A federal appeals court on Thursday tossed out a $5 million verdict against protesters who carried signs with inflammatory messages like "Thank God for dead soldiers" outside the Maryland funeral of a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the signs contained "imaginative and hyperbolic rhetoric" protected by the First Amendment. Such messages are intended to spark debate and cannot be reasonably read as factual assertions about an individual, the court said.

A jury in Baltimore had awarded Albert Snyder damages for emotional distress and invasion of privacy. The 2006 funeral of Snyder's son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder in Westminster, Md., was among many military funerals that have been picketed by members of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas.

Albert Snyder's attorney, Sean E. Summers, said he and his client were disappointed.

Property rights advocates who fought to keep the city of New London from taking homes by eminent domain say the city's failure to develop the land is poetic justice. But city officials say the land's fate was victim of the bad economy.

Susette Kelo and six other homeowners fought for years to keep New London from taking their homes. The city won the right to buy the land in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 2005.

Officials hoped for more than 3,000 new jobs in the development. But today, there's only a state park and a handful of new jobs.

Federal prosecutors said Tuesday that a review of most accounts held by financier Bernard Madoff's customers when he was arrested shows that about half of the customers had not lost money because they withdrew more money than they originally invested.

Prosecutors made the revelation as they told a judge in court papers that there was no need to order restitution because all of Madoff's assets will be distributed to investors through forfeiture requirements.

As part of their filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, they summarized the findings of a court-appointed trustee who is calculating how much investors lost so it can be decided how to divide up assets that are recovered.

The government said a search of financial records, including microfilm records dating back to 1979, show that investors suffered net losses exceeding $13 billion. In all, 15,870 claims have been made to the trustee by those seeking a share of any recovered money.

The court document said there were approximately 8,094 customer accounts held by Madoff's private investment business from at least 2000 through December 2008. At the time of his Dec. 11 arrest, there were 4,902 active customer accounts, the government said.

Most of the customers who had current accounts have made claims with the trustee, prosecutors wrote. Of those, nearly 50 percent had a net loss, meaning they contributed more funds to their accounts than they withdrew, while about half had no net loss because they withdrew more funds than they contributed, prosecutors said.

A federal U.S. court has ruled in favor of critics of Monsanto Co's genetically engineered sugar beets, saying the U.S. government failed to adequately evaluate environmental and economic risks associated with the crop.

The U.S. District Court for the northern district of California ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) violated federal law by failing to prepare an environmental impact statement before deregulating genetically altered sugar beets.

Monsanto developed the biotech beets to be resistant to Monsanto's glyphosate herbicide Roundup, and promotes the sugarbeets as "Roundup Ready."

The plaintiffs include the Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance, Sierra Club, and High Mowing Seeds. The groups filed the lawsuit in January 2008.

About 1.1 million U.S. acres were seeded this year to Roundup Ready sugar beets in the fourth year of commercialized production.

Critics say the Roundup Ready beets are dangerous for the environment because they promote the emergence of "superweeds" or weeds that cannot easily be killed because they also develop a tolerance to weedkiller. They also say that organic and convential beet farmers are damaged because the genetically altered sugar beets are wind-pollinated and inevitably cross-pollinate related crops grown nearby.

The court found that USDA gave only "cursory" consideration to some of these concerns, failing to adequately consider the risks. The court has ordered the USDA to conduct a rigorous assessment of the environmental and economic impacts of the crop on farmers and the environment, and will evaluate other remedies in an October meeting of the parties.

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the state's plan to allow up to 17,500 video lottery terminals at horse racing tracks is subject to a statewide voter referendum.

The 6-1 ruling by the high court puts a potential dent in Ohio's plan to raise $933 million over two years. The money from the terminals was a key component in addressing a $3.2 billion shortfall in the state's new two-year budget for the fiscal biennium that began July 1 without raising taxes.

"While I am disappointed by this decision, we need to fully review the court's judgment before determining next steps," Ohio Governor Ted Strickland said in a statement.

"The Ohio Lottery Commission has modified its agenda for this afternoon's scheduled meeting, which was to include the video lottery terminal implementation rules, to ensure adequate time to fully review and understand the impact of the court's decision," he added.

The lawsuit was filed by LetOhioVote.org, a ballot issue committee, which argued that the state constitution requires voter approval of the gambling plan.

Two other lawsuits were subsequently filed in the Ohio Supreme Court, challenging actions taken by the governor and legislature earlier this year regarding the video lottery terminals.

In its ruling, the court rejected the state's position that the terminals were essentially part of the appropriation process with their revenue allocated to education and therefore not subject to any referendum. Justices also ordered Ohio's secretary of state to allow the plaintiff to pursue a referendum on the terminals.

The state Court of Appeals on Thursday struck down an Indiana law requiring government-issued photo identification for voters, overturning on state constitutional grounds a strict law previously upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Considered one of the nation's toughest voter identification laws, it requires that a state or federal photo ID card be presented at the ballot box. Critics have said it disenfranchises some poor, older and minority voters. Supporters contend it is needed to prevent voter fraud at the polls, which critics say is rare.

Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels called Thursday's 3-0 ruling "an act of judicial arrogance."

"It would be one thing if this thing had not already been litigated from the bottom up through the federal system, and multiple court rulings — including the Supreme Court of the United States — hadn't already spoken," Daniels said.

The Indiana Democratic Party previously challenged the law in federal court, saying it violated the U.S. Constitution. But the nation's highest court upheld 6-3 in April 2008.

The League of Women Voters then challenged the law in state courts, arguing it violated the Indiana Constitution by imposing a requirement on some, but not all, voters.

A Marion County judge dismissed the suit in December, but the League appealed, and this time a panel of judges ruled in its favor. In a 29-page ruling, Judge Patricia A. Riley wrote that the trial court must declare the law void because it regulates voters in a way that is not "uniform and impartial."

The judges held that it was irrational to require those who vote in person to verify their identities when those who vote by mail are not required to do so even though absentee voting is more susceptible to fraud. The panel also said the law arbitrarily gives preferential treatment to people who vote in nursing homes where they live because they aren't required to show a photo ID even though other elderly people who vote elsewhere must.

While the nursing home discrepancy could be remedied easily by requiring those residents to present ID, the treatment favoring absentee voters might require legislation to fix, the judges said.