The White House insisted Tuesday that the implementation of President Barack Obama's landmark health care law will not be affected by a negative federal court ruling, and the Justice Department said it would appeal.

"There's no practical impact at all as states move forward in implementing ... the law that Congress passed and the president signed," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters.

Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said that, as expected, the department would appeal Monday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson in Virginia. Hudson declared that a central provision of the law — the requirement for nearly everyone to carry health insurance — was unconstitutional.

The ruling by the Republican-appointed judge in a high-profile lawsuit by Virginia's Republican attorney general was a setback for the Obama administration, but not a surprise. Two other district court judges, both Democratic appointees, have found the law constitutional.

Obama administration officials noted that consultations with states on implementing the law were moving forward. Later this week officials from all but a handful of states are expected to travel to Washington to meet with the Health and Human Services Department to discuss setting up the state-based insurance marketplaces, called exchanges, required by the new law.

For two years, the two sons of jailed financier Bernard Madoff portrayed themselves as honest whistleblowers of their father's historic fraud. A court-appointed trustee depicted them as bungling money managers who did nothing to protect investors.

The suicide of Mark Madoff leaves unanswered questions for investors seeking payback for the billions of dollars his father siphoned — and for criminal investigators who continued to pursue charging Madoff's family for knowing participation in the fraud.

The 46-year-old Madoff — Bernard Madoff's eldest son — hanged himself Saturday by a dog leash on a metal ceiling beam in his Manhattan loft apartment, his 2-year-old son asleep in another room. The death was officially ruled a suicide by hanging Sunday by the city medical examiner.

He died on the anniversary of his father's arrest two years ago in the largest Ponzi scheme ever recorded. It followed the filing in recent weeks of dozens of lawsuits by trustee Irving Picard as he pursued billions of dollars in damages against those who profited from the multi-decade fraud.

Increasingly, Picard has stepped up his language in lawsuits against those who knew Madoff well, describing an Austrian banker accused in a lawsuit Friday of being Madoff's "criminal soul mate" in her efforts on behalf of Madoff's fraud.

Last Wednesday, he included the brothers as defendants in an $80 million lawsuit he brought against the London-based international arm of Madoff's business, saying the overseas operation was used to siphon off money from the fraud for the Madoff family.

The ruling in Virginia strikes the most serious legal blow yet to the Obama-backed law requiring Americans to get health insurance.

A federal judge in Virginia on Monday rejected part of the new healthcare law, becoming the first court to rule that Congress had placed an unconstitutional requirement on Americans to get health insurance.

The much-anticipated decision, which the Obama administration is expected to appeal, will not stop implementation of the sweeping overhaul that the president signed in March.

The new mandate is not set to go into effect until 2014, when Americans will also gain guarantees that they will be able to get health benefits even if they are sick.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson denied a request from Virginia Atty. Gen. Ken Cuccinelli, the lead plaintiff, to stop implementation of the law while higher courts consider the case.

A reality TV producer charged with killing his wife in Mexico is due back in Los Angeles court Tuesday afternoon to argue that his detention is unconstitutional.

Attorneys for Bruce Beresford-Redman claim the federal prosecutors haven't properly demonstrated there is enough evidence to hold the former "Survivor" producer while he fights extradition.

Prosecutors say it is premature for them to present evidence obtained from Mexican authorities connecting Beresford-Redman to the April killing of his wife in Cancun.

A magistrate judge refused last week to set bail for Beresford-Redman. He has been jailed since Nov. 16, when he was arrested on a fugitive warrant on an aggravated homicide charge.

A French court today convicted Continental Airlines and one of its mechanics for on involuntary manslaughter charges related to the 2000 crash of an Air France Concorde jet, The Associated Press reports.

The court ordered Continental to pay Air France $1.43 million for damages to Air France's reputation and an additional fine of $265,000. CNN says "mechanic John Taylor received a fine of 2,000 euros ($2,656) and a 15-month suspended prison sentence for involuntary manslaughter."

The crash of the Air France Concorde killed all 109 people on board and four on the ground.

AP writes "the presiding judge confirmed investigators' long-held belief that titanium debris dropped by a Continental DC-10 onto the runway at Charles de Gaulle airport before the supersonic jet took off on July 25, 2000, was to blame."

The New York Times says "a 2002 report by French air accident investigators concluded that a small strip of metal had fallen off a Continental DC-10 that took off minutes earlier and that the piece punctured a tire of the Concorde as it accelerated down the runway on July 25, 2000. The tire disintegrated in seconds, investigators said, sending shards of rubber into the fuel tanks and causing a catastrophic fire."

The US Supreme Court, which five years ago struck down laws preventing wine makers in one state from selling directly to customers living in another, could be poised to dip its collective toe into the wine vat again.

The top US court will soon decide whether to hear a challenge to a Texas law which says that wine retailers are not allowed to engage in cross-border commerce with individual consumers -- even if wine producers are.

The issue is being brought to the high court by those who argue that consumers have the right to buy the wine of their choosing even if it comes from an out-of-state merchant.

Tom Wark, executive director of the Specialty Wine Retailers Association (SWRA), said there are 37 states with such laws on the books similar to the one his group is fighting in Texas.

"If I can't find the wine that I want in my local store, I can go online and probably find that wine being sold from somewhere in another state, but I can't have it shipped to me," Wark told AFP.

He said his group -- founded under the banner "wine without borders" -- is hoping that the Supreme Court will make a similar finding to one it reached in a celebrated 2005 case that overturned state liquor laws which gave preferential treatment to in-state wineries.