A federal appeals court on Tuesday put off deciding on the wireless industry's challenge to the regulations until the Federal Communications Commission gets preliminary clearance for the rules.

After a panel of experts appointed by the FCC pointed out that many cell towers along the Gulf Coast stopped working when they lost power during Hurricane Katrina, the agency proposed in May 2007 that all cell towers have a minimum of eight hours of backup power that would switch on in the event a tower lost its regular energy source.

The loss of power contributed to communication breakdowns that complicated rescue and recovery efforts during the 2005 disaster.

Wireless companies have said the regulations were illegally drafted and would present a huge economic and bureaucratic burden. In particular, they said, the thousands of generators or battery packs required would be expensive and local zoning rules or structural limitations could make installation impossible in some places.

The FCC agreed in October to exempt cell sites that a wireless carrier proved couldn't meet the rules. The FCC would give companies six months to report on the feasibility of installing backup power and another six months either to bring sites into compliance or explain how they would provide backup service through other means, such as portable cellular transmitters.

CTIA-The Wireless Association, Sprint Nextel Corp. and others asked the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., this year to intervene, saying the exemptions would still leave wireless companies scrambling to inspect and compile reports on thousands of towers.

The appeals court put the rules on hold while it heard each sides' arguments in May.

The FTC said it may rescind its guidance on tar and nicotine yields that is based on that test. The commission said if the guidance is withdrawn, advertisers should no longer use terms suggesting FTC endorsement or approval of any specific test method.

The test, known as the Cambridge Filter Method, is a machine-based test that smokes cigarettes according to a standard procedure and is sometimes referred to as "the FTC method." The FTC issued its guidance in 1966 at a time when most public health officials believed reducing the amount of tar produced by a cigarette could reduce a smoker's risk of lung cancer. The commission believed that giving consumers uniform information about tar and nicotine yields of cigarettes would help them make informed decisions about the cigarettes they smoked.

But the FTC said Tuesday scientists now believe the test does not provide meaningful information on relative amounts of tar and nicotine people are likely to get from smoking different brands of cigarettes.

The main reason is that smokers often alter their behavior to get the necessary nicotine dosage, the FTC said. The techniques include taking larger and deeper puffs, smoking more and blocking the ventilation holes that may contribute to lower levels of tar and nicotine.

Nicotine acts as a stimulant and is one of the main factors contributing to the addictive quality of smoking. Tar is the residue from burning tobacco and one of the most destructive byproducts of smoking, accumulating in a smoker's lungs.

Five men charged in the Sept. 11 attacks, including alleged mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are to appear Wednesday and Thursday for pretrial hearings in the Bush administration's special tribunal for terrorism suspects. Their trials have not yet been scheduled.

The suspects could get the death penalty if convicted of charges that include murder.

A judge is expected to hold hearings to explore defense allegations that Mohammed intimidated his co-defendants into refusing military lawyers.

Meanwhile, a judge in Washington is considering a challenge that could disrupt the first scheduled war crimes trial, on July 21, of Salim Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden.

Hamdan's lawyers say a recent Supreme Court decision has raised new legal issues that require U.S. District Judge James Robertson to delay the trial. The government says it wants to move forward.

Robertson has scheduled a July 17 hearing in Washington on the issue, just four days before Hamdan is to go on trial in a specially built courtroom on a former airstrip at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

A ruling in favor of the prisoner could also delay the trials for other men held at Guantanamo, and perhaps force the military to devise a whole new way to prosecute alleged terrorists.

The State newspaper of Columbia reported Wednesday that Tenenbaum has jointed the McNair Law firm.

The newspaper reported Tenenbaum will work on financial matters, such as bond referendums for school districts seeking to build or renovate schools.

Tenenbaum was state education superintendent from 1999 to 2003. She says she's missed working with school officials.

Managing partner Bill Youngblood says the McNair law firm has represented about 60 of the state's 85 school districts on financial issues in the past five years.

Youngblood says Tenenbaum brings the firm intellect, institutional memory about public education and an understanding of government.

The vote, planned for Wednesday, would end almost a year of wrangling between the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, and Congress and the White House over the president's warrantless wiretapping program that was initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

A major issue was the Bush administration's insistence that the bill shield from civil lawsuits telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on Americans without court permission after 9/11.

The White House had threatened to veto the bill unless it immunized companies like AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. from wiretapping lawsuits. About 40 such lawsuits have been filed. They are all pending before a single federal court.

CBS Corp.'s CBS Broadcasting subsidiary, News Corp.'s Fox network and other major network affiliate groups sued EchoStar 10 years ago in South Florida to prevent the Englewood, Co.-based company, which operates the DISH satellite network, from providing distant network signals to customers who can receive local affiliates' broadcasts through regular antennas.

The Satellite Home Viewer Act of 1988 allowed carriers such as EchoStar to provide secondary transmissions of copyrighted distant network programming to "unserved households," those that could not otherwise receive the signals.

The lawsuit claimed that EchoStar was infringing on network copyrights by providing the signals to "served" households as well.

After a two-week bench trial in 2003, the district court found that EchoStar retransmitted network programs to hundreds of thousands of served homes, which it called "willful or repeated" copyright infringement. That ruling was upheld by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider an appeal in January 2007.

According to court documents, EchoStar complied with an injunction that went into effect Dec. 1, 2006, by disconnecting distant network channels to about 900,000 customers — at a loss of $25 million a year.

Vick filed Chapter 11 papers in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Newport News on Monday. The seven largest creditors listed in the court papers are owed a total of about $12.8 million.

Vick is serving a 23-month prison sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, after pleading guilty last year to bankrolling a dogfighting ring. He was subsequently suspended indefinitely without pay and lost all his major sponsors, including Nike. He also faces state charges related to dogfighting.

According to the filing, the debt includes a $3.75 million prorated signing bonus the Atlanta Falcons are seeking to recover.