The California Supreme Court's refusal affirms a Bay Area Air Quality Management District limit on burning wood, fire logs or wood pellets on nights when air quality is expected to exceed public health standards.

The appeal was brought by Duraflame Inc., which argued that its logs burn cleaner than other fuel types and should be exempt from the ban.

Duraflame appealed to California's high court after losses in both Alameda County Superior Court and a state appeals court.

A divided Michigan Supreme Court has issued an opinion that would continue to prevent an energy company from discharging treated wastewater into the headwaters of the Au Sable River in Otsego County.

The 4-3 decision would deny the water discharge plan for Merit Energy Co. because the court's majority ruled it is "manifestly unreasonable."

The company already had abandoned the discharge plan and considered the case moot. A previous Supreme Court ruling would have prevented the discharge.

The new ruling, however, could set precedents for future environmental cases in which the state has issued permits.

Conservative justices who currently form the court's minority blast the more liberal majority for using a moot case to "reach desired policy results."

Gov. Mitch Daniels has appointed new judges in two central Indiana counties.

The governor's office says Daniels appointed J. Jeffrey Edens as judge of the Boone Circuit Court. Edens succeeds Justice Steven David, who was appointed to the Indiana Supreme Court in September. Edens has been serving as judge pro tempore since David's appointment.

Edens is a former Boone County chief deputy prosecutor and past president of the Boone County Chamber of Commerce.

Daniels also appointed David Riggins as a Shelby County Superior Court judge. Riggins succeeds Judge Russell Sanders, who announced his retirement in August.

A former lawyer for a financial adviser to celebrity clients was arrested Thursday on money-laundering charges filed in New York alleging he helped conceal the adviser's Ponzi-like scheme.

Attorney Jonathan Bristol pleaded not guilty Thursday in federal court in Manhattan. He was released on $1 million bond.

An indictment alleges that Bristol hid investor money stolen by Kenneth Starr — a one-time adviser to Wesley Snipes, Sylvester Stallone and Martin Scorsese — in secret escrow accounts.

Prosecutors say Bristol raided the accounts in January to pay $1 million to settle a claim by a disgruntled Starr client. They say another $100,000 was used to cover bills from Bristol's law firm.

In April, Bristol also used the escrow accounts to help Starr siphon $7 million in investors' money to buy Starr a five-bedroom, six-bath condominium, the indictment says. Prosecutors had previously alleged that $5.75 million of the total was stolen from a 100-year-old heiress.

Attorneys general in Arizona and Nevada filed civil lawsuits Friday against Bank of America Corp., alleging that the lender is misleading and deceiving homeowners who have tried to modify mortgages in two of the nation's most foreclosure-damaged states.

Bank of America violated Arizona's consumer fraud law by misleading consumers who tried to reduce their monthly payments to keep their homes, state Attorney General Terry Goddard said. The bank also violated the terms of a 2009 consent agreement requiring its Countrywide mortgage subsidiary to implement a loan modification program, the Arizona lawsuit alleges.

Hundreds of homeowners kept making their mortgage payments because Bank of America repeatedly assured them that their loans were being modified, Goddard said. Instead, many lost their homes anyway.

"Those people could have used that money for something else," Goddard told The Associated Press. "They were deceived into continuing to make mortgage payments when they had no hope of saving their homes."

Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto told the AP that the Silver State's lawsuit was a last resort to try to get the bank to change its ways. It was filed after several discussions with bank managers led to assurances but little more.