Enron's demise wiped out thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in market value and more than $2 billion in pension plans.

Tuesday's turndown for the Enron investors came without comment in a routine Supreme Court list of cases the justices had decided not to hear.

The chances that Enron shareholders can recover some money dimmed a week ago with the Supreme Court's decision against investors in a separate suit. It alleged that two suppliers doing business with a cable TV company engaged in securities fraud.

That suit was politically sensitive for the Bush administration because of its potential to affect the Enron case. The administration sided with the business community against investors, despite the recommendation of the Securities and Exchange Commission to side with the investors. It was left to attorneys general from 30 states to support shareholders in the case against the cable TV suppliers.

The justices ruled that the investors in Charter Communications Inc. did not have the right to sue because they did not rely on the deceptive acts of the suppliers.

The same principle could apply to the Enron case, where investors relied on Enron's glowing description of its business, but were arguably unaware of any deceptive conduct by the investment banks.

Lawyers for Enron investors say the circumstances in the two cases are not comparable.

In the Enron suit, stockholders are accusing Wall Street investment banks of colluding with the energy company to hide its losses.

To date, Enron plaintiffs have settled for $7.3 billion from several financial institutions including JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.

Enron stockholders are seeking more than $30 billion from Merrill Lynch & Co., Credit Suisse First Boston and Barclays Bank PLC.

The investment banks, say Enron investors, schemed with the energy company, scheming with Enron by entering into partnerships and transactions that enabled the energy company to take liabilities off its books, recording revenue from the deals when it was actually incurring debt.

Now that the Supreme Court has rejected the case, "I think that the chances of succeeding on a scheme liability theory are nearly zero; the resolution of this Enron case was made clear by the decision" last week against investors in the cable TV suppliers suit, said attorney Greg Markel, who represents corporate clients in securities fraud lawsuits.

Last March, the appeals court in New Orleans reversed a decision by U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon in Houston, who had said Enron shareholders could sue as a class.

The issue of certifying a class is a critical one. Once the courts allow huge numbers of investors to pursue a securities fraud lawsuit, the defendants almost always settle rather than exposing their corporations to potentially catastrophic liability.

The appeals court decision in the Enron case meant that shareholders and investors could not pool their resources to sue as a group. Lawyers for Enron investors estimate the class size at over 1 million shareholders.

Enron Corp., once the nation's seventh-largest company, crumbled into bankruptcy in December 2001. The failure became a symbol of the corporate scandals that rocked Wall Street early this decade.

The Federal Reserve cut its key interest rate by three-quarters of a percentage point to 3.5 percent, its biggest in more than 23 years. But markets paused only momentarily before the selling wave renewed as investors seem fixated on the idea that the U.S. will drag the world economy down.

"Incoming information indicates a deepening of the housing contraction as well as some softening in labor markets," the Fed said. Canada's central bank cut too.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he was confident in the resilience of the U.S. and global economies and welcomed the Fed cut as a helpful move.

"This is very constructive and I think it shows this country and the rest of the world that our central bank is nimble and can move quickly in response to market conditions," Paulson said.

The White House, rushing to put together a $150 billion stimulus package to prop up an economy ravaged by a housing slump and a mortgage defaults crisis, declined immediate comment on the Fed cut.

President George W. Bush was set to meet members of Congress later in the day to discuss the economic rescue package.

Outside North America, politicians and central bankers said the market selloff looked excessive. But they had their work cut out to convince as people like billionaire investor George Soros, who said the world faced a financial crisis worse than any since World War Two.

Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA Inc., which is owned by Deutsche Telecom, asked the justices to overturn the ruling. They said in court papers that state and local governments try to "hide" taxes and fees by barring carriers from listing them as separate items, requiring the companies instead to fold them in with the rest of their charges.

Consumer advocates, who support the lower court's ruling, responded that wireless companies frequently add a confusing array of charges that are not always the result of government taxes. Such complaints led the Federal Communications Commission to extend "truth in billing" rules to cell phones in 2005.

The legal question in dispute is whether the FCC was correct when it ruled in 2005 that federal law prohibits the states from barring separate line items. Federal communications law bars state regulation of rates but allows states to regulate "other terms and conditions" of service.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the FCC in 2006, ruling that line items on bills were "other terms and conditions" that states could prohibit. The justices' decision Tuesday allows that ruling to stand.

The issue is not completely settled, however. The Justice Department's Solicitor General, the Bush administration's lawyer, urged the court to turn down the case, even though the Solicitor General disagreed with the appeals court's ruling.

That's because the appeals court sent the case back to the FCC, and the agency is considering additional grounds for preempting state regulation of the wireless industry, the Solicitor General said. As a result, the issue is not yet ripe for Supreme Court review, the Solictor General said.

De Beers, the world's largest diamond importer, settled a class action lawsuit Monday worth $297 million, which would be divided roughly in half between consumers and diamond merchants and resellers.

The lawsuit charged that De Beers and its subsidiaries violated antitrust, unfair competition and consumer-protection laws by monopolizing diamond supplies, and conspired to control the diamond prices by fixing and raising them as per their discretion.

The South African company, which controls 40 percent of the world's diamond trade. was also charged with false advertising.

Under the settlement, De Beers would pay $22.5 million to the "direct purchaser class members and $272.5 million to "indirect purchaser class members."

Consumers who purchased diamonds from De Beers directly or indirectly between 1994 and 2006 will be eligible to receive a rebate. The rebate amount will be determined based on the quality of the diamond.

The case is being heard in the US District Court for the District of New Jersey. The next hearing in the case is set for April 14.

The annual "March for Life" rally was due to begin at noon (1700 GMT) on the sprawling National Mall and take protesters past the Capitol, the seat of the US legislature, to the Supreme Court, where on January 22, 1973, the country's highest justices voted seven to two that a state law in Texas that banned abortion, except to save a woman's life, was unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court decision, enshrined as "Roe v. Wade" for the key figures in the case, gave the United States some of the least restrictive abortion laws in the world and galvanized religious opposition groups into action against it.

On the eve of the march, anti-abortion activists crowded into the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception at Catholic University in Washington to pray for abortion to be banned, officials at the university said.

While local media reported that thousands had attended the all-night vigil, university officials were still counting heads on Tuesday morning, spokeswoman Jackie Hayes said.

More than 1,000 "pro-life" advocates from around the United States spent the night sleeping on floors at the university ahead of the march, the school's website said.

The Reverend David O'Connell, president of Catholic University, attended a breakfast "with President George W. Bush and pro-life leaders" at the White House Tuesday morning, the website added.

Norma McCorvey -- originally given the pseudonym "Jane Roe" for the landmark case -- was due to hold an anti-abortion news conference alongside Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul in Washington ahead of the march.

McCorvey was first brought before a court in Dallas, Texas, in 1970 by two women lawyers seeking the right for the then-homeless, 22-year-old single mother to terminate her third pregnancy.

The defendant was Henry Wade, the district attorney representing the state of Texas.

The Texas court's ruling favored "Roe," but it still did not strike down Texas's state laws banning abortion.

So that by the time the case came to the Supreme Court and its decision in favor of universal abortion rights nationwide was handed down, McCorvey had already had her third child, which she put up for adoption.

Years later, she converted to Catholicism and became an anti-abortion activist.

"I believe that I was used and abused by the court system in America. Instead of helping women in Roe v. Wade, I brought destruction to me and millions of women throughout the nation," McCorvey told lawmakers in 2005.

Roe versus Wade is seen as increasingly vulnerable to being overturned, as the court has turned more conservative with recent appointments and it requires only five of the nine Supreme Court judges to vote in favor of changing the decision to permit the 50 states to set their own abortion bans.

In April, the high court took the first step in rolling back abortion rights in more than a generation by banning a controversial late-term termination procedure.

Public opinion has remained fairly constant over the years with some 25 percent of Americans believing abortion should be available on demand, 25 percent saying that it should be totally banned, an 50 percent holding that it should be legal but restricted.

Two Feathers Elk and Bison Ranch in McMinville, Tenn., and the North American Deer Farmers Association are asking a federal judge to declare Kentucky's law unconstitutional, arguing that it illegally restricts interstate commerce.

"We don't believe they are interpreting the law properly," said Shawn Schafer, executive director of the deer farmers association, an 800-member group based in Lake City, Minn.

The farm and the group have sued Jonathan Gassett, the commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources, and Karen J. Alexy, division director of wildlife for the department, on Friday in U.S. District Court in Lexington.

Phone calls to Gassett and Alexy after 5 p.m. Friday were not immediately returned.

But Morgain Sprague, general counsel for the fish and wildlife department, has sent the attorney for Two Feathers ranch a letter warning that any animals confiscated in Kentucky would be destroyed. He said the law is Constitutional and is being interpreted correctly.

"Your clients are free to use the interstates surrounding the Commonwealth of Kentucky to import cervids into Tennessee," Sprague wrote.

Kentucky state law bans the importation of elk and deer to protect the state's elk and white-tailed deer herds from chronic wasting disease. State officials have enforced the law to prohibit anyone from bringing deer or elk across state lines, even if the animals are destined for another state.

Violating the law is a felony, punishable by up to $10,000 in fines and five years in prison.

That has posed problems for Two Feathers ranch, which wants to ship animals to and from Kansas and pass through Kentucky on the interstate, Schafer said. The ranch applied to Kentucky for permits to transport the animals across state lines but was refused, Schafer said.

But Schafer said he believes the ban violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. The Kentucky law is also discriminatory because it allows deer and elk farmers in the state to move their animals around, he said.

Schafer said Kentucky is the only state his group knows of that interprets the law to ban deer and elk from even crossing state lines.

"When I take a load of horses down to Florida, I don't have to call ahead and check with all the states in between to make sure it's OK to drive through," Schafer said.

In September, Wildlife and Fisheries agents arrested Timothy Cory Looper of Livingston, Tenn., as he passed west of Paducah with a load of elk and deer. The animals were destined for a hunting lodge in Tennessee, but the state destroyed the animals.

Looper was charged with six felony counts of illegally importing elk and deer into Kentucky. His case is pending.

Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarthy had suspended Allstate on Wednesday from writing new policies because it had not fully complied with a subpoena to testify about its property insurance business.

The 10-day stay by the Florida First District Court of Appeal allows Allstate's more than 1,100 Florida agents to continue doing business, the insurer said in a statement.

In addition to car insurance, Allstate provides home insurance in Florida through Allstate Floridian Insurance and Allstate Floridian Indemnity, two independent subsidiaries of the parent company.

Allstate officials had appeared before state regulators earlier this week to testify on proposed rate increases of up to 41 percent in Allstate's property insurance business.

But state officials called off the hearing when Allstate officials refused to answer questions and to provide specific documents.

State investigators have been trying to determine if Allstate and other companies colluded to prevent property insurance rates from dropping despite legislative action last year to reduce premiums.

The issue is a major one in Florida, which has been reeling from a deteriorating real estate market and huge increases in premiums after eight hurricanes in 2004 and 2005, when insurers paid out about $35 billion in claims.

The suspension mainly affected new auto policies, since Allstate had said previously it planned to reduce its homeowner policy exposure in Florida while increasing its 14 percent share of the state's auto insurance business.