Vermont's governor has signed the first-in-the-nation law aimed at protecting companies from so-called patent trolling — the practice of making deceptive claims of patent infringement in the hopes of collecting licensing or settlement money.

The law, signed Wednesday by Gov. Peter Shumlin, allows courts to consider if a claim is deceptive and specifies other factors that can be considered as evidence. Courts can award damages or relief to Vermont companies wrongly pressured into paying licensing fees or a settlement, and the Vermont attorney general can conduct civil investigations and bring civil action against violators.

Intellectual property law professor Eric Goldman of Santa Clara University in California said Vermont's law is a novel approach but he said it's unclear if Vermont has the authority to regulate patent activity.

The FBI says a 37-year-old man has been arrested following last week's discovery in Washington state of a pair of letters containing the deadly poison ricin.

Matthew Ryan Buquet was expected to make his initial appearance in federal court in Spokane following his arrest Wednesday afternoon.

The letters were postmarked in Spokane and addressed to the downtown post office and the adjacent federal building. They were intercepted by the Postal Service, and no one was injured.

Investigators in hazardous materials suits spent most of Saturday executing a search warrant at a three-story apartment building downtown but said there was no public health risk.

Former Penn State President Graham Spanier has asked a county judge to throw out charges accusing him of helping cover up abuse allegations against former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

Spanier's lawyers filed the motion last week, citing his allegation that the university's former top lawyer, Cynthia Baldwin, violated attorney-client confidentiality when she gave prosecutors information about him. He also argued that some of the charges were filed after the statute of limitations had run out.

His attorney, Elizabeth Ainslie, said Wednesday the criminal case remains on hold while Spanier's co-defendants, Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, ask the state Supreme Court to review a recent decision by the grand jury judge that he did not have jurisdiction to throw out their charges.

"We're waiting for the Supreme Court to decide the issues that are very similar to our issues," she said.

Spanier, she said, also has raised "legal issues relating to statutory interpretation. For instance, whether Dr. Spanier could conceivably be considered a supervisor of any of the children who were victims of Mr. Sandusky."

Sandusky, 69, is serving a 30- to 60-year state prison sentence after being convicted last year of 45 counts for the sexual abuse of 10 boys. He maintains his innocence and is pursuing appeals.

Spanier was forced out as president after Sandusky's arrest but remains a faculty member while fighting the accusations that he and other administrators committed crimes as they responded to complaints about the former defensive coach.

Spanier was charged in November along with Curley, the school's former athletic director, and Schultz, a retired vice president.

The three men face charges of perjury, obstruction, endangering the welfare of children, failure to properly report suspected abuse and conspiracy.

It's not unusual for a cat to get a hairball, but a 400-pound tiger needed help from veterinary surgeons in Florida when he couldn't hack up a basketball-size hairball by himself.

The 17-year-old tiger named Ty underwent the procedure Wednesday at a veterinary center in the Tampa Bay area community of Clearwater. Doctors said in a statement that they safely removed the 4-pound obstruction from Ty's stomach.

The tiger, which is cared for by Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation in Seminole, was brought to veterinarians after not eating for nearly two weeks. Doctors said they detected the hairball using a scope with a camera.

Vernon Yates, whose nonprofit group regularly assists law enforcement agencies with seized animals, says he's thankful the hairball was removed and Ty is doing fine.

A school bus slammed into the back of another bus, setting off a chain-reaction crash involving four buses in northern Indiana, leaving dozens of middle and high students with non-serious injuries and one driver seriously injured.

Kosciusko County Sheriff's Department Sgt. Chad Hill said the bus driver was taken by helicopter to Parkview Hospital in Fort Wayne. He said more than 100 students from Wawasee School Corp. were on the buses when the accident occurred about a mile north of North Webster, about 40 miles west of Fort Wayne.

Kosciusko Community Hospital spokeswoman Joy Lohse said 43 people injured in the accident were being treated there. None of them were in serious or critical condition. Lohse said she didn't have any additional information, including how many of the patients were students or their exact conditions. A nursing supervisor at IU Health Goshen Hospital said four students being treated there were in good condition.

Hill said several other students were released to their parents and may have been brought to area hospitals for minor injuries.

