Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor scheduled the hearing to receive updates on attorneys' preparations for Murray's preliminary hearing, which is scheduled to begin in January. During that hearing, the judge will determine whether there is enough evidence for the cardiologist to stand trial.

Murray is accused of giving Jackson a lethal dose of sedatives, including the anesthetic propofol. He had been hired to serves as the singer's personal physician during a series of comeback concerts.

A Canadian accused of killing an American soldier as a teenage al-Qaida militant pleaded guilty Monday as part of a deal that avoids a war crimes trial for someone labeled a "child soldier" by his defenders.

Omar Khadr pleaded to five charges including murder for throwing a grenade that mortally wounded the soldier during a fierce raid on an al-Qaida compound in Afghanistan in 2002. The now 24-year-old defendant also admitted to planting improvised explosive devices and receiving weapons training from the terrorist network.

The exact terms of the plea agreement were not immediately disclosed. Khadr will now face a military jury for a sentencing hearing that is expected to last several days. The panel cannot impose a sentence more severe than the plea agreement. His trial had been scheduled to start Monday and he faced a possible life sentence.

Dressed in a dark suit instead of the solid color jumpsuits typically worn by prisoners held at the U.S. base in Cuba, the defendant, who was born in Toronto and speaks fluent English, repeatedly answered "yes" to a series of questions from the military judge making sure he understood the charges against him.

A mother who threw her two children from an overpass in Dallas then jumped off the 20-foot-high bridge has been found not guilty of attempted murder and injury to a child.

A judge ruled Thursday that Khandi Busby is not guilty by reason of insanity and ordered her into a state mental institution.

Defense attorney David Pire says Busby believed God told her to throw her 6- and 8-year-old sons off the bridge on March 12, 2008 to protect them from Satan.

The boys' injuries have been treated and they are in foster care. Relatives say Busby is bipolar and had stopped taking her medication

Three people charged with bilking the state's recycling program out of $7 million by importing cans from Arizona pleaded not guilty Wednesday.
Howard Leveson, 68, the owner of Perris Valley Recycling, and two of his employees entered their pleas to a total of 18 counts including recycling fraud, grand theft and conspiracy, the Riverside Press-Enterprise said.

Attorney General Jerry Brown said the center used containers not eligible for state funds.

"These people pretended to be recycling California aluminum cans when they were really importing tons of cans from Arizona," Brown said in a statement issued Wednesday. "They brazenly defrauded the state's successful recycling program."

The center raised suspicion because it was collecting about 10,000 pounds of cans per day starting in early 2009 while similar facilities average only about 500, and special agents from the Attorney General's office began an investigation.

Officials estimate the center brought in 4.4 million pounds in cans from Arizona, worth about $7 million in state funds.

An Innocence Project attorney is questioning the impartiality of the prosecutor leading a Texas science panel's probe of an arson investigation that led to the execution of a Texas man.

Stephen Saloom of the Innocence Project said Friday at a panel meeting in Austin that prosecutor John Bradley shows "a lack of objectivity" in the Cameron Todd Willingham case.

Bradley has publicly called Willingham a "guilty monster."

Bradley is the chairman of the Texas Forensic Science Commission, which is investigating whether investigators committed professional misconduct in determining arson caused a 1991 fire that killed Willingham's three daughters. Willingham was executed in 2004.

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.