McCain's shift has come in stages, catching some Republicans by surprise. Speaking with reporters on his campaign bus on July 9, he cited a need to shore up Social Security. "I cannot tell you what I would do, except to put everything on the table," he said.

He went a step farther Sunday on ABC's "This Week," in response to a question about payroll tax increases.

"There is nothing that's off the table. I have my positions, and I'll articulate them. But nothing's off the table," McCain said. "I don't want tax increases. But that doesn't mean that anything is off the table."

That comment drew a strong response this week from the Club for Growth, a Washington anti-tax group. McCain's comments, the group said in a letter to the Arizona senator, are "shocking because you have been adamant in your opposition to raising taxes under any circumstances."

Indeed, McCain frequently has promised not to raise taxes.

At a July 7 town-hall meeting in Denver, he said voters faced a stark choice between him and Democrat Barack Obama.

Sharpton declined to plead guilty in exchange for time served. He was held for 5 1/2 hours on May 7 after he and scores of others were arrested for blocking intersections to protest the acquittals of three officers in the Sean Bell shooting.

He said outside court Monday that the plea offer was unfair and that the charges against him and others should be dropped.

A judge offered to drop charges against Trent Benefield and Joseph Guzman, friends of Bell who were wounded in the Nov. 25, 2006, shooting, provided they stay out of trouble for six months. Bell was killed in a hail of 50 police bullets as he left his bachelor party at a Queens topless bar.

Sharpton said his decision to go to trial was "a matter of law, not just a matter of principle."

He said that although all the defendants were arrested for doing the same thing, those who had records of civil rights activism were "singled out" and weren't given the opportunity to have their cases adjourned.

Barbara Thompson, spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney, said officials in her office "looked at each case individually."

Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Neil Ross scheduled a trial for Sharpton and about 10 others on Sept. 10.

Some veteran public officials seeking re-election have been blocked from serving new terms because the state Supreme Court has upheld term limits in a ruling delivered just one day before the start of Nevada's early voting.

A pair of rulings Friday mean no votes can be counted for 21 incumbents in local or state government service who have hit a voter-mandated limit of 12 years of service.

They include Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, a 27-year fixture on the powerful commission who already has spent more than $200,000 in his bid for another term. Others affected include two state university system regents, and several school and town board members around Nevada.

Since ballots were already printed for the start of early voting on Saturday, no changes in listed candidates could be made.

"The ballots are all going to contain these names," Clark County Registrar Larry Lomax said. "What we're going to have to do is post signs at all the polling places explaining which candidates are out."

The high court said the Nevada Constitution "plainly states" that officials can't serve more than 12 years, under terms of the term limits approved by voters in 1996.

However, 13 longtime state legislators escaped the immediate effect of the ruling. The voter mandate took effect a few weeks after the November 1996 elections, when a final vote canvass made the results official. State legislators elected that year took office the day after the election, and the Supreme Court said in a separate ruling that the mandate can't apply retroactively to them.

Spain's National Court on Sunday jailed seven people on charges of belonging to a militant cell of the Basque separatist group ETA.

The cell is believed responsible for a string of recent bombings, and investigators believe its members were planning more attacks.

The seven will be held in provisional preventive custody pending a full trial, anti-terror judge Baltasar Garzon said in a statement. A date for the trial was not given.

All seven were detained Tuesday in police raids in the Basque towns of Getxo and Elorrio. Among those jailed was the suspected leader of the cell, Arkaitz Goikoetxea.

Garzon said the cell was suspected of having perpetrated many recent attacks, including the May car bombing of a police barracks in Legutiano, northern Spain, in which one officer died.

After the detentions, Goikoetxea led officers to two caches of explosives and other terror-related material, including tranquilizers to sedate kidnap victims, the judge said in the statement.

Iowa doesn't have any all-nude strip clubs — but it does have performing arts centers where women dance naked.

However, the loophole in the state's public indecent exposure law that allows nude dancing at "art centers" is under attack in the small community of Hamburg, a town of 1,200 just across the Missouri River from Nebraska.

The case pending before a Fremont County judge effects only one business in Hamburg, but if he agrees with the prosecutor, it could eventually threaten the legal standing of nude dancing clubs across the state.

District Judge Timothy O'Grady heard arguments in a one-day trial on July 17 and took the case under advisement.

It all began on July 21, 2007, when a 17-year-old niece of Sheriff Steven MacDonald climbed up on stage at Shotgun Geniez in Hamburg and stripped off her clothing. Owner Clarence Judy was charged with violating Iowa's public indecent exposure law.

Judy responded that the law doesn't apply to a "theater, concert hall, art center, museum, or similar establishments" devoted to the arts or theatrical performances.

"Dance has been considered one of the arts, as is sculpture, painting and anything else like that. What Clarence has is a club where people can come and perform," said his lawyer, Michael Murphy.

Murphy noted that the club has a gallery selling collectible posters and other art, and it provides patrons with sketch pads.

Russian authorities are hoping to make legal history by applying an American racketeering law in a Moscow court as they seek to recover billions of dollars in damages from the Bank of New York Mellon.

Hearings resume Monday in the Russian Federal Customs Service's $22.5 billion lawsuit against the bank, which was at the center of a major money-laundering scandal in the late 1990s.

In a highly unusual move, Russia has brought the case under a famous U.S. law used to fight organized crime, and both sides have drawn on the expert opinion of some of America's best-known legal minds in preparing their case.

The Russians have brought in Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and Robert Blakey, one of the authors of the 1970 statute on racketeer-influenced and corrupt organizations, or RICO. Bank of New York Mellon lawyers are fielding Richard Thornburgh, a former U.S. attorney general and Pennsylvania governor.

The RICO statue has never been successfully ruled on in a foreign court, according to lawyers. If the Moscow court agrees to apply the U.S. law, some lawyers predict it would open the floodgates for a slew of similar claims.