Former Navy Secretary Richard J. Danzig, who has served as a bio-warfare adviser to the president, the Pentagon, and the Department of Homeland Security, urged the government to stockpile an anti-anthrax drug while serving as a director for the company that supplied it, according to a report published Sunday.

While there is no evidence any nation or terrorist group has achieved it, Danzig warned for a decade that terrorists could easily engineer a strain of anthrax resistant to common antibiotics that could be a devastating threat to national security, according to an investigation by the Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/12K6Rxh ).

Danzig successfully suggested stockpiling a drug known as raxibacumab, or "raxi," to guard against the potential threat, and biotech startup Human Genome Sciences Inc. has won $334 million in federal contracts since 2006 to supply the drug that now goes for $5,100 a dose.

At the same time, Danzig was a director for the company, earning more than $1 million in company compensation between 2001 and 2012. It was the first product the company sold and the U.S. government remains the only buyer. The Rockville, Md.-based company was acquired by GlaxoSmithKline in August for $3.6 billion.

Several officials who attended seminars led by Danzig said they had no knowledge of his ties to Human Genome Sciences.

"Holy smoke — that was a horrible conflict of interest," said Dr. Philip K. Russell, a physician, retired major-general and biodefense official in the George W. Bush administration.

Federal law bars U.S. officials, including advisers and consultants, from giving counsel on matters in which they have a financial interest.

Danzig said there was no conflict of interest, and that he sought only to inform officials of the danger, not to lobby for the purchase of raxibacumab.

"My view was I'm not going to get involved in selling that," Danzig told the Times in an interview. "But at the same time now, should I not say what I think is right in the government circles with regard to this?"

Danzig added, "I feel that I've acted very properly with regard to this."

Danzig, 68, who served as Navy secretary in the Clinton administration and has since worked as a consultant, began warning about antibiotic-resistant anthrax in the wake of five deaths from anthrax-laced letters that came soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The anthrax in the letters was not resistant to antibiotics, but Danzig was soon warning of the possibility of a deadlier form of the germ, saying his interest in the subject came from "people whose technical skills exceed mine."

The Times investigation found seven papers Danzig had written on bioterrorism since 2001, and in only one did he disclose his ties to Human Genome Sciences.

The latest high-stakes court hearing for O.J. Simpson in the glitzy capital of big gambles has come to a close with the former football star's defense team feeling confident that their client is closer to getting out of prison.

The last time Simpson was in a Las Vegas courtroom, he was convicted of kidnapping and armed robbery. Now, with a new team of attorneys on his side, he has mounted a cool, methodical case that his former lead lawyer botched the 2008 trial so badly that a new one should be granted.

"He has a very good chance now," said Ozzie Fumo, one of the attorneys who represented Simpson. "I don't think the state was able to counter any of our issues."

Simpson's lawyers presented evidence that showed Miami-based attorney Yale Galanter shared responsibility for the ill-conceived plan for the NFL Hall of Famer and former Hollywood star to take back personal items and mementos from two sports collectible dealers in a Vegas hotel room. They also built a case that he deliberately sabotaged Simpson's chances for acquittal and appeal to protect himself and his own self-interests.

When the weeklong hearing ended Friday there seemed to be little doubt that major mistakes were made when Simpson was sentenced to nine to 33 years in prison on 12 criminal counts. The real question is whether enough was done to meet the high standard needed for District Court Judge Linda Marie Bell to free Simpson from state prison and grant him a new trial.

The final witness she heard from was Galanter, who defended his actions in a tense courtroom standoff with Simpson and his new representatives Friday.

As Simpson's legal team worked to portray Galanter as hungry for the money and fame that could come from an O.J. trial, the lawyer said it was Simpson who agreed to spend more than a half a million dollars on his defense, turned down a plea bargain and decided not to testify.

"I felt a genuine fondness for O.J. and was devastated when he lost," Galanter said.

