Three motions were filed in U.S. District Court on behalf of Lori Drew of the St. Louis suburb of O'Fallon, her attorney H. Dean Steward told The Associated Press.

Drew is accused of helping create a false-identity account on the MySpace social networking site to convince young neighbor Megan Meier she was chatting with a teenage boy.

Meier, who was being treated for attention deficit disorder and depression, hanged herself in 2006, allegedly after receiving cruel messages, including one saying the world would be better off without her.

Missouri authorities did not file any charges because at the time they could not find any laws that applied.

In May, however, a Los Angeles federal grand jury indicted Drew on charges of conspiracy and accessing computers without authorization to get information used to inflict emotional distress. She pleaded not guilty.

The case was filed in Los Angeles because MySpace's servers are in Los Angeles County. FBI agents in St. Louis and Los Angeles investigated the case.

Legal experts have said use of the federal cyber-crime statute on accessing computers may be open to challenge.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it agreed with the federal judge who in 2005 ruled that the EPA exceeded its authority in exempting certain ship discharges from the pollution control requirements of the 1972 Clean Water Act.

A handful of environmental groups and states sued the EPA to require it to regulate ballast water because of concerns that invasive aquatic species such as mollusks were being pumped into local waters.

Except for sewage, ship discharges are exempt from regulation. Wednesday's court ruling applies to bilge water and non-sewage wastewater from a ships' showers, laundries, galleys and engines.

While the EPA was appealing the judge's decision, it also drafted regulations requiring oceangoing freighters to dump ballast water at least 200 miles from shore and refill their tanks with new seawater to flush and kill invasive freshwater species.

The agency is taking public comments on the regulations, which would take effect Sept. 30.

"We're reviewing the decision to determine next steps," Benjamin H. Grumbles, EPA's assistant administrator for water said in a statement. "It's commonsense and good environmental policy not to require millions of boaters and vessel owners to get federal clean water permits."

The ruling comes as efforts to establish a federal standard for cleaning up ballast water have stalled in Congress. Among other issues, California officials have expressed concerns to lawmakers that the state's stricter standards could be pre-empted by a weaker federal law.

Some environmental groups contend the EPA's plan to block foreign species does little to prevent exotics from slipping into U.S. ports and water bodies.

"It's a good first step," said Nina Bell, executive director of Northwest Environmental Advocates, one of the groups that brought the lawsuit. "But the EPA's got a long way to go when it comes to regulating ballast water."

Numerous invasive species have devastated aquatic ecosystems throughout the country. In the Great Lakes, global hitchhikers such as the quagga mussel and the freshwater ruffe fish out-compete native species for food, spread disease and cost the regional economy billions a year.

Six states, including New York, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, joined as plaintiffs in the suit. A shipping industry group joined the EPA in fighting the regulations.

Andrew Giuliani, a 22-year-old rising senior, contends he had dreams of becoming a professional golfer and was dismissed without cause from the golf team in February without a chance to defend himself. He said in a statement Thursday that he sued "to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else at Duke."

Giuliani was dismissed because coach O.D. Vincent III wanted to cut the team from 13 players to about half its size, the lawsuit said. He claims a breach of contract because he was recruited by Duke's previous coaching staff.

"This has been heartbreaking," Giuliani's mother, Donna Hanover, said in a statement. "We tried for many months to convince members of the Duke administration that this situation should be corrected and we are sad that we have now had to turn to the court."

The coach said Giuliani "flipped his putter a few feet to his golf bag" and drove fast while leaving a golf course parking lot, according to the lawsuit. Giuliani also was accused of playing a team football game harder than the other players liked and of being disrespectful to a trainer.

Terry Childs has been jailed since July 13 on four felony counts of computer tampering. He is accused of creating secret passwords that gave him exclusive access to the city's new multi-million-dollar computer network, which stores records such as officials' e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail bookings.

Authorities said Childs initially refused to reveal correct passwords to them, but that he turned them over to Mayor Gavin Newsom during an unusual jailhouse visit Tuesday.

The city is still experiencing computer problems, said San Francisco Deputy District Attorney Conrad del Rosario. He told San Francisco Superior Court Judge Lucy McCabe that the Sheriff's Department is "locked out" and that other city departments are having problems.

Defense attorney Erin Crane said her client was the subject of a smear campaign by co-workers jealous of Childs' computer savvy and work ethic.

In arguing for reduced bail, Crane said in a motion that Childs was merely trying to protect the network after "co-workers and supervisors had in the past maliciously damaged the system themselves, hindered his ability to maintain it ... and shown complete indifference to maintaining it themselves."

Crane also said Childs, 43, posed no danger to the public.

She declined to comment outside court other than to say she was disappointed about the bail. She said his incarceration before trial will hinder her preparation of a complex case.

Law firm Williams Mullen has signed a 75,000-square-foot lease to relocate to downtown Raleigh's RBC Plaza.

The building's owner, Raleigh's Highwoods Properties (NYSE: HIW), announced the lease Wednesday. It said the office space in 293,000-square-foot RBC Plaza, which is under construction, is now 95 percent preleased.

Williams Mullen will relocate from Highwoods Tower I in north Raleigh, where the law firm occupies 51,000 square feet. The company plans to move to RBC Plaza in the third quarter of 2009.

"We are excited to be moving to RBC Plaza and the heart of downtown Raleigh," Williams Mullen director Keith Kapp said in a statement. "This is a great opportunity for us to be in a central location in the newest office building in the city. We have been customers of Highwoods for many years and are very pleased to be able to extend this mutually beneficial relationship."

Triangle Business Journal first reported that Williams Mullen was looking to take space in the RBC Plaza.

The RBC Plaza, a 29-story tower that is the tallest building in the Triangle, is scheduled to open this fall with a mix of office, retail and condominium space. All 139 condominiums are under contract with non-refundable deposits, Highwoods says.

Cozen O'Connor has asked Commonwealth Court to reconsider its argument that the Ethics Board is wrong in requiring that donations to Brady's mayoral campaign committee, for the purpose of retiring his debt, comply with the city's limits on donor contributions.

Brady incurred nearly $450,000 in legal fees during his successful fight to stay on the ballot during last year's mayoral primary. He would be able to pay that debt off faster and easier if donors now were permitted to exceed the city caps in that race, which were $5,000 per individual, and $20,000 per political committee.

But in a ruling last month, Common Pleas Court Judge Gary F. DiVito dismissed Cozen O'Connor's lawsuit, saying the firm lacked the legal standing to challenge the city law

The decision by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia is the latest twist in a decade-long legal battle over the Child Online Protection Act. The fight has already reached the Supreme Court and could be headed back there.

The law, which has not taken effect, would bar Web sites from making harmful content available to minors over the Internet. The act was passed the year after the Supreme Court ruled that another law intended to protect children from explicit material online — the Communications Decency Act — was unconstitutional in the landmark case Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU challenged the 1998 law on behalf of a coalition of writers, artists, health educators and the publisher Salon Media Group.

ACLU attorney Chris Hansen argued that Congress has been trying to restrict speech on the Internet far more than it can restrict speech in books and magazines. But, he said, "the rules should be the same."

Indeed, the Child Online Protection Act would effectively force all Web sites to provide only family-friendly content because it is not feasible to lock children out of sites that are lawful for adults, said John Morris, general counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology, a civil liberties group that filed briefs against the law.