In a case involving the Salt Lake City-based Summum, the court said that governments can decide what to display in a public park without running afoul of the First Amendment.

Pleasant Grove City, Utah, rejected the group's marker, prompting a federal lawsuit that argued that a city can't allow some private donations of displays in its public park and reject others. The federal appeals court in Denver agreed.

In his opinion for the court, Justice Samuel Alito distinguished the Summum's case from efforts to prevent groups from speaking in public parks, which ordinarily would violate the First Amendment's free speech guarantee.

Alito said "the display of a permanent monument in a public park" requires a different analysis.

Because monuments in public parks help define a city's identity, "cities and other jurisdictions take some care in accepting donated monuments," he said.

The justices said that in court arguments set for this fall, they will consider throwing out an appeals court ruling that ordered the cross be torn down.

The American Civil Liberties Union and a former National Park Service employee have been challenging the cross' continued presence on national parkland for nearly eight years. A cross has stood on the site since 1934, when a local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars erected it atop an outcropping known as Sunrise Rock.

Congress has transferred ownership of the land on which it sits to a private party.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals twice said the cross must come down. It invalidated the 2004 congressionally approved land transfer, saying that "carving out a tiny parcel of property in the midst of this vast preserve — like a donut hole with the cross atop it — will do nothing to minimize the impermissible governmental endorsement" of the religious symbol.

U.S. District Judge Susan Illston scheduled a hearing for Wednesday morning and ordered the U.S. Marshals Service to tell Anderson and provide him with transportation, if needed.

The judge has barred prosecutors from using key evidence, such as positive steroids tests, at Bonds' March 2 trial unless Anderson testifies.

Anderson has said through his attorney he will refuse to testify, and he may be sent to prison on contempt of court charges. Anderson was sent to prison after refusing to testify about Bonds before a federal grand jury in 2006.

The court said Monday that it will leave undisturbed the conviction of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, despite an appeals court finding that his constitutional rights were violated when a judge allowed jurors, but not Abu Ali, to see classified evidence against him.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond determined that the error made no difference to the outcome of the trial.

Abu Ali has challenged various aspects of the legal process, including that he was tortured by interrogators in Saudi Arabia. Federal courts have denied all his appeals.

Born in Houston, Abu Ali grew up in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, Va., and was valedictorian of a private Islamic high school. He joined al-Qaida after traveling to Saudi Arabia to attend college in 2002. As a member of a Medina-based al-Qaida cell, Abu Ali discussed numerous potential terrorist attacks, including a plan to assassinate Bush and a plan to establish a sleeper cell in the United States.

He was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but the appeals court ordered a new sentencing hearing after ruling that the trial judge ignored federal sentencing guidelines that called for life in prison.

Lawrence County Warden Charles Adamo said his 300-inmate jail cannot offer proper long-term care for Jordan Brown, of Wampum, who was charged Saturday with using his own 20-gauge shotgun to kill 26-year-old Kenzie Marie Houk.

Houk was eight months pregnant with the child of Brown's father and also had two daughters, ages 4 and 7, who lived together in the rural home where authorities said she was slain as she lay in bed Friday.

Police said the boy then hopped onto a school bus with Houk's oldest daughter. State troopers picked him up at school after tree trimmers called 911 when Houk's youngest daughter told them she thought her mother was dead.

Wednesday's ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans only revives part of the case that lawyers for a group of purported "whistleblowers" filed against eight insurers and six adjusting firms after the August 2005 storm.

A three-judge panel from the appeals court upheld a lower court's ruling that Allstate Insurance Co. and State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. must be dismissed from the Louisiana lawsuit because they already were defendants in a similar suit in Mississippi.

However, the 5th Circuit said U.S. District Judge Peter Beer erred in dismissing the other insurers and adjusting firms that aren't named in the Mississippi case.

Other defendants in the Louisiana case include Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Co., Fidelity National Insurance Co., American National Property & Casualty Co., American Reliable Insurance Co., and Standard Fire Insurance Co.