However, when Simpson testified Wednesday, he recounted his hotel room confrontation with memorabilia dealers, and his interactions with the lawyer he blamed for his conviction.

He said he trusted Galanter based a long professional relationship. "He was my guy," Simpson said.

He said Galanter made no mention of a plea deal and advised him not to testify in his own defense when other lawyers said it would help.

Galanter, when he was on the stand, said Simpson brought "too much baggage" to testify given his 1995 acquittal in the murders of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman. Following the "trial of the century" Simpson was ordered to pay $33.5 million when he was found liable for the killings in civil court.

Galanter also testified that Simpson confided to him that he had asked two men to bring guns to the hotel room in September 2007, and Simpson "knew he screwed up."

Simpson lawyer Fumo, however, said that claim wasn't credible.

"Galanter tried to throw O.J. under the bus, but it was inconsistent with the entire defense he presented," Fumo said. At trial Galanter had said Simpson never ordered guns to be carried and didn't see firearms in the room.

Simpson's lawyers have a high legal burden to prove their case under a writ of habeas corpus, which relies on showing not only that his lawyer's work was ineffective but that if he had acted differently it would have changed the outcome.

But there is another key issue — conflict of interest.

"An actual conflict is a violation of the right to counsel," said Jennifer Carr, a criminal law professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas."

If Simpson "can succeed in showing that there has been an actual conflict, he need not show that that conflict caused the verdict. Merely showing the conflict is sufficient to show his right to counsel was violated," Carr said.

Simpson's testimony was pivotal on this point. Even with his hair gray and thinning, and his finely chiseled features lost under the burden of years and weight, the 65-year-old Simpson was an impressive witness.

He was still O.J. Simpson, a man used to the spotlight. He shuffled to the witness stand in shackles but spoke with confidence. He told of dining with Galanter the night before the hotel caper and telling him the plan.

"I talked to Yale about it two or three times," Simpson said. "The overall advice he was giving was, 'You have a right to get your stuff.'"

Galanter told a different story.

"He said he and some of his boys might be doing a sting in the morning," said Galanter.

He added that Simpson said, "he finally had a lead on some personal pictures and memorabilia that was stolen from him years earlier. I said, 'O.J., you've got to call the police.'"

As it turned out, someone called the police but it wasn't Simpson. The memorabilia dealers claimed they were robbed at gunpoint. Simpson was arrested.

"It obviously didn't go the way I hoped it would," Simpson said with a touch of irony.

Las Vegas lawyers Gabriel Grasso and Malcolm LaVergne, who also participated in the case, testified that Galanter had a conflict because he could have been called as a witness. There was a trail of phone calls between Simpson and Galanter before and after the Sept. 13, 2007 confrontation.

Other points raised by Simpson's team included Galanter's failure to hire investigators or experts and never interviewing witnesses against Simpson because, "We already knew a lot about them."

A key criticism was Galanter's refusal to hire experts to analyze audio recordings from the hotel incident, telling a colleague they were "operating on a shoestring" while demanding more money from Simpson's business manager. He also refused to challenge admissibility of the tapes, insisting they would help Simpson.

Jurors said they convicted Simpson solely on the basis of the tapes because they found the witnesses not credible.

When the hearing ended, the judge said would issue a written ruling but did not set a date.

If Simpson succeeds in getting his conviction thrown out, prosecutors will have to either retry him or offer a plea bargain. It is also possible Simpson could be freed with credit for time served. If he loses, he will be sent back to prison and will probably appeal to a higher court.

He will be 70 before he is eligible for parole.

In a commencement address at Atlanta's historically black Morehouse College, President Obama said graduates should "find time to defend the powerless."

The president said his own success was due to "the special obligation I felt, as a black man like you, to help those who need it most, people who didn't have the opportunities that I had — because there but for the grace of God, go I. I might have been in their shoes. I might have been in prison. I might have been unemployed."

In New Jersey, Rutgers University graduated the largest class in school history — an estimated 14,302 students.

