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.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals says sentencing juvenile convicted killers to life in prison without parole is not unreasonably harsh.

Chris Joshua Meadoux was 16 at time of a 2007 double slaying in San Antonio.

A jury sentenced the Hurricane Katrina evacuee to life in prison without parole for his capital murder conviction in the killing of 17-year-old Johnny You and 19-year-old Luis Martinez during a fight.

Meadoux and You were friends in Slidell, La., before their families evacuated after the 2005 hurricane.

The Austin American-Statesman reports an appeals court said Wednesday that juveniles may be less morally culpable, but some actions justify the penalty.

A Russian labeled the "Merchant of Death" by those who claim he fueled some of the world's deadly Third World conflicts over the last decade with powerful weapons has arrived in the United States. He faces charges he supported terrorists trying to overthrow the government of Colombia and shared their hatred for Americans.

Viktor Bout arrived late Tuesday at Westchester County Airport, in White Plains, N.Y., before he was brought to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan to await an initial court appearance expected Wednesday afternoon. A news conference with federal prosecutors and officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration was to occur in late morning.

Bout, 43, a former Soviet military officer and air cargo executive, was flown from Bangkok, Thailand, to suburban New York on a chartered U.S. plane just four days before an extradition order would have expired, permitting him to be freed and returned home to his native Moscow.

Instead, he was taken in manacles and a bulletproof vest as Russian diplomats made a final outraged push to persuade Thailand to release him, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The California Supreme Court has upheld the death penalty sentence for the killer of two Riverside County deputies in 1997.
Timothy Russell was sentenced 11 years ago for the ambush killings of 41-year-old James Lehmann Jr. and 33-year-old Michael Haugen. The deputies had responded to a domestic violence call in a remote desert area east of Cabazon when Russell opened fire with an M-1 carbine.

The Riverside Press-Enterprise says attorney's for Russell, who is now 50, claimed his death sentence should be overturned because the amount of time he was hiding, waiting for the deputies, was not enough duration to indicate he was trying to ambush them.

But the justices any time period of lying in wait was sufficient to warrant a death sentence.