The privately held company also reached a deal that will allow a Crown Acquisitions affiliate to buy 17 of its 25 stores, including its flagship locations in Boston and New York. The agreement is subject to a bankruptcy court auction, which is expected in about five weeks.

The auction will allow other companies to submit bids for the 17 stores, as well as for the rest of the Filene's Basement locations and the chain's other assets.

New York-based Crown, a real estate and asset management company, plans to continue running the 17 stores under the Filene's Basement name.

Buxbaum Group, a California-based liquidator, acquired Filene's last month through an affiliate company, FB II Acquisition Corp. The sale came after the previous owner, Retail Ventures Inc., said the chain was experiencing "significant liquidity problems."

Filene's Basement, known for its "Running of the Brides" wedding gown sale, was founded more than a century ago in Boston.

Lawyers for John Odgren say he was legally insane when he fatally stabbed 15-year-old James Alenson at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in January 2007.

A judge ruled last year that prosecutors improperly obtained more than 30 hours of Odgren's jailhouse conversations.

But prosecutors say they obtained the recordings lawfully. They want to play the recordings at Odgren's trial because they believe the conversations show a lucid boy who was not in the throes of mental illness.

The Supreme Judicial Court will hear prosecutors' appeal on Monday.

Trustee Irving Picard says in a complaint filed Friday in Bankruptcy Court that Stanley Chais and his family made more than $1 billion in false earnings off Madoff's scheme. He claims the money came from the pockets of burned investors. He wants the money back.

Chais lawyer Eugene Licker says the Chais family has suffered "astounding and ruinous losses from the Madoff scheme."

Madoff pleaded guilty in March to charges his secretive investment advisory operation was a pyramid scheme. He faces up to 150 years in prison.

Picard is overseeing the liquidation of Madoff's assets. He says he plans to use sale proceeds to pay Madoff's victims.

Critics of the prosecution of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman of the American Israel Public Afffairs Committee had accused the federal government of trying to criminalize the sort of back-channel discussions between government officials, lobbyists and reporters that are commonplace in the nation's capital. AIPAC is an influential pro-Israel lobbying group.

Acting U.S. Attorney Dana Boente said the government moved to dismiss the charges in the drawn-out case after concluding that pretrial rulings would make it too difficult for the government to prove its case.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III had made several legal rulings that prosecutors worried would make it almost impossible to obtain a guilty verdict. Among them was a requirement that the government would have to prove that Rosen and Weissman intended to harm the United States by trading in sensitive national defense information.

The trial had been scheduled to start June 2 in a case that has dragged on for four years.

Rosen and Weissman had not been charged with actual espionage, although the charges did fall under provisions of the 1917 Espionage Act, a rarely used World War I-era law that had never before been applied to lobbyists.

A former Defense Department official, Lawrence A. Franklin, previously pleaded guilty to providing Rosen and Weissman classified defense information and was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison.

This came as the high court on Wednesday upheld the conviction and sentence of Christopher Michael Dean, who was arrested for trying to rob a bank in Rome, Georgia, in 2004.

A gun went off accidentally during the attempted robbery when Dean tried to switch the weapon from one hand to the other. The discharge brought an automatic 10-year sentence for firing a weapon during a crime. Dean appealed, saying the automatic sentence shouldn't count since the firing of the gun was accidental.

Federal prosecutors said the law doesn't care why the gun went off, and the high court agreed.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who called it "the case of the bungling bank robber" in his bench statement, said the law "does not require that the discharge be done knowingly or intentionally."

If criminals want to avoid the penalty for accidental gunfire, they can "lock or unload the firearm, handle it with care during the underlying violent or drug trafficking crime, leave the gun at home or — best yet — avoid committing the felony in the first place," Roberts said.

Justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer dissented, saying Congress intended the automatic sentence to only apply to intentional discharges of weapons.

It is the second major race case heard by the justices after Barack Obama became the nation's first black president.

The justices seemed split along conservative and liberal lines in considering a provision applying to all or parts of 16 states, mostly in the South. It requires them to get federal government approval before changing their voting procedures.

Congress adopted the Voting Rights Act, an historic piece of U.S. civil rights legislation, to make it easier for millions of blacks and other minorities to exercise their right to vote.

Congress extended it in 2006 for 25 years, with then-President George W. Bush signing it into law.

Last week the justices considered whether race still can be used as a factor for job promotions and hirings, an issue that could affect millions of employers nationwide.

Opponents of the voting rights law argue that the protections for minority voters are no longer needed after more than 40 years of progress, and they cite Obama's election as evidence of how America has changed since 1965.

Lawyers also will advocate for GM franchise owners, who are under increasing pressure to go out of business as the auto maker races to downsize in an effort to avoid a government-led bankruptcy.

GM's National Dealer Council retained the law firm of Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP to help ensure dealers being forced to close get payouts they're owed from the auto maker, according to a memo sent to dealers.

The auto maker is looking to eliminate 2,600 dealers by 2010 as part of a recovery plan that aims to keep the company out of bankruptcy court by slashing costs and restructuring debt.

GM, which has said it expects minimal costs in reducing its dealer body, will inform dealers within the next two weeks whether they are among those marked to close.