An attorney for Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland's office asked the Oklahoma Supreme Court Monday to strike down a new law designed to raise revenue for the state's Medicaid program.

Attorney Michael Ridgeway told the high court state lawmakers did not follow constitutional guidelines when they passed the bill. Their errors included failing to get a required three-fourths vote of the House and Senate, he said.

The law sets a 1 percent fee on claims paid by private health insurers and companies with self-insured health care plans to support Medicaid, which provides health care to low-income and elderly residents.

Attorneys for the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, the state's Medicaid provider, and other state agencies urged the court to uphold the new law and said it was meant to increase residents' access to health care services provided by Medicaid.

The doctor charged in Michael Jackson's death is due back in court for a scheduling hearing that will determine when prosecutors will publicly present some of their evidence.

Dr. Conrad Murray is required to attend Monday's hearing, during which a Los Angeles judge is expected to schedule a preliminary hearing for later this year.

The judge will decide at that hearing whether there is enough evidence for the involuntary manslaughter case against the cardiologist to continue. Murray, who maintains offices in Las Vegas and Houston, was charged in February for administering a lethal dose of anesthetic propofol to Jackson.

Murray has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys have said the physician did not give Jackson anything that "should have" killed him.

NASA's former chief of staff has pleaded guilty to conspiracy in a case stemming from a $600,000 contract for Mississippi State University, a client of his consulting firm.

Sheila Wilbanks, a U.S. Attorney's office spokeswoman, said Courtney Stadd pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court in Gulfport, Miss.

Stadd faces up to five years in prison at sentencing on Nov. 18.

Prosecutors say Stadd conspired with Liam Sarsfield, NASA's former chief deputy engineer, to guide contracts. Sarsfield pleaded guilty in November to one count.

Stadd was NASA's chief of staff and White House liaison from 2001-2003. Stadd was convicted in 2009 and sentenced to probation in a different case for steering a $10 million contract to MSU.

The 14 crosses erected along Utah roads to commemorate fallen state Highway Patrol troopers convey a state preference for Christianity and are a violation of the U.S. Constitution, a federal appeals court said Wednesday.

The ruling reverses a 2007 decision by a federal district judge that said the crosses communicate a secular message about deaths and were not a public endorsement of religion. It's the latest in a recent rash of mixed-bag rulings on the public use of crosses.

A three-judge panel from Denver's 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its 38-page ruling that a "reasonable observer" would conclude that the state and the Utah Highway Patrol were endorsing Christianity with the cross memorials.

"This may lead the reasonable observer to fear that Christians are likely to receive preferential treatment from the UHP," the justices wrote.

The 12-foot high white crosses with 6-foot horizontal crossbars are affixed with the patrol's beehive logo and a biography of the deceased trooper.

First erected in 1998, monuments were paid for with private funds and erected only with the permission of the troopers' families. Nearly all of the 14 crosses are on public land.

Two men behind the cross project have said they selected crosses for the memorials because the image of a cross can simultaneously convey a message of death, remembrance, honor, gratitude and sacrifice.

New Orleans rapper Juvenile has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge in Louisiana.

The St. Bernard Parish sheriff's office says the 34-year-old, whose real name is Terius Gray, entered the plea Thursday. The rapper and an aquaintance were arrested Feb. 25.

He received a suspended sentence of three months in jail and must serve six months probation and pay a $250 fine and court costs.

Juvenile, best known for the song "Back That Thing Up," has been arrested at least four times on charges ranging from failure to pay child support to resisting an officer at a Florida mall in 1999. Most of the charges have been dismissed. In 2003, he was sentenced to 75 hours of community service for hitting a man on the head with a champagne bottle.

A federal judge in Virginia has ruled that a company is entitled to the value of about 5,900 artifacts it salvaged during six expeditions to the Titanic.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith in Norfolk granted a salvage award to RMS Titanic Inc. late Thursday.

However, the judge postponed until next year a decision on whether to simply give the company title to the artifacts or sell them and turn the proceeds over to RMS, a subsidiary of Premier Exhibitions Inc. of Atlanta. The items are worth an estimated $110 million.

Until then, RMS can retain possession of the artifacts, which are being displayed in exhibitions around the world.

The Titanic sank in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland in April 1912, killing more than 1,500 of the 2,228 people onboard.