The Swiss successfully defended the America's Cup off Valencia, Spain, in July and immediately accepted a Spanish yacht club as the challenger of record for a 33rd Cup in 2009.

While other countries can enter, the challenger of record runs the sail-off series to select the boat that will meet the defender in the America's Cup finals and negotiates the ground rules with the defender.

BMW-Oracle has challenged the validity of the Spanish club, saying it doesn't meet the requirements of the 1887 Deed of Gift that sets the basic rules for the America's Cup.

BMW-Oracle's challenge specifies a race in boats with a maximum waterline length and beam (width) of 90 feet. That could only be a huge catamaran or trimaran, which would approach the 50 m.p.h. mark.

Most sailing experts agree that BMW-Oracle is right. The Spanish club was formed only two weeks before the last cup ended, giving it a shaky hold on the requirement that it be an established yacht club. Nor has it held an "annual regatta," as the deed requires.

It's clear that the Spanish club was set up as Alinghi's puppet, in return for which the Swiss agreed to keep the America's Cup -- and the massive tourism dollars it earns -- in Valencia.

The Spanish club is so pliant that it has allowed Alinghi to design a new, 90-foot-waterline boat that would be used in the 33rd Cup in secret. So far, Alinghi has refused to reveal the design parameters to potential challengers, giving the Swiss a head start of several months in the crucial technological challenge of building the fastest boat.

"This is not the best time I've ever had in 27 years with the America's Cup," said Ehman, who is the spokesman for San Francisco's Golden Gate Yacht Club (the official challenging organization) and negotiates with other syndicates as the head of external affairs for BMW-Oracle Racing.

Ehman may have more history with America's Cup controversies than any living sailor. In 1983, when America lost the cup for the first time in 132 years, he was involved with Dennis Conner's Liberty syndicate in the battle over the legality of Australia II's radical wing keel. (The Aussies won.)

And closer to this case, in 1987, he warned the San Diego Yacht Club early on that an unexpected challenge by New Zealand with a 135-foot monohull was probably going to be upheld in court.

He was right, and the Americans met the challenge with a 60-foot catamaran in an event that saw San Diego retain the America's Cup but lose support from sailors in the United States and worldwide over what those sailors viewed as cheating.

"Just about every lawyer I talked to who has read the deed thinks (Alinghi) is wrong. But will they lose in court? You don't know. It's up to a judge, one guy," Ehman said. "After listening to the arguments in court and the judge's questions, I came away even more confident, but you can't be 100% sure."

If the Swiss lose, they can negotiate with the Americans. Ehman said that rather than have two syndicates race giant catamarans, BMW-Oracle would prefer to involve all of the challengers and the defender in selecting a new monohull design for a Cup off Valencia in 2010.

"But if they lose and won't negotiate, then we are ready to build the multihull and race next September. We have a design team and a build facility, and we are ready to push the button," Ehman said. He added, "That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for the America's Cup. I think a lot of people would love to watch giant multihulls" dicing around the turn marks at 30-40 miles per hour."

If it comes to a multihull event this time around, the atmosphere toward BMW-Oracle should be much different than it was toward Dennis Conner's San Diego entry in the 1987 debacle.

That's because both Oracle and Alinghi will have equal chances to build the fastest racing yacht ever designed, which could be the key to making the America's Cup a big television draw among non-sailors.

Thomas' new autobiography, "My Grandfather's Son," shows how the second black justice on the Supreme Court came to oppose affirmative action after his law school experience. He was one of about 10 blacks in a class of 160 who had arrived at Yale after the unrest of the 1960s, which culminated in a Black Panther Party trial in New Haven that nearly caused a large-scale riot.

The conservative justice says he initially considered his admission to Yale a dream, but soon felt he was there because of his race. He says he loaded up on tough courses to prove he was not inferior to his white classmates but considers the effort futile. He says he was repeatedly turned down in job interviews at law firms after his 1974 graduation.

"I learned the hard way that a law degree from Yale meant one thing for white graduates and another for blacks, no matter how much any one denied it," Thomas writes. "I'd graduated from one of America's top law schools, but racial preference had robbed my achievement of its true value."

Thomas says he stores his Yale Law degree in his basement with a 15-cent sticker from a cigar package on the frame.

His view isn't shared by black classmate William Coleman III.

"I can only say my degree from Yale Law School has been a great boon," said Coleman, now an attorney in Philadelphia. "Had he not gone to a school like Yale, he would not be sitting on the Supreme Court."

Coleman's Yale roommate, Bill Clinton, appointed him general counsel to the U.S. Army, one of several top jobs Coleman has held over the years.

Thomas said he began interviewing with law firms at the beginning of his third year of law school.

"Many asked pointed questions unsubtly suggesting that they doubted I was as smart as my grades indicated," he wrote. "Now I knew what a law degree from Yale was worth when it bore the taint of racial preference."

He said it was months before he got an offer, from then-Missouri Attorney General John Danforth.

Steven Duke, a white Yale law professor who taught when Thomas attended Yale, said Thomas is right to say that the significance of someone's degree could be called into question if the person was admitted to an institution on a preferential basis. However, he said that could be overcome by strong performance, noting that two Yale graduates — Danforth and President Bush — put Thomas into top jobs.

"I find it difficult to believe he actually regrets the choice he made," Duke said. "It seems to me he did pretty well."

Some classmates say Thomas — who was raised poor in Georgia and stood out on campus in his overalls and heavy black boots — faced a tougher transition than black students who came from middle-class or privileged backgrounds.

