A sixth man was sentenced to life in prison by the Intermediate Court in Kashgar on Friday. Xinhua said the six were convicted of charges ranging from illegally making explosives to leading a terrorist organization.

Chinese authorities say militants among the Uighurs — Turkic-speaking Muslims — are leading a violent Islamic separatist movement in Xinjiang and are seeking to set up an independent state in the Central Asia border province.

"In order to split the nation ... they carried out extreme religious activities and advocated holy war and established a terrorist training base," Xinhua said of the six.

Critics accuse Beijing of using claims of terrorism as an excuse to crack down on peaceful pro-independence sentiment and expressions of Uighur identity.

About 1.5 percent of China's 1.3 billion people are Muslim, according to the U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom Report. But not all of them are Uighurs or live in Xinjiang.

A man who answered the phone at the Intermediate Court confirmed the sentences but said he had no other details. He refused to give his name. A call to the city government office rang unanswered.

Xinhua said the six men "recruited dozens of terrorists and sent them to 'Black Valley Training Camp' to undergo nearly two months of secret training." It did not say what the training camp was.

It also said the six men killed a police officer when they were arrested. It did not say when they were arrested.

China has cracked down hard on anyone it feels is challenging its authority in Xinjiang. In February, U.S. broadcaster Radio Free Asia reported that China had executed another Muslim, Ismail Semed, in the region on charges of trying to split the country.

The justices are facing a decision about whether to hear an appeal from city officials in Washington, D.C., wanting to keep the capital's 31-year ban on handguns. A lower court struck down the ban as a violation of the Second Amendment rights of gun ownership.

The prospect that the high court might define gun rights under the Constitution is making people on both sides of the issue nervous.

"I wouldn't be confident on either side," said Mark Tushnet, a Harvard Law School professor and author of a new book on the battle over guns in the United States.

The court could announce as early as Tuesday whether it will hear the case.

The main issue before the justices is whether the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns or instead spells out the collective right of states to maintain militias. The former interpretation would permit fewer restrictions on gun ownership.

The Second Amendment reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

The federal appeals court for the District of Columbia was the first federal panel to strike down a gun-control law based on individual rights. The court ruled in favor of Dick Anthony Heller, an armed security guard whose application to keep a handgun at home was denied by the district.

Most other U.S. courts have said the Second Amendment does not contain a right to have a gun for purely private purposes.

Chicago has a similar handgun ban, but few other gun-control laws are as strict as the district's.

Four states — Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland and New York — are urging the Supreme Court to take the case because broad application of the appeals court ruling would threaten "all federal and state laws restricting access to firearms."

The district said its law, passed in 1976, was enacted by local elected officials who believed it was a sensible way to save lives. The law also requires residents to keep shotguns and rifles unloaded and disassembled or fitted with trigger locks.

The city's appeal asks the court to look only at the handgun ban because local law allows possession of other firearms.

Critics say the law has done little to curb violence, mainly because guns obtained legally from the district or through illegal means still are readily available.

Although the city's homicide rate has declined dramatically since peaking in the early 1990s, it ranks among the nation's highest, with 169 killings in 2006.

Heller said Washington remains a dangerous place to live. "People need not stand by and die," he said in court papers.

He said the Second Amendment gives him the right to keep working guns, including handguns, in his home for his own protection.

The last time the court examined the meaning of the Second Amendment was in a 1939 case in which two men claimed the amendment gave them the right to have sawed-off shotguns. A unanimous court ruled against them.

Gun control advocates say the 1939 decision in U.S. v. Miller settled the issue in favor of a collective right. Gun rights proponents say the decision has been misconstrued.

Chief Justice John Roberts has said the question has not been resolved by the Supreme Court. The 1939 decision "sidestepped" the issue of whether the Second Amendment right is individual or collective, Roberts said at his confirmation hearing in 2005.

"That's still very much an open issue," Roberts said.

Both the district government and Heller want the high court to take the case. The split among the appeals courts and the importance of the issue make it likely that the justices will do so, Tushnet said.

Former users of withdrawn painkiller Vioxx will be eligible for a piece of manufacturer Merck & Co.'s $4.85 billion nationwide settlement if they meet strict criteria meant to weed out people with bogus claims. They must:

-- Have had a claim filed by Thursday, the day before the deal was announced.

-- Already have medical documentation that they suffered a heart attack or an ischemic stroke; people who had mini-strokes or hemorrhagic strokes are not eligible.

