A federal appeals court has temporarily  A 2008 Supreme Court ruling giving Guantanamo Bay prisoners the right to challenge their indefinite detention does not apply in the case of two detainees who committed suicide, the Obama administration says in newly filed court papers.

The Justice Department made the argument in a lawsuit brought by the families of two Saudi detainees who, according to the U.S. government, hanged themselves at the island prison on the same day in June 2006 after more than four years in captivity.

A year and a half ago, the Supreme Court overturned part of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that had stripped federal courts from hearing challenges to the indefinite detention of hundreds of Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

The decision "had no effect" on another provision of that act that says no court has jurisdiction to hear a challenge "relating to any aspect" of a Guantanamo Bay prisoner's detention, the department said in court papers filed Friday.

blocked construction of a massive gold mine project in northeast Nevada that critics say would harm the environment and ruin a mountain several tribes consider sacred.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed part of an earlier decision denying a preliminary injunction sought by conservationists and tribal leaders. The groups had sought the injunction to force Barrick Gold Corp. to postpone digging a 2,000-foot-deep open pit at the Cortez Hills mine 250 miles east of Reno.

The 17-page ruling issued Thursday in San Francisco said the U.S. Bureau of Land Management failed to adequately analyze the potential for the mine on Mount Tenabo (tuh-NAH'-boh) to pollute the air with mercury emissions and dry up scarce water resources.

A condemned Ohio man asked a federal judge Thursday for an emergency order to stop next week's planned execution, arguing the state is rushing too fast to use its new, one-drug lethal injection process.

Kenneth Biros said the untested method announced last month could jeopardize his right to an execution that does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

Biros, 51, says moving ahead with the process would amount to human experimentation with a system never used before in the United States "or any other civilized country."

Biros is concerned the method "will not result in the dignified, humane, quick, and painless death that is required by the federal and state constitutions," his attorneys said in Thursday's court filing.

Biros has also challenged the one-drug method in federal court and also asked a federal appeals court in Cincinnati to delay Tuesday's execution.

Biros killed 22-year-old Tami Engstrom near Warren in 1991 after he offered to drive her home from a bar, then scattered her body parts in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The state opposes any delay, and Gov. Ted Strickland on Thursday denied Biros' request for clemency.

Condemned killer Kenneth Biros could become the first person in the country put to death with a single dose of an intravenous anesthetic instead of the usual — and faster-acting — three-drug process if his execution proceeds Tuesday.

The execution could propel other states to eventually consider the switch, which proponents say ends arguments over unnecessary suffering during injection. California and Tennessee previously considered then rejected the one-drug approach.

Though the untested method has never been used on an inmate in the United States, one difference is clear: Biros will likely die more slowly than inmates put to death with the three-drug method, which includes a drug that stops the heart.

Lethal injection experts on both sides of the debate over injection say thiopental sodium, which kills by putting people so deeply asleep they stop breathing, will take longer.

How much longer is unclear: Mark Dershwitz, an anesthesiologist who advised Ohio on its switch to the single drug, has written death should occur in under 15 minutes.

Ohio inmates have typically taken about seven minutes to die after the three-drug IV injection, which combines thiopental sodium with the drugs pancuronium bromide — which paralyzes muscles — and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest. Dershwitz also said in a court filing last week that a single dose of thiopental sodium would take longer than the three drugs, though he didn't specify a time.

Nortel Networks Corp. said late Wednesday it won court approval in the U.S. and Canada to sell two of its business units.

The larger unit, Nortel's global optical networking and carrier ethernet businesses, is going to Ciena Corp. The business is one of the most sought-after assets of Nortel, a once-dominant network gear maker that is selling itself off in pieces after filing for Chapter 11 protection in January.

The deal gives Ciena all products, contracts, and intellectual property, including technology that improves the speed and capacity of fiber optic networks.

Bankruptcy courts in Delaware and Ontario approved the deal over objections by Finnish rival Nokia Siemens Networks, which said that it would be willing to pay $810 million in cash for the business with its partner, One Equity Partners.

A condemned Texas inmate is hoping the U.S. Supreme Court keeps him from the death chamber for the fatal slashing of an 11-year-old girl.

Bobby Wayne Woods is set for lethal injection Thursday evening in Huntsville for the April 1997 abduction, rape and slaying of Sarah Patterson, his ex-girlfriend's daughter.

But his attorneys contend his life should be spared because of a Supreme Court ban on executing mentally impaired people. Attorney Maurie Levin says his IQ hovers around 70 "the magical cutoff point for determining whether someone is mentally retarded."

State and federal courts repeatedly rejected Woods' mental impairment claims, though Texas' highest criminal court last year halted his execution hours before it was to occur.

West Virginia's Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled against him, but the head of a bankrupt coal company is asking it to reconsider its recent decision in favor of Massey Energy Co.

For the third time, the court last month overturned the $50 million verdict that Hugh Caperton and his Harman Mining won against Massey.

A Boone County jury had found that Massey bankrupted them both by hijacking a coal supply contract. But the Supreme Court concluded 4-1 that a clause in the contract required that the case be heard in Virginia.

Caperton's Wednesday filing argues that the decision wrongly bars him from pursing his claims in that state. His filing also echoes criticisms made Tuesday by dissenting Justice Margaret Workman of the ruling's legal reasoning.