The groups had been ordered in a 2004 civil case to pay 156 million dollars to the family of 17-year-old David Boim, killed in 1996 in an attack. A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the groups' role was not fully established.

It ordered a new trial to examine more closely the links between the organizations and the boy's death.

"The Boims will have to demonstrate an adequate causal link between the death of David Boim and the actions" of the groups, the court ruling said.

"This will require evidence that the conduct of each defendant, be it direct involvement with or support of Hamas's terrorist activities or indirect support of Hamas or its affiliates, helped bring about the terrorist attack that ended David Boim's life."

The groups had been charged with taking part in terrorism by aiding or financing Hamas, a powerful Islamist movement in the Palestinian territories.

"The Boims' theory ... was that in promoting, raising money for, and otherwise working on behalf of Hamas, these defendants had helped to fund, train, and arm the terrorists who had killed their son," the ruling said.

The defendants included the American Muslim Society and the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, which was the biggest Muslim charity in the United States until it was outlawed after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The foundation also faces separate criminal charges for alleged links with Hamas. It is charged with giving 36 million dollars to committees controlled by the movement from 1992 to 2001.

A leading US Muslim rights group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), welcomed the appeal court's decision Friday.

"This landmark ruling is a strong rejection of the recent disturbing trend of political lawsuits against American Muslims who have committed no crime other than providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians," it said in a statement.

"CAIR deplores the murder of David Boim and hopes that the actual wrong-doers are brought to justice."

In what will almost certainly be his final year as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox is preparing to tackle a number of issues — some controversial and some fairly straightforward — in 2008. Cox described an agenda he plans to discuss with senior SEC staffers after the new year. Though he has not announced that 2008 will be his final year at the SEC, it is almost certain that by the time President Bush leaves office in January 2009, Cox will also be gone, if only to allow the next president to appoint his or her own candidate to the position.

Among the goals Cox hopes to achieve in 2008:

•Mutual fund prospectus reform.

Noting that U.S. investors have invested about $3 trillion of their retirement funds in the stock market, and that half of that sum is invested via mutual funds, Cox says he wants the mutual industry to do a better job communicating basic information to investors about their offerings.

In November, the SEC put a proposal for mutual fund prospectus reform out for comment. In a few months, after reviewing the comments, the SEC will vote on the matter. "It's not that people need things dumbed down," Cox says. "But people are busy. There's a reason that CEOs insist on having executive summaries. It's important to put the vital information upfront."

•New rules on 12b-1 mutual fund fees.

These add-on fees were approved by the SEC in 1980 as a way for mutual funds to promote themselves, attract new investors and, theoretically, reduce the cost of operating a mutual fund. But with the explosive growth of mutual funds over the past 25 years, the fees have morphed into pools that fund managers can use to reward brokers they do business with.

The SEC's department of investment management is considering a proposal that would clarify the role that independent directors should play in approving a fund's 12b-1 plan. "You can expect the SEC to engage in rulemaking on 12b-1," Cox says. "Independent directors have been urging us to make changes in this area, and I think we can bring a great deal of clarity that is currently lacking."

•Proxy access.

Cox promises to revisit a topic that has generated the most severe criticism he has endured since being sworn in as SEC chair more than two years ago: the ability of shareholders to have access to a public company's proxy materials.

Last month, Cox voted in favor of a proposal that solidified the SEC's long-standing position that public firms can rebuff shareholders' attempts to get their own director candidates on proxy ballots. Citing ambiguity in the SEC's position, a federal appeals court ruled in 2006 that shareholder activists could force their candidates onto proxy slates through litigation.

Cox's vote to close the "ambiguity" loophole drew outrage from investor-rights advocates. But Cox said at the time of the vote that he was not willing to proceed with a meaningful overhaul of the commission's proxy-access rules with a commission hobbled by the absence of one Democratic appointee.

The August departure of Roel Campos, one of the Democratic appointees to the commission, changed the dynamics surrounding proxy access and scuttled any chance at meaningful reform for 2007. The other democratic commissioner, Annette Nazareth, also plans to step down.

If and when the Senate votes to confirm their likely replacements — Democrats Luis Aguilar and Elise Walter — Cox vows to revisit the issue.

•Protection of seniors.

Cox has made protecting older investors a priority, cracking down on abusive "free lunch" promotions and the like. For 2008, he wants to reach out to investor advisers to find out answers to potentially tricky questions.

If, for example, an investment broker has a longtime client who develops Alzheimer's, how should financial decisions be handled?

Cox realizes that every situation will have a unique set of facts and circumstances, but with a boomer population rapidly moving toward retirement age, he says he wants to develop some "best practices" in the area.

The case in U.S. District Court in Detroit stems from an accounting scandal at Delphi that led to the company restating financial results going back several years in June 2005, the law firms said. Deloitte was Delphi's outside auditor.

The plaintiffs, who were seeking to represent investors who bought Delphi securities from March 7, 2000 to March 3, 2005, sued Delphi, some company officials, Deloitte and certain other entities, the law firms said.

