Environmental groups challenging permits for a natural gas pipeline and export facility in south Texas lost a legal fight at a federal appeals court Thursday.

A panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved the “least environmentally damaging” alternative submitted during the permitting process.

The permit was granted for the project of Rio Grande LNG and Rio Bravo Pipeline Company. The rejected court challenge was filed by the Shrimpers and Fishermen of the RGV, the Sierra Club and a group called Save RGV from LNG. The groups announced their challenge in 2021, saying the project posed an environmental threat to low-income communities, shrimpers and fishers in the Rio Grande Valley region.

According to Thursday’s opinion, the groups argued that the permit violated the Clean Water Act. They challenged the Corps’ finding that the project’s disruption of environmentally vulnerable wetlands would be temporary and would not require mitigating action by the companies.

The 5th Circuit panel said the Corps considered studies showing that the area’s vegetation would return within a year of the project’s completion.

Hong Kong’s leader said on Monday he will ask Beijing to rule whether to let foreign lawyers be involved in national security cases after the city’s top court allowed a prominent pro-democracy publisher to hire a British lawyer for his upcoming trial.

John Lee said the government would ask for a postponement of Jimmy Lai’s high-profile trial that was due to start Thursday. But he did not offer a timetable for the interpretation that could effectively preempt the court judgment.

“At present, there is no effective means to ensure that a counsel from overseas will not have conflict of interest because of his nationality. And there is also no means to ensure that he has not been coerced, compromised, or in any way controlled by foreign governments, associations or persons,” he said.

The move was targeting overseas counsels who do not have the general practice qualification to carry out legal service in Hong Kong, he added.

Lai, the founder of the now-defunct Apple Daily and one of the most prominent figures in the city’s pro-democracy movement, was arrested after Beijing imposed a tough n ational security law to crack down on dissent following widespread protests in 2019. He faces collusion charges and a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

While the city’s secretary for justice was appealing an earlier ruling that approved Lai to hire a veteran British lawyer at the top court, pro-Beijing politicians and newspapers also voiced objections over the last few days.

An appeals court ruling could mean the end of a federal lawsuit filed by the parents of a Black teenager who was naked and unarmed when he was shot and killed by suburban Oklahoma City police in 2019.

Police said 17-year-old Isaiah Lewis was naked when he broke into an Edmond home in April 2019 and attacked two officers. He was fatally shot after a stun gun didn’t stop him, Edmond police said.

Attorneys for Lewis’ parents said the teenager was experiencing a mental breakdown when the officers “unjustifiably” shot him.

But a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver on Friday ruled in favor of Officer Denton Scherman, who fired the fatal shots, saying he was entitled to qualified immunity for his actions, the Oklahoman reported on Saturday.

Attorneys for Lewis’ parents could ask the full appeals court to reconsider the ruling.

An autopsy found Lewis sustained gunshot wounds to his face, thighs and groin. Toxicology tests showed he had detectable amounts of a common antihistamine called diphenhydramine and THC, the active ingredient of marijuana, in his system.

Utah-based Pacific Group Resorts, Inc., which owns five ski resorts, has won the auction to buy Jay Peak Resort, the Vermont ski area that was shaken by a massive fraud case involving its former owner and president.

The court-appointed receiver who has been overseeing Jay Peak for more than six years announced Thursday the results of Wednesday’s auction, with Pacific Group Resorts making the highest and best bid among the multiple bidders. The offer was not disclosed.

“We are pleased an experienced operating company like Pacific Group Resorts ended up with this great asset,” receiver Michael Goldberg said in a statement.

A federal court must approve the bid and a hearing is tentatively scheduled for Sept. 16, according to Goldberg. The sale is expected to close before the upcoming ski season, Goldberg said.

Pacific Groups Resorts, which owns Ragged Mountain Resort in New Hampshire and Powderhorn Mountain Resort in Colorado, as well as properties in British Columbia, Virginia, Maryland, had originally offered to buy Jay Peak for $58 million. Goldberg wanted to be able to continue to market the resort, and if there were qualified bids to hold an auction “in order to assure the highest and best offer,” according a court filing last month.

Vern Greco, PGRI’s president and CEO, said the company started pursuing the acquisition over three years ago.

“Jay has a high quality team of dedicated employees who have weathered the uncertainty of the receivership for a long time,” he said in a statement. “We look forward to bringing renewed stability to the property and its staff, we’re enthusiastic about the prospects for the resort, and we are delighted to be in Vermont which is an important market for any mountain resort operator.”

