It's a "terrible Catch-22," House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., said Wednesday as the House passed, and sent to the White House, legislation aimed at assuring that the ADA lives up to its promise of protecting the disabled from discrimination.

The 1990 law is widely regarded as one of the major features of civil rights legislation in the 20th century because it ensured that the disabled have access to public buildings and accommodations, thus giving them better access to the workforce. But the Supreme Court has generally exempted from the law's anti-discrimination protections those with partial physical disabilities or impairments that can be treated with medication or devices such as hearing aids.

The Supreme Court has slowly chipped away at the broad protections of the ADA and has created a new set of barriers for disabled Americans," said Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., a chief sponsor of the bill along with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md.

The bill directs the courts toward a more generous application of the ADA's definition of disability, making it clear that Congress intended the ADA's coverage to be broad and to cover anyone facing discrimination because of a disability.

"It will afford millions of individuals with access to the courts under the ADA and clarifies that anyone with a disability is protected from unfair discrimination," AARP senior vice president David P. Sloane said after the Senate passed the measure by voice vote last week.

The House passed the measure by voice vote as well. But Hoyer noted that it took months of difficult negotiations involving the business community and advocates for the disabled to find the right balance between the rights of the disabled and the obligations of employers.

Jason Matteau, 27, and Rebecca Matteau, 24, of Jewett City, turned themselves to police in Montville after being told authorities had arrest warrants for them. They were freed on $50,000 bonds and ordered to appear in court Oct. 1.

Their son, Wyatt, died Aug. 28, about two hours after being shot in the head when the gun accidentally fired, state police said. The Matteaus were at their apartment with their son and infant daughter at the time, but Wyatt was alone in a room when the gun went off, troopers said.

Connecticut law makes it a crime to store loaded firearms in an area where the owner reasonably should know that someone under 16 could find them.

Jason and Rebecca Matteau are both charged with risk of injury to a minor. Jason Matteau is also charged with criminally negligent storage of a firearm.

Both charges are felonies. Risk of injury to a minor carries up to 10 years in prison, and the firearm charge carries up to five years in jail.

On Tuesday, the court expected to call Bruce Fromong again and perhaps several other witnesses who could set the stage for the jury to hear from Thomas Riccio, the colorful collectibles broker who arranged a hotel room meeting between Simpson and memorabilia peddlers Fromong and Alfred Beardsley a year ago when the pair said they were robbed at gunpoint.

"Obviously the prosecution may change witness order a little bit, but I would expect Tom Riccio tomorrow or Wednesday," Simpson defense attorney Yale Galanter said.

Fromong, 54, became "lightheaded, dizzy and started to sweat," according to his lawyer, Louis Schneider, before Clark County District Court Judge Jackie Glass sent the jury out of the room and suspended his testimony.

Fromong has had four heart attacks in the past year, said Schneider, who described his client as "medically fragile." Paramedics examined Fromong in the courthouse hallway, but left without taking him to a hospital.

The break interrupted a pointed cross-examination by Simpson lawyer Gabriel Grasso, who bored in after Fromong said for the first time that he heard "somebody in the room saying, 'put the gun down.'"

Agriprocessors Inc. has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to urge the justices to reconsider their long-held position that workers in the country illegally have a right to join labor unions.

The Supreme Court has yet to decide whether to take the case, but if it does, it could have ramifications for a complicated area of U.S. labor law.

At issue are rules that make it a crime for a company to hire illegal immigrants, yet simultaneously protect those same workers from retaliation for engaging in union activity.

Those intertwined standards came into play at Agriprocessors' small distribution facility on the Brooklyn waterfront in 2005, when a group of about 20 workers voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

Agriprocessors fired most of the workers after the vote, saying it had investigated their Social Security numbers and concluded at least 17 were in the country illegally.

The company also refused to accept the unionization vote, arguing that it was invalid because of the workers' immigration status.

The National Labor Relations Board sided with the union and took the company to court. The company ultimately gave the workers $2,500 apiece to settle their retaliation complaints, but the dispute over whether the warehouse is now officially a United Food and Commercial Workers Union shop is still unresolved.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 180 points, well off the drop of nearly 350 points seen in the early going.

Stocks posted big losses in markets across much of the globe as investors absorbed bankruptcy plans at Lehman and Merrill Lynch's forced sale to Bank of America for $50 billion in stock. And perhaps most ominously, American International Group Inc. is asking the Federal Reserve for emergency funding. The world's largest insurance company plans to announce a major restructuring Monday.

