A so-called pandering provision makes it a crime to promote, distribute or solicit material in a way intended to cause others to believe it contains child pornography. It carries a sentence of at least five years in prison.

The Supreme Court in 2002 struck down an earlier version of the law that included computer generated images that appeared to depict minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct.

Congress then adopted new legislation in 2003, which President George W. Bush signed into law, in an effort to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling.

But a U.S. appeals court in Atlanta ruled the law still did not pass constitutional muster and violated guarantees that the government cannot suppress lawful free speech.

The Bush administration told the Supreme Court the ruling interfered with the effort by Congress to suppress the market for child pornography. 

Judge L.T. Senter Jr., rejected grouping claims in one lawsuit because a "sweeping relief," as he called it, would prevent State Farm from meeting the burden of proof of cause because of "possible variations" in claims.

Claimant Judy Guice had sought the class-action grouping, a move objected to by State Farm, the Biloxi Sun Herald said.

The insurance company fought grouping claims for legal purposes and wants to handle each separately. No two owners, it says, had the same type of loss, whether from wind or water or what ratio of each destroyed homes during the storm.

"I think we're going to see hundreds if not thousands of cases," said Brad Smith, director of the veterinary teaching hospital at UC Davis. "It's going to take some time to sort this out."

Menu Foods, the Canadian-owned pet food maker, expanded its recall Friday to all cans and pouches of the recalled brands of "cuts and gravy" foods regardless of when they were manufactured. The first recall was limited to pet foods made after Dec. 3.

The discovery of rat poison in pet food was announced Friday by New York state food safety experts who analyzed samples of the commercial pet food provided by the manufacturer.

The substance, aminopterin, is not licensed for use as a rat poison in the United States, but it is used for that purpose in other counties.

The drug is used in cancer research, and it formerly was used to induce abortions in the United States, scientists said.

The Germany-based company issued its response the day after Oracle alleged SAP resorted to high-tech skullduggery to obtain confidential information about Oracle's software. Redwood Shores-based Oracle alleges SAP repeatedly raided its computers so a subsidiary called TomorrowNow can provide product support to Oracle's customers.

"SAP will not comment other than to make it clear to our customers, prospects, investors, employees and partners that SAP will aggressively defend against the claims made by Oracle in the lawsuit," spokesman Steve Bauer said in a statement.

Oracle has spent more than $20 billion in the past three years in a challenge to SAP's market leadership in business applications software -- programs that automate a wide range of administrative tasks.

He declined to specify the loss. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

"We believed green onions may have been the source based on the presumptive positive testing, so we immediately removed them from our products to put public safety first," the statement said. "We later learned they were not the source of the E. coli outbreak."

The lawsuit alleges Taco Bell officials probably knew by Dec. 9 and certainly by Dec. 11 that tests for E. coli in the green onions were negative. The company and FDA officials said Dec. 11 that the green onions were not the source of the disease, and Taco Bell posted a press release Dec. 13 on its Web site that said lettuce appeared to be the most probable source of the outbreak, according to the suit.

Creed also said Taco Bell would no longer include green onions as a food ingredient. The lawsuit noted that lettuce remains in about 70 percent of Taco Bell‘s food selections.

Activist groups sued Viacom Inc. on Thursday, claiming the parent of Comedy Central improperly asked the video-sharing site YouTube to remove a parody of the cable network's "The Colbert Report."

Viacom responded by saying it had no records of ever making such a request.

Although the video in question contained clips taken from the television show, MoveOn.org Civic Action and Brave New Films LLC argued that their use was protected under "fair use" provisions of copyright law.

With Viacom identified by YouTube as the source of the removal request, they said Viacom should have known the use was legal and thus its complaint to YouTube to have the video blocked amounted to a "misrepresentation" that is subject to damages under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The challenge, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, came about a week after Viacom filed its own, $1 billion lawsuit against YouTube, claiming that the wildly popular Web site is rife with copyrighted video from Viacom shows, including "The Colbert Report."

Neither YouTube nor its parent, Google Inc., was named in the latest lawsuit, filed on the plaintiffs' behalf by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society.

In a letter to the plaintiffs' lawyers, Michael D. Fricklas, general counsel for Viacom, said the company had no record of sending YouTube a complaint, despite YouTube's identification of Viacom as the source. YouTube had no comment about the discrepancy.

The expulsions will be erased from the record and the students will be allowed to make up for missed work. Two of them still must write letters of apology to a teacher named in the movie and his wife.

In the movie, the "teddy bear master" orders stuffed animals to kill a teacher who had embarrassed him, but students battle the toy beasts, according to documents filed in court.

School officials last year expelled the four students who made the film, arguing that it was disruptive and they saw it as a threat to Knightstown Intermediate School teacher Dan Clevenger.

Two of the students sued, claiming their free-speech rights were violated. A federal judge in December ordered that school officials allow them back into class, saying that although the students should apologize for the "humiliating" and "obscene" movie, district officials had not proven that the work disrupted school.

A third student joined the lawsuit after it was filed, and the fourth student did not challenge the expulsion.

Superintendent David McGuire said the school district's insurance company will cover the cost of the $69,000 settlement that will be split among the plaintiffs.