-- Have proof they received at least 30 Vioxx pills.

-- Have received Vioxx pills recently enough to indicate they likely took the painkiller within two weeks of their injury.

-- Be legal U.S. residents alleging their injury occurred in the United States.

-- Promptly register their claims after being contacted by their current attorney.

An Albany law firm will be adding offices in Washington, D.C. early next year, buoyed by a recent contract with the largest union of federal employees in the country.

Tully Rinckey & Associates PLLC plans to open a Washington office with three attorneys in the spring, while later adding a branch office in Utica, N.Y., firm partner Greg Rinckey said today. Before those sites open, the firm is scheduled to move its main office to 441 New Karner Road in Albany, a quarter-mile from its current site.

Rinckey said the firm hopes the Washington office will be "a springboard" for landing future contracts with federal agencies. Recently, the firm agreed to take on a backlog of 3,000 cases for the American Federation of Government Employees, Rinckey said. The union represents about 600,000 workers holding jobs with the federal government and the District of Columbia.

Steven Herrick, the firm's senior counsel, will move to Washington to head that office. Associate attorney Tracy Dam-Chieco will run the Utica office.

An attorney for a property owner where Mattel once operated a factory in Beaverton, Ore., argued that the courts should step in and correct mistaken decisions by arbitrators.

Arbitration is often regarded by the business community as a cost-saving, timesaving substitute for lawsuits. But the risk is that the losing side cannot seek relief in the courts except in limited circumstances.

In the fight between Hall Street Associates L.L.C. v. Mattel, the two sides agreed in advance that a federal court could review an arbitrator's decision for possible errors of law. A federal judge overturned the arbitrator's decision, making the property owner the winner in the Mattel case.

Chief Justice John Roberts suggested expanded judicial review is appropriate in this instance, pointing to the fact that the two sides negotiated a contract with court review as one of its provisions.

Justices David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia suggested Mattel might be seeking more latitude than the law allows for parties to negotiate expanded judicial review in arbitration cases.

The American Arbitration Association says a cornerstone principle of federal law is that arbitrators' awards are final and binding.

If parties to a dispute are allowed to engage in expanded judicial review, arbitration will become a prelude to lawsuits instead of a substitute, the association said in court papers.

Many industries have an interest in the case, including the wireless communications industry which has filed papers in support of an expanded role for the courts.

The wireless industry says that in the absence of court review, parties may decide they are unwilling to "bet the company" on arbitration. The result would be a decline in the number of disputes sent to arbitration and an added workload for already-overburdened courts.

In the case before the justices, Hall Street Associates wants Mattel to pay for cleanup at a contaminated factory site that Mattel leased from Hall Street.

The toy company and the property owner agreed to submit the case to arbitration, signing an agreement allowing either side to seek court review of the decision.

The property that Mattel leased from Hall Street Associates contains high levels of the industrial solvent TCE used to degrease metal parts.

Mattel did not contaminate the grounds with the hazardous chemical and an arbitrator initially ruled the toy manufacturer did not have to pay for the cleanup.

The case then began a six-year odyssey through the federal court system.

A judge said the arbitrator's decision "defies logic." The arbitrator responded by reversing himself and awarding Hall Street $584,000.

This prompted another trip to the courts and ultimately an order by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to reinstate the original arbitration award in favor of Mattel.

The collection includes a black doctor's bag used by Nichopolous containing prescription bottles bearing Presley's name, as well as jewelry, guns, and a laryngeal scope used to examine Presley's throat.

According to the lawsuit, Nichopolous agreed last year to sell it for $1 million to Long and his business partners, Robert Gallagher and Betty Franklin of Nevada. Long put up the money, and Gallagher and Franklin, who claimed to have a "half interest" in the collection, agreed to assign all their rights to a company Long controlled.

Long alleged in his lawsuit that Gallagher and Franklin refused to surrender access to the memorabilia and would not provide the paperwork needed to obtain insurance. A judge entered a default judgment against Gallagher and Franklin in July after they repeatedly failed to appear for court hearings and ignored court orders.

The judgment held Gallagher and Franklin in contempt and gave Long authority to dissolve the partnership and sell the collection. The Supreme Court turned down Gallagher's appeal Tuesday.

David Finger, an attorney for Long, said his client is determined to make Gallagher give up the collection.

"If he does not turn it over, we will seek to have him incarcerated," Finger said.

Michael Matuska, an attorney for Gallagher and Franklin, did not immediately return a telephone message Wednesday.