A New Mexico-based uranium producer plans to move forward with a mining operation in the western part of the state after that a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that its land is not part of Indian Country.

The full 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled in a 6-5 decision that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency erred when it determined that a parcel of land near the Navajo community of Church Rock was Indian land.

The decision means that Hydro Resources Inc. can seek an underground injection control permit from the state of New Mexico rather than the EPA, which has permitting authority on tribal lands.

Hydro Resources wants to inject chemicals into the ground to release uranium and pump the solution to the surface in a process called in-situ leaching.

The justices agreed to hear the state's appeal of a court order to reduce its inmate population by December 2011. The state argues that a panel of three federal judges overstepped its authority.

The administration of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger acknowledges the state's 33 adult prisons are filled beyond their intended capacity but says it has been making progress to improve health care for inmates. The case involves lawsuits that stretch back to 1990 and include repeated court findings of intolerable prison conditions that violate the Constitution.

At one point, a federal judge said incompetence and malfeasance in California's prison medical system was the cause of one inmate death per week. The prison health care system has operated under the authority of a court-appointed receiver since April 2006.

Nearly a year after he went from anonymity to notoriety, Michael Jackson's doctor returns to court for a pretrial hearing that will determine when he goes to trial and what he will be able to do in the meantime.

Dr. Conrad Murray is likely to face the usual placards and catcalls from Jackson fans denouncing him outside the courthouse and members of Jackson's family glaring at him inside the courtroom Monday.

First on the agenda will be Murray's fight to retain his California medical license. He has not been practicing in the state, but his attorney, Ed Chernoff, has maintained that loss of his license here would have a domino effect on his practices in Texas and Nevada.

Chernoff said in documents filed Friday that those two states have reached agreements to allow Murray to practice as long as he abides by a judge's order not to administer anesthetics such as propofol, which was blamed in Jackson's death.

St. James Anglican Church, a theologically conservative breakaway church, has waged a nearly six-year fight to keep the church property instead of returning it to the Diocese of Los Angeles.

St. James is one of several dozen individual parishes and four dioceses nationwide that voted to split from the national church after the 2003 consecration of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop.

State courts have sided with the Los Angeles diocese throughout the six-year legal case. The church lost its petition to have the case heard in the U.S. Supreme Court last year.

"We only have 15 minutes to make our arguments. It really is daunting," Yale Galanter said Thursday. "But what the public doesn't know is that there are hundreds of pages of briefs that have already been filed."

Simpson and convicted co-defendant Clarence "C.J." Stewart won't be in court when their lawyers tell a trio of justices that Simpson's fame — and his acquittal in the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman in Los Angeles — tilted the Las Vegas proceedings in favor of the prosecution.

Simpson, who turns 63 next month, has been working as a gymnasium janitor while serving nine to 33 years at a state prison in the northern Nevada town of Lovelock.

Stewart, 56, heads a music program while serving 7 1/2 to 27 years at High Desert State Prison, 45 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

It's unclear when the state's high court will rule.

But the federal court's Chief Judge Tena Campbell said Gardner failed to prove he could not get a "fair and impartial hearing" before Utah's Board of Pardons and Parole.

A two-day hearing before the board is set to begin on Thursday.

In court papers filed in U.S. District Court late Tuesday, attorney Andrew Parnes argued that the board's process was tainted because lawyers that represent the board work for the Utah attorney general's office — the same entity that sought Gardner's death warrant. Those state attorneys will also argue against the board commuting Gardner's death sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole.