By Tim Kenneally

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Michael Douglas had a public-relations headache when the Guardian newspaper reported that he blamed oral sex for his cancer - and his representative quickly contested the story.

But the "Behind the Candelabra" star has found a silver lining, he said Monday.

"I never expected to become a poster boy for head and neck cancer, but, if after what started out as trying to answer a couple of questions about the suspected sources of this disease results in opening up discussion and furthering public awareness, then I'll stand by that," Douglas said at an American Cancer Society's tribute to composer Marvin Hamlisch.

"Head and neck cancer can be caused by many things including HPV virus, smoking, alcohol, drug abuse, genes, environment and stress. I do not know what caused my particular cancer. If I did, I'd have a Nobel Prize."

The actor concluded, "I do know that I am here today because of all the incredible advances in cancer research and treatment. Early awareness is a key factor. If this episode contributes to public awareness, all the better."

The Guardian published an interview in which Douglas seemed to attribute his throat cancer to oral sex.

Asked if he regretted years of smoking and drinking in light of his diagnosis, Douglas replied, "No. Because without wanting to get too specific, this particular cancer is caused by HPV, which actually comes about from cunnilingus."

After the interview was published, Douglas' representative told TheWrap that Douglas was merely offering one of the causes for his type of cancer.

"He did not say cunnilingus was the cause of his cancer," Douglas' representative, Allen Burry said. "He didn't specifically name a cause."

The 68-year-old actor, who is married to actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2010. Douglas says that he is currently free of the disease.

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Magic Stone Productions and Odenkirk Provissiero Entertainment are teaming to produce Bob Odenkirk's feature "Girlfriend's Day."

Odenkirk, who plays shady lawyer Saul Goodman on AMC's "Breaking Bad," wrote the script and will star in the film, which will serve as the narrative directorial debut of Michael Paul Stephenson ("Best Worst Movie").

In a city where greeting card writers are celebrated like stars, romance writer Ray (Odenkirk) used to be the king. In trying to recapture the feelings that once made him the greatest, he gets entangled in a web of murder and deceit as writers vie to create the perfect card for a new holiday: Girlfriend's Day.

"'Girlfriend's Day' is an offbeat comedy, but the characters are full of heart, searching for love and connection," said Odenkirk. "Michael's documentaries feature the same kind of likable offbeat characters, and I can't wait to make this film."

"After reading 'Girlfriend's Day' it felt like a discovery," added Stephenson. "Long before 'Girlfriend's Day' even came into the picture, I had Bob's name down on a list of actors I'd hope to work with one day. I've been a fan of Bob's for a long time, and feel that his dramatic sensibilities as an actor have been largely untapped. 'Girlfriend's Day' is rooted in themes that I believe in, and I'm honored to collaborate with Bob in telling a story that's close to his heart."

Stephenson and his wife Lindsay Stephenson will produce for Magic Stone along with Odenkirk and his producing partner Marc Provissiero. They're currently meeting with financiers in the hopes of starting production this fall in Los Angeles.

Odenkirk will next be seen on the big screen this November in Alexander Payne's "Nebraska" and in James Ponsoldt's Sundance sensation "The Spectacular Now." He'll also return for the final season of "Breaking Bad," which debuts in August.

Odenkirk is repped by WME and Odenkirk Provissiero Entertainment, which also reps Stephenson.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co raised its 2013 earnings outlook after quarterly results beat low expectations, as CEO Meg Whitman's turnaround plan helped offset shrinking personal computer sales with enterprise computing services.

While fiscal second-quarter profit plummeted 32 percent, Wall Street had braced for worse. HP shares gained 14 percent after the company projected full-year earnings per share of $3.50 to $3.60, raising the lower end by 10 cents, and fiscal third-quarter profit that topped analyst estimates.

Whitman, who took the helm at the world's largest PC maker more than a year ago, is orchestrating a turnaround, trying to recapture some of the Silicon Valley icon's former strong growth. She has said the process could take years.

HP received a warmer welcome from investors for its results than smaller rival Dell Inc, which last week reported a 79 percent slide in profit and is now mired in a takeover battle between founder Michael Dell and activist investor Carl Icahn.

"This is another good deposit on the road to our turnaround here," HP Chief Financial Officer Cathie Lesjak said in an interview. "We are roughly where we want to be in total on the company."

