The High Court made the ruling in the case of Binyam Mohamed, who is accused of conspiring with al-Qaida leaders to attack civilians. Captured in April 2002 in Pakistan, he claims he spent 18 months in Morocco and was tortured there before being flown to an alleged CIA-run site in Afghanistan and later transferred to Guantanamo.

The accusation is important in a legal context because evidence obtained by torture will not be admissible during military tribunals being conducted at the detention center at the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo.

"Compelling the British government to release information that can prove Mr. Mohamed's innocence is one obvious step towards making up for the years of torture that he has suffered," Clive Stafford Smith, director of the human rights charity Reprieve, said in a statement.

In a statement, the Foreign Office said it is considering the implications of the judgment.

The government has cited national security concerns in refusing to hand over documents.

Mohamed, an Ethiopian refugee who moved to Britain when he was 15, is the 20th detainee selected for trial at Guantanamo. He has not yet entered a plea.

The High Court heard the case over five days in August. Only some sessions were open to the public because of the sensitivity of the information.

Merrill Lynch & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. face increased pressure by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to settle claims they misled investors on auction-rate debt as Wachovia Corp. agreed to buy back $9 billion of the bonds.

Merrill's prior offer to repurchase $10 billion of the securities was inadequate and the firm may face ``imminent'' legal action, Cuomo said yesterday.

New York has subpoenaed about 25 firms involved in sales of auction-rate securities, including five that then settled. Goldman is among the firms being probed, he said.

Wachovia joined Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and UBS AG in settlements stemming from a nationwide investigation into why auction-rate securities were marketed as safe as cash until the $330 billion market collapsed. Regulators have sought auction-rate buybacks for customers, reimbursement for consumers forced to sell securities at prices below face value and relief for institutional investors.

After a trial of nearly two months, the jurors in Ventura County Superior Court found on Tuesday that the La Conchita Ranch Co. did not build a sufficient drainage system for its land on a hilltop overlooking the community of La Conchita.

The landslide followed soaking winter storms, and attorneys for the plaintiffs had argued the ranch, which grows lemons and avocados, saturated its orchards and created a "perfect recipe" for a landslide.

The ranch's lawyers countered that the area is geologically unstable and has had at least six landslides, including a 1909 slide that killed four railroad workers.

The Jan. 10, 2005, slide destroyed 13 homes and damaged 23 others in the unincorporated town on California's central coast, 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles.

"I'm glad the ranch is being held accountable," said community leader Mike Bell, sometimes called the "mayor" of the unincorporated town. "They had every opportunity to prevent what happened to our town and hopefully now they're going to pay for it."

Attorneys for both sides declined to comment after Tuesday's findings, citing a gag order that continues until the damages phase of the trial is over. That part of the trial, which the judge has said could take more than a month, begins Monday.

The ranch will not be subject to punitive damages, because the jury ruled that its conduct was not "outrageous" or in "reckless disregard" to property or people.

It took Judge Vincent O'Neill more than an hour to read 50 pages of findings in the case, in which dozens of plaintiffs including property owners and relatives of victims sued the company for wrongful death, personal damage and property damage.

The complex jury verdict also found that some of the plaintiffs who owned property in the area were liable for injuries to other plaintiffs.

The jury exonerated ranch manager David Orr and Ventura County, saying they were not negligent.

Justice Joyce Kennard wrote that two Christian fertility doctors who refused to artificially inseminate a lesbian have neither a free speech right nor a religious exemption from the state's law, which "imposes on business establishments certain antidiscrimination obligations."

In the lawsuit that led to the ruling, Guadalupe Benitez, 36, of Oceanside said that the doctors treated her with fertility drugs and instructed her how to inseminate herself at home but told her their beliefs prevented them from inseminating her. One of the doctors referred her to another fertility specialist without moral objections, and Benitez has since given birth to three children.

Nevertheless, Benitez in 2001 sued the Vista-based North Coast Women's Care Medical Group. She and her lawyers successfully argued that a state law prohibiting businesses from discriminating based on sexual orientation applies to doctors.

The law was originally designed to prevent hotels, restaurants and other public services from refusing to serve patrons because of their race. The Legislature has since expanded it to cover characteristics such as age and sexual orientation.

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out a two-year-old rule that may have allowed some refineries, power plants and factories to exceed pollution limits because the Environmental Protection Agency "failed to fix inadequate monitoring requirements ... and prohibited states and local authorities from doing so."

Since 1990, the Clean Air Act has required permits granted to facilities releasing more than 100 tons of any pollutant a year to include enough monitoring to ensure the company is meeting its emissions targets. Approximately 15,000 to 16,000 permits have been issued under the program, mostly by state and local pollution agencies.

"We can't have strong enforcement of our clean air laws unless we know what polluters are putting into the air," said Keri Powell, a staff attorney with Earthjustice, who sued the EPA on behalf of four environmental groups.

The EPA said Tuesday that it was reviewing the court's decision. But an agency spokesman said the monitoring deficiencies should be remedied on the national level rather than on a case-by-case basis.

Appeals court judge Brett Kavanaugh, a former attorney in the Bush White House, wrote the sole dissenting opinion.

He said that while EPA and state and local governments may disagree about whether monitoring requirements will adequately measure compliance, he found "nothing in the statute that prohibits EPA's approach."

During the penalty phase of Juan Alvarez's trial, jurors cried openly as survivors of the dead came forward to describe the anguish of their losses and the emptiness of their lives since the accident in 2005 robbed them of spouses, sisters, fathers and mothers.

Superior Court Judge William Pounders, who has presided over many high profile trials in a long career on the bench, admitted outside the jury's presence that he also had been affected by the survivors' testimony.

"I've never been so emotionally affected by evidence," said Pounders, who does not have the option to increase the penalty to death at the sentencing hearing Wednesday.

The prosecution described Alvarez as a remorseless, smirking defendant who didn't think of the case as a tragedy.

The defense painted the 29-year-old as a mentally disturbed man who was almost aborted by his mother, was shaped by a childhood of horrific abuse and became a methamphetamine addict. They said he drove his sport utility vehicle on the railroad tracks in a misguided attempt to get the attention of his estranged wife. They said he changed his mind at the last minute but it was too late to get the vehicle off the tracks.