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Reports that a North Carolina group overseeing payments to tobacco farmers from a 1999 settlement said it would appeal a judge's decision that cigarette companies did not have to make the last of those payments. Anger expressed by tobacco farmers when Judge Ben Tennille of the business court ruled that cigarette makers need not make those payments because the 1999 settlement was superseded by Congress's approval of a 10.1 billion dollar tobacco buyout.

Reports that the U.S. has reached an accord with the Shiites in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's approval of the Shiite-led transition government set to take over in Baghdad in June 2004.

With the financial system on the verge of collapse in late 2008, a group of troubled banks doled out more than $2 billion in bonuses and other payments to their highest earners. Now, the federal authority on banker pay says that nearly 80 percent of that sum was unmerited. In a report to be released on Friday, Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Obama administration's special master for executive compensation, is expected to name 17 financial companies that made questionable payouts totaling $1.58 billion immediately after accepting billions of dollars of taxpayer aid, according to two government officials with knowledge of his findings who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the report. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed Wednesday to set aside the convictions of two Dallas men wrongly imprisoned for capital murder. Christopher Scott, 39, and Claude Simmons Jr., 54, had been serving life sentences for the 1997 killing of Alfonso Aguilar until they were released last year after another man confessed to the killing and implicated a suspected accomplice, who was arrested in October and charged with capital murder. Mr. Scott and Mr. Simmons will each be eligible for a lump sum of about $960,000, plus lifetime payments of about $80,000 a year as compensation for time served. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Obama administration announced a $1.25 billion deal with black farmers on Thursday, possibly ending a years-long stalemate over charges of racial discrimination by the Agriculture Department. If approved by Congress, it would be the second round of damages stemming from a class-action lawsuit the government originally settled in 1999. The new money is intended for people who were denied earlier payments because they had missed deadlines for filing. The amount of money each would receive depends on how many claims were successfully filed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Medtronic said on Monday that it would pay more than $1 billion to buy two privately held heart valve companies. Medtronic, a medical device maker based in Minneapolis, said it agreed to buy CoreValve, a major player in the relatively new market for less-invasive valve replacement. Medtronic will pay $700 million as well as future milestone payments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]