Frank Washington, a black classmate and friend of Thomas who also came from a lower-income background, said he had 42 interviews before he landed a job at a Washington law firm.

"It seemed like I had to go through many more interviews than a lot of my other non-minority classmates," said Washington, now an entrepreneur who owns radio and television stations.

Other black classmates say their backgrounds didn't matter.

Edgar Taplin Jr., raised by a single parent in New Orleans, said he landed a job after graduation at the oldest law firm in New York, and does not recall black graduates struggling more to get jobs than their white classmates.

"My degree was worth a lot more than 15 cents," said Taplin, who retired in 2003 as a global manager with Exxon Mobil.

Thomas has declined to have his portrait hung at Yale Law School along with other graduates who became U.S. Supreme Court justices. An earlier book, "Supreme Discomfort," by Washington Post reporters Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher, portrays Thomas as still upset some Yale professors opposed his confirmation during hearings marked by Anita Hill's allegations that Thomas sexually harassed her.

Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh turned down requests for interviews about the justice's book, but said in a statement that he and his predecessors have invited Thomas to have his portrait done and the offer still stands.

Koh said they met for several hours about a year ago. "He made it clear that he had greatly enjoyed his time at Yale Law School, and that he had great affection for his fellow students and for several professors who are still here," he said.

Cole, a 32-year-old woman who was suffering from bi-polar disorder, was sleeping on a boat dock near Nashville’s Riverfront Park, when she was pushed into the water.

Dotts, who has maintained all along that he didn’t push Cole in the water, pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of facilitation of second-degree murder. He will have to serve eight years at 30%.

Dotts’ lawyer, Jack Lowery, said that his client, who has been in jail since the August 11, 2006 incident, would be eligible for parole in a few months.

Cole’s death sparked outrage in the homeless community and was the inspiration for nightly vigils and a documentary.

Forty-7-year-old Scott Baldwin pleaded guilty to one count of felony insurance fraud. He was ordered to pay a $2,000 fine and given a suspended jail sentenced.

The attorney general's office says in May 2004 Baldwin made a claim to Wausau Insurance Companies that he had injured a tooth while eating soup purchased from a supermarket. The claim, for $1,927, included a letter and treatment plan from a dental office. The attorney general says in fact, those documents were for an old injury of that tooth and not caused by the soup.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday blocked Virginia's plans to kill Christopher Scott Emmett, 36, hours before he was to die by lethal injection. Courts in Nevada and Texas this week postponed executions scheduled before year's end, making 2007 one of the quietest so far for executions since the mid-1990s.

"Some courts are being prudent by waiting to see how the Supreme Court will go," said Lisa McCalmont, a consultant to the death penalty clinic at the University of California at Berkeley law school.

Fewer than 50 executions will take place this year, even if several states pushing ahead with lethal injections defeat legal efforts to stop them. The last time executions numbered fewer than 50 was in 1996, when there were 45.

Since executions resumed in this country in 1977 after a Supreme Court-ordered halt, 1,099 inmates have died in state and federal execution chambers. The highest annual total was 98 in 1999, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment.

In 2007, 42 people have been executed.

Texas, where 26 prisoners have been put to death this year, plans no more executions in 2007 after federal and state judges stopped four death sentences from being carried out.

Executions also have been delayed in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas and Oklahoma since the high court announced Sept. 25 it would hear a challenge to Kentucky's lethal injection method. Courts in California, Delaware, Missouri, North Carolina and Tennessee previously cited problems with lethal injections procedures in stopping executions.

The last person executed in this country was Michael Richard, 49, who died by lethal injection in Texas the same day the Supreme Court agreed to consider the constitutionality of lethal injection procedures in Kentucky. A Texas state judge refused that day to accept an appeal from Richard's lawyers, saying it had arrived after office hours.

Kentucky's method of lethal injection executions is similar to procedures in three dozen states. The court will consider whether the mix of three drugs used to sedate and kill prisoners has the potential to cause pain severe enough to violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

"The U.S. is clearly in what amounts to a de facto death penalty moratorium," said David Dow, a lawyer who runs the Texas Innocence Network out of the University of Houston Law Center and represents death row inmates.

Josh Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore., and a death penalty supporter, said executions should continue even while the Supreme Court looks at lethal injection.

The reprieves for the dozen or so men whose dates to die had been set are likely to be only temporary. Even the lawyers for the Kentucky inmates acknowledged there are alternative drugs and procedures available that lessen the risk of pain.

Justice Antonin Scalia also has suggested that people are reading too much into the court's decision to take up the Kentucky case. Scalia said Tuesday night he would have allowed Arkansas to proceed with the execution of Jack Jones.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had earlier put off Jones' execution because of the high court review. That decision "was based on the mistaken premise" that the high court wants state and federal judges to intervene every time a defendant raises a court challenge to lethal injection, Scalia said in a statement accompanying the Supreme Court's order that kept the appeals court ruling in place.

State officials in Florida and Mississippi are continuing with plans to carry out death sentences despite the high court's review. In both states, high courts are considering pleas for a delay from condemned inmates.

Lawyers for Mississippi are arguing that there is no reason to wait for the Supreme Court's lethal injection ruling. Earl Wesley Berry has an Oct. 30 execution date for a 1987 killing.

In Florida, Mark Dean Schwab, 38, is scheduled to die Nov. 15 for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old. Executions had been suspended since December after it took twice as long as usual — 34 minutes — for a convicted killer to die. Gov. Gov. Charlie Crist ended the freeze in July by signing Schwab's death warrant.