The Utah Supreme Court says state election officials must accept online petition signatures that are turned in to get individuals on the ballot.

The justices announced the unanimous decision Tuesday as voters went to the polls for primary elections.

The issue was raised by an independent candidate for governor. Farley Anderson's paperwork included more than 150 e-signatures and was rejected by the lieutenant governor's office.

Utah law acknowledges that electronic signatures are valid substitutes for handwritten ones, but the state attorney general's office argued that e-signatures could not be counted because election law only contemplates a paper-based system.

Farley's attorney argued that the state denied Farley his constitutional right to ballot access.

They span the ideological spectrum, including former clerks to Justice Antonin Scalia, the court's conservative icon, and to one of its most liberal stalwarts, former Justice William Brennan.

Vice presidential chief of staff Ron Klain is one of the signers, as are conservative lawyers Miguel Estrada and Peter Keisler, two of former President George W. Bush's failed judicial nominees.

Five members of a Midwest militia charged with conspiring to rebel against the government and use weapons of mass destruction will remain in jail while awaiting trial, an appeals court said Tuesday, reversing a decision by a federal judge.

Each man is dangerous and "no conditions of release will reasonably assure the safety of the community," two judges on the three-judge panel said.

During a series of raids in late March, authorities arrested nine members of a southern Michigan group called Hutaree. The government claims they were scheming to kill a police officer, then attack law enforcement who attended the funeral, in the first steps toward a broader rebellion.

Over prosecutors' objections, U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts had said they could await trial at home under strict conditions, including electronic monitors. The government later dropped its opposition to releasing four but took her decision on the other five to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Defense lawyers say the men legally possessed weapons and that any talk of killing people was simply stupid, hateful speech with no specific targets planned.

Food safety law firm Pritzker Olsen is preparing to file a lawsuit on behalf of a woman from central Illinois who was hospitalized in the Subway Salmonella Hvittingfoss outbreak.

“Our client ate a sandwich and ended up in the hospital. This should never happen in our country”
.The 52-year-old resident of Tazewell County is one of at least 97 people who have tested positive for the same strain of Salmonella in an outbreak linked to more than 40 Subway locations in 28 Illinois counties. Pritzker Olsen is in contact with other victims.

Attorney Fred Pritzker said the client ate an oven-roasted chicken sub on May 11 at the Subway on 603 Jackson Street in Morton, Illinois. She was hospitalized for several days after suffering gastroenteritis and cramping with severe vomiting.

“Our client ate a sandwich and ended up in the hospital. This should never happen in our country,” Pritzker said. “Stringent sanitation requirements should be in place all along the food chain, and federal and state health officials should be given the authority and money needed to enforce the laws. Large restaurant chains should require suppliers to regularly test for Salmonella and other dangerous pathogens.”

Pritzker Olsen is also representing victims of a shigellosis outbreak associated with the Subway restaurant in Lombard, Illinois. The firm filed a lawsuit in March of this year on behalf of one of the victims, a resident of DuPage County, Illinois, who battled a severe Shigella infection for two weeks. The Subway lawsuit alleges that the outbreak was caused by sick food handlers at the restaurant.

Although contaminated food was the source of this current outbreak linked to certain Subway restaurants in Illinois, health officials are concerned that sick food handlers may continue to spread Salmonella Hvittingfoss. To prevent this, the Illinois Department of Public Health is requiring food handlers in 46 Subway restaurants to have two consecutive test results that are negative for Salmonella Hvittingfoss before being allowed to return to work.

For more information, visit http://www.pritzkerlaw.com or contact Pritzker Olsen law firm at (612) 338-0202. Pritzker Olsen offices are located at Plaza VII, Suite 2950, 45 South Seventh Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55402.

A second man is expected to change his not-guilty plea in the arson fire that destroyed a predominantly black Massachusetts church hours after Barack Obama was elected president.

Thomas Gleason Jr. has a change-of-plea hearing scheduled Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Springfield. Gleason had been scheduled to go to trial on civil rights and other charges later this week.

His lawyer, Mark Albano, declined to comment when reached Monday.

Gleason is one of three white men charged with burning down the Macedonia Church of God in Christ on Nov. 5, 2008, the day after Obama was elected the nation's first black president.

Last week, Benjamin Haskell pleaded guilty in a deal that calls for him to spend nine years in prison.

A former vice president of an Iowa kosher slaughterhouse will be sentenced to 27 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $27 million restitution for his conviction on financial fraud charges, a federal judge said Monday.

Chief U.S. District Court Judge Linda R. Reade released the memorandum outlining the sentence she will hand down for Sholom Rubashkin during the former Agriprocessor's Inc. manager on Tuesday in federal court in Cedar Rapids.

A jury found Rubashkin guilty last fall on 86 federal financial fraud charges. Prosecutors had sought a 25-year sentence. Rubashkin's attorney, Guy Cook, said the sentence is longer than necessary and plans to appeal.

"It's unfair and excessive and is essentially a life sentence for a 51-year-old man," Cook said.

Cook said he spoke to Rubashkin Monday and he described Rubashkin as calm and focused.

Rubashkin oversaw the plant in Postville, Iowa, that gained attention in 2008 after a large-scale immigration raid in which authorities detained 389 illegal immigrants. The plant filed for bankruptcy months after the raid and was later sold. Prosecutors claim evidence of the massive fraud scheme was uncovered during an investigation by a court-appointed trustee.

Prosecutors later alleged that Rubashkin intentionally deceived the company's lender and that he directed employees to create fake invoices in order to show St. Louis-based First Bank that the plant had more money flowing in that it really did. But Cook tried to portray Rubashkin as a bumbling businessman who was in over his head, and who never read the loan agreement with First Bank.