Chiquita Brands International, Inc. has reached a plea agreement with the US Justice Department to settle claims that Chiquita paid approximately $1.7 million to a Colombian terrorist group between 1997 and 2004 to protect banana harvesting operations in Colombia, according to a criminal information filed by the DOJ in federal court Wednesday. Chiquita itself released an SEC filing Wednesday, which states, in part:

On March 14, 2007, Chiquita Brands International, Inc. ("the Company") entered into a plea agreement with the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Colombia and the National Security Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (together, the "government") relating to the previously disclosed investigation by the government into payments made by the Company's former banana-producing subsidiary in Colombia to certain groups designated under U.S. law as foreign terrorist organizations. Chiquita voluntarily disclosed the payments to the government in April 2003. Under the terms of the agreement, the Company will plead guilty to one count of Engaging in Transactions with a Specially-Designated Global Terrorist, and will pay a fine of $25 million, payable in five equal annual installments, with interest. The Company also will continue to cooperate with the government in any continuing investigation into the matter. As previously disclosed, the Company had recorded a reserve in 2006 of the full $25 million fine amount in anticipation of reaching a settlement with the government.

The agreement is subject to approval and acceptance by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

The payments were made to the United Self-Defense Forces (AUC) of Colombia, which in September 2001 was designated as a terrorist organization by the US government.

Testimony began Tuesday in the trial of a civil suit brought against Sudan by families of US military personnel killed in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. The families say Sudan has provided material support to al Qaeda since 1991, without which the attack that killed the US personnel would not have been possible. The 59 family members are seeking $105 million in damages. US District Judge Robert Doumar of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia has nonetheless indicated that the federal Death on the High Seas Act will likely apply, limiting the maximum damages the families could receive to $35 million.

Last month, Doumar denied a motion by Sudan to dismiss the suit based on the complaint's failure to connect Sudan with al Qaeda. An earlier motion to dismiss because the statutory limitations had passed was also dismissed. During the trial phase, the plaintiffs will try to prove that Sudan provided the terrorists with explosives, locations for training camps, and the cover of diplomatic pouches to transport materials. They will also allege that Sudan's New York consulate facilitated al Qaeda's 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Because the United States has listed Sudan as a sponsor of terrorism since 1993, Sudan cannot claim sovereign immunity.

A plan for a local ski resort to use treated wastewater for snowmaking has been rejected by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the plan will pollute the sites and violate Native American rights under the Religious Restoration Act of 1993, a March 13 story in The Arizona Republic reported.

The Arizona Snowbowl has been seeking approval to use recycled water for snow for over a year; last January a federal district court ruled against Indian tribes opposing the plan. The tribes appealed and presented their case to the Court of Appeals last September, the story said.

The tribes believe the recycled water would be harmful to the mountain's deities and that the treated water could come from mortuaries, according to the story.

Judge William A. Fletcher wrote in the court decision: "To get some sense of equivalence, it may be useful to imagine the effect on Christian beliefs and practices — and the imposition that Christians would experience — if the government were to require that baptisms be carried out with 'reclaimed water," the story reported.

The ski mountain's owner, Eric Borowsky, said, "Snowbowl intends to vigorously pursue further judicial review."

The US Supreme Court overturned a 2002 obstruction of justice conviction against Arthur Andersen for its involvement in the fallout of Enron, but the ruling did not come in time to save the accounting firm which is no longer in operation.

Berndt, 56, owns the Maverick Farm in Sharon, a 16,000-tree property that's one of the largest maple producers in the state. He's planning on sugaring another 20 years before passing the property on to his children or a conservation group. But warmer winters are threatening to cut the tapping season over the next several decades and, with the migration of Southern tree species, crowd out maples over the next century.

What to do? Berndt, a member of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, heard about the environmental groups' lawsuit against two U.S. government agencies - the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corp. - for investing $32 billion in taxpayer money in overseas subsidies to such energy companies as Exxon Mobil Corp., General Electric Co., Halliburton and the now-defunct Enron.

According to the lawsuit, the two federal agencies should have followed the National Environmental Policy Act and reviewed the projected impacts of the resulting oilfields, pipelines and coal-fired power plants.

Had the government done so, it would have realized that the greenhouse-gas emissions from the subsidized fossil-fuel projects equal one-third of the nation's yearly output and almost 10 percent of the world's total, the lawsuit says.

Because scientists blame such gases for global warming, the review would have required the agencies to consider investing in alternatives such as renewable energy and efficiency projects.

Berndt supports such efforts. And so he and his wife, Anne, decided to join several other citizens and cities including Boulder, Colo., and Oakland, Calif., as plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

"We're trying to stimulate some change in policy," he says. "The United States needs to be a leader in the world to bring solutions to climate change."

Berndt isn't the only Vermonter involved in the lawsuit. The Burlington law firm of Shems Dunkiel Kassel & Saunders is representing all the plaintiffs.

"What we're asking for isn't novel," lawyer Ronald Shems says. "We're hoping federal agencies start complying with federal laws."

And stop fueling global warming, Berndt adds.

"If my wife and I have no maple trees, we have no farm income, and the aesthetic value of the land will also be devastated," he says in court papers. "If climate change has the predicted impacts, we should start culling trees now as the timber market will become saturated rather quickly once maples start disappearing in large numbers. However, like many people, we are in denial because it is too depressing to consider the loss."

Lawyers argued the case in U.S. District Court in San Francisco last April. The hearing came after a judge rejected the government's claims that the case should be dismissed because the agencies hadn't taken any action subjecting them to judicial review and were exempt from the National Environmental Policy Act.

"We're just waiting for a decision," Shems says. "It can take a few weeks to approximately a year."

The government has declined to comment until a ruling is reached. Berndt, for his part, is hopeful, although he doesn't know how much time the maple industry has left.

"There are more people who are starting to get concerned," he says. "We know if we continue along the course we're on, ultimately at some point all the sugar makers will be out of business."

The Second Amendment to the US Constitution provides: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." Senior Judge Laurence Silberman wrote for the majority:

...the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. That right existed prior to the formation of the new government under the Constitution and was premised on the private use of arms for activities such as hunting and self-defense, the latter being understood as resistance to either private lawlessness or the depredations of a tyrannical government. In addition, the right to keep and bear arms had the important and salutary civic purpose of helping to preserve the citizen militia. The civic purpose was also a political expedient for the Federalists in the First Congress as it served, in part, to placate their Antifederalist opponents. The individual right facilitated militia service by ensuring that citizens would not be barred from keeping the arms they would need when called forth for militia duty. Despite the importance of the Second Amendment’s civic purpose, however, the activities it protects are not limited to militia service, nor is an individual’s enjoyment of the right contingent upon his or her continued or intermittent enrollment in the militia.

In dissent Judge Karen Henderson, a Reagan appointee, countered that the Second Amendment did not properly apply to the case, as prior caselaw, statute, and the Constitution itself recognized that the District of Columbia is not a state subject to the jurisdiction of the Bill.