The court couldn't take up an apartheid dispute involving some of the nation's largest companies because too many of the justices had investments or other ties with those corporate giants.

It appeared to be the first time in at least a quarter-century that the justices' financial holdings prevented them from taking a case.

The result is that a lawsuit will go forward accusing dozens of corporations of violating international law by assisting South Africa's former apartheid government. The companies and the Bush administration had asked the court to intervene, arguing that the lawsuit was damaging international relations, threatening to hurt South Africa's economic development and punishing the companies using a fuzzy legal concept.

Four of the nine justices sat out the court's consideration of the case. Federal law calls for at least six to hear any case.

Short of the required number, the court took the only path available to it and upheld an appeals court ruling allowing the lawsuit to proceed.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy provided no explanation for their decision not to take part in the case.

But those justices have ties to Bank of America Corp., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Colgate-Palmolive Co., Credit Suisse, Exxon Mobil Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM and Nestle SA, among nearly three dozen companies that asked the high court to step in.

A federal appeals court wrestled with those kinds of questions Thursday when it considered placing restrictions on patent protections for business practices. The case under review is being closely watched by financial services and software companies.

The number of patents on tax preparation strategies, investment techniques and other business methods has surged since 1998, when the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit opened the door to such claims.

That increase has led to widespread criticism that many of the patents, including one about how to teach golf lessons, are frivolous and spur excessive litigation.

The Federal Circuit said in February that it would reconsider its decade-old decision in a case that many patent experts say is one of the most important in years. Depending on how broadly the court rules, the case could make it harder for investment banks and software companies to patent their products.

Hunt reported that Woodard grabbed him first, and repeated the falsehood to an FBI agent almost a year later. On appeal, Hunt said the evidence was insufficient to convict him of deliberate falsehood and that the 10-month sentence was excessive. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed in an opinion filed Monday.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles convened Monday to hear the case of William Earl Lynd, who is scheduled to die Tuesday for fatally shooting his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore, two days before Christmas in 1988.

Lynd's attorney, Tom Dunn, is seeking a 90-day stay of execution as well as a commutation of his sentence.

The U.S. Supreme Court in April upheld Kentucky's lethal injection protocol, clearing the way for executions to resume in the roughly three dozen states that use that method.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved 2,370 warrants last year targeting people in the United States believed to be linked to international terror organizations.

That figure represents a 9 percent increase over 2006. The number of warrants has more than doubled since the terrorist attacks of 2001.

The secret intelligence court was established in 1978 to oversee government requests to conduct surveillance on suspected spies inside the U.S.

The court denied three warrant applications in full and partially denied one, the Justice Department said. Eighty-six times judges sent requests back to the government for changes before approving them.

Those oversight numbers also represent an increase over last year, when the court partially denied only one application and required changes to 73 applications.

Because the workings of the court are secret, however, it's impossible to know whether that increase was due to more court oversight, more aggressive government efforts or simply the nuances of individual cases.

The Supreme Court affirmed Wednesday that police have the power to conduct searches and seize evidence, even when done during an arrest that turns out to have violated state law.

The unanimous decision came in a case from Portsmouth, Va., where city detectives seized crack cocaine from motorist David Lee Moore after arresting him for a traffic ticket offense.

Justice Antonin Scalia said that when officers have probable cause to believe a person has committed a crime in their presence, the Fourth Amendment permits them to make an arrest and to search the suspect to safeguard evidence and ensure their own safety.

Moore was convicted on a drug charge and sentenced to 3 ½ years in prison. The Virginia Supreme Court had ruled police could not lawfully conduct a search.

The high court wrote, "we can conceive of no way to draw a principled line permitting drug testing only student athletes."

"If we were to allow random drug testing here, what prevents school districts from either later drug testing students participating in any extracurricular activities, as federal courts now allow, or testing the entire student population?" Justice Richard Sanders wrote for the court's plurality. Joining him were Chief Justice Gerry Alexander and Justices Susan Owens and Tom Chambers.

Two families with high school students sued the district. Wahkiakum County Superior Court Judge Douglas Goelz ruled in 2006 that testing students was reasonable after less-intrusive methods failed to address the drug threat. The case was appealed directly to the state Supreme Court.

Messages left with the school district and with the lawyer for the school district were not immediately returned.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington represented the parents. ACLU spokesman Doug Honig said the case was precedent-setting for the state, and "as a result of this ruling we don't expect to see other districts pursuing suspicionless testing programs."

However, the nine-member court was split on whether the plurality ruling was too sweeping. There were three separate concurrences, and at least one justice said random suspicionless drug testing would be OK under "carefully defined circumstances."

The sticking point between the ruling by Sanders and a concurrence written by Justice Barbara Madsen was over a "special needs exception" as in federal law, which would allow random searches in some circumstances.

Sanders' ruling says there is no need to create that type of exception in Washington law.

"Simply passing muster under the federal constitution does not ensure the survival of the school district's policy under our state constitution," Sanders wrote.

"In the context of randomly drug testing student athletes, we see no reason to invent such a broad exception to the warrant requirement as such an alleged exception cannot be found in the common law," he wrote.