A Utah man has been charged in federal court after authorities say he threatened to shoot air marshals, hijack the flight and urinate in the cabin of a Delta Airlines plane en route from Amsterdam to Detroit.

During a Thursday appearance in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City, a judge allowed Jared L. Hansen to remain free pending a Nov. 7 hearing in Detroit. Hansen was ordered to surrender his passport and abstain from drinking alcohol, among other conditions.

He didn't return a telephone message seeking comment Thursday, and no attorney was listed for him in court records.

Hansen, 31, was aboard an Oct. 4 Delta Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit when authorities say he attempted to use the bathroom in the business class section of the cabin. Members of the flight crew asked him to either return to his seat or use the facilities in the rear of the cabin, but he refused, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit.

Hansen, who was believed to be heavily intoxicated, then threatened to urinate in the cabin and exposed himself, authorities said.

Gays and lesbians are not entitled to the same heightened legal protection and scrutiny against discrimination as racial minorities and women in part because they are far from politically powerless and have ample ability to influence lawmakers, lawyers for a U.S. House of Representatives group said in a federal court filing.

The filing Friday in San Francisco's U.S. District Court comes in a lesbian federal employee's lawsuit that claims the government wrongly denied health insurance coverage to her same-sex spouse. Karen Golinski says the law under which her spouse was denied benefits — the Defense of Marriage Act — violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection.

But attorneys representing the House's Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group counter that DOMA is subject to a lower level of court scrutiny because gays and lesbians don't meet the legal criteria for groups who receive heightened protection from discrimination. Under that lower standard, DOMA is constitutional, they argue.

A panel of judges at a U.N.-backed court investigating the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri will consider whether to stage a trial in absentia for four Hezbollah members accused in the slaying.

The suspects were indicted earlier this year, but Hezbollah has refused to arrest them and send them for trial in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon's purpose-built courtroom.

The court said in a statement Monday that a pretrial judge preparing the case has asked trial judges "to determine whether proceedings in absentia should be initiated" against the four men.

Iranian-backed Shiite militia Hezbollah denies involvement in the Feb. 14, 2005, truck bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others, including the suicide bomber, in Beirut.

A key member of the legal team defending John Edwards against campaign finance charges will not represent the former Democratic presidential candidate at his upcoming trial following questions about a potential conflict of interest.

A motion filed by federal prosecutors says Raleigh defense lawyer Wade Smith will withdraw. The move comes after prosecutors questioned whether Smith had a conflict of interest due to a 2009 conversation with a financial advisor for Bunny Mellon, a wealthy socialite who provided the bulk of nearly $1 million used to support Edwards' pregnant mistress, Rielle Hunter, as he ran for president in 2007.

According to the government, Smith told Mellon's advisor that Edwards knew the money was intended to help him. That appears to conflict with statements by Edwards that he knew nothing of the payments.

Edwards is charged with six felony and misdemeanor counts related to campaign finance violations. He has pleaded not guilty. A trial is scheduled to begin in January.

Smith is among the most well-known defense lawyers in North Carolina, with a list of previous clients that includes members of the Duke University lacrosse team cleared of charges they gang-raped a stripper.

A young Nigerian allegedly on a terrorist mission for al-Qaida prayed, washed and put on perfume moments before trying to detonate a bomb in his underwear to bring down an international jetliner on Christmas 2009, a prosecutor told jurors as the man's trial opened Tuesday.

Virtually everyone aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 had holiday plans, but Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab believed his calling was martyrdom, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Tukel said.

In the plane's bathroom, "he was engaging in rituals. He was preparing to die and enter heaven," Tukel said. "He purified himself. He washed. He brushed his teeth. He put on perfume. He was praying and perfuming himself to get ready to die."

After returning to his seat, Abdulmutallab pushed a small plunger on the chemical bomb in his underwear, an action that produced a "pop," the prosecutor told jurors.

The bomb didn't work as planned but Abdulmutallab was engulfed in flames, said Tukel, who displayed the flight's seating chart on a screen to show jurors where things happened on the plane.

Opening statements began after an unexplained 70-minute recess requested by Abdulmutallab and his attorney, Anthony Chambers, shortly after they entered the courtroom.

Banks would be barred from trading for their own profit instead of their clients under a rule being proposed by federal regulators.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. backed the draft rule on a 3-0 vote Tuesday. The ban on proprietary trading was required under last year's financial overhaul law.

For years, banks had bet on risky investments with their own money. But when those bets go bad and banks fail, taxpayers could be forced to bail them out. That's what happened during the 2008 financial crisis.

The Federal Reserve has also approved the draft of the so-called Volcker Rule, which was named after former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and Treasury Department must still vote on it, and then the public has until January 13 to comment. The rule is expected to take effect next year after a final vote by all four regulators.

Congress and President Barack Obama had high hopes for the rule. But they left most of the details for regulators to sort out.

It's unclear how strictly the ban will be enforced. For example, it can be hard to tell whether an investment is intended to benefit a bank or its clients and whether federally insured deposits could be put at risk by these trades.