A San Francisco man upset with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's support of health care reform pleaded guilty Thursday to threatening the Democratic congresswoman and her family.

Gregory Lee Giusti, 49, admitted making more than 30 abusive and harassing phone calls to the homes and offices of Pelosi. He spoke to Pelosi directly on March 25 and threatened to destroy her Northern California home if she voted for the health care legislation.

Under a deal with prosecutors, he'll be sentenced Dec. 2 to 21 months in prison and ordered to stay at least 100 yards away from Pelosi, her family and her staff when he's released.

Joseph Cotchett, a prominent Silicon Valley attorney and Democratic donor, represented Pelosi during the hour-long federal court hearing in San Francisco. Cotchett told U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White that the speaker approved of the plea bargain and said Pelosi would not demand Giusti pay victim restitution typically required in such cases.

A disheveled and weepy Giusti told the judge he made the phone calls because "I was upset with her passing the health care law."

Prosecutors said Giusti used a device that allows users to make calls over the Internet and choose the area code where the calls originate.

The government is asking an appeals court to throw out a judge's order to release a Guantanamo Bay prisoner accused of recruiting Sept. 11 hijackers.

The 9/11 commission report described Mohamedou Ould Salahi as a significant al-Qaida operative who instructed hijackers how to reach Afghanistan to train for jihad. Salahi says he falsely admitted under abusive interrogation to arranging travel for some of the hijackers.

Salahi has been held without charge for eight years at the Navy-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and remains there as lawyers prepare to argue over his release before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington on Friday.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled this spring that the evidence against Salahi was "tainted by coercion and mistreatment" and based on classified material that could not support a criminal prosecution.

"The government's case relies heavily on statements made by Salahi himself, but the reliability of those statements — most of them now retracted by Salahi — is open to question," the judge wrote in his order.

A Michigan Court of Appeals judge urged lawmakers Wednesday to clarify the state's medical marijuana law, saying the "inartfully drafted" measure has resulted in confusion and arrests.

Judge Peter O'Connell issued his call Wednesday in a 30-page opinion on an Oakland County case in which the court upheld marijuana possession charges against two Madison Heights residents. The judge said the law is so confusing that users "who proceed without due caution" could "lose both their property and their liberty."

The appeals court decision comes as Metro Detroit leaders struggle to interpret the law, which was intended to allow marijuana prescriptions for medical purposes. But O'Connell argued in his separate, concurring opinion that sections of the law contradict Public Health Codes that make possession and manufacture of the drug illegal.

Raids last month on clinics in Ferndale and Waterford Township resulted in arrests and the seizure of marijuana and medical records. A week later, Lapeer County Sheriff's deputies searched a medical marijuana dispensary in Dryden, confiscating marijuana and cash.

"To me, our dilemma is magnified by the events of the last few weeks," said Berkley Mayor Marilyn Stephan, who is faced with the expiration in November of a 180-day municipal moratorium on the medical marijuana law.

A dispute over whether an imam who plans to build a mosque near ground zero ignored safety hazards at property he owns in northern New Jersey is headed to court.

Parties in the lawsuit against Feisal Abdul Rauf are scheduled to appear Wednesday in state Superior Court.

A lawsuit filed by Union City claims Rauf ignored numerous code violations at two apartment buildings he owns. Union City is just across the Hudson River from New York and has about 70,000 residents.

The lawsuit claims Rauf didn't fix 12 fire code violations the year before one building caught fire. It says parts of the other building have been without electricity, smoke detectors and fire alarms because Rauf's company didn't pay utility bills.

A spokesman tells The Associated Press the imam won't comment on the lawsuit.

Privately owned Danish toymaker Lego has lost a court battle to have its snap-together plastic bricks registered as an exclusive trademark in the European Union.

Lego had argued that studs on top of the bricks made them highly distinctive and, thus, eligible for trademark rights. The Luxembourg-based European Union Court of Justice (ECJ) upheld a 2008 ruling by the General Court, which dismissed Lego's challenge to the decision by trademark agency OHIM.

"Undertakings may not use trademark law in order to perpetuate, indefinitely, exclusive rights relating to technical solutions," it said.

OHIM had repealed an earlier decision to grant trademark rights for Lego bricks after objections from Canadian toymaker Mega Brands Inc.

Lego, whose name originates from the Danish words for "play well", is Europe's biggest toy manufacturer and competes with Mattel and Hasbro.

Peter Kjaer, the head of Lego's intellectual property section, said. "It is naturally a matter of concern to us that use of the brick by others can dilute the trademark. But the worst aspect is that consumers will be misled."

Financial adviser to the stars Kenneth I. Starr, Starr & Co. pled guilty before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Friday to ripping off $50 million from A-listers including Wesley Snipes, Sylvester Stallone, Uma Thurman, Nora Ephron and Al Pacino.

The 66-year-old Starr told the judge he improperly used his clients' money for his own purposes. His attorney, Flora Edwards, told the court: "He's committed a horrendous error in judgement. This was truly a horrendous error. I don't think it was greed. He made a real bad mistake, and he's deeply sorry for it."

The three counts that Starr pled guilty to - wire fraud, money laundering and adviser fraud - carry a sentence of up to 12 years. He still faces 20 additional counts and charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

U.S. Attorney for Manhattan Preet Bharara said: "Kenneth Starr is a tale of fiction and fraud, in which he played the role of legitimate investment adviser to a cast of unsuspecting victims."

When prosecutors arrested Starr on May 27, they found him hiding in a closet of his $7.5 million Upper East Side condominium, which the government has since seized. His sentencing is scheduled for Dec. 15.

Starr's fourth wife, former Scores stripper Diane Passage, failed to show up for her husband's court appearance on Friday. Her lawyer, Giovanni DiStefano, told The New York Post Passage needed to look after her 12-year-old son. A recent Vanity Fair feature on Starr and his misdeeds paints the picture of a man who knew how to tell his celebrity clients what they wanted to hear about the far reaches of their wealth, and whose own personal greed continued to grow as he remarried.