At New York's Hofstra University, students wore white ribbons at their graduation ceremony in honor of Andrea Rebello, one of their colleagues killed by a gunshot early Friday morning. A police officer accidentally killed 21-year-old Rebello as an armed intruder held her in a headlock.

Here are some images from college commencements across the nation:

With a bullet still in his body, the police officer who survived a showdown with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects said Sunday he's determined to return to duty.

Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Officer Richard Donahue has been recovering alongside victims injured in the April 15 attack by the marathon's finish line since his transfer to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston on Friday.

The 33-year-old uses crutches to get around now, and is coping with nerve damage that makes it painful to walk and difficult to sleep. But sitting alongside his wife Kim Donahue, the transit officer said he's getting stronger and healthier every day.

Besides building strength to walk on his own, Donahue also is doing speech therapy and other exercises to prepare his mind and body to head home again. He said he's looking forward to the end of his hospitalization so he can spend more time with his 7-month-old son, who's gotten four new teeth in the meantime, and toss a ball around with his family's beagle.

Donahue doesn't recall anything about the gun battle that left him wounded on a street in suburban Watertown. His last memory from the day he almost bled to death is roll call at the start of his shift.

That was hours before Donahue responded to the call that came after authorities say bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev fatally shot his police academy friend, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Officer Sean Collier.

It was in Watertown that Donahue suffered a severed femoral artery when a bullet pierced his groin during a gun battle with the Tsarnaev brothers.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died on the same street where Donahue was wounded. Authorities have said Dzhokhar Tsarnaev drove over his brother while fleeing the scene after Tamerlan, 26, ran out of ammunition and was tackled by officers.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev's cause of death was listed as gunshot wounds and blunt trauma to his head and torso.

But Donahue, an MBTA officer of three years, has no memory of the encounter that nearly killed him.

"As of right now, it's all been a blackout," he said.

Exactly how Donahue was wounded isn't clear. He said if his injury turned out to be from a fellow officer's bullet, he was just glad police "got the job done" at a chaotic scene where authorities said the suspects tossed explosives and fired on officers.

"If it was friendly fire, it was friendly fire, he said. "We got the job done and the other suspect got captured shortly thereafter, so I'm just happy with that."

The transit officer said he is in favor of authorities filing additional charges against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in connection with Collier's death and his own close call. But he wouldn't say if he favored the death penalty in the case of a guilty verdict for the 19-year-old, who remains in a prison hospital after his arrest.

"One of them, I guess, has already been brought to justice," Donahue said of Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

Donahue's wife said she's proud of her husband, and while they won't use the word "hero" a lot at home, their 7-month-old son will have a lot to live up to as he grows up.

"We keep saying he's not going to be able to get away with anything. Like, 'Oh, you don't want to eat your green beans? Well, Daddy's got a bullet in his leg and came back from the dead. So, if you could do us a favor and just eat your food that would be great,'" the 31-year-old mom said with a smile.

MBTA Police Chief Paul MacMillan nodded in approval Sunday as he heard Donahue talking about getting back into the shape he was before the line of duty shooting.

"I think it's absolutely incredible the effort that was put into saving his life that night and the fact that he has come so far," the chief said later. "... We'd love to get him back, but we want him to get well first and foremost."

The man who police say hurled homophobic slurs at a gay man on a Manhattan street before firing a single fatal shot to his head has been charged with murder as a hate crime.

Elliot Morales appeared Sunday in Manhattan Criminal Court. He also was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and menacing.

Authorities say Morales used a revolver to kill 32-year-old Mark Carson early Saturday as he walked with a companion in Greenwich (GREN'-ich) Village.

Ben Petok, a spokesman for the Manhattan district attorney, says no plea was recorded for Morales. He's being held without bail. His next court appearance is Thursday.

On Saturday, in the lively Village streets, police say Morales followed Carson and a companion and asked if they wanted to die seconds before opening fire.