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The justices will hear the retailer’s appeal that one sex bias claim should not be able to represent 1.5 million women and will consider halting an environmental suit against coal-fired power plants.

The Supreme Court announced Monday it would hear two major appeals from corporate America that seek to block mass lawsuits, one involving a huge sex bias claim against Wal-Mart and the other a massive environmental suit that aims to hold coal-fired power plants responsible for contributing to global warming.

In both cases, the justices agreed to consider stopping the suits before they could move toward a trial.

The move is only the latest sign that the court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is inclined to rein in big-money lawsuits against businesses. The conservative justices have been particularly skeptical of sprawling suits that could run on for years and lead to enormous verdicts.

In the global warming case, industry lawyers played up this theme. They cited the mass litigation over asbestos and tobacco and said the climate change suits, unless halted, could make those “look like peanuts.”

In the Wal-Mart case, the justices will decide whether the retail giant can be sued for sexual discrimination in the largest workplace class-action suit in the nation’s history. A federal judge and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco cleared the suit to proceed as a class action on behalf of as many as 1.5 million women who were employed at Wal-Mart in the last decade. The suit contends women were regularly paid less than men and denied promotions.

The justices will not decide whether Wal-Mart is guilty of bias. Instead, they will rule on whether a retailer must defend itself against a single lawsuit that speaks for more than a million employees.

Since 1966, the federal rules of civil procedures have allowed individual plaintiffs to sue as “representative” of a class of persons, but “only if there are questions of law or fact common to the class.” The lawyers who sued Wal-Mart said the company had a common corporate culture that reserved most management jobs for men. Wal-Mart disagrees and argues that because hiring and promotions decisions are made by individual managers in its 3,400 stores, the employees do not have a common complaint.

The issue of when a suit can proceed as a class action is of great interest to corporate lawyers and the trial bar. If a suit gets the go-ahead to proceed as a class action, companies feel pressure to offer a settlement rather than risk a potentially crippling jury verdict.

The global warming suit, if allowed to proceed, could be even more significant. It will determine whether judges can rule that pollution is a public nuisance and on that basis set limits on carbon emissions. The case to be heard by the court concerns power plants in the Midwest and South, but similar nuisance suits have been filed against the auto, oil, coal and chemical industries, asserting they should be held liable for contributing to climate change.

Environmentalists and lawyers for several states, including New York, California and Connecticut, have backed the suits. They are frustrated by the slow pace of progress in Washington and say the courts must act. David Doniger, policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate Center, said the justices should “keep the courthouse door open until the executive branch actually protects the American people” by curbing carbon emissions.

But lawyers for the Obama administration urged the high court to stop the global warming suit. They say addressing climate change is a “political question,” not a legal one, and it should be resolved by Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency, not through courts and lawsuits.

The high court gave environmentalists a big win in 2007 when it ruled that greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, were air pollutants under the Clean Air Act and subject to federal regulation. That decision cleared the way for the EPA to issue new rules limiting carbon emissions, including from vehicles. But the agency has not set new limits for old power plants, and Congress has been unwilling to adopt a broad climate change bill.

The power plant lawsuit was described as “opening a new frontier” in the climate change fight when it began in 2004. Eight states, New York City and several environmental groups filed suit against four private power companies and one federally run public utility, which they described as the “five largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the United States.” They won a preliminary victory last year when the U.S. Court of Appeals in New York cleared the suit to proceed.

In their appeal, lawyers for the power industry called the suit “breathtaking in scope” and “staggering” in its implications. It would allow a single judge to set nationwide rules for carbon emissions, they said. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she would step aside because she heard the case when it first came to the appeals court in Manhattan.

Two suicide bombers dressed as police officers detonated explosive vests at a meeting of hundreds of people with the top civilian official in the tribal agency of Mohmand, killing more than 40 and wounding at least 100, government officials said.

The meeting, called a peace jirga, had been assembled to plan strategy to stand up to the Taliban, who have carved out a haven in the strategic tribal region on the Afghan border, resisting a nearly two-year campaign by the Pakistani military.

Such attacks have by now become a familiar tactic. Insurgents have often struck with suicide bombers at meetings of government officials and tribal elders to prevent them from forming anti-Taliban militias.

At the time of the attack Monday, the compound was filled with hundreds of anti-Taliban tribesmen and tribal elders who were meeting with the top civilian official in the region, Amjad Ali Khan, who escaped unhurt.

“This was their pre-emptive to stall a possible military operation,” Mr. Khan said afterward. “But we are not deterred.”

The bombers had filled their suicide jackets with bullets, rather than ball bearings, to make them more deadly, leaving many of the wounded in critical condition. Dressed as local tribal policemen, they struck inside the compound that houses Mr. Khan’s regional headquarters.

