The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday unanimously rejected provisions of a Maine law that restricts the shipment of tobacco products in the state.

"Despite the importance of the public health objective, we cannot agree with Maine that the federal law creates an exemption," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the court's majority opinion. "The act says nothing about a public health exception."

The ruling determines that federal trucking laws bar state regulation of tobacco shipments, despite Maine's concern that tobacco products might be shipped to minors.

The state law, passed by Maine in 2003, required shippers such as United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) to follow special handling procedures when delivering cigarettes or other tobacco products with the aim of keeping tobacco from being shipped illegally to minors. The industry challenged the provisions, arguing they were onerous, increased costs and ran afoul of the federal limit on state shipping regulations.

Major shipping companies, including UPS and FedEx Corp. (FDX), already have voluntarily agreed not to ship cigarettes in a settlement with New York over tobacco restrictions enacted in that state.

In previous legal action, the Maine law was struck down by a federal trial court. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston affirmed lower-court rulings that held federal shipping laws pre-empted the Maine law. The Supreme Court's opinion affirms the appeals court holding.

The order in the U.S. came after a Swiss bank, the Julius Baer Group, filed a complaint earlier this month against the site and San Mateo, Calif.-based Dynadot LLC, Wikileaks' domain name registry, for posting several hundred of the bank's documents.

Some of those documents allegedly reveal that the Julius Baer Group was involved in offshore money laundering and tax evasion in the Cayman Islands for customers in several countries, including the U.S.

The court ordered that "Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS-hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name," according to court documents. It also said that Dynadot should prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org Web site, or any other Web site or server other than a blank park page until further notice.

A spokesman for the Julius Baer Group could not be reached for comment Monday.

According to its Web site, the purpose of Wikileaks, founded in 2006, is to develop "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis."

Wikileaks has been plagued by controversy since its inception, coming under fire from institutions whose confidential documents have been posted on the site and from critics who have questioned the motives of the site's founders. Still, others have praised the site for supporting the free dissemination of information.

Wikileaks posted a press statement on its site about the U.S. order, calling it "clearly unconstitutional" and said it "exceeds its jurisdiction."

In a subsequent search, the sheriff's department found methamphetamine in Herring's pockets and an unloaded gun under the front seat of his truck.

It turned out that the warrant for Herring's arrest had been recalled five months earlier.

Herring was sentenced to 27 months in prison after a jury convicted him on federal drug and gun charges.

Courts have ruled that as a deterrent to police misconduct, the fruits of an unlawful search and seizure may be excluded from evidence.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta said that suppressing evidence in Herring's case would be unlikely to deter sloppy record keeping.

The cost of suppressing the evidence, the appeals court said, would fall on the county that arrested Herring, not on the county that was negligent in its record keeping.

Montana wants the court to rule that Wyoming is using too much water from the Tongue and Powder Rivers, while Montana residents are not getting enough water in some dry years.

Disputes between states often are decided by the Supreme Court.

The disagreement is over the Yellowstone River Compact, an agreement the states and North Dakota signed in 1950 spelling out how to share water.

Montana argues the compact should require Wyoming to limit water use — including from groundwater pumping. Montana argues that coal-bed methane production in Wyoming, which requires pumping huge quantities of groundwater, makes the situation worse.

Wyoming says in response that Montana has failed to show it has been harmed by Wyoming's water use, which is in line with the 1950 agreement.

For the first time in nearly half a century, Fidel Castro has stepped down as president of Cuba. The announcement caps a year and a half of limbo and speculation since Mr. Castro fell ill and temporarily ceded power to his younger brother, Raúl Castro.
"I will not aspire to nor accept – I repeat, I will not aspire to nor accept – the post of President of the Council of State and Commander in Chief," read a letter that appeared early Tuesday morning in the Community Party daily Granma.

It is a pivotal moment in the island nation's history. Castro rose to power on New Year's Day in 1959, and quickly became a nemesis of the United States as he turned Cuba into a communist country. Throughout the cold war – and since – US presidents have attempted to topple him with no success. Many Cubans have no memory of anyone other than Castro as the head of state. Even when he handed temporary power to his brother in July 2006, there was an expectation that he would return.

The justices rejected appeals from Xavier University and 68 other individuals and businesses seeking to allow their lawsuits against the insurers to go forward.

Xavier asked the court to step in after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the policies did not cover damage from floods, even those that resulted from man-made failures such as the collapsed levees in New Orleans.

Other cases working their way through state courts have so far reached differing conclusions. A Louisiana appeals court has said that language excluding water damage from some insurance policies was ambiguous. The Louisiana Supreme Court will hear arguments in that case on Feb. 26.

Xavier and the other plaintiffs had asked the federal court to allow the state Supreme Court to rule on their suits as well. The 5th Circuit refused and the U.S. high court upheld that ruling on Tuesday.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday turned away, without comment, an appeal by Ford Motor Co. in a tax dispute with the cities of Seattle and Tacoma.

The court's action means the Dearborn, Mich.-based automaker won't be able to recover the $1.7 million in taxes it paid the two cities after they audited the company and assessed it for back taxes in 2003.

While the financial stakes are small, several business groups urged the court to take the case because they argued that more and more localities are imposing the type of tax at issue. Seattle and Tacoma impose a 'business activity' tax on a company's gross receipts from wholesale sales.

'Without the Court's guidance, businesses will be subject to an increasing number of unapportioned business taxes, resulting in multiple taxes' in different jurisdictions, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers and other groups said.

Lawyers for the cities said the tax is neither an income tax nor sales tax but a tax on 'the privilege of doing business' in their jurisdictions. They also said in court papers that the tax has been in existence for decades and its use hasn't significantly spread.

Seattle and Tacoma assess their business activity taxes on 100 percent of the gross receipts Ford receives from wholesale sales of cars to Ford dealers in the two cities.

But the automaker argued in court papers that much of its wholesale activity, such as invoicing and transfer of ownership, takes place outside Washington state. As a result, it should pay taxes on only a portion of its receipts, the company said.

The Supreme Court's refusal to consider the case lets stand a ruling by the Washington state Supreme Court in favor of the cities.