The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by Pfizer Inc. that sought to thwart a securities lawsuit alleging the drugmaker misrepresented the safety profile of the blockbuster pain drug Celebrex.

The plaintiffs alleged that Pfizer's Pharmacia unit deliberately withheld the full results of a medical study that showed no safety advantage to using Celebrex over less expensive anti-inflammatory drugs.

Pfizer argued that investors missed a two-year statute of limitations to bring the lawsuit. The investors said there was no evidence of a possible fraud until the Washington Post published an article about missing Celebrex data in August 2001, meaning their April 2003 lawsuit was within two years of that development.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled last year that the lawsuit was not filed too late. The Supreme Court let that ruling stand without comment.

The high court's denial of Pfizer's appeal comes a week after the justices ruled unanimously that investors didn't wait too long to file securities lawsuits alleging that Merck & Co. misrepresented the safety of painkiller drug Vioxx. Pfizer's appeal had been on hold pending the outcome of the Merck case.

The Supreme Court has refused to review the case of a British woman on death row in Texas for killing a young mother.

The justices on Monday rejected an appeal from Linda Carty, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing a woman whose child she also snatched in Houston in 2001. Carty has complained that her trial lawyers were deficient.

The British government and human rights groups have aided Carty's cause.

Carty is one of 10 condemned women in Texas. She is a former teacher from St. Kitts in the British Virgin Islands.

In September, a taped voice recording of Carty begging Britons to help save her life was broadcast into London's Trafalgar Square.

Two American women charged in a global terrorism plot allegedly aimed at killing a Swedish artist are due in court in Philadelphia.

Court papers show the case is largely built on e-mails and online postings allegedly made by 46-year-old Colleen LaRose of Pennsburg and 31-year-old Jamie Paulin-Ramirez of Leadville, Colo.

The Colorado woman's defense lawyer, Jeremy Ibrahim, says he will ask Monday for copies of computer evidence. A judge may have to screen it first because prosecutors say some of it may be classified.

LaRose is also expected to enter a plea to a superseding indictment. Both women have previously pleaded not guilty. They were arrested this year after returning from Europe.

President Barack Obama has accelerated his search for his next Supreme Court nominee, meeting in the Oval Office with one of the candidates, federal judge Sidney Thomas of Montana, a person familiar with the conversation says.

Obama's meeting with Thomas on Thursday was his first known formal interview for the upcoming vacancy on the court. He is holding conversations with other candidates, and it is not clear whether he has already had other personal meetings with contenders.

Vice President Joe Biden interviewed Thomas at the White House in a separate meeting Thursday, said the person familiar with the conversations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss Obama's private deliberations.

The White House had no comment. A call to Thomas' chambers was not answered.

The personal time Obama devoted to Thomas suggests that the federal judge, well respected within legal circles but hardly a familiar name in Washington, is under a higher level of consideration by the president.

The news of his interview by the president and vice president works to the White House's advantage in signaling that Obama is giving a hard review to a candidate who comes from outside the Washington Beltway and does not neatly fit into conventional wisdom.

The Florida attorney general's office is investigating possible misconduct by a large law firm that files foreclosures for banks, according to a posting on its Web site.

The Web site said the office is looking at whether Florida Default Law Group, based in Tampa, was involved in "fabricating and/or presenting false and misleading documents in foreclosure cases." Mortgage documents that are used to prove a bank has a right to foreclose "have later been shown to be legally inadequate and/or insufficient," the Web site said.

A spokeswoman for Florida Default declined to comment. Ryan Wiggins, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Bill McCollum, said the investigation began last fall.

The civil probe comes as some judges and federal prosecutors in Florida are paying close attention to how banks—and so-called foreclosure-mill law firms that work for banks—are attempting to take control of homes from borrowers in default. Judges across the country have chastised banks and their attorneys for attempting to seize properties they can't prove they own.

A teenager convicted of first-degree murder for fatally stabbing another student in the bathroom of a suburban Boston high school has been sentenced to life in prison.

John Odgren was sentenced Friday to a mandatory life sentence with no possibility for parole by Middlesex Superior Court Judge Jane Haggerty.

Odgren's lawyer filed a motion asking the judge to declare a state law that forces mandatory life sentences for juvenile offenders as unconstitutional. The judge says she will take it up at a later date.

Odgren was convicted Thursday by a jury that rejected the defense's assertion that the then-16-year-old boy was legally insane when he stabbed 15-year-old James Alenson at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School on Jan. 19, 2007.

Prosecutors depicted Odgren as a calculating killer who picked a victim at random.