A Japanese court gave the go-ahead for the restart of two nuclear reactors Thursday after its operator said in an appeal they were safe.

The Fukui District Court in western Japan lifted an April injunction that was filed by a group of residents who said that a massive earthquake exceeding the facility's quake resistance could cause a disaster similar to the Fukushima crisis following the March 2011 quake and tsunami.

The order paves the way for a resumption of the Takahama No. 3 and No. 4 reactors, operated by the Kansai Electric Power Co.

The operator had already obtained approval of the safety regulators, and town and prefectural leaders expressed their support for a restart this month, just in time for the ruling. Two of Japan's 43 reactors are currently back online.

Thursday's decision minimizes the delay for the Takahama reactors, which had been set for restart late this year.

The utility plans to go ahead with loading fuel rods into the No. 3 reactor within days, and go through final safety checks before putting the reactor back online late January.

Takahama reactors could be a third and fourth to restart, while prospects for a fifth one, the Ikata reactor in Shikoku, southwestern Japan, are uncertain due to strong local opposition over evacuation plans in case of an emergency.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's pro-business government wants to restart as many reactors as possible. The government says nuclear energy should remain key for resource-poor Japan. Abe is also pushing to export Japan's nuclear technology and recently signed a nuclear agreement with India.

The American Civil Liberties Union said it plans to appeal a federal court ruling that upheld a technical college’s plan to force every incoming student to be tested for drugs.

Tony Rothert, legal director for the ACLU’s Missouri chapter, told the Jefferson City News Tribune that the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has given the organization until Jan. 4 to file a petition seeking a rehearing by either the same three-judge panel that issued the ruling earlier this month, or by all of the active 8th Circuit judges.

“We intend to request both,” Rothert said. “While rehearing is difficult to obtain, we are fortunate in this case to have a majority decision that is poorly crafted and departs from 8th Circuit and Supreme Court precedent.”

The ACLU filed the federal lawsuit in 2011 challenging a mandatory drug-testing policy Linn State Technical College’s Board of Regents approved in June of that year. The school since has changed its name to State Technical College of Missouri.

The lawsuit argued the policy violated the students’ Fourth Amendment right “to be secure . against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

When it started the program, the school said the testing policy was intended “to provide a safe, healthy and productive environment for everyone who learns and works at Linn State Technical College by detecting, preventing and deterring drug use and abuse among students.”

Under the policy, students had to pay a $50 fee for the drug test and could be blocked from attending if they refused to be tested.

U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey issued a ruling in September 2013 that limited the drug testing to five Linn State programs. But in its 2-1 vote earlier this month, the federal appeals court panel overturned her ruling as too narrow.

The former head of the Costa Rican football federation has pleaded not guilty in the U.S. after being charged in a sprawling investigation of bribes and kickbacks involving FIFA, soccer's governing body.

Eduardo Li pleaded not guilty during an initial appearance Friday in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn.

Authorities say Li was extradited to the U.S. a week after withdrawing his appeal against being sent. He was brought to New York on Friday.

Li's attorney says his client voluntarily returned to the U.S. and intends to fight the allegations.

About 20 soccer officials have been indicted on charges stemming from the U.S. investigation of corruption in the sport.

The North Carolina Court of Appeals has upheld last year's conviction of a former school teacher for molesting students repeatedly in the 1970s and 1980s.
 
The three-judge panel on Tuesday found no error in the trial of John Thomas Patterson of Mooresville. Patterson, who once worked at the former Mount Mourne Elementary School in Iredell County, is now serving life in prison.

Patterson had been a fourth-grade teacher at the school and resigned in the mid-1980s after the molestation accusations surfaced. Charges weren't filed until former students came forward at least 15 years later. About a dozen former students, now adults, ultimately testified at the trial.

The unanimous opinion rejected Patterson's appeal challenging both the jury instructions and the trial judge's refusal to dismiss the charges after evidence was presented.

A Chinese woman pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to have two other women take college admissions examinations in her place to help her get accepted to Virginia Tech.
 
Yue Zou acknowledged having her boyfriend contact a China-based test-taking service.

After that happened, Zou, of Blacksburg, Virginia, supplied her passport information through an online network known as QQ Chat, which enabled people in China to create in her name phony passports that were shipped to her in the United States.

On the passports were the photos of two other Chinese women, who took tests in the Pittsburgh area while pretending to be her.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jimmy Kitchen told the judge that Zou forwarded results from the Test of English as a Foreign Language, or TOEFL, to Virginia Tech in November 2013 and results of a Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT, taken by another Chinese impostor in March 2014.

Zou, from Hegang, a city in the Chinese province of Heilongjiang, paid an unspecified sum for the TOEFL and $2,000 for the SAT, Kitchen told a judge in U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh.

Zou, 21, faces up to five years in prison when she's sentenced in February. She could also be deported, though that will be handled by federal immigration officials in a separate proceeding.

Federal authorities haven't explained how they learned of the scheme.

Zou's attorney, Lyle Dresbold, told the judge that Zou will remain confined to her Blacksburg apartment with an electronic monitoring bracelet until she's sentenced. He told the judge she's still enrolled at Virginia Tech.

University spokesman Mark Owczarski said he could not comment on her status. But he said students found to have submitted work that is not their own to gain admission would face a range of possible sanctions, including expulsion, under the university's honor code.

Zou's TOEFL test was taken by Yunlin Sun, 24, of Berlin, Somerset County. She pleaded guilty in August and faces sentencing in December. Prosecutors say Ning Wei, from Taiyuan, in the Chinese province of Shanxi, took Zou's SAT. She hasn't been arrested, and prosecutors say they believe she returned to China.

Britain's High Court has ruled that the Uber app to hail minicabs is lawful ? a blow to London's famous black cab drivers, who argued that it violated city regulations.

The court's decision Friday came after Transport for London sought clarification as to whether the San Francisco-based company's app worked in the same way as meters used by the strictly regulated black cabs.

The Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association argued the app ? which records a car's location and travel time and feeds it back to servers in California ? worked like a meter.

But Justice Duncan Ouseley disagreed, ruling that the app relies on GPS signals and did not operate in the same way.

Uber has come under fire in several European countries, including France, Italy and Spain.