The Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday affirmed a ruling that barred a woman from running for a city council seat because she doesn't speak English proficiently.

The state's highest court ruled that Alejandrina Cabrera's name shouldn't appear on the March 13 election ballot in San Luis but didn't list a reason for the decision. A full written ruling is expected at a later date, according to an Arizona Supreme Court spokeswoman.

The case brought widespread attention to the southern Arizona border city after Mayor Juan Carlos Escamilla filed a court action asking for a determination of whether Cabrera has the English skills necessary to serve a four-year term.

State law requires elected officials to know English, but Cabrera's attorneys claimed the law doesn't define proficiency in the language.

John Minore, an attorney for Cabrera, said his office is looking at ways to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cabrera's lawyers previously said the action against their client was politically motivated because of her efforts to recall Escamilla. Cabrera began circulating petitions to recall the mayor in April after the council hiked utility rates and approved the layoffs of 12 city employees as part of spending cuts.

Database software maker Oracle is rejecting a court-ordered award for $272 million from German rival SAP, saying it would rather have another trial over SAP's theft of software and customer-support documents.

A jury awarded Oracle Corp. $1.3 billion in the case in November 2010, but a federal judge cut that amount last September. Oracle said then that it would seek a new trial.

In a Monday court filing, the Redwood City, Calif., company says it rejected the award.

SAP AG has admitted that a now-closed subsidiary, TomorrowNow, pilfered Oracle's intellectual property. Oracle argued that this helped SAP undercut Oracle for similar services. SAP said it didn't make much use of the documents and should have to pay only $40 million.

Georgia's top court struck down a state law that restricted assisted suicides, siding on Monday with four members of a suicide group who said the law violated their free speech rights.

The Georgia Supreme Court's unanimous ruling found that the law violates the free speech clauses of the U.S. and Georgia constitution. It means that four members of the Final Exit Network who were charged in February 2009 with helping a 58-year-old cancer-stricken man die won't have to stand trial, defense attorneys said.

Georgia law doesn't expressly forbid assisted suicide. But lawmakers in 1994 adopted a law that bans people from publicly advertising suicide, hoping to prevent assisted suicide from the likes of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the late physician who sparked the national right-to-die debate.

The law makes it a felony for anyone who "publicly advertises, offers or holds himself out as offering that he or she will intentionally and actively assist another person in the commission of suicide and commits any overt act to further that purpose."

The court's opinion, written by Justice Hugh Thompson, found that lawmakers could have imposed a ban on all assisted suicides with no restriction of free speech, or sought to prohibit all offers to assist in suicide that were followed by the act. But lawmakers decided to do neither, he said.

The Mississippi Supreme Court said Wednesday it will take up the legal challenge to the pardons ex-Gov. Haley Barbour gave out in his last days in office.

State Attorney General Jim Hood, a Democrat, wants to invalidate dozens of the 198 pardons that Barbour, a Republican, handed out before his second four-year term ended Jan. 10. Ten of the people were still incarcerated when they received reprieves.

Only about two dozen of the people pardoned followed the Mississippi Constitution's requirement to publish a notice about their reprieves in their local newspapers for 30 days, said Hood, who wants the others invalidated. Barbour has said the pardons are valid and that he gave them because he's a Christian and believes in second chances.

Most of the people who could lose their pardons already served their sentences and have been out of prison for years. Some of them were convicted of comparatively minor crimes as far back as the 1960s and 1970s and have never been in trouble again.

Five of the pardoned are being held on a temporary restraining order issued by Hinds County Circuit Judge Tomie Green. The Supreme Court extended that order until it can rule on the matter. It set a hearing for Feb. 9 and said it would try to rule quickly.

A federal judge has ruled against a deep-sea exploration company in a dispute with Spain over 17 tons of silver coins recovered from a sunken 19th century Spanish galleon.

Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc., which found the treasure off the Portuguese coast in 2007, had requested a stay after a federal court in Atlanta ruled last year the explorers must give the treasure back to the Spanish government.

In an order Tuesday, a U.S. circuit court judge denied the company's motion for a stay.

In court documents, the exploration firm said it wanted to stay the proceedings until the U.S. Supreme Court could consider the case.

Odyssey had said in court filings that such a denial might mean Spain will keep the treasure forever. Spain's position is that it is not subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts, Odyssey said.

A Huxley woman accused of killing her newborn twin daughters and hiding their bodies in the trunk of her car has pleaded not guilty.

Jackie Burkle is charged with two counts of first-degree murder. She is being held on $1 million bond.

Her attorney entered a written plea of not guilty on her behalf Monday morning in Story County District Court in Nevada.

Police found the infants' bodies in the trunk of Burkle's car on Jan. 7 after receiving a call to check on her.

Court records show Burkle appeared pregnant at work at a Huxley convenience store Jan. 5. She no longer looked pregnant two days later, prompting a co-worker to call police.

Police have not released a cause of death or why Burkle gave birth at home.

A Wisconsin appeals court on Thursday denied the request for a new trial made by a man convicted in the grisly 1992 killing of a Green Bay paper mill worker.

Rey Moore, 65, was one of six men convicted of killing their co-worker Tom Monfils. His body was found in a pulp vat at the then-James River Corp. plant in Green Bay with a weight tied around his neck.

Moore's attorney, Byron Lichstein, of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, argued that the conviction should be overturned because of questionable testimony by prison inmate James Gilliam.

He had testified in 1995 that Moore told him he participated in a group beating of Monfils at the mill. But Gilliam later recanted and said Moore told him he actually tried to prevent the beating.

That change in Gilliam's testimony was not allowed at the trial. Lichstein argued that Moore deserved a new trial because that testimony would exonerate him.