The publisher of The Wall Street Journal went to court Tuesday seeking to overturn a 31-year ban on the release of records about how much Medicare money individual doctors receive.

Dow Jones & Company Inc. filed papers in federal court in Orlando in an effort to end a prohibition that was implemented in 1979 following a successful lawsuit in Florida by the American Medical Association.

Dow Jones called the ban outdated and said it had limited the data reporters for The Wall Street Journal were able to obtain last year for a series of stories that examined abuses in the Medicare system.

"There is no legally supportable justification for maintaining a sweeping and obsolete injunction that for over thirty years has prevented the American public from knowing the true extent of Medicare waste, abuse and fraud," Dow Jones said in its filing.

The president of the American Medical Association said that members of the public could draw misleading conclusions from the data if it is released, given its complexity and "significant limitations."

"Physicians who provide care to Medicare patients are already subject to widespread governmental oversight," Dr. Cecil Wilson of Winter Park, Fla., said in a statement. "These federal agencies and contractors have access to the full range of Medicare data and are aggressively ferreting out improper claims."

The Supreme Court won't overturn the convictions of a suburban New York City couple convicted of enslaving two Indonesian housekeepers.

The high court on Tuesday refused to hear appeals from Mahender and Varsha Sabhnani that sought to overturn their forced-labor convictions.

The couple was convicted of enslaving two domestic servants the couple brought from Indonesia by keeping their travel documents and having them perform forced labor on their behalf.

Prosecutors said Varsha Sabhnani was primarily responsible for inflicting years of abuse on the poorly educated servants. They said her husband let the abuse take place and benefited from the work the women performed in their $2 million Long Island home.

Varsha Sabhnani says pre-trial publicity prevented her from getting a fair trial, while her husband argues that he shouldn't have been convicted for aiding and abetting because he didn't stop his wife.

A New Jersey Supreme Court justice who refused to participate in all decisions while a temporary judge is assigned to the bench has tempered his protest.

Justice Roberto Rivera-Soto said in an opinion published Wednesday that he will issue decisions in cases in which Judge Edwin Stern participates, so long as the judge's vote doesn't affect the outcome.

Rivera-Soto said he'll continue to defer a decision to vote in cases where Stern's position changes the outcome.

Rivera-Soto maintains it's unconstitutional to have a temporary justice on the court when a quorum of five is present. Chief Justice Stuart Rabner appointed Stern to fill a vacancy that occurred when Gov. Chris Christie did not reappoint Justice John Wallace in May, leaving the seven-member court one member short.

Democrats who control the state Senate have refused to consider Christie's choice to replace Wallace, corporate lawyer Anne Patterson.

A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked the Environmental Protection Agency from taking over greenhouse gas permits in Texas.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia issued the stay Thursday, pending further action by the court.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott had asked the federal appeals court in Washington to block the EPA from taking over greenhouse gas permits starting Sunday until the court could review the case.

The appeals court noted that order issuing the stay "should not be construed in any way as a ruling on the merits" of Abbott's motion.

Earlier last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had declined to issue a stay that would delay the EPA's plans as Texas' lawsuit against the federal agency moved forward.

A federal appeals court has blocked Texas' effort to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from forcing states to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Wednesday declined to issue a stay that would delay the EPA's plans as Texas' lawsuit against the federal agency moves forward. Texas is suing to stop the EPA from implementing a plan to regulate the gases that will start on Jan. 2.

The EPA took the unprecedented step this month of announcing it will directly issue permits to Texas industries after the state openly refused to comply with the regulations.

A spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry said he was disappointed with the court's ruling but confident that the state will prevail "in the end."

It's the most significant new tax law in a decade, but what does it mean for you? Big savings for millions of taxpayers, more if you have young children or attend college, a lot more if you're wealthy.

The package, being signed Friday by President Barack Obama, will save taxpayers, on average, nearly $3,000 next year.

But many families will be able to save much more by taking advantage of tax breaks for being married, having children, paying for child care, going to college or investing in securities. There are even tax breaks for paying local sales taxes and using mass transit, and a new Social Security tax cut for nearly every worker who earns a wage.

Most of the tax cuts have been around since early in the decade. The new law will prevent them from expiring Jan. 1. Others are new, such as the decrease in the Social Security payroll tax. Altogether, they provide a thick menu of opportunities for families at every income level.

"The tax code wants to encourage people to invest in their homes, invest in their education, invest in their retirement, and you have to know about all of these in order to take advantage of it," said Kathy Pickering, executive director of The Tax Institute at H&R Block.

As he travels about the city, assuring Chicagoans that he is one of them, Rahm Emanuel must be asking himself why he just didn't leave his house vacant when he went off to work in the White House. Or rent it to a buddy or a relative.

That's because a cornerstone of an expected legal challenge to his status as a Chicagoan — a challenge that, if successful, would knock him off the February ballot and out of the city's mayor's race — is that when Emanuel rented his house he broke the rule that a candidate must live in the city a full year before the election.

"He doesn't have a house. ... He's not a resident if (he's) renting the house," said Burt Odelson, a Chicago election attorney who said he's filing a challenge against Emanuel with the city's Board of Election Commissioners as early as Friday on behalf of several "objectors" who he would not name.

Emanuel has tried to diffuse any question over his residency since the day he said goodbye to President Barack Obama at the White House, telling Obama that he looked forward to returning to "our hometown" and even throwing in a reference to the Chicago Bears.

Since then, he's made his family's history in Chicago part of his narrative, from his grandfather who arrived here from Europe to his own children, the fourth generation of his family to call the city home. He's talked of his father's Chicago medical practice and his uncle who retired as a police sergeant after working in a part of the city that Emanuel represented in Congress.

In recent weeks, Emanuel and his staff have ramped up efforts to do away with the issue. His staff posted newspaper editorials and a letter of their own explaining why Emanuel is a resident on his campaign website, ChicagoforRahm.com. In a campaign television commercial, Emanuel shakes hands with residents and city workers while stressing he's a Chicago guy, coming home to run for mayor.