Enterprise services and printing units are "probably a little bit ahead," she said, adding the two businesses helped drive the company's gross margin improvement during the quarter.

HP's net income fell to $1.08 billion, or 55 cents a share, from $1.59 billion, or 80 cents a share, a year earlier.

The company earned 87 cents per share on an operating basis during the second quarter on revenue of $27.6 billion.

HP had been expected to post earnings of 81 cents a share on revenue of just over $28 billion, according to the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

For its fiscal third quarter, it estimated non-GAAP earnings per share of 84 to 87 cents, higher than 83 cents expected by Wall Street analysts.

Its shares, which have climbed 51 percent in 2013 as investors gradually gained confidence in its prospects, rose 13 percent to $24.08 in extended trading after closing at $21.23 on the New York Stock Exchange.

STEEP DECLINE IN PC SALES

HP, whose name is synonymous with the birth of Silicon Valley, has suffered years of turbulence. Whitman became HP's third CEO in as many years after Leo Apotheker's abrupt dismissal.

She is now pushing layoffs, cost cutting, and expansion into markets and areas with longer-term potential such as enterprise computing services. The move, intended to bolster margins, pits HP against the likes of IBM.

HP is laying off 29,000 employees over the next two years and has written off $10.8 billion mostly related to the writedown of its EDS services business.

Lesjak said so far the company had reduced 18,800 jobs and intends to cut a total of 26,000 by the end of the year.

On Wednesday, the company reported that revenue fell across HP's main business divisions, with the steepest decline in the personal systems group. Sales from HP's largest, PC-focused unit dived 20 percent to $7.58 billion.

But that same division recorded a 3.2 percent operating margin, up from about 2.7 percent in the previous quarter, as the company focused on improving profitability.

The printing division had the smallest revenue decline, of 1 percent, year over year, but the company said it had a "strong operating margin" of 15.8 percent.

HP generated $3.6 billion in cash flow during the quarter and used some of the funds to reduce net debt by $1.8 billion to $2.9 billion. The company had $13.6 billion in gross cash at the end of the quarter.

(Reporting by Poornima Gupta; Editing by Richard Chang and David Gregorio)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Standing conventional stock market wisdom on its head, investors may wish for weaker-than-expected U.S. employment numbers next Friday.

A strong jobs report could prompt an early end to the Federal Reserve's policy of pumping money into the banking system to rescue the economy and set off the stock market's long-awaited pullback.

The Fed's loose monetary policy since the end of 2008 has kept interest rates low and propelled stocks to record highs.

Last week, stocks fell and bond yields surged after Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the U.S. central bank may decide to taper its stimulus programs in the next few policy meetings if data shows the economy is gaining traction.

Stocks posted their second straight week of losses on Friday, mostly on fears that the Fed would curb its bond-buying program sooner than most people expected.

"We're in a mindset where the market seems to be very fearful of the Fed beginning a tapering," said Quincy Krosby, market strategist at Prudential Financial in Newark, New Jersey.

"Those who are in the market based on easy money ... will probably exit" if the May jobs number exceeds expectations, she said.

The market has managed to climb this year without any substantial pullback. Concerns about the Fed's next move have increased speculation that a major bout of selling is ahead.

A stronger-than-expected jobs number "would continue to produce the concerns you've seen manifested in the market over the last couple of days," said Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia, which manages about $58 billion in assets.

Economists say job gains of at least 200,000 per month over several months are needed to significantly reduce high unemployment.

The Fed has said it will keep interest rates at historic lows until the U.S. unemployment rate drops to 6.5 percent.

Employers are expected to have added 168,000 jobs to their payrolls in May, according to economists polled by Reuters. That's slightly above April's count of 165,000 new positions.

The U.S. unemployment rate is expected to hold steady at 7.5 percent in May.

To be sure, better-than-expected jobs data would be evidence of strength in the economy, a positive for the market in the long run, so any pullback could be short-lived, analysts said.

"If it's a short-term correction, I think that would have to be opportunistic, in the sense that investors should take advantage of moving any sideline money into the equity market," Luschini said.

Even with the recent losses - the Standard & Poor's 500 indexfell 1.1 percent this week - the index rose 14.34 percent for the first five months of 2013. That gain marked the S&P 500's best first five months of any year since 1997.

DITCHING DIVIDEND STOCKS

A rotation out of high-yielding dividend stocks has already begun because of the rise in U.S. Treasury bond yields.

Dividend stocks had been among the market's leaders for much of this year's rally as investors favored those shares over fixed-income securities in a low interest-rate environment.

"The first crack we've seen is, as bond yields have been going up, people are moving out of that area," said Eric Kuby, chief investment officer of North Star Investment Management Corp., in Chicago.

"Managers are starting to look at things other than consumer staples with nice dividends and stable businesses. So within the stock market, you're seeing more volatility within sectors."

The S&P 500 gained 2.1 percent for the month of May, while the S&P utilities sector indexlost 9.6 percent and the S&P consumer staples indexdropped 2.4 percent.

The spread between the S&P 500 dividend yield and the 10-year U.S. Treasury note's yield this week hit its narrowest in about a year. The S&P 500 dividend yield was at 2.39 percent, while the 10-year note's yield hit 2.235 percent during the week.

By comparison, the dividend yield on the utilities sector stands at about 4 percent.

The move out of dividend-paying and other defensive shares should continue as the economy improves, Kuby said, though he pointed out that the market is still a "long way" from seeing high interest rates.

"The fact that rates are likely to creep up over time, that's a given. And it's not going to be sudden or dramatic. It's going to be more gradual."

IT'S RAINING NUMBERS

Next week will bring a snapshot of U.S. manufacturing activity from the Institute for Supply Management, which releases its May index on Monday. Economists polled by Reuters expect a reading of 50.5 for May, compared with 50.7 in April.

Monday's economic agenda also calls for April construction spending - forecast up 0.8 percent after a drop of 1.7 percent in March.

Domestic car and truck sales for May, also expected on Monday, are projected to have increased to 15.1 million units from April sales of about 14.9 million units, the Reuters Poll showed.

The U.S. international trade deficit, set for release on Tuesday, is forecast to have widened slightly to $41 billion in April from $38.8 billion in March.

A preview of the jobs picture will come on Wednesday with the release of a report from payrolls processor ADP. Economists polled by Reuters have forecast that the ADP data will show private-sector employers added 165,000 jobs in May, compared with 119,000 in April.

Wednesday's numbers to watch will include the ISM's release of its U.S. services-sector Purchasing Managers' Index for May. A reading of 53.4 is forecast for May, up from April's 53.1.

The Fed's Beige Book is expected on Wednesday afternoon. That report will give a look at the economy in 12 regional Federal Reserve bank districts.

On Thursday, initial claims for unemployment benefits will grab attention - on the day before the big payrolls report from the U.S. government. Initial jobless claims are projected to have slipped to 345,000 in the week ended June 1 from 354,000 in the previous week.

(Wall St Week Ahead runs every Friday. Questions or comments on this column can be emailed to: caroline.valetkevitch(at)thomsonreuters.com ) (Editing by Jan Paschal)

In a wild game before 39,129 fans, each team slugged four home runs and the Orioles rallied from a four-run deficit against one of the best pitchers in the game.

Zimmerman hit solo homers in the first and fourth innings before adding a two-run drive in the fifth, all off Chris Tillman. With a chance to tie the major-league record of four homers in a game, Zimmerman came to the plate in the seventh against Steve Johnson and looked at a third strike.

It was the first three-homer game of Zimmerman's career.

Davis hit a solo drive in the fourth and capped a six-run seventh with his major-league leading 19th homer, a two-run shot off Tyler Clippard.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has no plans to quit and has received no indication that his job is in jeopardy ahead of a cabinet reshuffling, his chief spokesman said on Tuesday.

Flaherty's poor health - he suffers from a rare skin disease - has fueled speculation in recent months that he would step down. But Dan Miles, his director of communications, said Flaherty was feeling much better these days.

Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to revamp his cabinet by July, but "if Jim Flaherty has anything to say about it, finance is not in play," Miles told Reuters.

Miles said he and Flaherty discussed the minister's plans over lunch on Saturday and that he wanted to pre-empt any media reports that Flaherty wanted to retire.

"I've spoken to him directly, and he's telling me he has no plans to leave," said Miles.

Flaherty has said publicly on numerous occasions that he intends to remain finance minister until the federal government eliminates its budget deficit, a goal set for 2015, ahead of the next election.

The ultimate decision is, of course, up to Harper.

"If the prime minister decided ultimately that he wants to make a change, that's his prerogative," said Miles. "But at this point, there's nothing to suggest that there's going to be a change."

