Taiwan's High Court decided Thursday that former President Chen Shui-bian should remain in detention because he could flee if released pending his appeal of his conviction on corruption charges.

Chen has been detained in a Taipei jail since late 2008, and was sentenced to life in prison by the Taipei District Court earlier this month after being found guilty of embezzling $3.15 million during his 2000-2008 presidency from a special presidential fund, receiving bribes worth at least $9 million, and laundering some of the money through Swiss bank accounts.

Earlier this week, he was indicted on new charges that he pocketed US$330,000 from foreign affairs funds for personal use.

The High Court decided to keep Chen in detention for a further three months after a hearing Thursday, spokesman Wen Yao-yuan said.

After reviewing the case documents, "the court reckoned that he is still hiding huge amount of assets overseas ... and he is likely to flee (Taiwan) if free," Wen said. "So the court has decided to continue his detention."

Chen is appealing his sentence, but no trial date has been set by the high court.

Chen has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and has charged that he is being prosecuted for his anti-China views by the administration of current President Ma Ying-jeou. Ma, who has been eager to improve ties with Beijing, has denied the accusation.

A money-market mutual fund that held more than $60 billion before it notoriously "broke the buck" a year ago said Wednesday it will hand out $1 billion in a fifth distribution to investors from the fund's remaining assets.

The $1 billion distribution, the smallest of five partial payouts since the Reserve Primary Fund's collapse, will be made to shareholders on or about Oct. 2, said New York-based Reserve Management Co., which ran the fund.

After that payout, the fund will hold about $3.5 billion. The final distribution and its timing is tied up in a pending civil fraud case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Reserve Management and its two top executives.

At a hearing in New York on Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Gardephe said he was inclined to set a Dec. 23 deadline by which the bulk of the remaining assets should be distributed to the fund's thousands of shareholders.

The fund had held more than $64 billion shortly before Sept. 16, 2008, when its net asset value fell below the $1 level needed to ensure investors a dollar-for-dollar return of their principal put into the fund. The fund declared $785 million that it held in Lehman Brothers debt worthless after the investment bank's bankruptcy filing. That sank the fund's net asset value to 97 cents, leading to the fund's collapse as institutional investors demanded cash back and fund managers were forced to sell assets at steep discounts amid plunging markets.

A Guantanamo prisoner who held up a photo of President Barack Obama as a sign of hope at a war crimes court hearing last year said Wednesday he has lost faith that the American leader will be much different than his predecessor.

Ahmed al-Darbi, who told the court in December he hoped Obama would "earn back the legitimacy the United States has lost in the eyes of the world," said in a note passed to his lawyer that he is disappointed the Guantanamo prison remains open and the military court still holds hearings.

"I say to him now that he has gone astray," al-Darbi said.

Al-Darbi, 34, a Saudi who is charged with conspiracy and providing material support for terrorism, gave the note to his lawyer following a hearing at which a judge granted the Obama administration's request to delay all proceedings in his case for 60 days while the government completes a review of the system for prosecuting Guantanamo prisoners.

Obama is expected to shift some of the trials to civilian courts and has said he intends to close the prison in January. There are about 225 prisoners at the Guantanamo jail, which was created by President George W. Bush, and officials have not announced where they will be moved.

Federal prosecutors said Tuesday that a review of most accounts held by financier Bernard Madoff's customers when he was arrested shows that about half of the customers had not lost money because they withdrew more money than they originally invested.

Prosecutors made the revelation as they told a judge in court papers that there was no need to order restitution because all of Madoff's assets will be distributed to investors through forfeiture requirements.

As part of their filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, they summarized the findings of a court-appointed trustee who is calculating how much investors lost so it can be decided how to divide up assets that are recovered.

The government said a search of financial records, including microfilm records dating back to 1979, show that investors suffered net losses exceeding $13 billion. In all, 15,870 claims have been made to the trustee by those seeking a share of any recovered money.

The court document said there were approximately 8,094 customer accounts held by Madoff's private investment business from at least 2000 through December 2008. At the time of his Dec. 11 arrest, there were 4,902 active customer accounts, the government said.

Most of the customers who had current accounts have made claims with the trustee, prosecutors wrote. Of those, nearly 50 percent had a net loss, meaning they contributed more funds to their accounts than they withdrew, while about half had no net loss because they withdrew more funds than they contributed, prosecutors said.

A federal U.S. court has ruled in favor of critics of Monsanto Co's genetically engineered sugar beets, saying the U.S. government failed to adequately evaluate environmental and economic risks associated with the crop.

The U.S. District Court for the northern district of California ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) violated federal law by failing to prepare an environmental impact statement before deregulating genetically altered sugar beets.

Monsanto developed the biotech beets to be resistant to Monsanto's glyphosate herbicide Roundup, and promotes the sugarbeets as "Roundup Ready."

The plaintiffs include the Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance, Sierra Club, and High Mowing Seeds. The groups filed the lawsuit in January 2008.

About 1.1 million U.S. acres were seeded this year to Roundup Ready sugar beets in the fourth year of commercialized production.

Critics say the Roundup Ready beets are dangerous for the environment because they promote the emergence of "superweeds" or weeds that cannot easily be killed because they also develop a tolerance to weedkiller. They also say that organic and convential beet farmers are damaged because the genetically altered sugar beets are wind-pollinated and inevitably cross-pollinate related crops grown nearby.

The court found that USDA gave only "cursory" consideration to some of these concerns, failing to adequately consider the risks. The court has ordered the USDA to conduct a rigorous assessment of the environmental and economic impacts of the crop on farmers and the environment, and will evaluate other remedies in an October meeting of the parties.

A Florida jury has found a Miami-area special needs teacher guilty of abuse after authorities say she put hot sauce in an autistic student's soda.

Sylvia Tagle was convicted Tuesday. Authorities say she gave the spiked soda to the student to teach him a lesson. Tagle says the boy grabbed the soda from her desk when she was with other students.

Jurors found Tagle not guilty of three other charges, including pulling a student's hair. Her attorney says she's a strict but dedicated teacher who maintains her innocence.

Tagle taught at the Bob Graham Educational Center in Miami Lakes. Her sentencing is set for Oct. 7. She faces a maximum of five years in jail.