Australia said Friday it will challenge Japan's whale hunting in the Antarctic at the International Court of Justice, a major legal escalation in its campaign to ban the practice despite Tokyo's insistence on the right to so-called scientific whaling.

Japan's Foreign Ministry called the action regrettable at a time when 88 member-nations of the International Whaling Commission were discussing a proposal that could allow some limited whaling for the first time in 25 years.

"We will continue to explain that the scientific whaling that we are conducting is lawful in accordance with Article 8 of the international convention for the regulation of whaling," said Japan's Foreign Ministry Deputy Press Secretary Hidenobu Sobashima. "If it goes to the court, we are prepared to explain that."

Japan, Norway and Iceland, which harpoon around 2,000 whales annually, argue that many species are abundant enough to continue hunting them. They are backed by around half of the whaling commission's members.

Australia has declared the southern seas a whale sanctuary and has long lobbied for an end to whaling there. The government says Japan's hunt is in breach of international obligations, but has declined to release any details of how it will argue its case before the court in The Hague.

The whaling commission has proposed a plan that would allow hunting without specifying whether it is for commercial or other purposes — but under strict quotas that are lower than the current number of hunted whales.

Commission Chairman Cristian Maquieira expressed optimism Thursday in Washington that the issue could be resolved at a meeting next month in Morocco. But senior U.S. official Monica Medina said the current proposal would allow the hunting of too many whales, signaling difficult negotiations ahead.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan got a boost from potential GOP supporters Thursday, when two Republican senators who will vote on her confirmation both said her lack of experience as a judge is no obstacle to elevating her.

Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and George S. LeMieux of Florida made their comments a day after one of the court's conservative icons, Justice Antonin Scalia, undercut Republican criticism of Kagan's lack of a judicial background.

Scalia's remark, made during a lecture Wednesday at the federal courthouse in Washington, "helps her. Definitely, it helps her," said Graham, a member of the Judiciary Committee that will hold confirmation hearings on Kagan set to begin June 28. "I think that argument is not going to go very far."

LeMieux, who had a lengthy meeting with Kagan in the Capitol Thursday, also said judicial inexperience was not a concern.

"I don't find that in any way a prohibition to her service," LeMieux said. The first-term Floridian called Kagan intelligent, articulate and "refreshingly forthcoming" on a variety of questions he posed, on subjects including free speech, guns, gay and lesbian rights and abortion.

A 10-page order signed on Wednesday by Los Angeles County Superior Judge Carl West also recommends that the state-based litigation, consisting of consumer-fraud class actions and personal injury claims, be assigned to a single judge in neighboring Orange County.

The order lists 40 separate cases filed so far in California courts against the Japanese automaker seeking damages for sudden, unintended acceleration of Toyota vehicles, said Aldwin Lim, a court clerk.

A final decision on assigning the cases rests with the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, Ronald George, and he is expected to render his decision in two to three weeks.

Complaints of runaway vehicles and other safety issues have led to the recall of more than 8.5 million Toyota vehicles worldwide, most for repairs of ill-fitting floor mats and sticking gas pedals the automaker blames for surging engines.

At a hearing before West on Tuesday, a lawyer for Toyota Motor Corp urged the judge to order all the California court cases to be sent to Orange County, the same jurisdiction where over 100 separate Toyota cases brought in U.S. district courts around the country have been assigned to a single federal judge.

The Massachusetts attorney general asked a judge Wednesday to strike down a federal gay marriage ban, arguing it interferes with the right of states to define marriage and have those marriages acknowledged by the federal government.

The challenge to the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act by Attorney General Martha Coakley's office was heard in federal court in Boston.

Assistant Attorney General Maura Healey argued states have historically had the right to define marriage.

She said the 1996 law could result in the denial of Medicaid and other benefits to married couples in Massachusetts, where same-sex unions have been legal since 2004.

A lawyer from the U.S. Justice Department, Christopher Hall, argued the federal government has the right to set eligibility requirements for federal benefits — including requiring that those benefits only go to couples in marriages between a man and a woman.

Hall also pointed to instances where the federal government has regulated the definition of marriage in certain immigration cases.

Two former managers of a company convicted of supplying substandard concrete to the Big Dig highway project in Boston have avoided prison time for their roles in the scheme.

A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced 64-year-old Robert Prosperi of Lynnfield and 53-year-old Gregory Stevenson of Furlong, Pa., to three years of probation, including six months of home confinement.

Federal prosecutors had requested prison sentences of at least seven years for each former manager at Aggregate Industries Inc.

U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz said the government was "disappointed" with the sentences because they do not "reflect the seriousness of the offense."

The men were convicted in August of 135 felonies, including conspiracy to commit highway project fraud. Their lawyers argued for leniency because they did not profit personally from the scheme.

A panel of judges has decided that the city of Los Angeles did not violate billboard companies' constitutional rights when it enacted a ban on outdoor ads.

The ruling this week by the 9th District Court of Appeals reverses a federal judge's 2008 decision that exceptions to the ban raised free speech concerns because they gave city officials too much leeway in deciding which signs to allow.

The appeals' court judges also vacated a contempt order against the city that was issued after it issued citations against outdoor advertising company World Wide Rush, one of the companies that challenged the sign ban.

Messages left with World Wide Rush's attorney and the Los Angeles city attorney's office were not immediately returned.