Thomas McFarland had unsuccessfully sought to enter a pretrial intervention program that would have spared him a criminal record.

Under terms of a plea agreement, the state will recommend the 61-year-old be sentenced to one year of probation and be ordered to pay the seaside town of Avalon $100,000 to offset cleanup costs.

McFarland admitted dumping hypodermic needles, cotton swabs and other medical waste into an inlet just before Labor Day weekend in 2008.

His lawyer says the dentist was distraught to the point of mental illness over his wife's lung cancer, and appeared to be acting out in "a cry for help."

A U.S. Appeals Court reinstated on Monday a 2004 lawsuit by eight states and the city of New York against five of the largest U.S. utilities over their carbon dioxide emissions.

The lawsuit was dismissed in October 2005 by U.S. District Court Judge Loretta Preska, who said the issue was a political question for Congress or the President, not the judiciary.

Monday's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York said the judge "erred in dismissing two complaints on the ground that they presented non-justiciable political questions."

The lawsuit against American Electric Power Co Inc, Southern Co, Xcel Energy Inc, Cinergy Corp and the Tennessee Valley Authority public power system, argued that greenhouse gas emissions from their plants were a public nuisance and would cause irreparable harm to property.

The utilities are five of the largest carbon dioxide emitters in the United States. Around 40 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions come from fossil-fueled power plants.

Fleet Management Ltd. pleaded guilty to charges of obstruction, making false statements and negligent discharge of oil, and agreed to pay a $10 million fine under a deal reached with prosecutors. A federal judge still must approve the deal.

The Cosco Busan sideswiped the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge on a foggy morning on Nov. 7, 2007. The ship spilled 53,000 gallons of oil into the water, killing thousands of birds and other wildlife and fouling miles of shoreline.

The ship's pilot, John Cota, was sentenced in July to 10 months in prison after pleading guilty to two misdemeanor charges.

Company director Aga Nagarajan appeared in court Thursday with lawyer Marc Greenberg, who entered the guilty pleas. They declined comment outside court.

U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston scheduled a Dec. 11 hearing to decide whether the $10 million is enough punishment.

Court documents showed the company acknowledging its crew was poorly trained and the master failed to stop the pilot from leaving port in thick fog. The master admitted he could "suffer adverse personnel consequences" if he delayed departure, according to the court filing.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstates most of a 2001 rule put in place by President Bill Clinton just before he left office that prohibited commercial logging, mining and other development on about 58 million acres of national forest in 38 states and Puerto Rico. A subsequent Bush administration rule had cleared the way for more commercial activity there.

The latest ruling, issued in San Francisco, sides with several Western states and environmental groups that sued the Forest Service after it reversed the so-called "Roadless Rule" in 2005.

But it is not the final word on roadless forests.

A separate case is pending in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, where environmental groups are appealing a Wyoming district court decision repealing the Clinton roadless rule.

"It's up and down like a yo-yo," said Tom Partin, president of the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group. "It seems to be bouncing from one court to the other."

The Obama administration cited that legal uncertainty this spring in ordering a one-year moratorium on most road-building in national forests.

The announcement by City Attorney Jan Goldsmith was the latest development in an emotional and yearslong battle over who should have exclusive use of the protected cove — children or seals — in the posh seaside neighborhood of La Jolla.

On Monday, a San Diego Superior Court judge ordered the city to begin chasing away the creatures from the cove, called the Children's Pool, by Thursday or face heavy fines in order to comply with a 2005 ruling in a lawsuit brought by a disgruntled swimmer.

The city said it would blast recordings of barking dogs to scare away the pesky pinnipeds at the cost of $688,000 a year. San Diego cannot use force because the seals are a federally protected marine species.

But just hours later, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill that added a marine mammal park to the list of permissible uses for the Children's Pool — giving the city a legal tool that could allow the seals to stay put.

In a 5-4 decision Tuesday, the court says environmental groups cannot pursue a lawsuit against forest regulations that limit public input when environmental impact on a U.S. Forest Service project is expected to be small.

The case concerned a proposal to salvage timber from 238 acres in the Sequoia National Forest in California. A fire in the summer of 2002 burned 150,000 acres. Even though the Forest Service withdrew the proposal, the federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld a nationwide injunction against the regulations.

The government argued that a challenge to the regulations must be tied to a specific project and the court agreed in an opinion written by Justice Antonin Scalia.

The case is Summers v. Earth Island Institute, 07-463.

Earthjustice, an environmental law firm based in Washington, sued the Environmental Protection Agency in 2007 on behalf of activist groups. The firm said existing federal regulations that exempted older cement kilns failed to impose adequate mercury pollution controls.

Nine states, including New York and Michigan, also joined the suit, contending the agency had not based its standards on the latest pollution control technology.

About 150 kilns around the nation generate nearly 23,000 pounds of airborne mercury a year, according to Earthjustice. Mercury, a toxic metal that can damage the brain and nervous system, is generated from the raw materials and some fuels used in cement-making.

The agency had issued mercury regulations for cement plants three years ago, but they applied only to kilns built after Dec. 2, 2005. Most operating kilns, however, were built earlier and were exempt.

Under the settlement, the agency will propose a mercury rule for all plants by March 31 and make a final decision within a year.

"EPA is carefully considering what an appropriate standard should be for mercury emissions from cement kilns," spokeswoman Cathy Milbourn said.