A former JetBlue flight attendant accused of cursing out an airplane passenger and then sliding down an emergency exit chute is due in a New York City courtroom.

Steven Slater is scheduled to appear today for a routine hearing on criminal-mischief charges.

Share Slater also was charged with reckless endangerment and trespassing after last month's meltdown aboard a JetBlue Airways Corp. flight from Pittsburgh that had just landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport. His lawyer has said the passenger's "lack of civility" prompted his behavior.

Defense attorney Daniel J. Horwitz says Slater is looking forward to his day in court.  Slater became water cooler talk for days after his Aug. 9 meltdown. Online groups canonized him as a hero or vilified him as a cranky brat.

The ruling may end a legal battle that has dragged on seven years after the slayings of Richard and Karla Van Dusen in Tierra Verde, near St. Petersburg.

William Deparvine was sentenced to death in 2006 for the killings, but continued to press his claim on a restored 1971 Chevrolet Cheyenne the slain man restored. Authorities say Deparvine forged a bill of sale for the truck, then killed the couple and tried to frame someone else.

The St. Petersburg Times reported that an appellate court panel on Friday upheld a judge's finding that Deparvine had no claim to the truck.

Attorneys for Cal Coburn Brown could now ask the full court to review the case or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Brown is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 10 for the 1991 torture and murder of 22-year-old Holly Washa, a Burien woman.

Brown is challenging, among other things, the state's new one-drug system for lethal injection.

The three-judge panel rejected his request for a stay in a 2-1 decision on Saturday.

Hemispherx Biopharma agreed Tuesday to settle all of the pending securities class actions against the biotechnology company that had been consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

The proposed settlement requires formal court approval.

Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Hemispherx (AMEX:HEB) of Philadelphia said the settlement will be paid from the company's insurance coverage and will not result in the payment of any funds by the company. The company said the settlement “expressly is not an admission of any culpability by Hemispherx or its officers.”

The series of lawsuits, according to documents Hemispherx filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, alleged the company and certain officers misrepresented the status of Hemispherx’s new drug application for Ampligen, an experimental treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome the company has worked on for more than three decades.

Last November, the FDA rejected the company’s new drug application for Ampligen and recommended the company conduct additional studies to demonstrate effectiveness. Hemispherx has stated it is continuing to work with the FDA to address the issues raised by the agency.

http://www.stockdestiny.com/entry/Hemispherx-Biopharma-settles-class-action-securities-lawsuits

An attorney says Ford Motor Co. has settled a Mississippi lawsuit over damages sought from a 2001 rollover crash that killed a New York Mets prospect in the Florida Panhandle.

Tab Turner, an attorney for the family of Brian Cole, told The Associated Press the settlement Thursday came after the jury in Jasper County awarded $131 million in actual damages to the family and before it was to consider possible punitive damages.

Turner said the settlement amount and terms were confidential.

A Ford spokeswoman blamed speeding and reckless driving for the accident.

Cole died from injuries he suffered when his Ford Explorer overturned as he drove home on March 31, 2001, from spring training in Port St. Lucie, Fla., to Meridian, Miss.

All bets are off at Betcha.com, a Seattle-based online bookmaker that couldn't skirt the state's gambling laws by making it optional for losing bettors to pay off wagers.

In a unanimous ruling Thursday, the Washington state Supreme Court said Betcha.com qualified as an illegal bookie because it arranged bets and took a percentage of the action as a fee.

Since that definition of professional gambling fits the company's activities, justices said they didn't have to decide whether optional payments by bettors would allow Betcha.com to technically escape the state's gambling restrictions.

"Under the statutory definition of bookmaking, it is immaterial whether or not Betcha users were engaged in gambling activity," Justice Tom Chambers wrote for the court.

In a blog post, Betcha.com founder Nicholas Jenkins said the court's reasoning "didn't pass the giggle test."

"Never in a million years did I expect an opinion like this one," Jenkins wrote. "The court's error is so obvious that I wonder if a single justice even cracked our brief, let alone the Revised Code of Washington."

Washington state allows some forms of non-tribal gambling, including cardrooms that offer poker, blackjack and other games with relatively low stakes. Online gambling and bookmaking fees, however, are specifically outlawed in the state. Internet gambling also is illegal on the federal level.