Most of the defendants, including Delphi, have already agreed to settle the case, said Stuart Grant, lawyer for one of the law firms representing plaintiffs in the case.

The value of the settlement with Delphi is about $204 million, with plaintiffs expecting to be paid in the company's common stock and warrants once it emerges from bankruptcy, Grant said.

Delphi, formerly a unit of General Motors Corp, filed for bankruptcy in October 2005 and plans to emerge from Chapter 11 in the first quarter of 2008.

Besides Grant's law firm Grant & Eisenhofer, other firms representing the plaintiffs are Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann; Schiffrin Barroway Topaz & Kessler; and Nix, Patterson & Roach.

The settlement agreements need to be approved by U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen, the law firms said.

Prosecutors have not said whether they will retry Tankleff, who was released on $1 million bail Thursday, days after an appeals court overturned his 1990 conviction and ordered a new trial because of new evidence. Relatives paid the bail.

"My arrest and conviction was a nightmare, and this is a dream come true," the 36-year-old Tankleff told reporters after a hearing in Riverhead, 75 miles east of Manhattan.

Tankleff's attorney, Bruce Barket, said he was awaiting Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota's decision on whether to retry the case.

In throwing out Tankleff's 1990 conviction last week, an appeals court said new evidence suggested someone else might have killed Seymour and Arlene Tankleff in their Long Island home.

Tankleff had been sentenced to 50 years to life in prison after being convicted in one of the nation's first televised trials. The case raised questions about police interrogation tactics and drew the support of the Innocence Project, an organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people.

Innocence Project executive director Barry Scheck said the district attorney should ask for an independent special prosecutor or state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to evaluate whether the case should be reprosecuted.

Finish Line, whose stock fell as much as 25 percent, has been trying to walk away from its June agreement to buy Genesco.

Genesco, based in Nashville, Tennessee, said the court ruled that Finish Line had breached their merger agreement.

"We look forward to working with The Finish Line to consummate the merger expeditiously," Genesco Chief Executive Hal Pennington said in a statement.

Swiss bank UBS sued both companies last month in federal court in New York in a bid to be relieved of its obligation to fund the deal.

Genesco, meanwhile, separately sued Finish Line and UBS in Tennessee in an attempt to force completion of the agreement.

"The only hurdle at this point is insolvency, and whether or not UBS can prove the combined entities would in fact be insolvent and not able to make interest payments and therefore possibly file for bankruptcy," Susquehanna Financial analyst Christopher Svezia told Reuters.

"That's part of the reason why you're seeing Genesco move, but you're not seeing it trade up to $50. There's a lot that needs to get settled here," said Svezia, whose firm has "neutral" ratings on both stocks.

The Tennessee court reserved judgment on whether the combined company would be solvent, saying it would await a ruling in the suit filed by UBS, Genesco said. 

A San Diego law firm has launched a class-action suit against Rancho Cucamonga-based Basin Water Inc., alleging that it misled shareholders, causing the company's stock price to rise to inflated heights, leading to losses for investors when the stock later fell.

Basin designs and builds groundwater treatment systems.

The law firm, Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP, says Basin and some of its officers and directors issued false and misleading statements about the company's financial results.

In particular, Coughlin Stoia alleges that Basin concealed facts from potential investors that included commitments to sell product at unprofitable prices and increased costs for waste disposal and salt purchasing.

The complaint also says company officials knew Basin had long-term contracts that would hurt profitability and lied about the status of those contracts.

In November, the stock fell 22 percent in one day after Basin announced that it would take a $4.7 million charge to reserve money for projected losses.

Basin said at the time it was the second charge the company had taken in less than a year related to so-called legacy projects.

Also, Basin said, improvements in its accounting practices allowed the company to determine the systems will continue to operate at a loss for some time.

The company said its management earlier this year established new business processes that ensure future contracts are properly priced and that Basin can pass along price increases to customers.

Late Friday, it was announced that a Baltimore law firm had started a class action against Basin as well.

Basin officials could not reached for comment Friday. Its shares closed at $9 Friday, up 89 cents.

Alinghi's lawyers contended that the San Francisco club's July challenge on behalf of BMW Oracle Racing was invalid because it failed to properly describe the yachts in which the race would be sailed.

The challenge letter described a boat that would measure 27 metres long by 27 metres wide - a dimension that could apply only to a multihulled vessel like the catamaran that American Dennis Connor used to defend the cup in 1988.

The challenge, however, also called the boat a "keel yacht," a term traditionally used to describe a boat with one hull.

Alinghi argued in court papers, filed in state court in New York on Thursday, that BMW Oracle's bid should be tossed because it proposes a boat that doesn't exist, or would be so misshapen because of its bargelike dimensions that it would be unfit for racing.

The Golden Gate Yacht Club said Alinghi's new claim lacks merit.

"If these arguments were valid they would have been presented months ago," BMW Oracle spokesman Tom Ehman said.

In November, a New York judge disqualified Alinghi's favored Spanish challenger, Desafio Espanol, of Club Nautico Espanol de Vela, on the grounds that the new club hadn't previously held a major regatta, as required by the cup's deed of gift.

The two sides are due back in court in January.