The justices in a 5-4 vote late Wednesday stopped the execution by injection of Thomas Arthur "pending further orders of this Court." Arthur, 66, was scheduled to die Thursday, more than 26 years after he was convicted of killing Troy Wicker Jr. of Muscle Shoals.

It was the third time Arthur received a stay on the eve of his execution.

"My reaction is we finally look forward to the opportunity to examine fully Mr. Arthur's claim of innocence by assessing witness testimony and DNA evidence," said defense attorney Suhana S. Han. "That is the right result."

State Attorney General Troy King called the stay a serious setback for the prosecution.

"The crimes against Troy Wicker's family continue to compound," he said. "There is a good chance he is going to escape his sentence before all is said and done."

Han said Arthur "was absolutely ecstatic."

"Having to face execution is something that most of us can never really imagine," she said.

Arthur's attorneys sought a stay from the governor and the courts by using Monday's sworn statement by Bobby Ray Gilbert, who claimed he killed Wicker. Gilbert is serving a life sentence for a different murder.

But Wicker's widow, who served 10 years of a life sentence for hiring the killer, told attorney general investigators that she never met Gilbert.

"I hired and paid money to Thomas Arthur, not Bobby Gilbert, to kill Troy Wicker," Judy Wicker said in a statement Monday.

Han said a hearing was needed to assess the credibility of Gilbert and Wicker.

South Korea introduced the ban in 1987 to try to prevent abortions of female fetuses in a country that had traditionally favored sons in the widespread Confucian belief that males carry on family lines. Abortion has also been illegal but practiced widely.

On Thursday, the Constitutional Court said it was too restrictive to ban doctors from telling parents the gender of the unborn for the entire pregnancy because there was little chance of aborting fetuses older than six months due to risks for mothers.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the convictions of Michael Hayward and Michael Stern, who were convicted in July 2006 and sentenced to six months in prison.

Hayward, 57, and Stern, 55, who had worked for Van der Moolen Specialists USA LLC, were the only specialists still facing prison time after convictions at trial. They had been accused of stealing $1 million apiece by skimming small amounts of money from stocks they oversaw.

The ruling all but ended a prosecution in which the government accused the powerful floor supervisors of using their inside positions to earn an estimated $20 million illegally for themselves and their firms.

Specialists play the crucial role of matching buyers and sellers in individual stocks, though their numbers have declined as computers have taken a larger role in the trading of securities.

Prosecutors targeted the specialists after concluding that they sometimes pocketed pennies for themselves or their firms from each trade by purchasing a stock and quickly flipping it for a slightly higher price.

Defense lawyers had argued that it would be absurd for highly paid specialists — many of them have seven-figure incomes — to try to make minuscule amounts of money each day in such a way. Instead, they said, prosecutors were highlighting innocent mistakes made on fewer than 1 percent of trades each specialist handled.

Casey Anthony is being held on $500,000 bail on charges of child neglect, making false statements and obstructing an investigation. Police say the 22-year-old mother lied to them and didn't report daughter Caylee missing for more than a month.

Casey Anthony hasn't been charged with her daughter's disappearance, but prosecutors call her a person of interest in what is beginning to look like a homicide investigation.

A lower court set the high bond. The 5th District Court of Appeal on Wednesday denied Anthony's request to order it lowered to $10,000. A spokeswoman says attorney Jose Baez plans to appeal to the Florida Supreme Court.

Major business groups, usual GOP allies, have implored Congress to act on the tax credits, many which expired at the end of last year or will run out at the end of this year. But for many Republicans, it's a matter or principle and politics: many oppose what they say are new tax increases to pay for parts of the package and nearly all say the Senate's only business now is acting on an energy bill that promotes drilling and other measures to boost domestic oil supply.

The White House, citing new taxes and other objections to the bill, threatened a presidential veto. The vote Wednesday was 51-43, nine short of the 60 needed to begin floor debate.

The criminal complaint charges state Sen. James Marzilli with two counts of indecent assault and battery alleging he groped a woman after an arts fundraiser April 6.

The charges were issued by Cambridge District Court Clerk-Magistrate Robert Moscow after the accuser made a citizen's request for criminal charges, a rarely used step allowed under state law. Her attorney, Wendy Murphy, said the woman swore under oath that her statement was true.

Clerk-magistrates have to find probable cause to believe a crime occurred, a lower standard than proof than beyond a reasonable doubt, the standard prosecutors must use during a trial. After the arraignment, the district attorney still can decide to dismiss the charges.

In a separate case, Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone is prosecuting Marzilli for allegedly sexually harassing four women in a single day in Lowell in June. He pleaded not guilty to those charges. His lawyer later said he has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and Marzilli has said he won't seek re-election.

In this case, Leone has said there wasn't enough evidence to prove the woman's claim. A spokesman, Corey Welford, said Leone plans to review a transcript of Wednesday's hearing to determine whether any new evidence was disclosed. If not, the case would not move forward.

Neither Marzilli, 50, nor his lawyer, Terrence Kennedy, attended the hearing. Kennedy said he believed the charges eventually would be dropped.

Michael Hayward and Michael Stern were convicted in July 2006 after they were accused of stealing $1 million apiece. Prosecutors said they had skimmed small amounts of money from stocks they were entrusted to oversee.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals notes that the government had already conceded that the conduct of the men was not manipulative. The court says their conduct was not deceptive either.

Hayward and Stern had worked for Van der Moolen Specialists USA LLC.