U.S. District Judge Timothy Black has approved a previously disclosed $179 million settlement and entered a final judgment in a dispute between AK Steel and retirees at its Butler, Pa., steel plant.

The AK Steel retirees had filed a class-action lawsuit in June 2009 to stop the company from making changes to their health insurance benefits. It had started making retirees pay a portion of their premiums in January 2010.

West Chester-based AK Steel is the largest Dayton-area company, with more than $4 billion in revenue.

Under the terms of the settlement, AK Steel will continue to pay for the benefits through 2014 and also pay $91 million to two trusts to cover future benefits for hourly and salaries retirees.

In return, the company has been relieved of liability for any benefits after 2014, and the lawsuit was dismissed.

Hollis King and his two friends might be the unluckiest pot smokers in Kentucky.

The three men were sitting around King's apartment in Lexington, Ky., on a Thursday night in October 2005, when police officers knocked on the front door, then kicked it in. They did not have a search warrant.

The police were looking for a man who fled into an apartment building after selling cocaine to an informant. They heard a door slam in a hallway, but by the time they were able to look down it, they saw only two closed doors.

They didn't know which one the suspect had gone through, but, smelling the aroma of burnt pot, chose the apartment on the left.

Their quarry had gone into the apartment on the right. But in King's place, they found one person smoking pot and a small amount of cocaine and money, and arrested King and his friends.

King pleaded guilty to drug charges, but the Kentucky Supreme Court threw out the evidence against him and the conviction, ruling that the police did not have cause to burst into his home without a warrant.

Boston Scientific Corp.'s Guidant unit hopes to end a criminal case accusing it of failing to properly disclose changes made to some implantable heart devices when it appears in court Wednesday.

Guidant pleaded guilty last spring, but U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank rejected the deal because it didn't call for probation. Instead, the company agreed to pay $296 million in fines and forfeiture fees in what prosecutors said was the largest criminal penalty against a medical device company.

Guidant is accused of falsely reporting a change it made to one device in 2002 and failing to report a change it made to another in 2005 — leaving doctors and patients unaware of potentially dangerous problems. The company pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors: submitting a false and misleading report to the Federal Drug Administration about one defibrillator model and failing to notify regulators about a safety correction to another line of devices.

In rejecting the deal, Frank asked for more information about the company's compliance programs and community service. His options Wednesday include approving the agreement, imposing a different fine or requiring more supervision of the company.

In a document filed last week, defense attorney Daniel Scott wrote that Guidant had improved its compliance policies since 2005 and upgraded them further after Indianapolis-based Guidant was acquired by Natick, Mass.-based Boston Scientific in 2006.

A state appellate court has affirmed a first-degree murder verdict against a man who caused a fatal crash in Anaheim five years ago when a stolen stove fell from his truck.

The Fourth District Court of Appeal recently affirmed the conviction and sided with an Orange County judge that Cole Wilkins should be sentenced to 26 years to life. Wilkins had been convicted of first-degree murder. The decision was reported in the Orange County Register on Monday.

Prosecutors say Wilkins was hauling a stove he had stolen from a construction site, meaning the July 2006 death occurred while he was committing a felony.

Off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy David Stan Piquette tried to avoid the appliance, hit a truck and was crushed by a trailer full of cement.

A federal court has ruled that a Kuwaiti-born man may collect monetary damages from the city of Honolulu following claims that he was arrested based on unjustified suspicions of terrorism.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco refused to reconsider the case last week and ordered the U.S. District Court in Honolulu to determine the amount of damages that the city owes Mansour Arekat. A three-judge panel had ruled 2-1 in November that Arekat's civil rights were violated.

Arekat, 45, was arrested in 2003 without a warrant under a state mental health law allowing people to be taken into custody if they're deemed to be imminently dangerous, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Monday.

Arekat's attorney, Eric Seitz, said Honolulu police used the mental health law to detain Arekat for seven or eight hours before he was released without charges.

Seitz said Honolulu police officer Letha DeCaires suspected that Arekat might be a terrorist because he came from the Middle East. Also, a former employee at Arekat's security firm told DeCaires that Arekat was associated with terrorism and had model airplanes at his apartment that resembled airliners hijacked in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

A federal appeals court in Chicago has denied imprisoned former Illinois Gov. George Ryan's request to be freed on bail so he can spend more time with his terminally ill wife.

The court on Monday rejected the emergency motion filed by Ryan's attorneys last week after Lura Lynn Ryan was taken to intensive care suffering complications from chemotherapy.

Prison authorities did escort the 76-year-old to see his wife for two hours the same day she was admitted to the hospital. Prosecutors cited that clandestine visit as one reason judges shouldn't grant Ryan's release.

Former Gov. James Thompson, a Ryan attorney, says the defense now will ask Democratic President Barack Obama to commute Ryan's sentence from 6 1/2 years to the three years the Republican's already served for his 2006 corruption conviction.