The WTO on Wednesday dealt the European Union a painful blow in a transatlantic trade row over multibillion dollar subsidies for US and European aircraft, ruling some state support for Airbus illegal.

Rival US airplane manufacturer Boeing claimed a "sweeping legal victory" and said it would require Airbus to repay four billion dollars in illegal subsidies, a claim disputed by the European aerospace giant.

Bringing to a head one of the most bitter trade disputes between the two trading powers, the World Trade Organization disputes panel upheld parts of a US complaint in the marathon legal battle.

In a 1,200-page ruling made public for the first time, the global trade referee said EU states should halt some aid for the development and export of Airbus airliners.

It notably accepted three out of seven claims by Washington that key launch aid amounted to export subsidies, which are illegal under WTO rules.

A federal appeals court ordered a new trial Thursday for the former chief marketing officer of one of the nation's biggest food products distributors, saying errors by a judge make it necessary to dissolve the conviction and the seven-year prison term that followed.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the new trial for Mark Kaiser after concluding that the trial judge erred in his instructions to the jury in November 2006, resulting in a flawed trial.

Kaiser, 55, of Ellicott City, Md., has been free on bail since he was sentenced three years ago to seven years in prison.

A lawyer for Kaiser did not immediately return a telephone message for comment. Prosecutors also did not immediately comment.

Kaiser was convicted of securities fraud, conspiracy and false filing after prosecutors said he and others enhanced their own bonuses by boosting the company's earnings $800 million from 2000 to 2003 by reporting fake rebates from suppliers.

Kaiser worked for U.S. Foodservice Inc., a former subsidiary of supermarket giant Royal Ahold NV. Ahold sold U.S. Foodservice Inc. in 2007 to a group of buyout firms led by KKR & Co. LLP. Defense lawyers argued at trial that Kaiser was kept in the dark about any financial misdeeds that occurred at the company.

Netherlands-based Ahold's U.S. properties include the Stop & Shop and Giant supermarket chains. U.S. Foodservice is one of the largest distributors of food products in the country, providing to restaurants and cafeterias.

The Supreme Court won't stop a lawsuit that accuses the Vatican of transferring a priest from city to city despite repeated accusations of sexual abuse.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from the Holy See, the legal name for the Vatican.

The Vatican wanted the federal courts to throw out the lawsuit that seeks to hold the Roman Catholic Church responsible for moving the Rev. Andrew Ronan from Ireland to Chicago to Portland despite the sex abuse accusations.

Sovereign immunity laws hold that a sovereign state — including the Vatican — is generally immune from lawsuits.

But lower federal courts have ruled in this case that there could be an exception to the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act that could affect the Vatican. A judge ruled there was enough of a connection between the Vatican and Ronan for him to be considered a Vatican employee under Oregon law, and that ruling was upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Sacramento.

According to court documents, Ronan began abusing boys in the mid-1950s as a priest in the Archdiocese of Armagh, Ireland. He was transferred to Chicago, where he admitted to abusing three boys at St. Philip's High School.

Ronan was later moved to St. Albert's Church in Portland, Ore., where he was accused of abusing the person who filed the lawsuit now under appeal. Ronan died in 1992.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is paying $755,000 to settle a lawsuit with a former staff lawyer who accused the agency of blocking his investigation of a prominent hedge fund.

The SEC settlement of Gary Aguirre's wrongful termination claim resolved a long-running controversy that prompted scrutiny in Congress and by the SEC inspector general. The settlement was announced Tuesday by the Government Accountability Project.

Aguirre was fired by the SEC in September 2005. He went public in 2006 with allegations of interference by SEC officials in the probe of Pequot Capital Management and improper deference to a Wall Street executive whom Aguirre wanted to interview. That prompted an investigation by Republican staff of the Senate Judiciary and Finance Committees.

The SEC initially took no enforcement action in the case, which was started in 2004 and closed in 2006. The agency reopened it in January 2009 after documents emerged in a divorce proceeding showing that Pequot began paying $2.1 million to a key witness in the case in mid-2007.

Last month, Pequot and its founder and chairman, Arthur Samberg, agreed to pay a total of $28 million to settle the SEC's charges of insider trading of Microsoft Corp. shares. The SEC alleged that the hedge fund traded Microsoft shares on confidential information provided by a former employee of the technology giant whom it later hired.

Pequot, whose core hedge fund was liquidated last year, and Samberg, a well-known money manager and philanthropist, neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.

The $755,000 being paid to Aguirre represents his salary for four years and 10 months plus his attorneys' fees, according to the Government Accountability Project, a group that works with whistleblowers. The group said it may be the largest settlement of its kind.

Under terms of the settlement, which was approved by a judge at the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, Aguirre agreed to drop two related cases against the SEC.

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan says she considers recent high court decisions expanding gun rights to be "settled law."

Kagan was asked at her confirmation hearing about two recent decisions, including a 5-4 ruling Monday, which essentially guaranteed citizens' Second Amendment rights to have guns, no matter where they live.

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California decried growing gang violence in her state, saying officials need leeway to deal with it.

Kagan responded that "once a court decides a case as it did, it's binding precedent." And she said judges must respect a precedent unless it proves unworkable or new facts emerge that would change the circumstances of a case.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday extended gun rights to every state and city in the nation in a ruling involving Chicago's 28-year-old handgun ban.

By a 5-4 vote and splitting along conservative and liberal lines, the nation's highest court extended its landmark 2008 ruling that individual Americans have a constitutional right to own guns to all the cities and states for the first time.

The right to bear arms, under the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, previously applied to just federal laws and federal enclaves, like Washington D.C., where the court struck down a similar handgun ban in its 2008 ruling.

Gun rights have been one of the country's most divisive social, political and legal issues. Some 90 million people in the United States have an estimated 200 million guns.

The United States is estimated to have the world's highest civilian gun ownership rate. Gun deaths average about 80 a day, 34 of them homicides, according to U.S. government statistics.

The ruling, issued on the last day of the Supreme Court's term, was a victory for four Chicago-area residents, two gun rights groups and the politically powerful National Rifle Association.

It was a defeat for Chicago, which defended its law as a reasonable exercise of local power to protect public safety. The law and a similar handgun ban in suburban Oak Park, Illinois, were the nation's most restrictive gun control measures.

"We hold that the Second Amendment right is fully applicable to the states," Justice Samuel Alito concluded for the court majority in the 45-page ruling.