But Mamdouh Habib almost certainly was mistreated during his three years of detention without trial in four countries after being arrested in Pakistan in late 2001, during which he suffered extreme stress and trauma, the judge found.

The findings came in a judgment in Habib's case against Sydney's The Daily Telegraph newspaper in which he claimed that the paper defamed him by implying he lied about being tortured.

A jury in 2006 found in Habib's favor, but the paper's publisher, Rupert Murdoch's Nationwide News Pty. Ltd., sought to knock down the case by proving that there was some truth to its article.

On Friday, Justice Peter McClellan of the New South Wales state Supreme Court upheld News' case, and ruled Habib would get no payout. Habib vowed to appeal.

Habib, an Egyptian-born Muslim immigrant, was arrested in late 2001 in Pakistan, where he says he was held for 28 days and interrogated by Americans before he was transferred to Egypt, then six months later to the U.S. military base at Bagram, Afghanistan and then to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Habib told the court he had been beaten and electrocuted by his captors while he was in Pakistan and Egypt, kept drugged and shackled, had his fingers broken, and was sexually molested.

He claimed that Australian officials were present during parts of his ordeal.

Habib said that while at Guantanamo he was regularly beaten before interrogation sessions, kept shackled and often naked, and had his cell sprayed with pepper spray.

In his ruling, McClellan said he could not accept a lot of Habib's evidence because it was inconsistent with previous statements he had made. The judge also found Habib was "prone to exaggerate," and "evasive" when pressed on details.

"I have no difficulty in accepting that the experiences which Mr. Habib suffered were traumatic" and were an "extraordinarily stressful experience," McClellan said.

"I also have little doubt that from time to time he was mistreated," he said, citing electric shocks, kicks and the use of hot and cold water as included in the likely abuse.

"However, the evidence he gave was disjointed and on many occasions he failed to respond to a question," the judge said. "I have ultimately concluded that I cannot accept the allegations of mistreatment in the detail which he gave the evidence in this court."

"That does not mean that I have concluded that these events did not happen but merely that I cannot be satisfied that they did happen," he said.

On the way home from work in Rochester, Patricia Martinez stopped at a liquor store and bought a small bottle of Champagne to celebrate her marriage to another woman. The wedding took place in Canada nearly four years ago, but it wasn’t until Feb. 1 that a New York appellate court declared it valid in the state.

Last week in Manhattan, a State Supreme Court justice, ruling in a divorce proceeding, recognized the Canadian marriage of two New York City women, known publicly as Beth R. and Donna M. - or Mom and Mommy to the two young children they had been raising together.

Less than two years after New York’s highest court refused to legalize gay marriage, leaving it up to a divided Legislature, courts in Rochester and Manhattan, as well as state and local officials, have begun to carry out what some say is the de facto legalization of gay marriage - and gay divorce - in New York for the price of, say, a ticket to Toronto.

Advocates for same-sex marriage say the two court decisions last month granting reciprocity in New York to gay marriages in other jurisdictions simply underline what most people would consider common sense.

A deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision against Pfizer Inc's Warner-Lambert unit over withdrawn diabetes drug Rezulin in a ruling announced on Monday, allowing the case to go forward.

By a 4-to-4 vote, the court affirmed a federal appeals court ruling that reinstated the lawsuit against the world's biggest drugmaker by Michigan residents who said their injuries were caused by the diabetes drug.

The split occurred because the court's ninth member, Chief Justice John Roberts, took no part in the case because he owns Pfizer shares. The court's one-sentence ruling does not address the merits of the dispute.

Rezulin, first approved in 1996, was pulled from the market in 2000 after about 100 people who took the medicine needed liver transplants or died. Pfizer has fought thousands of lawsuits claiming the drugmaker failed to warn the public about the drug's toxic effects.

The high court's action clears the way for the case to proceed in federal court in New York.

At issue in the Supreme Court case was a Michigan state law that provides pharmaceutical companies immunity from such suits except when it can be proven that the manufacturer defrauded the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Gay rights advocates sued to overturn the ban four years ago after the court halted a monthslong same-sex wedding spree that saw thousands of couples marry at City Hall.

The justices were scheduled to hear three hours of arguments in six cases.

"I think I speak for everybody when I say that this has been a long time coming and a day that has been eagerly anticipated," said City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who is representing the city in a lawsuit supporting gay marriage.

The cases were filed after the court stopped the same-sex marriages in the winter of 2004. More than 4,000 couples exchanged vows at the direction of Mayor Gavin Newsom months before gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts, although the high court ultimately voided the unions.

