NEW ORLEANS - The Federal Emergency Management Agency is requesting immunity from lawsuits filed on behalf of Gulf Coast hurricane victims who claim they were exposed to dangerous fumes while living in government-issued trailers.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt is scheduled to hear FEMA’s bid to be dismissed from a series of consolidated cases filed against the federal government and the companies that supplied FEMA with tens of thousands of trailers after Katrina and then Rita in 2005.

Lawyers for Gulf Coast storm victims accuse FEMA of negligence for sheltering them in trailers with elevated levels of formaldehyde, a preservative used in construction materials that can induce breathing problems and is believed to cause cancer.

In court papers,

DETROIT - Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was charged with exchanging romantic text messages with additional women in the scandal that has him fighting allegations that he lied under oath about an intimate relationship with his former chief of staff.

The Wayne County prosecutor’s office has determined that Kilpatrick sent and received text messages with "intimate or romantic content" to several women who were not his wife or former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty, an investigator's report said.

The office was able to locate and identify the women, but did not not list their names, the report said.

The allegations led the prosecutor’s office to amend current charges against the 38-year-old mayor. The amended complaint was signed by a district court magistrate and

NEW YORK - Testimony that could help clear executed American communist Ethel Rosenberg of charges she helped pass atomic secrets to the Soviet Union in the 1950s will remain secret, a judge ruled on Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein rejected a petition from the National Security Archive seeking the release of grand jury testimony by Ethel's brother, David Greenglass. Greenglass was a key prosecution witness in the famed 1951 spy trial that ended in the 1953 execution of Ethel and her husband, Julius Rosenberg.

The case, which has been described by Rosenberg supporters as a frame-up amid anti-communist McCarthyism hysteria and Cold War fear, hinged on Greenglass and his wife, Ruth Greenglass, fellow communists who became prosecution witnesses.

David Gree

SACRAMENTO - Union Pacific Railroad Co. said Tuesday it will pay $102 million to settle a federal lawsuit over damage from a massive California wildfire sparked by railroad employees in 2000.

U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said the settlement marks the U.S. Forest Service's largest ever damage recovery for a wildfire.

It also is the largest civil judgment for federal prosecutors in the region, which stretches from Bakersfield to Oregon and covers California's Central Valley and the Sierra Nevada.

Union Pacific spokeswoman Zoe Richmond said the Omaha, Neb.-based company agreed to settle after a federal judge ruled against it in February.

Sparks from welders repairing tracks caused the fire, which burned more than 52,000 acres in the Plumas and Lassen national forest

ORLANDO, Fla. - A sheriff's detective said a car driven by the mother of a missing 2-year-old Florida girl smelled of decomposition when investigators recovered it.

Casey Anthony's Pontiac was towed after being parked for days at an Orlando check-cashing business. Anthony's mother testified in court today that her daughter and granddaughter hadn't been home in weeks.

Corporal Yuri Melich said it appeared that a stain, some dirt and 2-year-old Caylee's hair were in the trunk.

Casey Anthony has been charged with child endangerment, making false official statements and obstructing a criminal investigation, but wants to be released on bond. Police say the 22-year-old has lied to them.

Casey Anthony's family said she was a good mother and never hurt Caylee.