The founder of the failed Wild West World theme park, Thomas Etheredge was found guilty on seven of nine counts of securities fraud.

Etheredge, 55, maintained that he provided enough information about his past, in publishing the book, “Real Men, Real Faith”. In 1987, Etheredge was convicted on nine counts of securities fraud.

However, the prosecution insisted that the book lulled investors into a false sense of security.

During the trial, Etheredge testified that in spite of budgeting correctly, poor weather and construction cost overruns caused the park’s failure.

The jury spent nearly two days in deliberation before reaching their verdict. The two counts where Etheredge was found not guilty involved investors that sought out Etheredge.

A court in Beijing denied an appeal by one of China’s best-known democracy advocates on Thursday and upheld his 11-year prison sentence, human rights activists said.

The Beijing Municipal Higher People’s Court upheld the conviction and unusually harsh sentence of the advocate, Liu Xiaobo. Mr. Liu, a Beijing scholar, played an important role in organizing a document called Charter 08 that called for political and legal reforms. Charter 08 was issued in December 2008; Mr. Liu was subsequently convicted of “inciting subversion of state power.”

The denial of Mr. Liu’s appeal marks the third judicial setback this week for activists in China and the latest signal that China’s leaders remain leery of tolerating greater pluralism.

Tan Zuoren, an activist who said the poor quality of the construction of public buildings contributed to the death toll in the Sichuan earthquake in May 2008, was sentenced to five years in prison on Tuesday for sending e-mail messages with comments about the military crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is heading to court to answer revised charges that he schemed to sell or trade President Barack Obama's old Senate seat and swap official favors for campaign money.

Marshals have warned they will not tolerate the kind of swirling crowd at Blagojevich's arraignment Wednesday that swallowed the former governor last time he was in court.

Curiosity about Blagojevich is guaranteed to bring out a heavy media contingent, but defense attorney Sheldon Sorosky says the arraignment is likely to be routine — a simple not guilty plea.

While the indictment against Blagojevich has been revised, the allegations of misconduct on his part are no different that the ones in the old version.

Last month, by a vote of 5 to 4, the U.S. Supreme Court gave carte blanche to the world's largest corporations to spend unlimited sums of money to support or oppose candidates for elected office. Big Business domination of Washington and state capitals will now intensify.

The case of Citizens United portends dire consequences for the nation's constitutional premise of "we the people," not we the corporations. Our constitution, at its origins and through all of its amendments, makes no mention of corporate entities, only human beings and their government.

For 120 years, it was not Congress but the Supreme Court that expanded the definition of "persons" to include for-profit corporations for the purposes of applying constitutional protections. For 30 years, the court has granted First Amendment speech protections to corporations as "artificial persons."

But not until last month has the court declared that the First Amendment gives corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections. The court majority, self-styled believers in precedent and judicial restraint, overturned two major Supreme Court decisions and reversed decades of campaign-finance laws aimed at preventing corporations from having undo influence over local, state and national elections.

Granted, existing campaign-finance rules have been inadequate. Regular news reports document how corporate spending debases elections and elected officials. But that doesn't mean things can't get worse. The court has challenged whatever social mores are left that view no-holds-barred corporate cash register politics as unseemly.

A North Carolina court has temporarily stopped the security rules that a judge issued for the retrieval of the John Edwards sex tape.

The North Carolina Court of Appeals issued a stay on Tuesday without giving a reason. The court, however, did not halt an initial order that requires former Edwards aide Andrew Young to turn over the tape by Wednesday afternoon.

Superior Court Judge Abraham Penn Jones last week ordered that Young's copies of the tape be turned over so they can be placed under seal. Jones has threatened Young with penalties if he doesn't hand them over.

Jones later ordered that a security official accompany Young to collect the video from a safety deposit box in Atlanta, a requirement that Young's attorneys protested.

China's highest court has issued new guidelines on the death penalty that instruct lower courts to limit its use to a small number of "extremely serious" cases.

The Supreme People's Court told courts to use a policy of "justice tempered with mercy" that takes into consideration the severity of the crime, the state-run Xinhua News Agency quoted court spokesman Sun Jungong as saying in a report late Tuesday.

The guidelines reflect the court's call last July for the death penalty to be used less often and for only the most serious criminal cases. China executes more people than any other country, but the high court has been more outspoken recently about the need to tone it down.

The court reviews all death sentences from lower courts before they are carried out, and its comments have indicated more of those death sentences could be overturned.

Still, China faced strong international criticism at the end of December when it executed a British man accused of drug smuggling, despite a plea for mercy from the British prime minister and concerns that the man had mental problems.

Rights group Amnesty International has said China put at least 1,718 people to death in 2008. China does not release an official count.