Jurors reviewed a biblical passage relating that a murderer who used an iron object to kill "shall surely be put to death." They were deciding whether to impose a death sentence on Khristian Oliver for fatally shooting and bludgeoning his victim with the barrel of a gun.

The court previously has said that jurors should base their verdicts only on evidence presented in the courtroom.

But state and federal courts upheld Oliver's sentence, despite testimony that some jurors consulted the passage that described a killing similar to the one Oliver committed.

Arizona state legislators and the state superintendent of public instruction want to be freed from federal court oversight of the state's programs for English learners. They've been ordered by a lower court judge to spend potentially hundreds of millions of dollars to comply with rulings in a 17-year-old case.

Parents of students attending southern Arizona's Nogales Unified School District sued the state in 1992, contending programs for English-language learners in Nogales were deficient and received inadequate funding from the state.

In 2000, a federal judge found that the state had violated the Equal Educational Opportunities Act's requirements for appropriate instruction for English-language learners. He ordered state legislators to create a plan to provide sufficient funds and placed the state's programs for non-English speaking students under court oversight.

Since then, the two sides have fought over what constitutes compliance with the order. Arizona has more than doubled the amount that schools receive per non-English speaking student and taken several other steps prescribed by the No Child Left Behind Act, a broader education accountability law passed by Congress in 2002.

Plaintiffs say that's not enough to comply with federal law and a judge agreed. But the state appealed, and now the high court will answer the question.

Kennedy avoided trial and possible jail time with the plea deal Monday in Hamilton County Municipal Court in Cincinnati. He will be on probation for six months and must perform 40 hours of community service.

He was arrested last December when Mississippi was in Cincinnati for a game against Louisville as part of the SEC/Big East Invitational. The cab driver said Kennedy punched him in the face and called him a terrorist after he told the coach he couldn't legally fit him and four others into his cab.

Kennedy is still embroiled in civil lawsuits with the driver and a valet who says he saw the confrontation.

The high court agreed to hear a U.S. Justice Department appeal defending the 1999 animal cruelty law after it was struck down for infringing free-speech protections.

A U.S. appeals court declared the law unconstitutional and overturned the conviction of a Virginia man, Robert Stevens, who sold three videos of pit bulls fighting each other and attacking hogs and wild boars.

His conviction in 2005 was the first in the country under the law. Stevens had been sentenced to 37 months in prison.

By a 10-3 vote, the appeals court rejected the government's argument that, for the first time in more than 25 years, there was a new category of speech not covered by constitutional free-speech protections. Usually, videos and other depictions are protected as free speech, even if they show abhorrent conduct.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says the U.S. Department of Justice must provide a copy of the doctor's report it used to determined Demjanjuk is healthy enough to safely travel. It also asks for the government's plans for the transportation of Demjanjuk to Germany.

Also, it wants Demjanjuk's attorneys to file papers addressing whether the court has jurisdiction.

The court's requests were filed Thursday. Lawyers have one week to respond.

Family of the retired autoworker have said flying him to Germany would amount to torture and that he might not survive the flight.

But McMaster said in a filing with the Supreme Court on Monday that he won't oppose the state Supreme Court taking up the challenge filed last week by a Chapin High School student.

McMaster says the timing may not be right to shift the issues raised in the case from a public policy debate to the courtroom.

Prosecutors had sought an 18-month prison term for Park Dae-Sung, 30 -- better known by his Internet alias "Minerva" -- while some media freedom groups criticised the decision to charge him.

Park was arrested in early January and charged with spreading online rumours that the government in late December ordered local banks not to buy dollars as part of efforts to stabilise the won.

Prosecutors claimed the December posting led to dollar hoarding, forcing the government hurriedly to inject two billion dollars to stabilise the currency market.

"Considering all the circumstances, it is hard to conclude that Park was aware the information was misleading when he wrote the postings," said Judge Yoo Young-Hyun of Seoul Central District Court.

The judge said that even if Park had realised the information was false, it cannot be concluded he intended to damage the public interest, considering the circumstances at the time or the special characteristics of the foreign exchange market.

Park wrote more than 200 economic commentaries in recent months and gained a major following after correctly predicting the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers last September.