One bomber struck near the office of one of Mr. Khan’s deputies; the other set off his explosives when guards tried to overpower him.

Among those killed were two journalists from Pakistani television stations. The wounded were taken to hospitals in Peshawar, the provincial capital adjacent to Mohmand.

“Mondays are public days and usually we have 2,000 to 3,000 tribesmen,” Mr. Khan said. “Thank God, it was prayers time. Otherwise the casualty figure would have been much higher.”

A mountainous, heavily forested area with easy escape routes to Afghanistan, Mohmand is a strategically important region where the Taliban have managed to organize men and weapons with relative ease.

The army has been fighting in Mohmand for nearly two years, but has so far had little success in clearing the area of militants.

A similar attack earlier this year also focused on officials and people who were trying to form a lashkar, or local militia, to stand up to the Taliban. In that attack, an insurgent detonated a car bomb, killing more than 60 people.

A private Swiss bank has agreed to pay up to $500 million to investors defrauded by convicted financier Bernie Madoff.

The trustee appointed to recover money for the notorious pyramid schemer’s victims on Monday said he reached an agreement with Geneva-based bank Union Bancaire Privee, and M-Invest Ltd., a corporation the bank set up in the Cayman Islands to invest with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC.

Trustee Irving H. Picard said the settlement is for no less than $470 million in cash and could reach $500 million. The deal was submitted for approval Monday with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. A hearing was scheduled for Jan. 6.

The deal was announced a day after Picard sued British bank HSBC seeking $9 billion in illicit earnings and damages. Picard alleged HSBC helped funnel more than $8.9 billion to Madoff through a dozen so-called feeder funds based in Europe, the Caribbean and Central America. He also says HSBC ignored warnings from its own accountants that Madoff’s phenomenal investment record was suspect.

“The UBP settlement agreement is the largest feeder fund bank cash settlement to date and the first major international bank settlement, two important milestones for the overall recovery initiative,” Picard said in a statement.

Last week, Picard sued JPMorgan Chase & Co. for $6.4 billion, charging the bank had a central role in working with the disgraced financier as he carried out his fraud. He has also pursued more than $30 million he claims Madoff’s family members squirreled away.

All of the funds recovered through the settlement will go to a fund set up for Madoff’s customers.

Madoff is serving a 150-year term in federal prison.

Harris County Judge Kevin Fine ordered the hearing last spring in response to a routine defense motion that judges typically reject. Fine, who stands out as a Democratic judge in deeply Republican Texas, declined to be interviewed but has indicated he’s aware of recent exonerations of death row inmates and his decision in the case will “boil down to whether or not an innocent person has actually been executed.”

Defense attorneys who filed the motions said they plan to call legal and academic experts who will detail how flaws in such things as eyewitness identification and confessions have led to wrongful convictions and sent innocent people to death row. The attorneys represent John Edward Green Jr., who is awaiting trial on charges he fatally shot a Houston woman and wounded her sister during a June 2008 robbery. The hearing could last up to two weeks.

Fine originally responded to the motion by declaring the death penalty unconstitutional. The decision surprised many Texans and generated a storm of criticism from Republican Gov. Rick Perry and others. The judge then clarified his ruling, saying the procedures the state follows in getting a death sentence are unconstitutional. Then he rescinded his ruling and ordered the hearing, saying he needed more information before making a final decision.

Fine has said he believes capital punishment is constitutional and the hearing will focus only on the specific issues raised by Green’s attorneys.

Still, his actions seem to be in contrast to the beliefs of many Texans who consider the death penalty a fitting punishment for the worst kind of crimes. And, the hearing is being held in Harris County, which includes the state’s largest city, Houston, and has sentenced more people to death than any other Texas county — 286 since executions resumed in 1982. One hundred fifteen of those have been executed.

While anti-death penalty groups have lauded Fine, those in favor of capital punishment have called him misguided.

Prosecutors with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office unsuccessfully tried to get him removed from the case. While they declined to comment before the hearing, they said in court documents that Fine has shown “antagonism against the death penalty” and they doubted he could be impartial.

Fine stands out among Texas judges: He sports dense tattoos and has said he’s a recovering alcoholic and former cocaine user.

Green’s attorneys say the hearing is not a referendum on whether Texas should have a death penalty. But they do plan to bring up the cases of Cameron Todd Willingham and Claude Jones, both of whose executions are being questioned.

Willingham was put to death in 2004 for burning down his Corsicana home in 1991 and killing his 2-year-old daughter and 1-year-old twins. His execution is being questioned after several fire experts have found serious fault in the arson findings that led to his conviction.

Jones’ 2000 execution is also being questioned after a new DNA test showed a hair that had been the only piece of physical evidence linking him to the crime scene didn’t belong to him. Jones was executed for the 1989 killing of a liquor store owner during a robbery in a town north of Houston.