The swift developments are the biggest yet in the 14-month-old credit crises that stems from now toxic subprime mortgage debt.

Investors are worried that trouble at AIG and the bankruptcy filing by Lehman, felled by $60 billion in bad debt and a dearth of investor confidence, will touch off another series of troubles for banks and financial institutions that may be forced to further write down the value of their own debt assets. Wall Street had been hopeful six months ago that the collapse of Bear Stearns would mark the darkest day of the credit crisis.

But AIG's troubles a week after its stock dropped 45 percent are worrisome for some investors because of the company's enormous balance sheet and the risks that troubles with that companies finances could spill over to the companies with which it does business. AIG, one of the 30 stocks that make up the Dow industrials, fell $5.37, or 44 percent, to $6.76 Monday as investors worried that it would be the subject of downgrades from credit ratings agencies.

Jeffrey Mortimer, chief investment officer at Charles Schwab Investment Management in San Francisco, said stocks' losses aren't steeper because the market expected Lehman would find a buyer or declare bankruptcy.

The filing was made in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the bank's holding company. The case had not yet been assigned to a judge.

Lehman's last hope of surviving outside of court protection faded Sunday after British bank Barclays PLC withdrew its bid to buy the investment bank.

Lehman learned at a last-minute meeting on Friday with federal officials that it would not be getting any emergency funding to give it the liquidity it needed, Chief Financial Officer Ian Lowitt said in an affidavit.

Lehman fell under the weight of $60 billion in soured real estate holdings and tighter a credit market that forced it to seek court protection.

As the company's financial health deteriorated over recent months, Lowitt said Lehman had "explored various options to restructure operations, reduce overall cost structure, and improve performance." He said executives took a two-pronged approach to saving the company: selling its investment management division and separating troubled real estate assets from the rest of the company.

"Management believed that divorcing the real estate assets from the rest of the company would relieve the pressure on the company," he said in the affidavit.

In an effort to calm the markets, Lehman announced its third-quarter results on Wednesday — a week earlier than planned — but Lowitt said that "did little to quell the rumors in the markets and the concerns about the viability of the company."

He said the uncertainty made it impossible for Lehman to continue outside of court protection.

The filing had been made so hastily that the company had not yet filed motions by Monday morning that are typically made on the first day, such as asking the court for permission to continue paying employees.

Many Lehman employees seen entering its headquarters in Midtown Manhattan tucked their chins down to avoid talking to the media and others who had lined up behind metal barriers in front of the building.

Some carried empty shopping, tote bags or gym bags in to the office. Some walked in with ties undone or wore more casual polo shirts than they may have otherwise.

Filing for Chapter 11 protection allows a company to restructure while creditor claims are held at bay. The company most likely chose to file under Chapter 11, rather than a Chapter 7 liquidation, so that it could retain more control over the selling off of assets, said Stephen Lubben, the Daniel J. Moore professor of law at Seton Hall Law School. In a Chapter 7 filing, the court would immediately appoint a trustee to take over the case.

"I'm sure they think they could conduct a better liquidation themselves, and that's probably true," Lubben said.

The investment bank had said earlier that none of its broker-dealer subsidiaries or other units would be included in the Chapter 11 filing. It says it is exploring the sale of its broker-dealer operations and is in "advanced discussions" to sell its investment management unit. That means customers of its broker-dealers will not be subject to claims by creditors in the bankruptcy case.

In its bankruptcy petition, Lehman listed Citigroup among its biggest unsecured creditors, with about $138 billion in bonds as of July 2. The Bank of New York Mellon Corp. was listed as holding about $17 billion in debt.

Lehman said that as of May 31, it had assets of $639 billion and debt of $613 billion.

A lawsuit filed by his parents has been dragging through the courts for eight years as attorneys argue the central issue: who must pay damages.

A federal appeals court is still trying to come up with the answer.

Last December, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out a lower court's order requiring several U.S.-based Islamic groups to pay $156 million to Boim's family — who claim money the groups gave to Palestinian charities ultimately helped fund terrorism.

But now the appeals court is second-guessing itself and revisiting the emotionally charged case, the first filed under a 1991 law allowing American victims of international terrorism to recover triple damages.

During an extraordinary "en banc" hearing before all 10 sitting judges last week, the case came in for a fresh airing. How much longer the case will go on is anyone's guess.