Harper is under pressure to freshen up his team and policies as he faces scandals and a re-energized opposition. He has said publicly that he planned big cabinet changes in mid-2013.

Harper's chief spokesman Andrew MacDougall would not say whether Flaherty would be affected by the shuffle. "I won't speculate on the outcomes," he said.

Flaherty, 63, has held his position since the Conservatives came to power in 2006 and has been in Harper's cabinet longer than any other minister.

He said in January that he has a rare condition called bullous pemphigoid and that the steroids he takes made him appear bloated and red-faced. But he said then that he could still perform his duties.

"He's still dealing with that issue," said Miles, "but he seems to be feeling much better and he's invigorated."

(Editing by Andrea Ricci)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Clearwire Corp is expected to postpone its shareholder vote on Sprint Nextel Corp's offer to buy the company after Dish Network Corp made a higher counterbid, two sources familiar with the situation said on Thursday.

Clearwire shareholders were due to vote on Friday on Sprint's offer to buy Clearwire for $3.40 a share, but will postpone the meeting after Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen made a bid of $4.40 late Wednesday, according to one source, who asked not to be named because of lack of authorization to comment.

Clearwire had said it could not act on a January offer from Dish for $3.30 per share as some conditions that came with the bid went against previous agreements Clearwire had with Sprint, its majority owner.

Since Dish removed some of the conditions in its new bid, the source said Ergen appeared to have "made a serious offer that is actionable" and that the board and its special committee will have to review the proposal carefully.

"This is a much improved offer from Dish, not just the dollar amount," said the source. "He's got himself in the game now."

Clearwire was expected to postpone Friday's vote, according to a second source.

Clearwire shares rose 21.5 percent, or 75 cents, to $4.23 on Thursday morning after Ergen announced his offer and started advertising a tender offer to Clearwire shareholders.

Any purchase of Clearwire would need approval from more than 50 percent of Clearwire's majority shareholders.

Before the latest Dish offer, many shareholders had said they were unhappy with Sprint's bid for Clearwire - even after it increased the price to $3.40 per share from $2.97 per share.

"This seriously complicates Sprint's bid for Clearwire," New Street analyst Jonathan Chaplin said in a research note, adding that the offer was good news for Clearwire's minority owners.

But Chaplin also noted complications for Dish, One problem for Dish and other potential Clearwire investors is that Clearwire would need approval from Sprint in order to sell the company or accept a new investor.

Dish is also competing against SoftBank Corp to buy Sprint itself. Dish has not said how the latest offer for Clearwire affects its bid for Sprint if at all

SoftBank gained clearance to go ahead with its Sprint offer earlier this week from a key U.S. government committee but needs more approvals, including a Sprint shareholder vote.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The Vatican took another step Wednesday to show greater financial transparency by publishing the first annual report from its financial watchdog agency and announcing new regulations to fight money laundering and terror financing.

The report from the Financial Intelligence Authority showed the agency received six internal reports on suspicious transactions in 2012, up from one a year earlier, and that two were sent onto Vatican prosecutors for investigation.

But the 10-page report made scant mention of any supervisory operations carried out in 2012. International financial authorities have recommended the agency conduct inspections and issue internal regulations to fight money laundering and terror financing.

The report also made no mention of the troubles that led to the suspension of credit card services inside the Vatican for several months, an embarrassment that inconvenienced the thousands of people who visit the Vatican and its museums each day.

The Vatican created the oversight agency in 2010 in a bid to shed its image as a secretive tax haven and improve its reputation in global financial circles following a series of scandals at its bank and a money laundering investigation launched by Rome prosecutors in 2010.

As part of that effort, the Holy See submitted itself to the Council of Europe's Moneyval evaluation process, which assesses countries' compliance with international anti-money laundering and anti-terror financing norms.

The Vatican in July passed the test on the first try and Moneyval said it had made great progress in a short amount of time. But the Holy See received poor or failing grades for the watchdog agency and its bank.

Specifically, Moneyval said the role, authority and independence of the watchdog agency was unclear and that the Vatican bank's rules for customer due diligence, wire transfers and suspicious transaction reporting were insufficient. It said the bank needed an independent supervisor and must conduct a thorough risk assessment to ensure that it knew its clients and the risks it faces.

The report issued Wednesday addressed few of those recommendations.

