A lower court in December struck down key provisions of the program, dubbed Healthy San Francisco, which requires companies with at least 20 workers to provide health coverage or pay the city a fee to help offset the program's estimated $200 million price tag.

The Golden Gate Restaurant Association, a powerful lobby, sued the city, arguing that the mandatory contributions the city sought placed a costly burden on members already struggling to make a profit.

But a three-judge panel for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Wednesday it appeared the program would ultimately prevail.

"There may be better ways to provide health care than to require private employers to foot the bill," Judge William Fletcher wrote in a unanimous ruling. But he wrote that it wasn't up to the court to "evaluate the wisdom" of the plan, only its legality.

Fletcher wrote that the city and the labor unions that joined San Francisco in defending the lawsuit "have a probability, even a strong likelihood of success."

City officials hope the program, the first of its kind in the nation, will eventually cover about 80,000 people. Mayor Gavin Newsom said that nearly 8,000 people have already signed up and that the city hopes to enlist about 40,000 more people by the end of the year.

The "ruling is an important victory for uninsured San Franciscans," Newsom said Wednesday.

U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White in December knocked out the business fee when he agreed with the restaurant owners and ruled that the program violated federal law.

A telephone message left Wednesday for an attorney representing the restaurant owners was not immediately returned.

Chester Arthur Stiles, 37, stood next to his appointed lawyers and stared at the floor, saying little during his four-minute arraignment in Clark County District Court.

Stiles is accused of sexually assaulting a 2-year-old girl in September 2003, and a 6-year-old girl that December. Authorities say the videotape is of the first attack.

Stiles faces 22 felony charges including lewdness with a child under 14, sexual assault with a child under 14 and attempted sexual assault with a child under 14. If convicted, he could face multiple life terms in prison.

The judge set trial for April 14. Stiles was returned to jail, where he has been held since his Oct. 15 arrest in what authorities have called protective isolation. Stiles' lawyer Jeff Banks said he intends to seek bail.

Stiles became the object of a nationwide manhunt after a Nye County man turned the videotape over to sheriff's investigators in Pahrump, a town some 60 miles west of Las Vegas. Authorities released images from the tape and pleaded for public help to find the girl and her alleged attacker.

The girl was found safe with her mother in Las Vegas on Sept. 28. Stiles was arrested after police in the suburb of Henderson stopped him driving a car with no license plates.

The man who turned the tape over, 27-year-old Darrin Tuck, remained jailed Wednesday in Pahrump on a probation violation. Tuck said he found the tape in the desert, and his lawyer has said Tuck had no involvement with Stiles.

Tuck has pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of possession of child pornography, which carries a possible penalty of one to six years in state prison. No trial date has been set.

A recently enacted law will allow class-action lawsuits -- commonplace in the countries such as the United States -- to be filed in Italy starting July 2008.

Adusbef, which focuses on financial services matters, wants to take aim at the so-called practice of anatocism, where compound interest is calculated on the initial loan plus interest that is accumulated each time the money comes due.

"We want to start from the most hated banking practice, this form of usury that is known as anatocism," Adusbef said.

That is opposed to using simple interest, in which only the interest on the original money borrowed is added.

Although banned by the Italian civil law code, Italian banks have been using compound interest for over 50 years, Adusbef said. No-one at Italian banking association ABI was immediately available for comment.

U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers on Tuesday granted the request by Joey Langston and Billy Quin of the Langston Law Firm to withdraw as attorneys for Scruggs, according to court records filed Tuesday in federal court in Oxford.

Scruggs, his son Zach and three others were indicted Nov. 28 on charges they conspired to bribe a judge in a case involving disputed fees related to lawsuits from Hurricane Katrina.

On Wednesday, Anthony Farese, an attorney for Zach Scruggs, also asked to withdraw from the case. He said in court papers that Zach Scruggs has "terminated his services" and intends to hire a new lawyer.

Biggers declined the request because the younger Scruggs has not yet named a replacement for Farese.

The elder Scruggs, a brother-in-law of former Sen. Trent Lott, is best known for making millions from tobacco litigation.

One of Langston's former law partners, Timothy Balducci, pleaded guilty Dec. 4 to conspiracy in the bribery case and is helping investigators. He had been one of those indicted along with Scruggs and his son.

On Dec. 10, the FBI searched the Langston Law Firm. FBI officials would not say what they were looking for, but Farese said at the time that they took records from cases that Balducci had worked on before he left the firm.

Quin and Langston did not respond to several messages left Tuesday by The Associated Press. John Keker, another attorney for the elder Scruggs, would not comment on why the two would no longer be working on the case.

In a separate case, a judge ruled Wednesday that an insurance company can question Richard and Zach Scruggs about their handling of leaked documents in a Hurricane Katrina insurance case.

Richard Scruggs wore "two hats" as the employer and lawyer for two key witnesses in that case, U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. ruled.

After Hurricane Katrina, Scruggs announced that sisters Cori and Kerri Rigsby, former employees of a State Farm contractor, were helping him build cases against insurance companies over their handling of storm claims. The sisters gave him thousands of internal State Farm records.

Scruggs hired the Rigsby sisters as consultants for $150,000 a year and served as their lawyer. State Farm wants to know more about those relationships.

Scruggs has said the leaked records proved that State Farm fraudulently denied the claim of policyholders Thomas and Pamela McIntosh, whose Biloxi home was destroyed by the storm on Aug. 29, 2005.

Also on Wednesday, attorney Kenneth Coghlan notified Biggers that he intended to represent Richard Scruggs in the bribery case.

Biggers refused to allow Coghlan, however, because the attorney represented another defendant in the case — former state auditor Steven Patterson — before withdrawing last month.

Allowing Coghlan to represent Scruggs could be a conflict of interest if one defendant testifies against the other, Biggers said.

If you bought diamonds over the last decade, you might be entitled to some money back.

The mining company De Beers is settling a $295 million class action lawsuit.

De Beers was accused of fixing diamond prices and monopolizing the market. The case involves diamonds bought from 1994 through March of 2006.

The amount of money you can get depends on how much you paid an the quality of the diamonds.

https://www.diamondsclassaction.com

Democrats who are challenging the law say it uses prevention of fraud as a pretext to discourage elderly, poor and minority voters — those most likely to lack proper ID and who tend to vote for Democrats.

Opponents say there have been no Indiana prosecutions of in-person voter fraud — the kind the law is supposed to prevent.

A federal judge who upheld the voter ID law pointed out that opponents were unable to produce evidence of a single, individual Indiana resident who had been barred from voting because of the law.

Courts have upheld voter ID laws in Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, but struck down Missouri's. Wednesday's case should be decided by late June, in time for the November 2008 elections.

The justices could use the case to instruct courts on how to weigh claims of voter fraud versus those of disenfranchisement.

The Supreme Court was bitterly divided, 5-4, in 2000 in Bush v. Gore, the case that clinched the presidential election for George W. Bush.

The consolidated cases are Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 07-21, and Indiana Democratic Party v. Rokita, 07-25.