In briefs submitted to the court, same-sex marriage supporters argued that California's Constitution leaves no room for denying gays and lesbians the right to wed.

They say that while the state is one of a handful where gay couples are entitled to most of the same legal rights as married spouses, the institution of marriage is too important to allow for alternatives that are by definition inferior.

"We're very hopeful that California history will stay true today and we'll see the constitution vindicated for the thousands of families in California who depend on our equal place under law," said Jennifer Pizer, a lawyer with the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund who is representing gay couples.

The state and same-sex marriage opponents, however, maintain that limiting marriage to members of the opposite sex is reasonable — not only to uphold tradition but because California voters approved a ballot initiative eight years ago bolstering the gay-marriage ban that was in place at the time. To overturn that law, they say, would abrogate the rights of all Californians.

When Esther Elizabeth Reed was indicted last year, Brooke Henson's relatives said they hoped Reed could tell authorities where to find her.

"Of course at first, it was just giving us hope that Brooke was alive," Lisa Henson, Brooke's aunt, said Monday.

Investigators have since said they don't think Reed had anything to do with Henson's 1999 disappearance.

Reed is accused of stealing Henson's identity in 2003 and posing as her to obtain false identification documents, take a high school equivalency test and get into Columbia University.

She was indicted last year and made her first court appearance Monday on federal charges of identity theft, mail and wire fraud and obtaining false identification documents. If convicted on all four charges, Reed faces a possible $1 million fine and 47 years in prison, time Lisa Henson said she hopes Reed will serve.

"I just hope that she never gets to see the light of day again," she said.

Reed answered routine questions from U.S. Magistrate Judge William M. Catoe and showed no emotion during the brief proceedings. Catoe entered a not guilty plea to all charges.

Reed, who was arrested Feb. 3 outside Chicago, is 29; Brooke Henson would be 29 in April.

Reed began posing as Henson in October 2003, obtaining an ID card in Ohio using her name, date of birth and Social Security number, Assistant U.S. Attorney Walt Wilkins said.

Two months later, Reed took a high school equivalency test in Ohio using Henson's name and received a degree, Wilkins said. Again using Henson's information, she took a college entrance exam in California in May 2004, using her score to apply for admission to Columbia, the prosecutor said.

Reed attended the New York school for two years, beginning in August 2004, Wilkins said. She then applied for and received student loans in Henson's name, in amounts investigators have said exceeded $100,000.

Reed then applied to the state of South Carolina for a duplicate copy of Henson's birth certificate, which she received at an address in Massachusetts. In 2006, Reed also applied for a U.S. passport in Henson's name, Wilkins said.

Investigators have said Reed stole multiple people's identities and also was admitted to Harvard and California State University, Fullerton, though she has not been charged in those cases and Wilkins did not discuss them Monday.

Assistant Federal Defender Lora Collins, who was appointed Monday to represent Reed but did not appear with her in court, did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

A message left at Columbia University's public affairs office after business hours Monday was not immediately returned.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York last year upheld their convictions on charges of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit bank fraud and bank fraud.

Lawyers for the two men argued that fraud charges should be thrown out because accounting terms were not explained to the jury and because the Rigases properly followed accounting rules during transactions that the government said were fraudulent.

Federal investigators began looking at Adelphia after it said in a footnote to a press release in 2002 that the company had approximately $2.2 billion in liabilities not previously reported on its balance sheet.

At trial, prosecutors said the Rigas family used the business for personal expenses, withdrawing millions of dollars to finance everything from 100 pairs of bedroom slippers for Timothy Rigas to more than $3 million to produce a film by John Rigas' daughter, Ellen, to $26 million on 3,600 acres of timberland to preserve the view outside the father's home.

Prosecutors said John Rigas once even spent $6,000 to fly two Christmas trees to New York for his daughter.

Last year, another son, Michael Rigas, was sentenced to 10 months home confinement after pleading guilty to a charge of making a false entry in a company record.

John Rigas, the son of Greek immigrants, created Adelphia from nothing when he bought the rights to wire the town of Coudersport, Pa., for cable television in 1952.

The problems arose after he took Adelphia public in 1986 and the company grew rapidly in the late 1990s.

Adelphia served more than 5 million customers in 31 states. It collapsed into bankruptcy in 2002.

It moved to Greenwood Village, Colo. Comcast Corp. in Philadelphia and Time Warner Cable, a unit of Time Warner Inc., have since bought Adelphia's cable assets.