Florida

State must surrender Limbaugh records

An appeals court Tuesday ordered prosecutors to turn Rush Limbaugh’s medical records over to the courts and keep them sealed, pending further review of the case.

The Palm Beach State Attorney’s Office, which seized the records in November, must surrender them to the circuit court in West Palm Beach, said the 4th District Court of Appeal.

The appeals court also ruled that the American Civil Liberties Union could join the conservative radio commentator in fighting to keep the records private. The ACLU, an unlikely ally, joined the case Monday, supporting the claim that Limbaugh’s constitutional right to privacy had been violated.

State Atty. Barry Krischer has repeatedly insisted Limbaugh’s rights have been protected. A spokesman, Mike Edmondson, said Tuesday that investigators have followed state laws since prosecutors began their investigation last year, after Limbaugh’s former maid told them she had been supplying Limbaugh with prescription painkillers.

Florida

Giuliani firm to occupy former anthrax site

A consulting firm run by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani plans to create a decontamination business that will be headquartered in the former supermarket-tabloid building targeted in one of the anthrax attacks two years ago.

Giuliani Partners will join with Sabre Technical Services, the company that decontaminated two post offices and a Senate Building after anthrax attacks in Washington, to form a new company called Bio-ONE, which will market expertise on anthrax-cleanup methods.

Bio-ONE will use the former offices of The National Enquirer in Boca Raton as its headquarters after decontaminating the building. The company will occupy the 65,000-square-foot former headquarters of American Media Inc. by early next year when the decontamination is complete.

San Francisco

Biotech crop plantings up 15 percent worldwide

Genetically engineered crop plantings increased 15 percent last year despite continued consumer resistance in Europe and elsewhere, according to a group that promotes use of the technology in poor countries.

Seven million farmers in 18 countries grew engineered crops on 167.2 million acres last year, compared with 145 million acres in 2002, according to a report released Tuesday by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications.

In 1996, the first year genetically modified crops were commercially available, about 4.3 million acres of biotech crops were under cultivation.

In all, some 18 percent of the world’s 3.7 billion acres under food-crop cultivation are biotech, the report said.

The most popular engineered crops contain bacterium genes that make plants resistant to either bugs or weed killers. Soy, corn and cotton continue to be the most popular crops to engineer.

Montana

Decision postponed on wolf protection

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service postponed a decision Tuesday on whether to drop federal protection for gray wolves, which were hunted nearly to extinction decades ago but have made a remarkable recovery since the 1990s.

The agency said the state of Wyoming had failed to submit an adequate plan for protecting the animals if the federal government were to step aside.

Joan Jewett, chief of public affairs for the wildlife agency’s Pacific Region in Billings, told The Associated Press that concerns with Wyoming’s plan “will need to be corrected before we can move forward with delisting.”

Gray wolves are protected under the Endangered Species Act. They were reintroduced in or around Yellowstone National Park beginning in 1995.