Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has hired fewer law clerks than usual, generating speculation that the leader of the court's liberals will retire next year.

If Stevens does step down, he would give President Barack Obama his second high court opening in two years. Obama chose Justice Sonia Sotomayor for the court when Justice David Souter announced his retirement in May.

Souter's failure to hire clerks was the first signal that he was contemplating leaving the court.

Stevens, 89, joined the court in 1975 and is the second-oldest justice in the court's history, after Oliver Wendell Holmes. He is the seventh-longest-serving justice, with more than 33 years and eight months on the court.

In response to a question from The Associated Press, Stevens confirmed through a court spokeswoman Tuesday that he has hired only one clerk for the term that begins in October 2010. He is among several justices who typically have hired all four clerks for the following year by now. Information about this advance hiring is not released by the court but is regularly published by some legal blogs.

Stevens did not say whether he plans to hire his full allotment of clerks or whether he will leave the court at the conclusion of the term that begins next month. Retired justices are allowed to hire one clerk.

Federal prosecutors have asked an appeals court to stay its decision that government agents illegally seized the drug testing records and samples of more than 100 baseball players.

The move could keep baseball's infamous drug list from being destroyed for at least a few months.

In a filing late Monday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco said the Solicitor General, in consultation with the criminal division of the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney's office, was considering whether to ask the Supreme Court to review the decision.

The deadline for a filing with the Supreme Court is Nov. 24.

"There is good cause for a stay," the government wrote in a motion filed by Joseph P. Russoniello, the U.S. attorney in San Francisco, and signed by Barbara J. Valliere, chief of his appellate section.

Police resumed their search Monday for possible links to unsolved crimes at the home of the Northern California sex offender charged with kidnapping a little girl and hiding her in his backyard for 18 years.

Three agencies in the San Francisco Bay area were looking through Phillip Garrido's property in Antioch for the fourth day, seeking evidence that might help solve cold cases.

Garrido and his wife, Nancy, were charged last week in the abduction, rape and imprisonment of Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was 11 when she was taken outside her home in South Lake Tahoe. They have pleaded not guilty to 29 counts.

Antioch and Contra Costa County authorities have not provided many details about what they are seeking at the property.

Police in the nearby city of Pittsburg, however, have said they are investigating whether Garrido, 58, was involved in the murders of prostitutes in the 1990s.

Over the weekend, authorities also roped off a next door neighbor's backyard where Garrido once lived in a shed. Neighbors say he once worked as the property caretaker and helped out an elderly man who lived there several years ago.

A fashion designer convicted of sexually assaulting aspiring models has asked a judge for a new trial, citing alleged juror and prosecutorial misconduct.

Anand Jon Alexander, awaiting sentencing, made an eloquent and impassioned plea Monday for a new trial. The 35-year-old, who is representing himself, says the jury that convicted him in November of 14 counts was not fair or impartial.

Superior Court Judge David Wesley denied Alexander a new trial earlier when the motion was made by a team of attorneys for the designer. He did not rule on Alexander's motion before breaking for lunch.

The designer has been featured on the television show "America's Next Top Model" and worked with such celebrities as Paris Hilton and Mary J. Blige.

A U.S. military contractor accused in a scheme to illegally ship nearly $300 million in Chinese-made ammunition to Afghan soldiers has agreed to a plea deal that could send him to prison for up to five years.

Under the deal, prosecutors will drop 84 counts of wrongdoing in exchange for 23-year-old Efraim Diveroli pleading guilty to a conspiracy charge. He could also be fined up to $250,000.

Diveroli was president and owner of AEY Inc., the Miami Beach firm awarded a $298 million U.S. Army contract in 2007 to provide the ammunition to Afghanistan. The contract forbade exporting Chinese ammunition, but prosecutors say the company did it anyway and claimed the rounds were from Albania.

AEY bought much of the ammunition from Albania's Military Export and Import Co., which had purchased huge amounts of Chinese ammunition from 1958 to 1974. Authorities say AEY then repackaged it to remove all traces of the Chinese manufacturer and provided the Army with written certification that the ammunition had come from Albania.

Congressional investigators also found in 2008 that AEY provided potentially unsafe helmets to troops in Iraq, failed to deliver 10,000 pistols to Iraq, and shipped inferior ammunition to U.S. Army special forces. The Pentagon and State Department have terminated or withdrawn numerous contracts with AEY over failure to perform, according to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

A federal judge on Monday may set a date for a competency hearing for the man charged with the 2002 abduction of Elizabeth Smart.

Brian David Mitchell, however, was not expected to attend the hearing in U.S. District Court.

Federal prosecutors sought the hearing in June and implied that two doctors who evaluated Mitchell reached different conclusions about his ability to participate in his defense.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Lambert has said a hearing could take 10 days. Court documents show prosecutors plan to call about 39 witnesses, including family, friends, former church leaders and staff at the Utah State Hospital, where Mitchell has been incarcerated for most of the last six years.

In court papers filed last week, Mitchell's defense attorney, Robert Steele, asked a judge to shorten the list in part because most of the proposed witnesses are not qualified to provide an assessment of competency. In addition, the information could potentially date back to Mitchell's childhood and have little relevance to his current mental state, Steele wrote.

Similarly, testimony from state hospital staff is irrelevant because Mitchell has been in the Salt Lake County jail since federal prosecutors took him into custody 10 months ago, court papers say.