The cause of the accident about 3:30 p.m. Wednesday wasn't immediately known. Photos from the scene showed the bus in the back of the collision had heavy damage to the front end, with the hood of the vehicle lying in the road. The bus in front of it had a deep dent in the back. The damage to the other two vehicles was not as visible.

Hill said the accident apparently occurred when the bus at the front apparently stopped to let a student off.

Children who were not injured were taken by another bus to Wawasee Middle School where they were picked up by their parents, Hill said.

A top human rights organization is criticizing the Obama administration's increasing use of drone aircraft for the targeted killing of terrorism suspects overseas and questioned whether it is legal.

Amnesty International says the U.S. drone policy is shrouded in secrecy but the killings appear to amount to extrajudicial executions that violate international rights laws. The London-based organization's assessment came in report released Wednesday on the global human rights situation.

Obama is expected to address his administration's reliance on drone strikes in a speech Thursday at the National Defense University. On the eve of the speech, Attorney-General Eric Holder acknowledged for the first time that four American citizens have been killed in drone strikes abroad since 2009.

Amnesty International also questioned the increasing reliance by U.S. police of Taser stun guns.

Federal regulators said Wednesday that they are conducting a special inspection of a nuclear power plant outside North Carolina's capital city that was forced to shut down last week after operators discovered corrosion and cracking in the reactor vessel's covering.

Two Nuclear Regulatory Commission specialist inspectors will join the on-site NRC inspectors "to assess the circumstances surrounding the discovery," the agency said in a news release.

Plant operator Duke Energy said last week it found a quarter-inch mark of corrosion and cracking in the covering of the reactor vessel, which contains heat produced by the nuclear core's energy. The crack did not penetrate the vessel head and there was no evidence of radiation leakage, the NRC and Duke Energy said.

"There was no immediate threat to the public or plant workers, but because the discovery is on the vessel head and was not seen in the original review, we are sending specialists from our Atlanta office to further evaluate the issue," said Victor McCree, the NRC's Southeast regional manager. "The special inspection team will work to analyze and understand all the details."

Duke Energy has started the repair process, the agency said. The company expects to have the reactor back in production within weeks, Duke Energy said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week.

Charlotte-based Duke Energy took over the Harris plant after it acquired Raleigh-based Progress Energy last year, which made it the country's largest electric company. The utility is cooperating with the NRC inspection, Duke Energy spokeswoman Rita Sipe said in an email.

"We have a team that is also performing our own evaluation to determine why this was not identified in previous reviews," Sipe said.

The shutdown came as plant operators prepared for an upcoming refueling outage by reviewing results from ultrasonic testing gathered during a refueling outage last spring.

The on-site portion of the inspection at the southern Wake County nuclear plant is expected to take about a week and a half, with a report to be issued within 45 days after the inspection is completed, the NRC said.

The inspection team will review Duke Energy's actions leading up to the discovery of the problem, examine the previous ultrasonic testing records, evaluate the company's repair plans, and decide whether the discovery highlights any broader issues that other nuclear plant operators should be aware of, the regulatory agency said.

Progress Energy was cited last year for two safety violations at the Harris plant considered to be of low to moderate significance, which an NRC spokesman said last week has since been corrected. Regulators found problems with ventilation systems that would be needed if there were a nuclear emergency.

The Chicago Board of Education was expected to take a final vote Wednesday on whether to close 53 schools, an ambitious proposal that sparked protests and lawsuits and could help define — for better or worse — Mayor Rahm Emanuel's term in office.

City officials say the closings are necessary because of falling school enrollment and as part of their efforts to improve the city's struggling education system. But critics have blasted Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff, and schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, saying the closings disproportionately affect minority neighborhoods and will endanger children who may have to cross gang boundaries to get to a new school.

They planned to protest outside the board's meeting Wednesday and were sending busloads of teachers, parents and students to Springfield to lobby lawmakers to approve a moratorium on the closings. Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis also pledged to start a voter registration drive in an attempt to register 200,000 new voters before the 2015 municipal elections — when Emanuel will be up for re-election — and to raise funds to support candidates for mayor, city council and statewide office.

