A former street preacher on trial for kidnapping and assaulting Elizabeth Smart suffered an apparent seizure in the courtroom Tuesday and was rushed to a hospital.

The judge adjourned the case for the day after defendant Brian David Mitchell was removed on a stretcher and put in an ambulance.

Paramedics took Mitchell to a hospital, but neither court officials nor defense attorneys would identify it. His condition could not immediately be determined.

However, court officials said later in the day the trial would resume Wednesday.

The incident occurred as the jury was about to be called into the courtroom for another day of testimony.

Mitchell was sitting between two of his defense attorneys when he stopped his daily hymn singing and slumped over slightly in his chair. He cried out — a long, loud moan — as his body twisted to the left.

Several Union City residents have filed a class action lawsuit against United Water on allegations that the company cheated customers by selling them useless warranties that do not cover repairs.

The warranties, which cost about $150 a year, are supposed to cover the repair of broken water pipes, sewer pipes and other items, the attorneys for three 18th Street plaintiffs, said. Although the application says "Guaranteed Acceptance" in large print, there are actually many exclusions, the attorneys said.

Multi-unit dwellings are actually excluded from the warranty, but that has not stopped United Water from marketing and selling the policies to the owners of multi-unit buildings, the lawsuit says.

The suit was recently filed in Bergen County Superior Court in Hackensack, where United Water is based.

Attorneys Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran held a press conference Tuesday at the courthouse. Afran estimated that if all New Jersey residents in a situation similar to the plaintiffs were to join the suit, and the suit was successful, it could cost United Water as much as $50 million.

The first in a series of Massachusetts slayings blamed on a serial killer has been resolved with a guilty plea.

Alfred Gaynor admitted Tuesday that he killed Vera Hallums. It was his eighth murder conviction and places the 43-year-old among the deadliest serial killers in Massachusetts history.

Hallums was bound and strangled in her Springfield apartment in April 1995. She was the first of several Springfield women killed over the next few years, most of whom were raped.

Gaynor received an eighth life sentence during his sentencing Tuesday in Hampden Superior Court.

He also has admitted to killing a ninth woman and leaving her toddler to die in her sweltering apartment, but has not been indicted in those cases.

A former vice president of the Democratic Republic of Congo has gone on trial for war crimes allegedly committed by his militia.

Jean-Pierre Bemba pleaded not guilty to three counts of war crimes and two counts of crimes against humanity as his trial opened at the International Criminal Court in The Hague Monday.

Bemba's trial is only the third to get underway at the court since it began work in 2002.

Prosecutors accuse Bemba of permitting his militia, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, to rape and murder civilians in the neighboring Central African Republic in late 2002 and early 2003. 

ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo told reporters Monday that the case will define the legal responsibility of a commander to control his troops.  He said the prosecutor's office is not arguing that Bemba personally committed the crimes or even ordered them -- but he said the troops who committed crimes were always under Bemba's authority and control. 

Bemba's lawyers say he had no command of the troops once they crossed the border into the Central African Republic and is not responsible for their crimes.

Bemba sent his fighters to the C.A.R. at the request of the country's then-President Ange-Feliz Patasse.  Patasse wanted them to fight a rebellion led by the country's former army chief of staff, Francois Bozize, who is now the C.A.R.'s president. 

Black farmers and American Indians who say the United States discriminated against them and took their money for decades are a step closer to winning long-awaited government settlements.

Under legislation passed by the Senate on Friday, black farmers who claim discrimination at the hands of the Agriculture Department would receive almost $1.2 billion. American Indians who say they were swindled out of royalties by the Interior Department would split $3.4 billion. Both cases have languished for more than a decade, and plaintiffs say beneficiaries are dying off.

"The Senate finally did the right thing," said John Boyd, head of the National Black Farmers Association. "They stepped up and told the world civil rights still matter in America."

The legislation was approved in the Senate by voice vote Friday and sent to the House. The money had been held up for months in the chamber as Democrats and Republicans squabbled over how to pay for it.

President Barack Obama praised the Senate for finally passing the bill and urged the House to move forward on it. He said his administration is also working to resolve separate lawsuits filed against the department by Hispanic and female farmers.

The Ohio Supreme Court will get a chance to determine the legality of the state's smoking ban after an appeals court ruled that state officials didn't overstep their bounds when they repeatedly cited a Victorian Village bar for violating Ohio's smoking ban.

Zeno's Victorian Village is fighting a two-pronged battle against the 2006 anti-smoking law, saying that it shouldn't apply to family-owned bars and that authorities are unfairly punishing bars for violating the ban rather than the smokers themselves.

On Tuesday, the Franklin  County Court of Appeals handed Zeno's a big setback. In a  3-0 ruling, judges overturned a trial court's decision that dismissed more than $30,000 in  fines against Zeno's. The trial  court concluded that authorities had singled out bars and  restaurants for penalties while  refusing to cite smokers who  violated the ban.

The February ruling by Franklin County Common Pleas Judge David E. Cain never affected how state and local health departments enforce the no-smoking law. As of the end of August, more than 2,500 fines had been imposed totaling nearly $1.2 million, according to the Ohio Department of Health. State and local officials had collected about $400,000 of that amount.