SEATTLE - The city's insurance company has agreed to pay $1 million to settle claims from about 175 people who were wrongly arrested during a peaceful World Trade Organization protest in 1999.

The case went to trial in January, and a federal jury found Seattle liable for violating the protesters' constitutional rights by arresting them without probable cause. The settlement, announced Monday, avoids a damages phase to determine how much the city owed, and it resolves the last outstanding claims against the city from the protests.

"The police can respect the constitutional rights of protesters and at the same time protect the public safety,'' said Mike Withey of Washington, D.C.-based Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, which brought the lawsuit.

As part of the settlement, which a federal judge must approve, the city will seal the arrest records and ask any law enforcement agencies that received copies to expunge them, Withey said. Each protester will be eligible to receive $3,000 to $10,000, and some of the settlement will be used to pay legal fees.

City Attorney Tom Carr said the city believes it would have won an appeal.

"However, the city's insurance company decided to settle the case rather than to continue to fund the appellate litigation,'' Carr said in a news release.

The insurance company is National Union, said Carr's assistant, Ruth Bowman. The company did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

The trial stemmed from the mass arrest of protesters at a downtown park, where they were sitting and singing patriotic anthems. That week, 50,000 demonstrators had swarmed Seattle, overwhelming police and closing down parts of the WTO meeting.

The park was in a "no-protest'' zone established by the mayor, but officers made no effort to determine whether the protesters had other legitimate reasons to be there before making the arrests, the jury decided.

In a pretrial ruling, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ruled the city had made the arrests without probable cause. Arrest reports were not filled out properly, she noted.

The city agreed in the settlement to issue copies of Pechman's rulings in the case to police cadets and officers to help prevent unlawful mass arrests, Withey said.

Lead plaintiff Ken Hankin, a Boeing worker, said he was pleased the settlement had been reached but added that getting a few thousand dollars seemed paltry compared to the violation of his rights. He spent three days in police custody and wasn't released until the WTO meetings had ended.

"I lost my right to protest the WTO,'' he said. "That's something I feel very upset about.''

Seattle previously paid about $800,000 in more than a dozen WTO lawsuits and claims.

Dann accused the companies of making and selling lead paint even though they knew that it is harmful, and said they should be ruled in violation of the state's public nuisance law.

The other companies in the lawsuit are American Cyanamid Co., Armstrong Containers Inc., Conagra Grocery Products Co., Cytec Industries Inc., and Lyondell Chemical Co.

Reporters Without Borders (RWB) ranked the United States in 53rd place last October in its fifth annual Worldwide Index of Freedom. RWB mentioned Wolf's imprisonment among other factors contributing to the United States' slip of nine places in the rankings since the previous year.

A Baltimore man who attended an Islamist guerrilla training camp in Pakistan pleaded guilty in New York to a terrorism charge.

Mahmud Faruq Brent, 32, faces up to 15 years in jail at his July 10 sentencing, The Washington Post reported.

Brent, who is also known as Mahmud Al Mutazzim, was scheduled to go on trial April 24 with two other defendants. His lawyer, Hassen Ibn Abdellah, told the Post Brent didn't plan to testify against the other defendants.

Brent pleaded guilty Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to conspiring to aid a group on the U.S. terrorism list, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, by attending one of its training camps. He was arrested in 2005 and has admitted attending the camp in 2002, the Post reported.

Federal officials tied Brink, an Ohio native and former Washington taxi and ambulance driver, to Seifullah Chapman, a member of what prosecutors called the "Virginia jihad network," the Post said. Chapman was sentenced to 65 years in prison on charges that included conspiring to support Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Former Assemblyman Larry Bowler, a family advocate, said the court should defer to voters.

"At least four justices on that San Francisco bench are against the broad majority of California voters, who want marriage preserved and protected," he said. "The high court could deal a low blow to the voters by creating so-called 'same-sex marriages' in late 2007 or early 2008."
Liberty Counsel filed a brief representing Campaign for California Families. It challenged the assertion that protecting marriage is discriminatory.

"They aren't arguing for a minor change in marriage, but for a deconstruction of the entire institution of marriage," read a news release from the non-profit legal group. "The essence of marriage has always been the union of one man and one woman. We have never allowed any other human relationships to be united under the banner of marriage."

The victory may be only temporary, however. The high court twice previously has extended legal protections to prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. These individuals were seized as potential terrorists following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and only 10 have been charged with a crime.

Despite the earlier rulings, none of the roughly 385 detainees has yet had a hearing in a civilian court challenging his detention because the administration has moved aggressively to limit the legal rights of prisoners it has labeled as enemy combatants.

A federal appeals court in Washington in February upheld a key provision of a law enacted last year that strips federal courts of their ability to hear such challenges.

At issue is whether prisoners held at Guantánamo have a right to habeas corpus review, a basic tenet of the Constitution that protects people from unlawful imprisonment.