"We know that we may not win every seat we intend to target but with research, polling, money and people power we can win some of them," Lewis said.

Even if the board — which is appointed by Emanuel — votes to spare some schools, many experts say it would be the largest number of closings at any one time by any school district in recent memory.

The mayor said Tuesday he believes closing the schools is the right thing to do, and that possible blowback from voters isn't a factor in his decisions.

"I will absorb the political consequence so our children have a better future," Emanuel said. "If I was to shrink from something the city has discussed for over a decade about what it needed to do ... because it was politically too tough, but then watch another generation of children drop out or fail in their reading and math, I don't want to hold this job."

Chicago is among several major U.S. cities, including Philadelphia, Washington and Detroit to use mass school closures to reduce costs and offset declining enrollment. Detroit has closed more than 130 schools since 2005, including more than 40 in 2010 alone.

The school closings are the second major issue pitting Emanuel against the Chicago Teachers Union. The group's 26,000 members went on strike early in the school year, partly over the school district's demand for longer school days, idling students for a week.

Emanuel and Byrd-Bennett say the district's financial and educational struggles call for drastic action. They say the nation's third-largest school district is facing a deficit of about $1 billion and that too many Chicago Public Schools buildings are half-empty because of a population drop in some city neighborhoods. They've also pledged students will be moved to schools that are performing better academically.

CPS says it has 403,000 students in a system that has seats for more than 500,000. About 30,000 students would be affected by the plan that was announced in March, with about half that number moving into new schools. All of the schools being considered for closure are elementary schools, serving students up to eighth grade.

Alderman Jason Ervin, whose West Side ward includes several schools slated for closure, said he has been meeting with school board members and Byrd-Bennett to try to explain the potential impact of the closings, which he says could further destabilize the area. He said many area residents have grown frustrated because they feel the decision about which schools to close was made months ago, despite weeks of additional hearings and community meetings.

But he was less certain what impact, if any, it could have on Emanuel's political future.

"He's the mayor. I'm the alderman. We still have to work together," Ervin said. "People will make those decisions when the time comes."

A Boston church official who once claimed to be an associate of mobster James "Whitey" Bulger has been arrested on charges of stealing money from the church.

Federal prosecutors say Edward MacKenzie Jr. was arrested at his Weymouth home Wednesday after being indicted on charges including racketeering and extortion.

The 54-year-old MacKenzie was the director of operations at the Boston Society of the New Jerusalem Church, which is affiliated with the Swedenborgian denomination.

Federal authorities say he was appointed to the salaried position in 2003 and "began to systematically loot the church of its considerable financial assets through a combination of fraud, deceit, extortion, theft and bribery." He also allegedly threatened other members.

A home number for MacKenzie could not be found. It wasn't clear if he had a lawyer.

Brokenhearted skateboarders who have long been denied access to Philadelphia's internationally renowned Love Park may have a new object of affection. It's called Paine's Park.

The $4.5 million city plaza officially opens Wednesday — but don't call it a skate park. Officials say it's a 75,000-square-foot public space that happens to be skateable.

Supporters have spent more than 10 years trying to build the park. It now sits next to a popular exercise path along the Schuylkill (SKOO'-kul) River, offering amenities for both skaters and non-skaters.

The project was spearheaded by the Franklin's Paine Skatepark Fund. The advocacy group was founded after boarders were exiled from Love Park in 2001.

Then-Mayor John Street instituted the ban because he said skaters were destroying the park's granite ledges, steps and benches.

Twelve-year-old Sathwik Karnik of Norfolk, Mass., has won the 2013 National Geographic Bee.

Sathwik correctly named Chimborazo as the mountain in Ecuador that represents the farthest point from the Earth's center to clinch the title. Thirteen-year-old Conrad Oberhaus of Lincolnshire, Ill., finished second.

Sathwik led throughout the final round of the 25th annual geography bee and was the last contestant to get a question wrong. He wins a $25,000 scholarship, a trip to the Galapagos Islands and a lifetime membership in the National Geographic Society.

Sathwik's older brother made the finals in 2011 and 2012, finishing 5th and 6th.

The U.S. Air Force has launched an unarmed intercontinental ballistic missile from a California base, a month after the test flight was postponed because of tensions with North Korea.

Vandenberg Air Force Base says the Minuteman 3 lifted off at 6:27 a.m. PDT Wednesday. It later splashed down thousands of miles away in the Pacific.

It's the first Minuteman test-launch of the year. Several Minutemans are launched each year at from Vandenberg to determine the weapon system's accuracy and reliability.

Officials say the original mid-April flight plan was delayed to avoid it being misconstrued by North Korea during a time of heightened tensions. It was rescheduled for Tuesday morning but was pushed back a day due to a problem with range safety instruments.

The administrator of the Boston Marathon victims' compensation fund said just five people have filed applications as of Tuesday, and is urging those affected by the blasts to fill out the paperwork before time runs out.

The families of the four people killed in the April 15 bombings and the ensuing manhunt, as well as the more than 260 who suffered physical injuries, have until June 15 to complete their applications, One Fund administrator Kenneth Feinberg said.

After that, they're not eligible.

"You would be amazed at how people in grief, with all sorts of uncertainty about their lives, don't file," Feinberg told the Boston Herald.

More than $31 million in corporate and private donations had been pledged to the One Fund as of Wednesday.

Feinberg saw similar procrastination while serving as special master of the 9/11 Victims' Compensation Fund, as well as other compensation funds he has overseen.

The application process has been made as simple as possible, he said. All that's needed is a one-page statement from the hospital where a victim was treated and a completed and notarized One Fund form.

The Massachusetts Bar Association is even providing free legal advice to people who need help filling out the three-page form.

Brittany Loring, whose skull was fractured in the blasts, said filling out paperwork may be difficult for some.

"The application itself seems really simple, but given that many of the survivors have longstanding injuries, these simple tasks may take a little bit longer," she said, adding that she has not filed her claim yet.

Feinberg has said that the families of those killed as well as victims who lost two limbs are likely to get about $1 million each, with other victims getting varying amounts based on the extent of their injuries and the length of their hospital stays. People who suffered psychologically are not eligible.

The funds will be distributed by June 30.

Sales of previously-occupied U.S. homes ticked up last month to the highest level in three and a half years, helped by a jump in the number of houses for sale.

The National Association of Realtors says sales rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.97 million, up from 4.94 million in March.

Home sales have risen 9.7 percent in the past 12 months. Still, sales have changed little since November. The supply of available homes remains tight and many would-be buyers aren't able to get loans.

The number of homes for sale jumped to 2.16 million, up nearly 12 percent from the previous month. But inventory is still almost 14 percent lower than a year earlier.

A man has been arrested in connection with one of several anti-gay attacks in recent days in New York City.

Police say Gornell Roman was charged Wednesday with assault and aggravated harassment, both as hate crimes.

Roman is accused of yelling an anti-gay remark and attacking a drinking companion in Manhattan's East Village on Monday. Roman and the victim, Dan Contarino, lived at a nearby homeless shelter.

It was one of 2 anti-gay attacks authorities announced Tuesday following the killing of a gay man over the weekend.

Tuesday morning, two men were walking in lower Manhattan when two other men yelled homophobic slurs in Spanish and attacked them. They were arrested on hate crime assault charges.

Mark Carson was killed Saturday; a man was charged with murder as a hate crime.

A home remodeler reportedly made the discovery of a lifetime while gutting a property in Minnesota: A 1938 comic book worth more than $100,000.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that David Gonzalez, 34, made the startling find amid old newspapers used to insulate a wall of a residence he was renovating in Elbow Lake, Minn. The Action Comics No. 1 issue, which features a new character named Superman hoisting a car above his head on its cover, has already attracted 31 bids in an online auction that runs through June 11, including one for $107,333.

"I knew it was worth money," the father of four told the newspaper. "But I had no idea how much."

The rare comic could have been worth even more if a heated argument with one of Gonzalez's relatives never occurred. He grabbed it back from his wife's aunt amid the excitement of the discovery, ripping its back cover. Experts later downgraded the comic book's condition to a 1.5 on a 10-point scale. For comparison, a 9.0-grade Action 1 recently fetched more than $2 million.

"That was a $75,000 tear," Stephen Fishler, co-owner of ComicConnect, a New York City online auction house that is selling Gonzalez's treasure, told the newspaper.

