Developers of a proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm were cleared to move forward Tuesday when Massachusetts' high court rejected a claim that the project sidestepped local opposition to win a key permit.

Cape Wind project, a 130-turbine proposal that would be the nation's first offshore wind farm, was given permission last year by a state board to build power transmission lines through state waters. The Supreme Judicial Court backed that decision in a 4-2 ruling.

Cape Wind had gone to the state after a local board, the Cape Cod Commission, rejected in 2007 its request to build about 18 miles of undersea and underground transmission cables to connect to the regional electric power grid. The local board said Cape Wind hadn't provided sufficient information.

Opponents argued the state exceeded its powers and was trumped by the local ruling, but the court disagreed. It said that that interpretation would mean the state Energy Facilities Siting Board's authority applied everywhere but Cape Cod.

Cape Wind opponents also argued the state board was wrong to consider only the transmission lines' effect on Massachusetts, rather than the entire project's effect. But the court said that doing so would have essentially given the board the power to kill a project under federal jurisdiction.

Gay couples legally married in other states cannot get a divorce in Texas, where same-sex marriage is banned, a state appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The 5th Texas Court of Appeals ruled that a Dallas district court judge didn't have the authority to hear a divorce case involving two Dallas men who married in Massachusetts in 2006. Republican state Attorney General Greg Abbott's office had appealed after Judge Tena Callahan, a Democrat, said she did have jurisdiction and dismissed the state's attempt to intervene.

"Today's court of appeals decision overruled the district court's improper ruling, confirmed the constitutionality of Texas' traditional definition of marriage and correctly found that Texas courts lack the legal authority to grant divorces to same-sex couples," said Abbott spokesman Jerry Strickland.

Callahan also had ruled Texas couldn't limit marriage to a man and a woman, but the appeals court said the state's same-sex marriage ban was constitutional.

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A judge removed a juror from a trial in suburban Detroit after the young woman wrote on Facebook that the defendant was guilty. The problem? The trial wasn't over. Hadley Jons, of Warren just north of Detroit, could be found in contempt when she returns to the Macomb County circuit court Thursday.

Jons, 20, was a juror in a case of resisting arrest. On Aug. 11, a day off from the trial and before the prosecution finished its case, she wrote on Facebook that it was "gonna be fun to tell the defendant they're guilty."

The post was discovered by defense lawyer Saleema Sheikh's son.

Circuit Judge Diane Druzinski confronted Jons the next day and replaced her with an alternate.

"You don't know how disturbing this is," Druzinski said, according to The Macomb Daily.

A message seeking comment was left for Jons on Monday.

"I would like to see her get some jail time, nothing major, a few hours or overnight," Sheikh said. "This is the jury system. People need to know how important it is."

Sheikh's son, Jaxon Goodman, discovered the comment while checking jurors' names on the Internet. He works in his mother's law office.

Wal-Mart has petitioned the US Supreme Court to reconsider a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirming class action certification in a gender discrimination case, notes a Jurist report.

The company has asked the court to examine whether the Appeals Court's April ruling was proper under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Due Process Clause, the Seventh Amendment and Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23 (FRCP). Wal-Mart's position is that the class is overbroad and that the Ninth Circuit's decision is inconsistent with certification standards in multiple circuits.

Wal-Mart also contends that claims for monetary relief cannot be certified under FRCP 23, which it says only applies to claims to injunctive relief. The report states that the case was filed in 2001 by female Wal-Mart employees who contend that Wal-Mart's nationwide policies result in lower pay for women than men in comparable positions and longer waits for management promotions than men.

A mixed picture of U.S. banks emerged Tuesday as the industry posted its highest quarterly earnings in nearly three years while the number of troubled institutions grew by more than 50.

Banks overall made $21.6 billion in net income in the April-to-June quarter, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said. It was the highest quarterly level since 2007 and was led by the largest institutions. The industry lost $4.4 billion in the second quarter of 2009.

But the number of banks on the FDIC's confidential "problem" list increased by 54 in the quarter -- growing to 829 from 775 in the first quarter. Most of the banks that have failed this year have been smaller or regional banks.

The decline in bank lending stemming from the financial crisis showed signs of leveling off, the data show. Total lending declined by $107.5 billion, or 1.4 percent from the first quarter. It posted the steepest drop since World War II -- 7.5 percent -- in 2009 from the year before.