A juvenile court on Monday refused to grant bail to an American teenager charged with murder after his mother was found dead at a resort in western India, a prosecutor said.

The court sided with police who argued 16-year-old Joncarlo Patton should not be set free given the seriousness of the alleged offense, said prosecutor N.K. Sankhala.

Patton was arrested at an airport on Aug. 13, a day after his mother, Cindy Iannarelli from Cecil, Pennsylvania, was found with her throat slit at a resort in the town of Osian in Rajasthan state.

Police have formally charged the teenager with murder and destruction of evidence. Patton denies the charges.

Patton's father, University of Pittsburgh business associate professor G. Richard Patton, who arrived in India over the weekend, attended Monday's court proceedings in Jodhpur, a tourist hub in Rajasthan. The judge granted Patton's request to meet his son in the juvenile home.

Sankhala said pretrial proceedings against Patton would be held Oct.11.

Dairy processors can make claims that their products are free of a synthetic growth hormone, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday in striking down parts of the state's rule on milk labeling.

Key parts of the state's labeling rule violated First Amendment rights to commercial free speech, a three-judge panel of 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled.

The Organic Trade Association and the International Dairy Foods Association sued the Ohio Department of Agriculture in 2008 over a state rule on how consumers are informed about whether milk is made from cows that were given a synthetic hormone.

The trade groups argued that the rule is too restrictive. It prohibits composition claims such as "antibiotic-free" and "pesticide-free," violating their free speech rights and impeding interstate commerce, the groups argued.

The appeals court reversed a lower court decision on the free speech issue, concluding that the state's ban is "more extensive than necessary to serve the state's interest in preventing consumer deception." The appeals court agreed with a lower court ruling that the rule does not impede interstate commerce.

The execution of a convicted rapist-murderer in California has been called off after rulings in state and federal courts, officials said Wednesday.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation removed Albert Greenwood Brown's execution from its calendar on Wednesday, a few hours after the California Supreme Court denied the state's request to proceed with the scheduled execution on Thursday night.

The state filed the request early Wednesday, after a federal court judge blocked Brown's execution Tuesday night. The execution would have been California's first since 2006, when challenges to the constitutionality of lethal injection forced the state to revise its measures.

Justices on the Arkansas Supreme Court sharply questioned the state attorney general's office Thursday, asking what damage could be done if a judge examined evidence that allegedly exonerates an inmate sentenced to death for killing three Cub Scouts in 1993.

"What harm is there in allowing (inmate Damien Echols) to present all evidence?" Special Justice Jeff Priebe asked senior assistant attorney general David Raupp.

Raupp responded: "The harm is to the criminal justice system's interest in finality and the work that gets done in evaluating whether justice can be served."

Echols, 35, has been on Arkansas' death row since he was 20 years old, sentenced to death for the 1993 killings of 8-year-olds Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore. He's maintained his innocence since his arrest and argues that he would be acquitted if retried on the charges.

The state Supreme Court upheld Echols' conviction in 1996, and Echols filed a new appeal after the court granted him permission to test DNA evidence from the crime scene, where the boys were found beaten, nude and hog-tied.

An Israeli court has rejected an Irish Nobel Peace Prize laureate's appeal against her deportation orders over entering Israel while being banned from the country.

Mairead Corrigan Maguire was detained at an airport lockup earlier this week for violating the conditions of her ban imposed in June, when she tried to reach Gaza aboard a blockade-busting ship.

At the time, Maguire was told she couldn't return for 10 years except with special approval.

The district court rejected her appeal Friday but gave her 48 hours to allow time for a Supreme Court appeal.

The 66-year-old Maguire is an outspoken champion of Palestinian statehood. Israel has banned other pro-Palestinian activists from entering, including Jewish-American linguist Noam Chomsky in May.

A California appeals court ruled Thursday that psychiatric and other confidential records of Franciscan friars accused of sex abuse should be made public.

The ruling from the 2nd District Court of Appeal is significant for clergy abuse victims who have been fighting for the public disclosure of records that the Roman Catholic church kept of abusive clergy.

The ruling arose from lawsuits filed against the Franciscan Friars of California Inc. by 25 plaintiffs alleging sexual abuse at the hands of friars.

Those plaintiffs settled for $28 million in 2006, but the settlement agreement also sought the release of records on six of the friars.

The trial judge found the social interests of protecting children from molestation outweighed the privacy rights of the friars, who then appealed the decision to make their psychiatric, medical and other records public.

An attorney representing the friars said Thursday's ruling robs the church — or any other organization dealing with children — of a way to find out if abuse is taking place without threatening the suspected abuser.

Priests or other employees who are molesting children may no longer discuss their crimes with a therapist or doctor because those records could now be made public, said Robert Howie, who represents the individual friars.