Fishler said the comic book would have been graded a 3.0 without the rip.

Vincent Zurzolo, a co-owner of ComicConnect, an online comic marketplace, said it was "pretty miraculous" that the comic book survived nearly eight decades.

"It's so hard for anyone to fathom that, in this day and age, you could still discover a comic book that nobody has known about because this book was in a wall of a house for more than 70 years," Zurzolo said.

Gonzalez, meanwhile, said he had no hard feelings regarding the damage to his valuable find.

"I am a humble working guy, so I didn't get too excited when I found it with old newspapers stuffed in the walls," he said. "Money won't buy you happiness."

Click for more from the Star Tribune.

A Coast Guard rescue swimmer whose disappearance led to a massive search in Hawaii pleaded guilty to desertion Tuesday, saying he left work one day, decided never to return and spent the next three months camping in the mountains. A military judge sentenced him to more than six months confinement and a bad conduct discharge.

During a special court-martial in Honolulu, Petty Officer 1st Class Russell Matthews pleaded guilty to desertion and wrongful use of marijuana. In exchange for his guilty plea, the Coast Guard dismissed charges of being absent without leave and causing the Coast Guard to conduct a search when there was no need.

Matthews' sentence also includes forfeiture of $2,000 of pay per month for a year, which he can opt to have sent to his two children. He'll also be downgraded to the third-lowest rank. The Coast Guard says the six months' confinement is on top of the 119 days he's already served at a Navy brig.

He wanted to leave the Coast Guard to bury the pain of losing crewmembers in a 2008 helicopter crash, he said. He was supposed to be with that crew but was hospitalized with appendicitis at the time of the crash. Adding to the pain was a bicycle accident, where his first wife was pulling their two sons on a trailer. She suffered a traumatic brain injury and later committed suicide. He deserted near the one-year anniversary of her suicide.

"Your honor, I left work and I didn't have any intention of going back," he testified, describing how he went to pick up his children from school on Oct. 9 and then got into an argument with his wife. He then drove to Kaena Point, a remote part of Oahu, and walked on the beach for several hours. Afterward, he camped in the mountains behind his kids' school, he said, where he stayed until he showed up at his wife's home in mid-January.

"That's a long time to be camping," said Coast Guard Cmdr. Kevin Bruen, the judge presiding over the court-martial. "How did you sustain yourself?"

"I had $20 in my pocket," Matthews said softly. "I did some... stuff I try not to remember."

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard launched a massive search. Members of the Coast Guard who participated in the search that scoured more than 10,000 square miles testified about the motivation to find one of their own, the speculation he may have tried to kill himself and then the mixed emotions that came when he turned up alive.

Pilots flew 64 hours searching over the waters off Kaena Point, taking Coast Guard members away from their normal duties and taxing aircraft. "He's part of our unit...we are family," said Cmdr. Prince Neal. Rescuers mourned his loss, only to find out he was alive. They felt happiness for his children, but also confusion, Neal recalled.

Matthews didn't discuss more about his time in the wilderness, only saying he simply went back to where he lived and realized his wife and children had moved. The memories of what happened next are sketchy, he said, recalling that paramedics were called because he had a cut on his head and he ended up in police custody.

"It was not my intention to turn my back on my unit or the Coast Guard," Matthews said. "I cannot change the past but I vow to make things right in the future."

Lt. Kelly Vandenberg, a Coast Guard attorney prosecuting the case, said by "hanging out in the woods," the people who suffered the most are his children.

One of Matthews' defense attorneys, Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Deerwester, said Matthews loved the Coast Guard and didn't act in spite. Finding a campsite overlooking his children's school was his way of not abandoning them, Deerwester said. He also said Matthews smoked marijuana to "self-medicate."

Coast Guard attorneys said his two sons are in the custody of his first wife's family on the mainland.

Before being led away, Matthews kissed his wife, who sat alone, dressed in black, in the back of the courtroom. She declined to comment and left the federal courthouse in tears.

Federal agents and the state fire marshal have effectively barred a federal safety panel from the site of a Texas fertilizer plant blast that killed 15 people and injured about 200 others, hampering its investigation, the panel's chairman said.