"I'm not here today to say that everything is great and perfect," said Rene Bruelhart, the agency director.

But at a press briefing, he stressed that a lot had been accomplished and that the Vatican was committed to pursuing the Moneyval process. He said that within the coming weeks and months, the Vatican would update its laws to more closely respond to the Moneyval recommendations and he said that screening of the bank account-holders was currently under way.

"We are more than on the right track in having an increased amount of suspicious transactions reports, that's also a clear sign that this type of screening is taken very seriously," he said.

The Vatican must submit a progress report to Moneyval in September, Bruelhart said.

In addition to the report, the Vatican has recently announced other measures aimed at greater financial transparency, including publication of the annual report of its bank and enlisting an international agency to certify the bank's compliance with anti-money laundering and anti-terror finance norms.

The watchdog agency has two main functions: one, as a financial intelligence unit that gathers and analyzes financial information, and the other supervising and regulating the Holy See's government, including the bank.

While the report released Wednesday provided 2012 statistics and updates on the financial intelligence work of the agency, there was slim information about the supervisory and regulatory work conducted in 2012.

There were no reports, for example, of any on-site inspections being carried out or any sanctions being meted out for infractions. The report was also silent on Moneyval's recommendation that the financial authority review the NGOs that work inside the Vatican for compliance with anti-money laundering and anti-terror finance norms.

And it made no mention of the decision by Italy's central bank to compel Deutsche Bank Italia to stop providing electronic payment services to the Holy See on Dec. 31. That meant that for several months in 2013, until a new service provider was found, visitors to the Vatican Museums they numbered 5 million last year and the Vatican post office had to pay cash for tickets and any other transactions.

While the cash-only problem didn't begin until Jan. 1, after the 2012 reporting period, presumably the problems that led to it were known last year.

In its decision, the central bank had cited the fact that the Vatican had insufficient banking supervision. Bruelhart, however, said Wednesday the dispute was between the Bank of Italy and Deutsche Bank, not the Vatican.

He added that as a result of the dispute, however, relations had improved between the Bank of Italy and Vatican and that an agreement formalizing such relations might soon be reached.

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Unraveling what briefly put the brakes on this powerhouse's spin could help shed light on states of matter that scientists currently are not able to recreate in labs, scientists added.

are a type of neutron star, which is the core of a massive star that devoured all its fuel, collapsed under its own weight and then exploded as a supernova. Magnetars are also often thought of as the most powerful magnets in the cosmos, with magnetic fields up to approximately 5,000 trillion times that of the Earth's. Astronomers have discovered less than two dozen magnetars so far. []

"Magnetars are really spectacular and mysterious objects," study co-author Victoria Kaspi, an astrophysicist at McGill University in Montreal and leader of the Swift magnetar monitoring program, told SPACE.com. "They can unleash extraordinary explosions and have the highest magnetic fields known in the universe, but they're relatively tiny, just the size of a city or so. How do they combine all that? We really want to understand them better."

The explosions that give birth to , including magnetars, crush them into some of the densest objects known, second only to a neutron star often packs as much mass as a half-million Earths within a diameter of only 12 miles (20 kilometers), and a teaspoonful of neutron star matter would weigh about 1 billion tons on Earth, approximately twice the combined weight of all the cars in the United States. This extraordinary mass gives a neutron star a powerful gravitational field as well a projectile would need to fly at about half the speed of light to escape from its surface.

Neutron stars can also spin as fast as the blades of a kitchen blender, up to 43,000 revolutions per minute. Past studies revealed hundreds of neutron stars can undergo changes in speed dubbed "glitches," in which the stars suddenly whirled faster.

Now for the first time, scientists have discovered that neutron stars can abruptly slow down as well, a surprising irregularity currently unexplained by existing models of neutron stars.

"We've dubbed this event an 'anti-glitch' because it affected this star in exactly the opposite manner of every other clearly identified glitch seen in neutron ," said study co-author Neil Gehrels, the lead researcher on the Swift mission at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Scientists focused on the magnetar 1E 2259+586, located about 10,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cassiopeia, using NASA's Swift observatory to watch it from July 2011 to mid-April 2012. Ordinarily, the magnetar completed a revolution every seven seconds, but the researchers discovered it had later slowed by 2.2 millionths of a second.

