SEC staff had known since 1997 that the billionaire was likely operating a Ponzi scheme but didn't charge him until February 2009. The charges came a few months after the Bernard Madoff pyramid surfaced.

At a Senate hearing last month, Kotz had termed "suspicious" the timing of the agency's civil fraud charges against Goldman.

The Supreme Court won't stop Utah from enacting a tax that hits only adult-oriented businesses.

The high court on Tuesday refused to hear an appeal from Denali, LLC, which wanted to overturn a decision by the Utah Supreme Court.

That court upheld a 2004 decision by the Utah Legislature to enact a 10 percent tax on sexually explicit businesses in an effort to pay for sex offender treatment. The tax covered everything a sexually explicitly business sold — admission, T-shirts and hamburgers included.

A group of strip clubs challenged the constitutionality of the law, saying it was overly broad and violated their First Amendment rights. But the state's Supreme Court upheld the tax.

The Utah Supreme Court ruled that the Sexually Explicit Business and Escort Services tax is not a violation of First Amendment rights.

Denali runs an exotic club featuring full frontal nudity, while another company, American Bush, Inc., wants to introduce nudity into its performances.

Other states have been waiting to see the outcome of this case before trying to enact their own taxes.

A Texas death row inmate found with the blood of murder victims on his clothing is seeking the Supreme Court's help in getting access to other evidence for DNA testing that might implicate someone else.

Hank Skinner was convicted of pummeling his girlfriend with a pickax handle and stabbing her two sons on New Year's Eve in 1993 in their Texas Panhandle home. DNA evidence at his trial showed that blood on his clothing was from at least two of the victims.

The Supreme Court is hearing argument Wednesday on whether Skinner may use a federal civil rights law to ask for tests on other evidence that were not done before his conviction.

The justices blocked Skinner's execution in March an hour before he was to go to the death chamber.

The Supreme Court won't reconsider a decision to reinstate more than 100 lawsuits filed by women who claimed that hormone replacement therapy caused breast cancer.

The high court refused on Tuesday to hear an appeal from Wyeth LLC and other pharmaceutical companies.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a federal judge's decision to throw out many of the lawsuits.

The drug companies wanted the case in federal court, and said plaintiffs added unrelated local defendants to ensure it would stay in state court. A federal judge agreed, and dismissed many of the lawsuits. But the appeal court overturned that ruling, saying that it had not been proven that the women had done anything wrong.

The Supreme Court is trying to sort out whether drug companies can be sued for claims of serious side effects from childhood vaccines without driving vaccine makers from the market and risking a public health crisis.

The court heard argument Tuesday in an appeal filed by Pittsburgh area parents who want to sue Pfizer Inc.'s Wyeth for the serious health problems they say their 18-year-old daughter suffered from a vaccine she received in infancy.

Several justices appeared sympathetic to the parents' claims.

Wyeth, backed by the Obama administration and many public health groups, argued that Congress shielded drug companies from most vaccine lawsuits when it created a special vaccine court 24 years ago to handle the claims.