In a May 17 letter to Sen. Barbara Boxer, U.S. Chemical Safety Board Chairman Rafael Moure-Eraso asked the California Democrat to help the board obtain evidence under control of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that he contends is essential to the board's investigation, the Waco Tribune-Herald and Austin American-Statesman reported.

"To date, the CSB has experienced significant obstacles that potentially compromise and delay our ability to complete the `comprehensive investigation' that you have rightly demanded, and that we would very much like to produce," he wrote to Boxer. The chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has said she planned to hold hearings into the April 17 West Fertilizer explosion.

A criminal investigation "comes with certain sensitivities. You need to keep it to law enforcement only," Robert Champion, ATF special agent in charge of the investigation told the American-Statesman. He also said the decision to bar the CSB from the site was made by the State Fire Marshal's Office.

Fire Marshal's Office spokeswoman Rachel Moreno said the CSB was kept out because criminal investigators were executing search warrants.

"We have to protect evidence," she told the American-Statesman. "We need to have one report, one set of interviews; it all has to be clear cut."

Messages left by The Associated Press with ATF and the State Fire Marshal's Office were not returned Tuesday night. However, a Boxer spokeswoman said the senator had asked the agencies to respond as quickly as possible to her concerns regarding the issues raised in the letter.

In an April 30 statement, Boxer said she "cannot rest until we get to the bottom of what caused the disaster" in West and that she wants to make sure such facilities are complying with chemical safety laws.

In his letter, Moure-Eraso said the board sent 18 investigators and other experts to West within 24 hours of the blast. At the same time, ATF "assumed essential exclusive control of the incident site" with the State Fire Marshal's Office, he wrote.

"These criminal investigators have exercised exclusive control of the site for a full one-month period ... and have altered or removed almost all relevant physical evidence at the site," he wrote.

ATF and the State Fire Marshal's Office "consistently expressed the position that CSB was not permitted to conduct separate interviews, prepare expert analysis or author its own independent report," he wrote. ATF and the state fire marshal "state that because in their view this was exclusively a criminal investigation, there could be only one version of what occurred and one report."

On May 16, representatives of the State Fire Marshal's Office announced that the joint criminal investigation left the cause of a fire precipitating the blast as "undetermined."

Investigators narrowed the number of possible causes to three: a problem with one of the plant's electrical systems, a battery-powered golf cart and a criminal act. However, they could not say with certainty what caused the fire that ignited stored ammonium nitrate, said Kelly Kistner, the assistant state fire marshal.

The Pentagon is asking Congress for more than $450 million for maintaining and upgrading the Guantanamo Bay prison that President Barack Obama wants to close.

New details on the administration's budget request emerged on Tuesday and underscored the contradiction of the president waging a political fight to shutter the facility while the military calculates the financial requirements to keep the installation operating.

The budget request for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 calls for $79 million for detention operations, the same as the current year, and $20.5 million for the office of military commissions, an increase over the current amount of $12.6 million. The request also includes $40 million for a fiber optic cable and $99 million for operation and maintenance.

The Pentagon also wants $200 million for military construction to upgrade temporary facilities. That work could take eight to 10 years as the military has to transport workers to the island, rely on limited housing and fly in building material.

The facility at the U.S. naval base in Cuba currently holds 166 prisoners, and hunger strikes by 100 of them over their indefinite detention and prison conditions prompted Obama to renew his effort to close Guantanamo. The president is expected to discuss the future of the facility in a speech on counterterrorism on Thursday.

"Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe," the president said at a White House news conference last month. "It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies on counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed."

Since his inauguration in January 2009, Obama has pushed for shutting the prison, signing an executive order for closure during his first week in office. He has faced resistance in Congress with Republicans and some Democrats repeatedly blocking efforts to transfer terror suspects to the United States.

The law that Congress passed and Obama signed in March to keep the government running includes a longstanding provision that prohibits any money for the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States or its territories. It also bars spending to overhaul any U.S. facility in the U.S. to house detainees.

That makes it essentially illegal for the government to transfer the men it wants to continue holding, including five who were charged before a military tribunal with orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks.

