Mike Sackett remembers what he thought when he saw the eye-popping fines of more than $30,000 a day that the Environmental Protection Agency was threatening to impose on him over a piece of Idaho property worth less than one day's penalty.

"If they do this to us, we're going to lose everything we have," Sackett said.

The EPA said that Sackett and his wife, Chantell, illegally filled in most of their 0.63-acre lot with dirt and rocks in preparation for building a home. The agency said the property is a wetlands that cannot be disturbed without a permit. The Sacketts had none.

They say they considered walking away from the property, near scenic Priest Lake, and a difficult fight with the federal government. Instead, they went to court and now the Supreme Court is hearing their case, with implications well beyond their property.

The justices are considering how and when people can challenge the kind of order the Sacketts got. The EPA issues nearly 3,000 administrative compliance orders a year that call on alleged violators of environmental laws to stop what they're doing and repair the harm they've caused.

Major business groups, homebuilders, road builders and agricultural interests all have joined the Sacketts in urging the court to make it easier to contest EPA compliance orders issued under several environmental laws.

A Rhode Island judge on Tuesday denied a request by West Virginia University to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Big East Conference over the university's bid to make a quick exit for the Big 12.

Providence County Superior Court Judge Michael Silverstein rejected all of the university's arguments for dismissal.

The school had argued the Rhode Island courts did not have the authority to decide the matter and should defer to the courts in West Virginia, where the first civil suit was filed in this dispute.

The university also claimed it can't be sued in Rhode Island because it has sovereign immunity as an agency of the state of West Virginia and was not properly notified by the Big East of its lawsuit.

Court spokesman Craig Berke said the timetable for future legal proceedings in Rhode Island has not been determined.

The Big East's lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and an order that West Virginia stay in the conference for 27 months.

West Virginia accepted an invitation from the Big 12 in October and hopes to join in time for the 2012 football season.

Since then the school and Big East have each sued the other and filed motions to dismiss the other's lawsuits. A West Virginia judge earlier this month refused to dismiss a university lawsuit against the Big East.

Court records indicate a man plans to plead guilty to federal weapons and methamphetamine charges in south Mississippi.

The indictment in U.S. District Court in Gulfport says Anthony Justin Necaise, who also goes by Anthony Joseph Necaise, was a felon in possession of a firearm in coastal Harrison County on June 9, 2008. He's charged with making meth the same day. A change of plea hearing is set for Jan. 3.

The government also is seeking the forfeiture of three .22 caliber rifles, a 410 gauge shotgun and ammunition.

Emmanuelle Maria's breasts were burning and globules of silicone gel were protruding into her armpits. Her implants had exploded inside her. Yet her doctors, she says, told her nothing was wrong.

Now, she wants the French government to tell 30,000 women to get their implants removed — at the state's expense — to call attention to their risks and save others from potential pain and indignity.

Prompted by calls from implant wearers and leading doctors, French health authorities are considering a drastic and unprecedented move: recommending mass surgery to rid the country of a type of breast implant that investigators say was secretly made with cheap industrial silicone whose medical dangers remain unclear.

Governments around Europe are hanging on France's decision Friday. Tens of thousands more women in Britain, Italy, Spain and other European nations are walking around with the same pre-filled implants, made by the now-defunct French company Poly Implant Prothese, or PIP.

Health officials from several European countries held a conference call Wednesday to discuss the implants, Portugal's Director-General of Health, Dr. Francisco Jorge, told The Associated Press. European Commission spokesman Frederic Vincent said no decisions were made, but France informed the others of the situation.

As he works to rev up his conservative base in Iowa with just two weeks to go until the state's caucuses, Newt Gingrich is launching a full-throated assault on a reliable GOP target: judges.

There is little love for the judicial branch among the Republicans seeking the White House. But Gingrich's ridicule has been, by far, the sharpest and the loudest. And it's taken a central role as his campaign struggles to stay atop polls in Iowa, a state where irate social conservatives ousted three judges who legalized same-sex marriage.

"I commend the people of Iowa for sending a strong signal that when judges overreach that they can find a new job," Gingrich told about 200 supporters who turned out to hear him speak in Davenport, Iowa, on Monday.

Gingrich has suggested that judges who issue what he termed "radical" rulings out of step with mainstream American values should be subpoenaed before Congress to explain themselves before facing possible impeachment. As president, he said, he'd consider dispatching U.S. marshals to round up judges who refuse to show voluntarily. In extreme cases, whole courts could be eliminated.

In the final debate before voters weigh in at the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, Gingrich called the courts "grotesquely dictatorial." He cast the fight in stark religious terms reminiscent of the culture wars, in which a secular, legal elite was encroaching on religious liberties.

The targets of Gingrich's strongest derision: the West Coast's 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a perennial punching bag for the right, and a federal judge in Texas who banned prayer in a public school.

A psychologist says an alleged Islamic extremist who has admitted killing two U.S. airmen at the Frankfurt airport earlier this year is mentally fit and can be held criminally responsible for his actions.

Psychologist Norbert Leygraf testified Monday to a Frankfurt state court that 21-year-old Arid Uka, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, suffered from no mental illnesses at the time of the March killing and remained in fine mental health, the dapd news agency reported.

Uka faces a possible life sentence if convicted of two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder.

Uka has confessed to the killings, saying he was trying to stop U.S. servicemen from going to Afghanistan. Under German law the court still has to review all the evidence.