Former Jay Peak owner Ariel Quiros, former president William Stenger and Quiros’ adviser William Kelly were sentenced this spring to federal prison for their roles in a failed plan to build a biotechnology plant using tens of millions of dollars in foreign investors’ money raised through a special visa program.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the state of Vermont also alleged in 2016 that Quiros and Stenger took part in a “massive eight-year fraudulent scheme” that involved misusing more than $200 million of about $400 million raised from foreign investors for various ski area developments through the same visa program.

They settled civil charges with the SEC, with Quiros surrendering more than $80 million in assets, including Jay Peak and Burke Mountain ski resorts.

The man charged with killing his mother at sea in a plot to inherit millions of dollars has asked a federal court Wednesday to authorize his release from custody pending trial.

The attorneys for Nathan Carman filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Burlington saying the evidence against him is “tenuous at best” and he is not a flight risk or a danger to the community.

As conditions of release, Carman is willing to surrender his passport, submit to electronic monitoring and turn over all the money he has, $10,000, to a third party or post some of that money as bail, the filing says.

He has also been under criminal investigation for almost a decade and he has been facing civil litigation, but he has always shown up in court.

“At no time during that lengthy period has Mr. Carman ever attempted to threaten a witness, contact a witness inappropriately or sought to influence a witness in any way,” the filing says. “There is no evidence to support such a claim now.”

After Carman’s arrest, prosecutors argued he should be held because he poses a flight risk and is a danger to the community.

Carman has been held since his arrest in May when he was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of his mother, Linda Carman of Middletown, Connecticut, during a fishing trip off the Rhode Island coast. Her body has never been found.

He was also charged with multiple counts of fraud.

Authorities also alleged Carman killed his grandfather, John Chakalos, at his home in Windsor, Connecticut, in 2013 as part of a scheme to obtain money and property from his grandfather’s estate, but he was not charged with that killing.

The Wednesday motion says that during his eight years living in Vernon, Vermont, Carman led a quiet life with solid ties to the community, participating in town forums, attending a local church and had many local friends.

The Tennessee Supreme Court on Wednesday reinstated the new state Senate map drawn up by Republicans this year in redistricting, ruling that a lower panel of judges didn’t properly consider how blocking the map and extending the candidate filing deadline would harm elections officials and cause voter confusion.

The 4-1 ruling doesn’t take a stance on the lower court’s determination that the GOP-controlled General Assembly violated the state’s constitution by improperly numbering the new districts. Instead, the high court focused on timing arguments.

In last week’s split decision to block the maps while the case proceeds, the lower court panel gave lawmakers 15 days to fix the maps or an “interim apportionment map” would be imposed. Meanwhile, the filing deadline for Senate hopefuls was pushed back to May 5. The order came the day before the April 7 deadline. The primary election in Tennessee is Aug. 4.

The Supreme Court ruled that the May 5 change presented “a significant delay on the election process in this state,” and the court reset the Senate filing deadline to April 14.

“We conclude that the trial court erred by granting the injunction because it failed to adequately consider the harm the injunction will have on our election officials who are detrimentally impacted by the extension of the candidate filing deadline, as well as the public interest in ensuring orderly elections and avoiding voter confusion,” Chief Justice Roger Page wrote in the majority opinion.

Environmental groups are renewing efforts to stop exploratory drilling by a Canadian mining company hoping to build a gold mine in Idaho west of Yellowstone National Park.

The Idaho Conservation League and Greater Yellowstone Coalition, in documents filed in federal court last month against the U.S. Forest Service, ask that the case involving Excellon Idaho Gold’s Kilgore Gold Exploration Project in the Caribou-Targhee National Forest in Clark County be reopened.

Excellon Idaho Gold is a subsidiary of Toronto, Ontario-based Excellon Resources Inc.

The company says the area contains at least 825,000 ounces (23.4 million grams) of gold near the surface, and potentially more deeper. The company said it is looking at possibly building an open-pit mine if exploration finds that the gold is mostly near the surface, or an underground mine if the gold is deeper.

Those types of mines would require additional approval from the Forest Service.

The exploratory project was halted following federal court rulings in 2019 and 2020 concerning potential harm to Yellowstone cutthroat trout.

The Forest Service late last year approved a new plan put forward by the company involving road building and 130 drill stations.