An aide to New York Gov. David Paterson surrendered Thursday to New York City authorities on assault charges stemming from a 2009 domestic violence case that touched off an evidence-tampering investigation in Albany.

David Johnson turned himself in to investigators with the Bronx district attorney's office on misdemeanor assault charges and was awaiting arraignment.

Paterson's involvement in the case — he made a phone call to the accuser, who soon dropped her allegations — caused him serious political damage, even though investigators found no evidence of witness tampering.

Buffeted by other ethics questions about World Series tickets, the Democratic governor soon dropped plans to run for a full term this fall, while saying he intended to finish the year in office.

The confrontation occurred on Halloween, with Johnson and his then-girlfriend, Sherr-una Booker. Angry over how she was dressed, she said he choked her, threw her against a dresser and ripped her Halloween costume. The case was initially handled in Family Court and dropped without prejudice because Booker did not appear for a hearing.

A California woman sued the governing body of U.S. competitive swimming and her former coach, claiming he sexually abused, humiliated and harassed her when she was a teenager training under his supervision.

The suit announced Wednesday is one of several around the country alleging USA Swimming covered up wrongdoing and allowed a culture of abuse to exist in coaching ranks. The lawsuit also names the West Valley Swim Club and Pacific Swimming, the West Coast branch of USA Swimming.

The lawsuit claims swim coach Norman Havercroft sexually abused Jancy Thompson over a five-year period in the 1990s, beginning when she was about 15.

The Associated Press generally does not identify victims of alleged sexual abuse. However, the now 28-year-old has chosen to speak publicly.

Thompson, who graduated from police academy and does gang intervention for a nonprofit group, said she came forward to help affect change.

Three South Florida law firms that represent mortgage lenders are being investigated by the state attorney general over allegations they forged documents filed with the courts in foreclosure cases.

The Florida attorney general issued the subpoenas this week, requesting reams of paperwork by the end of the month from attorneys working in the foreclosure capital of the country.

The investigation targets firms considered to be handling the largest number of foreclosures in Florida on behalf of lenders, in some cases handling thousands of cases a month. They are the Law Offices of David J. Stern in Plantation; the Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson in Fort Lauderdale; and Shapiro & Fishman, which has offices in Boca Raton and Tampa.

The subpoenas request documents going back to at least Jan. 1, 2008.

Attorney General Bill McCollum said the firms may have presented fabricated documents in court to obtain foreclosure judgments against homeowners. Thousands of final judgments of foreclosure against Florida homeowners may have been the result of improper actions by the firms under investigation, said McCollum, a Republican who is a running for governor.

He likened their work processing so many foreclosures to a mill, churning out foreclosures in large volumes.

Victoryland casino closed voluntarily Monday as a court ruling loomed that could allow a raid of Alabama's largest electronic bingo operation, the last non-Indian casino doing business in the state.

Victoryland owner Milton McGregor said the casino was be closing temporarily due to the "legal shenanigans and threats" from Gov. Bob Riley and his gambling task force commander, John Tyson Jr.

Riley and Tyson contend the casino is an illegal slots operation and court rulings in Alabama have made that clear. But McGregor said no court has ruled specifically that Victoryland's machines are in violation of a constitutional amendment allowing bingo that Macon County voters approved.

"The system of government in our state has broken down," McGregor said in a statement.

Macon County's district attorney and sheriff have contended the casino is legal. Their attorneys had a Monday afternoon deadline from the Alabama Supreme Court to respond to Tyson's request to raid Victoryland and confiscate its 6,000 bingo machines.

Civil rights groups on Thursday accused the U.S. Census Bureau of discrimination in its hiring of more than a million temporary workers to conduct the 2010 census, saying it ignored a warning from a federal agency that its hiring practices might violate the Civil Rights Act.

The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Public Citizen Litigation Group were among groups that sued the secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce in April to end the hiring practices and obtain back pay for plaintiffs. They beefed up the lawsuit Thursday with new claims and plaintiffs.

The lawsuit, which seeks class action status in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, alleges the Census Bureau in hiring temporary workers over the past two years illegally screened out applicants with often decades-old arrest records for minor offenses or those who were arrested but never convicted. It accuses the bureau, a division of the Department of Commerce, of discriminating against more than 100,000 blacks, Latinos and Native Americans, who are more likely to have arrest records than whites.

The first word on whether California's same-sex marriage ban passes scrutiny under the U.S. Constitution is scheduled to come down Wednesday when a federal judge issues his ruling in a landmark case.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker has reached a decision on whether to uphold or overturn the voter-approved ban known as Proposition 8 and plans to publish his opinion in the afternoon, court spokeswoman Lynn Fuller said.

His verdict comes in response to a lawsuit brought by two same-sex couples and the city of San Francisco seeking to invalidate the law as an unlawful infringement on the civil rights of gay men and lesbians.

Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriages in California five months after the state Supreme Court legalized them, passed with 52 percent of the vote in November 2008 following the most expensive campaign on a social issue in U.S. history.

Attorneys on both sides have said an appeal was certain if Walker did not rule in their favor. The case would go first to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals then the Supreme Court if the high court justices agree to review it.

Anticipating such a scenario, lawyers for the coalition of religious and conservative groups that sponsored Proposition 8 in 2008 filed a legal brief Tuesday asking Walker to stay his decision if he overturns the ban so same-sex couples could not marry while an appeal was pending.