The justices offer no comment on their action Monday, rejecting appeals in three separate cases, in favor of Dow Chemical, Monsanto and other companies that made Agent Orange and other herbicides used by the military in Vietnam.

Agent Orange has been linked to cancer, diabetes and birth defects among Vietnamese soldiers and civilians and American veterans.

The American plaintiffs blame their cancer on exposure to Agent Orange during the military service in Vietnam. The Vietnamese said the U.S.' sustained program to prevent the enemy from using vegetation for cover and sustenance caused miscarriages, birth defects, breast cancer, ovarian tumors, lung cancer, Hodgkin's disease and prostate tumors.

All three cases had been dismissed by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York.

The appeals court said that lawsuit brought by the Vietnamese plaintiffs could not go forward because Agent Orange was used to protect U.S. troops against ambush and not as a weapon of war against human populations.

The other two suits were filed by U.S. veterans who got sick too late to claim a piece of the $180 million settlement with makers of the chemical in 1984. In 2006, the Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 on whether those lawsuits could proceed.

The settlement came in a class-action lawsuit filed by the freelancers against publishers and database companies. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York had thrown the agreement out, but the high court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal of that decision.

The proposed settlement covers both freelancers who registered the copyright to their works and those who didn't. The appeals court said courts generally do not have authority over infringement claims on works that have not been copyrighted.

The lawsuit followed a Supreme Court ruling in 2001 that freelance writers have online rights to their work. The case largely applied to articles, photographs and illustrations that were produced 15 or more years ago, before freelance contracts provided for the material's electronic use.

The case is Reed Elsevier v. Pogebrin, 08-103.

Al-Marri has been held in a Navy brig outside Charleston, S.C. for more than 5 years since President George W. Bush declared him an enemy combatant.

He will now be transferred to Illinois to face trial in a civilian court on charges of providing material support to terrorism.

Before the indictment, the Al-Marri case was headed to the Supreme Court.

The court is considering whether the president has the authority to order the arrest of terror suspects in the United States and hold them indefinitely without bringing charges.

American-born Christopher Paul was to be sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost after pleading guilty in June to one count of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction in terrorist attacks.

Paul, 44, was accused of joining al-Qaida in the early 1990s and helping teach fellow Muslim extremists how to bomb U.S. and European targets. Prosecutors agreed to drop charges of providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to provide support to terrorists.

The Justice Department accused Paul and two other men of discussing terrorist attacks during an August 2002 meeting at the Caribou Cafe coffee shop in Upper Arlington.

The other two also pleaded guilty: Nuradin Abdi in 2007 in connection with an alleged plot to blow up an Ohio shopping mall, and Iyman Faris in 2003 in connection with an alleged plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge.

The court reversed a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The San Francisco-based appeals court had ruled the telecom company was setting its wholesale prices so high that an Internet service provider could not compete with the low prices AT&T charged in the retail market.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit, LinkLine Communications Inc., buys access to AT&T's transmission lines. Linkline then competes with AT&T in selling high-speed Internet access.

"Under these circumstances, AT&T was not required to offer this service at the wholesale prices the plaintiff would have preferred," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.

Roberts was joined in his opinion by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito. Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens and David H. Souter concurred only with the judgment.

The ruling does not end the case. The justices sent the case back to a trial judge, who can decide whether AT&T was charging too little for its product in hopes of running its competitors out of business.

The case is Pacific Bell Telephone Co. d/b/a AT&T California v. LinkLine Communications Inc., 07-512.

The court found all three guilty of forced marriage, marking the first time the charge has been handed down in an international tribunal.

Issa Sesay and Morris Kallon, two top leaders of the Revolutionary United Front, were found guilty on 16 of 18 counts. They include sexual slavery, forced marriage, amputation, murder and the enlistment of child soldiers.

Augustine Gbao, a battlefield commander, was found guilty on 14 of the 18 counts.

The convictions mark the end of the Special Court that was set up after the country's disastrous civil war. The rebels were infamous for amputating the arms of victims, as dramatized in the film "Blood Diamond."