The court found that the agency, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation, had ignored the results of a database it commissioned to catalog more than 50,000 truck accidents from 1991 to 2002. Using the data, the study extrapolated that the risk of fatigue-related accidents would be substantially higher in the extra hours of service allowed by the new rules.

“F.M.C.S.A. failed to provide an adequate explanation for its decision to adopt the 11-hour daily driving limit,” the court said.

The new rules had been adopted after heavy lobbying by politically connected leaders of the trucking industry. The changes were part of the broader strategy by the Bush administration to reduce regulations on businesses.

Safety experts and insurance analysts challenged the changes. They said longer driving hours have contributed to the high number of truck accidents. About 100 people die each week in truck-related accidents, making trucking America’s most treacherous industry as measured by overall deaths and injuries.

Supporters of the loosened standards say they have made it faster and cheaper to move goods across the country. They say the changes promote safety because shorter hours would force the industry to put more drivers with little experience behind the wheel. And they note that the fatality rate, or the number of deaths per miles traveled, has continued a long decline.

Still, the fatality rate for truck-related accidents remains nearly double that involving only cars. And the Bush administration has repeatedly missed its own targets for reducing the number of fatalities from truck accidents.

The decision today came in a case filed by Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. It was the third time in three years that the courts have been critical of the motor carrier agency.

A different appeals panel criticized the agency in December 2005 for failing to issue adequate rules for the training of drivers, saying the agency had ignored its own studies on the need for more comprehensive training.

And in 2004, a third panel of the appeals court struck down virtually identical new hours of service rules as the ones at issue in Tuesday’s decision, saying that they had been “arbitrary and capricious.”

After Congress, at the urging of the Bush administration and the trucking industry, intervened to block the enforcement of the 2004 court order, the motor carrier agency issued the 2005 rules. At the time, the agency said it had addressed the concerns raised by the appeals court’s 2004 decision.

In a regulatory impact analysis accompanying the 2005 changes, the agency concluded that the economic costs to the industry of tightening the hours of service rules, as consumer groups had proposed, outweighed the safety benefits.

But the court said today that analysis was flawed. The opinion was written by Judge Merrick B. Garland and signed by Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg and Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson.

Safety groups hailed Tuesday’s ruling and said the court had confirmed their view that the agency had failed to adequately justify relaxing the rules.

“The court is saying once again, no,” said Jacqueline S. Gillan, vice president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, an alliance of consumer, health and insurance organizations. “For three and a half years this agency has tried every which way to defend a rule that would result in longer consecutive driver hours and longer total work hours. This has a dramatic dangerous impact on the lives of truck drivers and on the lives of everyone sharing the roads with trucks. And once again the court has said, ‘No, you cannot go ahead with a rule when it violates the law and you clearly have not justified it.’ ”

The agency would not say whether it would appeal the decision or seek a stay of the court’s order, which is set to go into effect in September.

“We are analyzing the decision issued today to understand the court’s findings as well as determine the agency’s next steps to prevent driver fatigue, ensure safe and efficient motor carrier operations and save lives,” said a statement issued by the agency.

The American Trucking Associations, which defended the changes to the rules in the proceeding, said they would ask the court to stay its ruling to give the agency time to provide a better justification of the changes.

A skeptical Alameda County judge ordered garbage hauler Waste Management on Tuesday to return to court next week to prove it is abiding by his order to collect all the trash in Oakland or face big fines for scores of missed pickups.

Superior Court Judge Richard Keller, at a hearing in his Fremont courtroom, said Oakland officials provided evidence that as many as 300 customers a day have not been receiving garbage service despite his order last week that the company truck away all the city's trash.

"That's more than ... just a matter of a couple of missed pickups," Keller said to Waste Management lawyers who told him the company is covering all of its routes. "All I'm saying is there's a certain amount of common sense that comes into play here in all this, and then there's gilding the lily."

Keller scheduled a hearing for Aug. 3 to determine whether the company should be held in contempt of his July 19 order -- which could subject the firm to fines of $2,500 per day for each of the hundreds of pickups the city says have been missed since then.

Meanwhile, representatives from Waste Management and the Teamsters union, along with Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and a federal mediator, spent 10 hours Tuesday trying to work out a deal and planned to resume negotiations at 11 a.m. today in Oakland. A contract agreement would end the company's lockout of nearly 500 union garbage haulers that began July 2.

Dellums said the two sides made progress in their talks Tuesday.

"We have reached agreement on several of the outstanding issues,'' he said Tuesday night, declining to provide details. "I'm actually feeling very good because there was substantial progress. I believe the remaining issues can be resolved -- that's not to say they're not difficult issues."

Since July 19, city officials said they have received 3,000 complaints about spotty trash, recycling and yard waste pickups, while Waste Management officials have said they resumed regular weekly pickups in Oakland and other East Bay areas affected by the lockout.

"Each day it goes on, it becomes more and more frustrating," said Dellums, who described the negotiations as tedious and difficult. Waste Management has hired hundreds of temporary workers to pick up trash in Oakland and other East Bay communities and has added extra drivers and trucks to East Bay routes since Keller's order last week, Waste Management attorney John Lynn Smith said at Tuesday's hearing.

Smith said the company has 117 drivers on routes in Oakland, a number equal to the number of Teamster drivers in the city before the lockout, which came three days after the union's contract with the company expired.