Lawmakers have cited statistics on terror suspects striking again and argued that Obama has failed to produce a viable alternative to Guantanamo.

Some members of Congress counter that U.S. maximum security prisons currently hold convicted terrorists and can handle such suspects. Among those in U.S. prisons is Zacarias Moussaoui, who planned the Sept. 11 attacks.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., said he favors closing Guantanamo for several reasons, including the expense. Money in a time of deficits could be a factor for other lawmakers, including fiscal conservatives in Congress.

Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to Obama on Tuesday offering his help to get the facility closed.

Until it is, Smith wrote, "it will continue to symbolize an unjust attempt to avoid the rule of law and to undermine the United States' moral standing in defending its values and protecting human rights."

Smith said al-Qaida continues to use Guantanamo to rally violent extremists to its cause.

A Coast Guard rescue swimmer whose disappearance led to a massive search in Hawaii pleaded guilty to desertion Tuesday, saying he left work one day, decided never to return and spent the next three months camping in the mountains of Oahu.

Petty Officer 1st Class Russell Matthews pleaded guilty to desertion and wrongful use of marijuana during a special court-martial in Honolulu on Tuesday before a Coast Guard judge. In exchange for his guilty plea, the Coast Guard dismissed charges of being absent without leave and causing the Coast Guard to conduct a search when there was no need.

"Your honor, I left work and I didn't have any intention of going back," he testified, describing how he went to pick up his children from school on Oct. 25 and then got into argument with his wife. He then drove to Kaena Point, a remote part of Oahu, and walked on the beach for several hours. Afterward, he camped in the mountains behind his kids' school, he said, where he stayed until he showed up at his wife's home in mid-January.

"That's a long time to be camping," said Coast Guard Cmdr. Kevin Bruen, the judge presiding over the court-martial. "How did you sustain yourself?"

"I had $20 in my pocket," Matthews said softly, seated at the defense table, flanked by his appointed Navy lawyers and wearing his service dress blues. "I did some... stuff I try not to remember."

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard launched a massive search. Members of the Coast Guard who participated in the search that scoured more than 10,000 square miles testified about the motivation to find one of their own, the speculation he may have tried to kill himself and then the mixed emotions that came when he turned up alive.

Pilots flew 64 hours searching over the waters off Kaena Point, taking Coast Guard members away from their normal duties and taxing aircraft. "He's part of our unit...we are family," said Cmdr. Prince Neal. Rescuers mourned his loss, only to find out he was alive. They felt happiness for his children, but also confusion, Neal recalled.

Lt. j.g. Curtis Gookin recalled searching for four days through rough ocean conditions, holding out hope they could recover his body and bring some solace to his family. When he surfaced months later, "I was really disgusted by his actions," he said.

Robert Coster, a civilian search-and-rescue coordinator, testified that the estimated cost of the search for the Coast Guard was more than $1 million.

The scenario Coster thought of during the search was that a well-trained rescue swimmer went into the ocean to commit suicide, changed his mind and was fighting the ocean to survive.

"This was an individual who was well-trained by the Coast Guard," Coster said. "He understood what we were doing for him."

Matthews didn't discuss more about his time in the wilderness, only saying he simply went back to where he lived and realized his wife and children had moved. The memories of what happened next are sketchy, he said, recalling that paramedics were called because he had a cut on his head and he ended up in police custody.

He admitted smoking marijuana in September and smoking several times during his desertion. "I smoked it in a joint, your honor," he testified. "Probably a few times, your honor."

Matthews' mother testified via telephone from the mainland that she was told he drowned, but she didn't believe it. "He would never do that to his children," Carol Matthews said. "I told them at the time I believed my son was AWOL." She said she told the Coast Guard he was likely in Puerto Rico or in the caves of Pupukea, on the north shore of Oahu.

He's expected to be sentenced Tuesday. The judge noted he'd already been held for 119 days.

Hawaii News Now previously reported that Matthews lost four colleagues in a 2008 helicopter crash. The following year, his first wife was critically hurt when she was hit head-on by a car while riding her bike. She died a couple of years later, according to public records.

Coast Guard attorneys prosecuting the case said his two sons are in the custody of his first wife's sister on the mainland.