Brooke Astor's son is back at his Manhattan trial, a day after he fell and hit his head in a courthouse restroom.

Anthony Marshall, who's 85, had heart surgery last fall. He takes blood thinners and walks unsteadily with a cane. He also has reportedly suffered a mild stroke.

Marshall denies charges that he exploited his mother's dementia to loot her $198 million fortune.

On Thursday, a prosecution witness waited to resume her testimony as lawyers held a conference with the judge.

Pearline Noble of the Bronx was Astor's nursing assistant. She started working for the philanthropist in mid-2003, helping her with grooming and other personal tasks.

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's thin record on the limits of presidential power suggests she will be neither reflexively hostile to broad expansion of a president's authority nor a reliable rubber stamp in support of it.

Three cases in particular offer clues:

_ As a judge on the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, Sotomayor dismissed complaints of commuters about random searches aimed at stopping terrorists on a ferry 300 miles north of New York City.

_ Citing an earlier ruling by the Supreme Court on the same topic, she upheld President George W. Bush's decision to prohibit U.S. aid to international family planning groups that support abortion.

_ On the other hand, Sotomayor joined colleagues in striking down parts of the anti-terror USA Patriot Act that Bush sought automatically prohibiting Internet service providers from telling customers when the government asks for private information about them.

Sotomayor has ruled in only a handful of foreign policy and national security cases that turned in part on constitutional limits to the powers enjoyed by the president, including the government's ability to respond to the threats, fears and vulnerabilities laid bare by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks.

In those rulings, as well as a speech she gave in 2003 at the Indiana University law school, she appeared to be more willing to consider robust use of presidential authority than was Justice David Souter, the man she would replace.

Souter, who retired last week, was among the justices most skeptical of the powers asserted by the Bush administration following Sept. 11.

While Sotomayor has leaned heavily on earlier court decisions to support her rulings — as appeals court judges must — she soon could face potentially groundbreaking cases on national security if President Barack Obama asserts executive authority to continue detaining suspected terrorists.

Obama's far-reaching steps to deal with the economy also could provoke legal challenges that could make their way to the high court. The justices recently rejected a bid to stop Chrysler LLC's sale of most of its assets to Italian automaker Fiat.

Dole Food Company Inc filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday against Swedish film makers it accuses of knowingly including "patent falsehoods" in a documentary about Nicaraguan banana workers who sued Dole for allegedly exposing them to pesticides on its plantations.

Dole said it repeatedly "implored" director Fredrik Gertten and producer Margarete Jangard to revise the film "Bananas!*" to show that the bananeros' lawsuits against Dole were thrown out in April by a Los Angeles judge who found a "pervasive conspiracy" to defraud U.S. courts by plaintiffs attorneys and Nicaraguan judges.

Gertten "refused to make any meaningful changes to the film, and persisted in publicly screening it and touting its accuracy in the face of court rulings that the story was false ...," said the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

NASCAR has asked an appeals court to overturn the injunction that lifted Jeremy Mayfield's indefinite suspension for a failing a random drug test.

NASCAR made its request Wednesday to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In the filing, NASCAR argues allowing Mayfield on the track presents potentially fatal consequences to other drivers, teams and fans.

The filing claims U.S. District Court Judge Graham Mullen relied on incorrect information when he lifted the suspension last week.

NASCAR has said Mayfield tested positive for methamphetamine, but the driver has denied using the illegal drug. His lawyers contend NASCAR's drug policy is flawed because it does not meet federal guidelines.

Six employees of Wall Street retail brokerage Sky Capital Holdings Ltd surrendered to the FBI on Wednesday on charges of a $140 million investment fraud and stock manipulation in the United States and Britain, officials said.

The firm's founder, President and Chief Executive Officer Ross Mandell and five others were charged in a criminal indictment announced by U.S. prosecutors and parallel civil case by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The six were charged in a two-count indictment to commit securities, wire and mail fraud for a purported scheme to defraud investors between 1998 and 2006.

Calls to phone numbers listed for the New York brokerage went unanswered or were busy.

A published overview of the company said that Sky Capital Holdings, through subsidiaries such as Sky Capital LLC, provided financial services and products for international clients. It has another subsidiary Sky Capital UK Ltd.

Until late 2006, Sky Capital's shares were traded on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.

"Investor funds were substantially used to enrich the defendants and others; to pay excessive undisclosed commissions to brokers and to pay off victims who had lost money through prior purported investment opportunities," the Office of the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan said in a statement.

Apart from Mandell, other principals and employees Stephen Shea, Adam Harrington, Arn Wilson, Robert Grabowski and Michael Passaro surrendered to the FBI on Wednesday morning, FBI spokesman Jim Margolin said.

They were expected to appear in Manhattan federal court later in the day.

A federal appeals court has rejected a lawsuit accusing Abbott Laboratories of antitrust violations over a sudden 400-percent price hike of a popular AIDS drug.

Advocacy groups and drug benefit providers sued Abbott in 2004. They alleged the North Chicago, Ill., drugmaker raised the price of the HIV-fighting Norvir to stifle competition and boost sales of its own alternative, Kaletra.

The company paid $10 million to settle the lawsuit and agreed to let the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals still determine if the price hike was an illegal business practice.

The court ruled in Abbott's favor Tuesday. If it had lost, Abbott would have had to pay an additional $17.5 million.

A lawyer for the advocacy groups says they're weighing whether to appeal the decision.