A financial firm that lost more than 650 employees in the Sept. 11 terror attacks must reduce its demands that an airline pay it nearly $1 billion, a judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein made the ruling regarding Cantor Fitzgerald after the company estimated it suffered $1 billion in lost profits because of the deaths of two-thirds of its work force at the World Trade Center.

The judge said Cantor Fitzgerald cannot base its estimate for damages on lost profits resulting from employees who died. He noted that the company had originally put losses at $102 million but raised them in 2009 to $1 billion before reducing them last year to $963 million.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to stop federal investigations into the private lives of people who want to work at government installations — even those who don't have security clearances and don't work on secret projects.

The high court turned away challenges to background checks of low-risk employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, despite claims from those federal contractors that the investigations were unconstitutional because they invaded their privacy.

"We reject the argument that the government, when it requests job-related personal information in an employment background check, has a constitutional burden to demonstrate that its questions are 'necessary' or the least restrictive means of furthering its interests," Justice Samuel Alito said.

Employees said the agency was invading their privacy by requiring investigations that looked into their medical records and asked friends about their finances and sex lives. If the workers didn't agree to the checks and fill out questionnaires on Standard Form 85 (SF-85) and Form 42, they were to be fired.

The Supreme Court won't overturn the convictions of a suburban New York City couple convicted of enslaving two Indonesian housekeepers.

The high court on Tuesday refused to hear appeals from Mahender and Varsha Sabhnani that sought to overturn their forced-labor convictions.

The couple was convicted of enslaving two domestic servants the couple brought from Indonesia by keeping their travel documents and having them perform forced labor on their behalf.

Prosecutors said Varsha Sabhnani was primarily responsible for inflicting years of abuse on the poorly educated servants. They said her husband let the abuse take place and benefited from the work the women performed in their $2 million Long Island home.

Varsha Sabhnani says pre-trial publicity prevented her from getting a fair trial, while her husband argues that he shouldn't have been convicted for aiding and abetting because he didn't stop his wife.

Alabama has executed a death row inmate for the 1988 shooting death of his estranged wife as he held their 17–month–old daughter in one of his arms.

Fifty–two–year–old Leroy White died by lethal injection Thursday night despite a plea by the daughter, now grown, that his life be spared.

He was pronounced dead at 9:10 p.m. Central time. He had no last words.

White was sentenced to die for the shooting death of Ruby White, a first grade teacher in Huntsville. Her relatives, including 23–year–old daughter Latonya White, asked Gov. Bob Riley to grant clemency. But Riley, along with federal and state courts, refused to halt the execution.

The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily halted the execution before denying his plea for a stay.

Former Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox will join Detroit-based Dykema Gossett PLLC as a senior attorney in its litigation department, the law firm CEO confirmed today.

Cox, 49, who ended eight years as the state's chief law enforcement officer on Jan. 1, starts next Monday at Dykema's Detroit office. He will practice in health care fraud, white-collar criminal law and federal and state regulatory compliance, said Dykema Chairman and CEO Rex Schlaybaugh.

Schlaybaugh said the firm leadership had talked with Cox for more than a month about his options upon leaving office. The attorney general seemed a good fit because of his involvement in health care transactions and the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, enacted last year.

"Mike is someone with a great deal of experience with the complexities of implementing that law and a great interest in it, which will be very important to some of our strategic clients," Schlaybaugh said.

"Many federal and state government agencies are also involved in aspects of these laws, and navigating that will be a high-demand area. In that way, I think he dovetails with our firm's needs very nicely."

Cox's health care practice will focus on client responses to increased compliance and tougher anti-fraud policies stemming from the Affordable Care Act, violations of the federal Stark Law or False Claims Act and responses to inquiries from the Office of the Health Services inspector general.

Two San Francisco newspapers engaged in a lengthy legal battle over predatory pricing have settled their dispute outside of court.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Bay Guardian and SF Weekly announced a settlement Monday but did not disclose its terms.

The Guardian filed an antitrust lawsuit against SF Weekly in 2004, accusing the paper of slashing advertising prices to drive the Guardian out of business. A San Francisco judge in 2008 ordered SF Weekly to pay $21 million to its rival.

SF Weekly has said its low-cost ads reflected fair competition and did not violate antitrust laws.

Both alternative weeklies are distributed for free and rely on ad revenue to continue operating.