"We'll continue to move forward to make sure people get service," Waste Management spokeswoman Monica Devincenzi said after the hearing, adding that on Saturday temporary drivers will go back over routes to gather any missed pickups from the week. "We truly apologize for any inconvenience we've caused our customers. We're trying our best to get it done."

But Deputy Oakland City Attorney Kandis Westmore said the city has received 200 to 300 complaints about missed pickups each day since the judge's order -- evidence, she said, that the company is not abiding by the order.

The city will have to prove in court that Waste Management has willfully failed to pick up garbage, Keller said. The city's efforts could be undermined, he said, by company claims that Teamster picketers at the firm's office in East Oakland have delayed replacement drivers on their routes by up to three hours.

Keller acknowledged that the potential fines, while substantial, might not motivate the multimillion-dollar corporation. "It's like swatting a gnat off the back of an elephant," he said.

City Attorney John Russo has said the city could hire another hauler to pick up trash in Oakland, but a spokeswoman for City Administrator Deborah Edgerly said Tuesday that city officials will continue efforts to compel Waste Management to comply with the terms of its franchise agreement.

"The performance standards are clearly spelled out -- pick up the trash," Karen Boyd said.

The company's contract with Teamsters Local 70 expired June 30, and Waste Management locked out its drivers in what company officials described as a pre-emptive move against a rumored Teamsters strike.

Union officials said their members did not intend to strike and planned to work while union and company officials negotiated a new contract.

Oakland, Emeryville, Albany, Hayward, Newark and part of San Leandro, along with unincorporated areas of Alameda County, including Castro Valley and San Lorenzo, are affected by the lockout.

Mr. James is accused of charging more than $58,000 in personal expenses on city-issued credit cards during his two decades as mayor and of selling city land at below market rates to Ms. Riley, who the authorities said then resold the property at an enormous profit.

Judith Germano, an assistant United States attorney, told Judge Martini that Mr. Ashley represented someone referred to in the criminal complaint as “Individual 1.” The person, who is not named in the indictment but who is “close to both defendants James and Riley,” lent $10,000 to Ms. Riley to help her pay for several properties in Newark and later received checks from Ms. Riley, according to prosecutors.

Ms. Germano said the other person Mr. Ashley represented was “an attorney in a number of real estate transactions” that are part of the case. In response, Mr. Ashley said, “I don’t see that there’s a conflict.” The judge told Ms. Germano to submit a brief with her concerns.

During the hourlong court appearance, Mr. James, 71, wearing a dark blue suit, smiled and seemed relaxed, limiting himself before and after the hearing to a single, repeated comment to reporters: “God is good all the time.” He and Ms. Riley, 38, who also pleaded not guilty, waived their right to a speedy trial.

Ms. Riley, whose relatives sat in the small, packed gallery, looked more anxious than Mr. James. She wore a black suit, flipped through legal papers, and did not smile.

Prosecutors said the evidence against Mr. James and Ms. Riley was largely contained in 40 banker’s boxes, each holding roughly 200 documents. Perry Primavera, a special assistant United States attorney, said that the prosecution would call about 60 witnesses, and that the trial would last about 12 weeks. The trial is tentatively set to begin in early February.

Mr. Ashley, a well-known criminal defense lawyer here, once represented Mr. James’s chief of staff, Jackie R. Mattison, who was found guilty in 1997 of taking bribes. After Monday’s court hearing, Mr. Ashley said of the prosecutors: “I didn’t know they were going to try to have me removed. I anticipated it could be an issue. They were never too happy with my representation.”

In court, Ms. Germano said that Mr. Ashley himself could be called as a witness in the case, to give evidence about a personal trip Mr. James and his companions made to Martha’s Vineyard in 2003, which prosecutors said cost the city of Newark more than $3,500.

After both of the parties contacted Microsoft and reported the problem, they were refused reimbursement or replacement discs. That’s when they decided to take legal action.

Microsoft has acknowledged the obvious defects in its consoles with the red rings of death, but they have yet to acknowledge any defects in their console which scratches discs. Perhaps they will have to add on to the $1 billion they’ve already set aside to deal with the red rings.

Shannon Houchin, a former police officer with the Crittenden County Sheriff’s Office in West Memphis, Ark., pleaded guilty today in federal court in Little Rock to a felony civil rights charge.

During his guilty plea, Houchin admitted that he abused his authority as a police officer when, in May 2006, he unnecessarily assaulted an arrestee while at the Crittenden County Detention Facility.

Houchin faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000.

“It is unacceptable for law enforcement officials to willfully abuse those committed to their custody,” said Wan J. Kim, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “The overwhelming majority of correctional officers dispatch their difficult duties with honor and professionalism. The Justice Department will aggressively prosecute those who cross the line and violate federal law.”

The Civil Rights Division is committed to the vigorous enforcement of every federal criminal civil rights statute, such as laws that prohibit the willful use of excessive force or other acts of misconduct by law enforcement officials. In fiscal year 2006, nearly 50 percent of the cases brought by the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division involved such prosecutions. Since fiscal year 2001, the Division has convicted 50 percent more defendants for excessive force and official misconduct than in the preceding six years.

Today’s plea resulted from the investigative work of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Civil Rights Division attorneys Christine Dunn and Karen Ruckert handled the case for the Justice Department.