Without a grounds crew, the Laramie Colts water down the infield before their game with the Fort Collins Foxes at Cowboy Field in Laramie, Wyo. The teams play this summer in the Mountain Collegiate League.

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DES MOINES — The Iowa Supreme Court struck down a state law meant to ensure that American Indian children are placed with tribal families when their parents give them up for adoption.

Ruling in a Woodbury County case, the high court said the law interferes with fundamental parental rights. It sent the case back to a lower court to determine the outcome under federal laws.

"The state has no right to influence her decision by preventing her from choosing a family she feels is best suited to raise her child," the court said.

The case involves a mother identified only as Shannon, who lived in Sioux City and became pregnant in 2005. Court records said she's a member of the Tyme Maidu Tribe of the Berry Creek Rancheria, located in California.

She chose a non-Indian family in Arizona as the adoptive family, and tribal leaders sought to intervene.

GARY — Moving railroad tracks to make way for longer runways at Gary-Chicago International Airport could cost as much as $45 million, an airport authority lawyer says.

The Northwest Indiana Regional Development Authority could be asked to fund up to $18 million of the project, attorney Patrick Lyp said Thursday.

Contacted after the meeting, airport director Chris Curry said a firm figure to move the tracks won't be known until final engineering is done.

Initially it was estimated that it would cost $27 million to move the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway tracks, which are 130 feet from the end of the main runway, Curry said. That runway is being lengthened to 8,900 feet.

But two other railroads involved in the move have since agreed to move their tracks north to make room for expanding a second runway.

LANSING — Gov. Jennifer Granholm as expected vetoed a bill that would have let motorcyclists ride without helmets in Michigan.

She announced the veto Friday. Granholm vetoed a similar bill in 2006.

The latest bill had some differences from the previous version. But Granholm said her concerns about safety and insurance costs remain the same.

DULUTH — The research team looking into a rare cancer in Minnesota's Iron Range says it wants to meet often with mine workers and retirees.

Fifty-nine men in northeastern Minnesota have died of mesothelioma, which strikes the lining of the lung. That's twice the expected rate of the disease.

The University of Minnesota's School of Public Health is leading the investigation, drawing on a database of 72,000 miners. One part of the complicated effort is figuring out just how much rock dust workers have been exposed to.

UNIVERSITY CITY — Police are searching for a Torah valued at $30,000 that was stolen from a St. Louis-area synagogue.

The handmade scrolls have been missing from the Congregation Bais Menachem-Chabad in University City since May 24. The Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, is the holiest document in Jewish life.

BISMARCK — North Dakota's Highway Patrol commander says troopers report drivers are slowing down on the interstates in North Dakota, possibly because of high gas prices. But troopers say speeding citations are up on other highways in the state.

AAA says the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline in North Dakota is around $4 a gallon.

Highway Patrol commander Col. Mark Nelson said troopers have issued 400 fewer citations from March to May this year compared with the same period last year on the interstates.

But Nelson said the trend is not the same on roads with a 55 mph, 65 mph, or 70 mph speed limit, where troopers issued more speeding tickets from March through May compared with last year.

BATAVIA — A public library in southwest Ohio has sharply limited use of its meeting rooms following a lawsuit over meetings with religious purposes.

The Clermont County Public Library in the county east of Cincinnati will allow only library programs in its meeting rooms.

The 10-branch system changed a policy that had allowed meetings of such outside groups as the Boy Scouts, but prohibited political, religious or social events.

A suit filed last week in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati claimed a couple's First Amendment rights to free speech were violated when they were blocked from holding a free financial-planning seminar because they planned to quote from the Bible.

SLAVE LAKE, Alberta — An Alberta judge has ruled that a serial criminal who admitted to killing four people while driving drunk is not a dangerous offender.

Instead, Raymond Yellowknee was declared a long-term offender in provincial court in Slave Lake on Thursday and will face a sentence of 20 years in prison — less four years credit for time served — with an additional 10 years of supervision after his release.

Yellowknee, 35, pleaded guilty in 2006 to four counts of impaired driving causing death as well as to criminal flight from police and driving while suspended.

Yellowknee has amassed a total of 71 offenses and has been out of jail for only one year since he was 18.