A federal court has given Chevron Corp. and driller Transocean Ltd. 30 days to suspend all petroleum drilling and transportation operations in Brazil until the conclusion of investigations into two oil spills off the coast of Rio de Janeiro.

The court says in a statement posted Wednesday on its web site each company will be fined 500 million reals ($244 million) for each day they fail to comply with the suspension.

About 155, 000 gallons of oil crude began seeping from cracks in the ocean floor at the site of a Chevron appraisal well in November. Two weeks later, the National Petroleum Agency said the seepage was under control. But in March, oil again started leaking and Chevron voluntarily suspended production in the field.

An appellate court on Tuesday tossed out Attorney General Pam Bondi's request for a decision to uphold the proposed privatization of 29 South Florida prison facilities.

A three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal rejected her plea to reverse a lower court's ruling against privatization, saying Bondi couldn't appeal on her own after her client, the Department of Corrections, declined to do so. The panel unanimously dismissed the case because Bondi was not a party.

"A party who suffers an adverse judgment in Circuit Court has the right to appeal, but nonparties whose rights have not been adjudicated have no right of appeal," Chief District Judge Robert Benton wrote for the court.

Leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature had urged Bondi to appeal after Gov. Rick Scott decided the department, which is part of his administration, would not.

One of Bondi's assistants acknowledged during oral argument last month that it was too late to carry out the privatization due to the expiration of a budget provision authorizing the plan. Nevertheless, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Glogau asked the appellate court to issue a ruling upholding the privatization provision that would set a precedent for future budgets.

The first legal test for Pennsylvania's tough new voter identification law is arriving.

A state Commonwealth Court judge will begin a hearing Wednesday on whether to block the law from taking effect in this year's election while the court considers a challenge to its constitutionality.

The hearing could last a week.

The law is the subject of a furious debate over voting rights as Pennsylvania is poised to play a key role in deciding the presidential contest in the Nov. 6 election.

Republicans say it's necessary to prevent fraud. But Democrats say it's an election-year scheme to steal the White House and contend that there's no track record of fraud that it would prevent.

Republican Gov. Tom Corbett signed the law in March without a single Democratic lawmaker supporting it.

A Pennsylvania state Supreme Court justice who is fighting political corruption charges has lost a request for her fellow justices to intervene in her criminal court case and require that an out-of-county judge preside over it.

The state Supreme Court issued the one-page order denying the request from suspended Justice Joan Orie Melvin on Tuesday. Melvin had sought to keep Allegheny County judges from hearing her case, complaining that one Allegheny County judge is married to a key prosecution witness, Lisa Sasinoski.

Melvin also had objected to a local district judge presiding over her preliminary hearing, saying the case may be too complex. Melvin asked her colleagues on the state Supreme Court to intervene after an Allegheny County judge denied her initial request.

A couple months before Brad Toft emerged as the only Republican in a crucial state Senate race, he pressed officials to seal records from a past court case.

In a signed letter, Toft seemed to suggest that he wasn't the same person cited in the court files, saying that he shared a name with one of the parties but arguing that "the specific identity of the defendant is unclear." He wanted the records blocked from public inspection, declaring that the files might do damage to his reputation.

Toft, however, acknowledged to The Associated Press that he was the defendant in the case, saying he was simply exploring whether an old judgment could be vacated.

Two former New Orleans police officers have asked a federal appealscourt to throw out their convictions on charges stemming from thefatal shooting of a man whose burned body turned up in HurricaneKatrina's aftermath.A three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also onWednesday heard the Justice Department's appeal of a judge's decisionto order a new trial for a third officer, Travis McCabe.McCabe was convicted of writing a false report on Henry Glover's 2005 shooting.The panel didn't indicate when it would rule.David Warren, who was convicted of shooting Glover withoutjustification, argues he shouldn't have been tried alongside otherofficers charged in the case, including Gregory McRae, who wasconvicted of burning Glover's body in a car.