The 2-1 decision by a panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirms the same court's 2005 ruling striking down the law. The Supreme Court had ordered the appeals court to take another look at Virginia's statute after the ruling on the federal ban.

The appeals court cited a key difference between the federal and state bans on the procedure that abortion opponents call "partial-birth abortion." The federal law protects doctors who set out to perform a legal abortion that by accident becomes the banned procedure. The Virginia statute provides no such protection.

The state has two weeks to ask the full federal appeals court to review the ruling, or 90 days to appeal to the Supreme Court. The attorney general's office "is reviewing all possible courses of action," spokesman J. Tucker Martin said.

The state law is unconstitutional "because it imposes an undue burden on a woman's right to obtain an abortion," Judge M. Blane Michael wrote in the majority opinion, joined by Judge Diana Gribbon-Motz.

The court couldn't take up an apartheid dispute involving some of the nation's largest companies because too many of the justices had investments or other ties with those corporate giants.

It appeared to be the first time in at least a quarter-century that the justices' financial holdings prevented them from taking a case.

The result is that a lawsuit will go forward accusing dozens of corporations of violating international law by assisting South Africa's former apartheid government. The companies and the Bush administration had asked the court to intervene, arguing that the lawsuit was damaging international relations, threatening to hurt South Africa's economic development and punishing the companies using a fuzzy legal concept.

Four of the nine justices sat out the court's consideration of the case. Federal law calls for at least six to hear any case.

Short of the required number, the court took the only path available to it and upheld an appeals court ruling allowing the lawsuit to proceed.

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Stephen Breyer and Anthony Kennedy provided no explanation for their decision not to take part in the case.

But those justices have ties to Bank of America Corp., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Colgate-Palmolive Co., Credit Suisse, Exxon Mobil Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM and Nestle SA, among nearly three dozen companies that asked the high court to step in.

A federal appeals court wrestled with those kinds of questions Thursday when it considered placing restrictions on patent protections for business practices. The case under review is being closely watched by financial services and software companies.

The number of patents on tax preparation strategies, investment techniques and other business methods has surged since 1998, when the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit opened the door to such claims.

That increase has led to widespread criticism that many of the patents, including one about how to teach golf lessons, are frivolous and spur excessive litigation.

The Federal Circuit said in February that it would reconsider its decade-old decision in a case that many patent experts say is one of the most important in years. Depending on how broadly the court rules, the case could make it harder for investment banks and software companies to patent their products.

Hunt reported that Woodard grabbed him first, and repeated the falsehood to an FBI agent almost a year later. On appeal, Hunt said the evidence was insufficient to convict him of deliberate falsehood and that the 10-month sentence was excessive. A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed in an opinion filed Monday.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles convened Monday to hear the case of William Earl Lynd, who is scheduled to die Tuesday for fatally shooting his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore, two days before Christmas in 1988.

Lynd's attorney, Tom Dunn, is seeking a 90-day stay of execution as well as a commutation of his sentence.

The U.S. Supreme Court in April upheld Kentucky's lethal injection protocol, clearing the way for executions to resume in the roughly three dozen states that use that method.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved 2,370 warrants last year targeting people in the United States believed to be linked to international terror organizations.

That figure represents a 9 percent increase over 2006. The number of warrants has more than doubled since the terrorist attacks of 2001.

The secret intelligence court was established in 1978 to oversee government requests to conduct surveillance on suspected spies inside the U.S.

The court denied three warrant applications in full and partially denied one, the Justice Department said. Eighty-six times judges sent requests back to the government for changes before approving them.

Those oversight numbers also represent an increase over last year, when the court partially denied only one application and required changes to 73 applications.

Because the workings of the court are secret, however, it's impossible to know whether that increase was due to more court oversight, more aggressive government efforts or simply the nuances of individual cases.