Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has endured weeks of insults, obnoxious questions and unwelcome drilling into her work as a judge and a lawyer — and it was all on purpose, essentially a dress rehearsal for her confirmation hearings.

In a series of faux hearings, Sotomayor has been barraged by hostile questions thrown her way by allies preparing the federal appeals judge for the interrogation that will begin Monday. She's been reviewing her past writings, speeches, cases and legal opinions while gaming questions she is likely to hear next week when the Senate Judiciary Committee takes up her nomination.

And Sotomayor also has been learning the quirks of senators who will do the questioning, and developing a thick skin for the barbs that might come her way.

The point is to ensure that no question comes up that Sotomayor hasn't heard and hasn't answered in the mock exercises.

"Judges are not accustomed to being judged," said Ed Gillespie, a White House counsel for President George W. Bush who helped prepare John Roberts and Samuel Alito for their confirmation hearings. "Helping them to understand the nature of the confirmation process and the nature of the Senate is important."

Sotomayor has faced Senate questioning before — when she was nominated by President George H.W. Bush for a federal trial judgeship in 1992, and again in 1997 when President Bill Clinton nominated her for a seat on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

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.

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.

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.

A central Minnesota woman ordered to pay $1.92 million for illegally sharing copyright-protected music is asking a federal judge to reduce the damages she must pay or grant a new trial, while the recording industry is taking steps to make sure she doesn't share music again.

Last month, a federal jury ruled Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, willfully violated the copyrights on 24 songs, and that she must pay $80,000 per song. In documents filed Monday in U.S. District Court, attorney Kiwi Camara argued this amount is "grossly excessive."

Camara asked that the court either remove the statutory damages from the judgment, order that the damages be reduced to the statutory minimum — which would result in a total award of $18,000 — or grant a new trial altogether.

"The plaintiffs did not even attempt to offer evidence of their actual injuries, seeking, instead, an award of statutory damages entirely for purposes of punishment and deterrence," Camara wrote, adding that the $1.92 million figure "shocks the conscience and must be set aside."

He also wrote that civil penalties must relate to a defendant's own conduct and the injury she caused to the plaintiffs. Instead, he said, it seems the damages were awarded not because what Thomas-Rasset did, but because of "the widespread and generalized problem of illegal music downloading."

Camara wrote that if a new trial isn't ordered, Thomas-Rasset would appeal based on evidence he argued should not have been allowed at trial.

This case was the only one of more than 30,000 similar lawsuits to make it all the way to trial. The vast majority of people targeted by the music industry had settled for about $3,500 each. The recording industry has said it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is instead working with Internet service providers to fight the worst offenders.

Phoenix-based Mesa had said that the termination of the contract, if successful, would cripple its airline.

Mesa said last year that the contract amounted to $20 million in monthly revenue for the parent company, or about 20 percent of its total sales for 2007.

Mesa won a preliminary court injunction from the federal district court in Atlanta to block the contract termination, and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, also in Atlanta, affirmed that decision Wednesday.

Delta says it will continue to fight to preserve its right to terminate the contract.

Defense attorneys had sought 12 years, while prosecutors wanted the maximum. The federal probation department had recommended 50 years. Chin called the fraud "staggering" and noted that it spanned more than 20 years. He says "the breach of trust was massive."

The 71-year-old former Nasdaq chairman pleaded guilty to securities fraud and other charges in March and has been jailed since.