Thirteen Somalis and a man from Yemen pleaded not guilty to piracy, kidnapping and firearms charges Tuesday in the February hijacking of a yacht that left four Americans dead.

They entered their pleas in federal court in Norfolk, where five other men convicted of piracy in a separate case last year had been sentenced to life in prison a day earlier.

"There's nothing I know about these charges. I do not admit that I was a pirate," Mohamud Salad Ali said through an interpreter Tuesday.

Each of the men requested a jury trial and all were ordered to remain jailed until then by Magistrate Judge Tommy Miller, who said they are a threat to society and a flight risk.

A trial has been set for May 17, although prosecutors want it pushed back because trying such cases is complicated.

Pirates have rarely been charged in the U.S. The case against the five Somalis sentenced Monday for attacking the USS Nicholas was the first to go to trial since the Civil War, when a New York jury deadlocked on charges against 13 Southern privateers.

A mayor in Utah says misdemeanor charges against the police chief appear to stem from a dog slaying last summer.

Parowan Mayor Donald Landes tells the Deseret News of Salt Lake City he believes the charges against Chief Preston Griffiths related to the shooting last July.

Griffiths was served Friday with a summons to appear March 22 in 5th District Court in Iron County on official misconduct and obstruction of justice charges. The case is being handled by Millard County prosecutors.

The 43-year-old Griffiths has been police chief since July 2003. The mayor says he's still on the job.

Griffiths hasn't commented on the charges.

Parowan animal control policies have been a hot topic since a resident shot two dogs he said were harassing his sheep in January 2010.

A California appeals court has sided with environmentalists in a decision that blames Los Angeles County and its flood control district for sending polluted runoff into the Pacific Ocean.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that the county is responsible for the heavily polluted storm water flowing untreated each year down the Los Angeles and San Gabriel rivers.

The Natural Resources Defense Council and Santa Monica Baykeeper environmental groups say the ruling is a turning point in the battle for clean water. Council attorney Aaron Colangelo says the county must now eliminate the flow of pollutants.

The Los Angeles Times says the Flood Control District argued its channels were simply conduits for upstream polluters, but the court says the district controls the flow to the ocean.

The owner of a Mason City home damaged in 2008 flooding has lost an appeal of his lawsuit against the city.

The Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed a district court judgment for the city in the lawsuit filed by William Plymat. He alleged the city's negligence caused $28,500 damage to his property.

The Mason City Globe Gazette says the city had installed culvert pipes near Plymat's home so rainwater and snowmelt could drain through the city's levee into the Winnebago River.

Automatic culvert valves were installed to prevent floodwater from the river from reaching nearby land.

An appeals court says a man hit by a New York City bus shouldn't get a $1.8 million jury award because he stepped into a street without looking.

Tuesday's ruling orders a new trial in Claude Williams' case. His lawyer didn't immediately return a telephone call Tuesday evening. New York City Transit declined to comment.

Williams suffered a concussion and other injuries in the September 2003 incident in Harlem. He said the bus ran a red light and was traveling too close to the curb.

The appeals panel noted that no witness testified that the bus went through a red light. But the judges said evidence did show Williams stepped into the bus' path without looking and wasn't in a crosswalk.

A man boasted of his parenting skills to a judge more than two years before being investigated in the killings of two young children whose bodies were found stuffed in luggage and dumped into a canal and in the death of their mother.

Clem Beauchamp's testimony and that of his then-girlfriend, whose body was found months before those of her son and daughter, was enough to convince a judge to allow his children from a previous relationship to live with him, before changing his mind a year later.

Now those children are in the state's hands as authorities work toward charging Beauchamp in the deaths of 25-year-old Felicia Brown, and her children, 10-year-old Jermaine McNeil and 6-year-old Ju'tyra Allen.

He was due in court Wednesday on an unrelated firearms charge, which authorities are using to keep him in custody while they wrap up their investigation into the slayings.

The children's bodies were found in separate bags in a Delray Beach canal last week. Their mother's body was found last August in a landfill, but was unidentified until last week.

Years before, in an Aug. 26, 2008, hearing in West Palm Beach, Beauchamp, now 34, described himself as a hard-working, involved father who dropped his children off at school and helped them with their education.