Canada's top court is upholding six murder convictions of a pig farmer accused of butchering women and feeding them to pigs.

Canada's Supreme Court said Friday that Robert Pickton's right to a fair trial was not violated the first time around, and denied his request for a new trial.

Pickton was convicted of murdering six prostitutes in 2007 and sentenced to life in prison with no parole for at least 25 years.

Six gay couples in Hawaii are filing a lawsuit Thursday asking for the same rights as married couples, three weeks after Gov. Linda Lingle vetoed a same-sex civil unions measure.

The lawsuit doesn't seek the titles of "marriage" or "civil unions" for gay partners. Instead, it requests that the court system extend them the benefits and responsibilities of marriage based on the Hawaii Constitution's prohibition against sex discrimination.

"We continue to be discriminated against," said plaintiff Suzanne King, who has been in a relationship with her partner for 29 years. "We're a family unit, and we live our lives just like everyone else, but we aren't treated the same."

The legal action in state court comes as a response to the Republican governor's veto July 6, when she said voters should decide whether to reserve marriage for couples of a man and a woman.

Five other states and the District of Columbia permit same-sex marriage. Five more states essentially grant the rights of marriage to same-sex couples without authorizing marriage itself.

Hawaii passed the nation's first "defense of marriage" constitutional amendment in 1998, giving the state's legislature the power to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples. The amendment is silent on civil unions and rights for same-sex couples.

Most Hawaii residents don't want the government to endorse equal rights for gay couples, said Garret Hashimoto, chairman for the Hawaii Christian Coalition.

A Utah Supreme Court decision that overturns polygamous church leader Warren Jeffs' 2007 criminal conviction won't automatically make him a free man. Even if Utah doesn't retry him, Texas and federal prosecutors are waiting to move forward with their own cases.

Justices on Tuesday unanimously said Jeffs should get a new trial because state attorneys overreached in their argument that performing the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin amounted to facilitating a rape.

Utah officials now have two weeks to seek a rehearing before the state's high court and then a month to decide if they'll retry the 54-year-old head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on charges of first-degree felony rape as an accomplice.

A judge Wednesday set an Aug. 18 date for a hearing on a motion from Jeffs' defense attorneys seeking a "speedy trial before a jury of his peers."

Meanwhile, authorities in Texas are trying to get Jeffs sent there to face charges in connection with his own alleged marriages to underage girls in 2005. A federal indictment stemming from Jeffs' stint as a fugitive on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list is also pending.

A leading Appalachian coal company is asking its counterparts to pool their money for a political offensive against Democrats in Kentucky and West Virginia.

International Coal Group is calling on other mining companies to join an initiative that would take advantage of a U.S. Supreme Court decision loosening restrictions on corporate contributions to political causes.

ICG Vice President Roger Nicholson said in an e-mail that he wants to target Democratic U.S. Reps. Ben Chandler of Kentucky and Nick Rahall of West Virginia, and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jack Conway in Kentucky. The e-mail, first reported by the Lexington Herald-Leader, was obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Nicholson said the Obama administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress are "fiercely anti-coal."

Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe says she plans to vote to confirm Elena Kagan as a Supreme Court justice.

The Maine lawmaker's announcement makes her the fourth Republican to break with her party to back President Barack Obama's high court nominee.

In a statement, Snowe says Kagan has met her standards for a justice with her strong intellect, respect for the rule of law and understanding of the Supreme Court's important but limited role.

She also says endorsements from conservative lawyers show that Kagan has a reputation for a sound judicial temperament.

Democrats have more than enough votes to confirm Kagan in a vote expected next week. Most Republicans oppose her, arguing she would bring a liberal bias to the bench.

The tide of lawsuits unleashed by BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico breaks into an Idaho courtroom on Thursday, just as the company's rivals are counting the cost of a ban on offshore drilling.

Attorneys hoping to lead the legal fight against BP are set to descend on Boise, Idaho, to address a special judicial panel considering how to bring order to the hundreds of civil lawsuits spawned by the spill after a rig explosion on April 20.

"There will be more lawyers in that courtroom than exist in the entire city of Boise put together," Mark Lanier, a Houston-based lawyer who plans to attend the hearing, joked this week. "It's going to be a circus."

Seven U.S. federal judges will convene more than 2,000 miles from the Gulf's oil-smudged shores to consider which U.S. court, or courts, should oversee hundreds of spill-related suits by injured rig workers, fishermen, investors and property owners.

Potentially adding its name to the line of claimants, Royal Dutch Shell Plc idled seven rigs and took a $56 million charge related to the drilling ban on Thursday. Saying the ban would reduce its production by almost 3 million barrels this year, the company did not rule out reclaiming the cash from BP.

Shell, one of the biggest oil producers in the Gulf of Mexico, said it had idled rigs rather than move them elsewhere because the ban's six-month duration meant it was not profitable to redeploy them to other areas.

A federal appeals court has ordered two executives convicted in a $1.9 billion corporate fraud case to be resentenced.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati said Wednesday the government hadn't proved Donald Ayers and Roger Faulkenberry were guilty of money laundering. Their convictions of conspiracy, securities fraud and wire fraud remain in place.

Faulkenberry is serving 10 years in prison, and Ayers is serving 15 years. They were convicted in 2008 with four other top executives from National Century Financial Enterprises, a Columbus health care financing company. Federal prosecutors likened the case to the Enron scandal.

The court said the government didn't prove that advances Faulkenberry and Ayers made to medical companies were designed to conceal the money's source.