"I looked at the data and was shocked the neutron star had suddenly slowed down," said study lead author Rob Archibald at McGill University. "These stars are not supposed to behave this way." []

The extreme forces that matter in neutron stars experience theoretically gives rise to a host of bizarre, exotic phenomena that might explain regular glitches. For instance, researchers suspect the interior of a neutron star possesses, among other curiosities, a kind of frictionless state of matter known as a neutron superfluid. This superfluid is thought to make a neutron star's core spin faster than its crust, occasionally giving the crust bursts of speed that astronomers saw as glitches.

Now scientists have to explain how anti-glitches might come to exist.

"There was a huge outburst of X-rays from the magnetar a week before the anti-glitch was discovered, which does seem to suggest some process in its interior is responsible," Kaspi said.

One possibility is that a neutron star may have pockets of superfluids under its crust that each move at different speeds. These pockets could end up revolving more slowly around the neutron star's core than its crust, ultimately braking its spin in an anti-glitch. Another possibility is that internal vortexes of neutron superfluid that normally help drive the neutron star crust's movements could get driven inward by powerful concentrations of magnetic force emanating from the neutron star's core.

Learning more about what causes anti-glitches might shed light on longstanding mysteries about matter under extremes. For example, matter in neutron stars can get squeezed to densities up to more than 10 times greater than in the atomic nucleus, far beyond what current theories of matter can describe.

" and are some of the best laboratories we have for understanding pure physics," said study coauthor astronomer Jamie Kennea, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University. "The extreme conditions on these stars could never be replicated in any laboratory here on Earth."

Now that one anti-glitch has been discovered, further analysis of past findings might turn up smaller, less conclusive examples, Kaspi said. Future research, such as that conducted bythe NICER (Neutron star Interior Composition ExploreR) X-ray telescope , might help discover more anti-glitches, Kaspi said.

In addition, some existing models of neutron star glitches cannot explain some of the behavior astronomers have seen from them. A better understanding of anti-glitches might help solve these puzzles as well, Kaspi said.

The scientists detailed their findings in the May 30 issue of the journal Nature.

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Jurors convicted former Cameron County District Attorney Armando Villalobos on racketeering, bribery and extortion charges. They acquitted him on two extortion charges.

Villalobos is the highest-profile target to stand trial in an FBI investigation into legal corruption in Cameron County. The former prosecutor was accused of taking more than $100,000 in bribes from attorneys.

Villalobos denied any wrongdoing and testified during his trial that he did not request money from lawyers in exchange for appointments with him.

Among the allegations were that Villalobos participated in a scheme involving Amit Livingston, who was convicted of killing his girlfriend, Hermila Hernandez, in 2007. Prosecutors alleged former state District Judge Abel Lima agreed to work with Villalobos and Villalobos' former law partner, Eddie Lucio, in criminal and civil cases involving Livingston. The trio's target was the $500,000 bond put up for Livingston's release before trial.

Federal prosecutors alleged Villalobos set up Lucio to represent Hernandez's three children in their lawsuit against Livingston, and the criminal and civil cases both landed in Limas' courtroom. In the criminal case, Limas agreed to convict and sentence Livingston on the same day, thereby freeing up his bond to be used as the settlement in the civil suit.

However, Limas also agreed that day to Livingston's request that he would have 60 days to get his affairs in order before reporting to prison. That meant Livingston was released without bond highly unusual for a convicted killer already sentenced to decades in prison. Livingston didn't report to prison as scheduled and hasn't been seen since.

Lucio received $200,000 in attorney's fees for handling the civil case. Prosecutors said he kicked $80,000 back to Villalobos and together they gave about $10,000 to Limas to keep quiet. Lucio also faces charges in the case. Lima, who was one of the main witnesses at Villalobos' trial, pleaded guilty to racketeering and awaits sentencing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Wynne told jurors in his opening statement that the cash payments Villalobos accepted from attorneys in exchange for his prosecutorial discretion amounted to "having a district attorney on retainer."

"You pay him in advance so when you need him, he's there," Wynne told jurors at the federal courthouse in Brownsville.

Prosecutors allege the activity took place from October 2006 through May 3, 2012. Villalobos, a two-term district attorney, served from 2005 through the end of 2012. He ran for Congress last year, losing in the Democratic primary.

Villalobos remains free on bond. He faces up to 20 years in federal prison for each of the seven counts on which he was convicted. Sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 26.