The government for the first time has enforced environmental laws protecting birds against wind energy facilities, winning a $1 million settlement from a power company that pleaded guilty to killing 14 eagles and 149 other birds at two Wyoming wind farms.

The Obama administration has championed pollution-free wind power and used the same law against oil companies and power companies for drowning and electrocuting birds. The case against Duke Energy and its renewable energy arm was the first prosecuted under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act against a wind energy company.

"In this plea agreement, Duke Energy Renewables acknowledges that it constructed these wind projects in a manner it knew beforehand would likely result in avian deaths," Robert G. Dreher, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, said in a statement Friday.

An investigation by The Associated Press in May revealed dozens of eagle deaths from wind energy facilities, including at Duke's Top of the World farm outside Casper, Wyo., the deadliest for eagles of 15 such facilities that Duke operates nationwide. The other wind farm included in the settlement, Campbell Hill, is northwest of Casper.

Spain's National Court has ruled against extraditing back to Morocco a convicted Spanish pedophile whose release triggered protests in the North African country.

A court statement Monday said Daniel Galvan Vina would not be handed back because under a bilateral agreement Spain and Morocco do not extradite their citizens to each other. The court said, however, it would begin a process to ensure that Galvan serves out his sentence in a Spanish jail, something the convict had originally asked for.

Galvan was convicted of raping 11 children in Morocco and sentenced to 30 years prison in 2011. He was mistakenly pardoned by Morocco's King Mohammed VI in July but was arrested in Spain days later after the king rescinded his pardon following the protests.

Two men have pleaded not guilty to killing two Chinese graduate students who were shot as they sat in a parked car near the University of Southern California last year.

The Los Angeles Times says 20-year-old Javier Bolden and 21-year-old Bryan James entered the pleas Thursday to murder charges.

Prosecutors say the men killed engineering students Ming Qu and Ying Wu a mile from campus in April of last year while stealing their cellphones. Authorities say GPS data was used to track Wu's phone, leading to the arrests.

At a preliminary hearing last month, prosecutors played a recording of a wiretapped phone call between Barnes and Bolden, in which they apparently discussed the attack on the students.

The Supreme Court wrestled Wednesday with the appropriate role for religion in government in a case involving mainly Christian prayers at the start of a New York town's council meetings.

The justices began their day with the marshal's customary plea that "God save the United States and this honorable court." They then plunged into a lively give-and-take that highlighted the sensitive nature of offering religious invocations in public proceedings that don't appeal to everyone and governments' efforts to police the practice.

The court is weighing a federal appeals court ruling that said the Rochester suburb of Greece, N.Y., violated the Constitution because nearly every prayer in an 11-year span was overtly Christian.

The tenor of the argument indicated the justices would not agree with the appellate ruling. But it was not clear what decision they might come to instead.

Justice Elena Kagan summed up the difficult task before the court when she noted that "every time the court gets involved in things like this, it seems to make the problem worse rather than better."

The justices tried out several approaches to the issue, including one suggested by the two Greece residents who sued over the prayers to eliminate explicit references to any religion.

A carnival ride operator facing assault charges over injuries from a ride at the North Carolina State Fair made his first appearance in court Monday, with a prosecutor saying there are still unanswered questions about what happened.

Timothy Dwayne Tutterrow, 46, of Quitman, Ga., faces three counts of assault with a deadly weapon, inflicting serious injury. Each count is punishable by up to eight years in prison.

Wake County District Court Judge Keith O. Gregory declined a request during the brief hearing to lower Tutterrow's $225,000 bond. The defendant, dressed in an orange and white striped jumpsuit, was taken back to jail in handcuffs.

Wake Sheriff Donnie Harrison said investigators determined the ride had been intentionally tampered with to bypass critical safety devices, though authorities have provided no details of the evidence against Tutterrow.

The "Vortex" jolted into motion Thursday evening as people were exiting, dropping riders from heights eyewitnesses estimated at up to 30 feet.

Three people remained hospitalized on Monday with serious injuries, including a 14-year-old. Two others were treated and released.

Michigan's right-to-work law applies to 35,000 state employees, a divided state appeals court ruled Thursday in the first major legal decision on the much-debated measure eight months after it passed.

Judges voted 2-1 to reject a lawsuit filed by unionized workers who make up more than two-thirds of all state employees. In a state with a heavier presence of organized labor than most, thousands of protesters came to the Capitol late last year as the Republican-backed measure won quick approval in a lame-duck session.

The law prohibits forcing public and private workers in Michigan to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment, and applies to labor contracts extended or renewed after late March. It went to court after questions were raised whether it can affect state employees, since the Michigan Civil Service Commission, which sets compensation for state employees, has separate powers under the state constitution.

The court's majority said legislators have broad authority to pass laws dealing with conditions of "all" employment while the panel has narrow power to regulate conditions of civil service employment.

"In light of the First Amendment rights at stake, the Michigan Legislature has made the policy decision to settle the matter by giving all employees the right to choose," Judges Henry Saad and Pat Donofrio wrote, adding that legislators decided to "remove politics from public employment and to end all inquiry or debate about how public sector union fees are spent."

Dissenting Judge Elizabeth Gleicher said the court's decision strips the civil service panel of its "regulatory supremacy" clearly laid out in the constitution, which allows the four-member commission to regulate "all conditions of employment" for civil service workers.