Harry & David will emerge from bankruptcy protection in the middle of September, the specialty foods company said Tuesday, after its plan for reorganization was approved in court.

The emergence will likely occur on or around Sept. 13, giving the company plenty of time to ramp up for the crucial holiday season.

Kay Hong, the interim CEO who is heading the restructuring, said that Harry and David is returning as a stronger company that is better positioned for long-term profitable growth. The restructuring plan was approved by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware

With consumer priorities reshuffled during the recession, the demand fruit basket and gourmet gifts evaporated. Harry & David entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March.

Hong said the company looks forward to the holiday season with strong lineup of new products and plans "to deliver a terrific gift experience and unparalleled customer service as Harry & David has done for generations."

Harry & David Holdings Inc., based in Medford, Ore., sells under the Harry & David, Wolferman's and Cushman's brands online and in stores.

The Michigan Court of Appeals has upheld first-degree murder convictions against an Oakland County man for stabbing his parents to death.

Mark Ott of White Lake Township was convicted in the fatal stabbings last year. The bodies of 57-year-olds Barbara and Michael Ott were discovered in February 2008 at their home in White Lake Township, about 30 miles northwest of Detroit.

On Wednesday, the he appeals court affirmed the jury's decision to find Ott guilty but mentally ill. Ott is serving the mandatory sentence of life without parole.

The appeals court vacated Ott's convictions on two counts of second-degree murder based on double jeopardy principles. The ruling says double jeopardy doesn't allow multiple punishments for the same offense.

The White House is expressing confidence that it's constitutional to require people to have health insurance and believes that President Barack Obama's health care law will be survive all legal challenges in the end.

Obama adviser Stephanie Cutter says the White House strongly disagrees with an appeals court ruling Friday that struck down the insurance requirement at the center of a law.

She says the White House is confident that ruling will not stand.

Cutter notes on the White House blog that four other courts, including a different appeals court, has upheld the law.

Many legal observers expect the U.S. Supreme Court to have the final say on the issue.

A woman caught with her two brothers after a nationwide manhunt told Colorado authorities she "deserved to get shot" after pointing a gun at a police chief at the end of the siblings' run from the law, according to a court document.

Lee Grace Dougherty, 29, Dylan Dougherty Stanley, 26, and Ryan Edward Dougherty, 21, are being held in Pueblo County, Colo., on bonds of $1.25 million each. The three made their first court appearance Thursday by video from jail, and none made any statement during the brief hearing.

They face charges of attempted murder of a peace officer and assault on a peace officer. The charges stem from allegations that they shot rounds from an AK-47 at four patrol cars during a chase Wednesday on Interstate 25 in Colorado. The chase ended when troopers deployed spike strips to puncture the tires of the trio's Subaru, and the vehicle rolled and crashed into a guardrail.

Fifteen incarcerated men who claim they were sent to prison by confessions that were beaten, burned and tortured out of them by convicted Chicago police Lt. Jon Burge and his officers are getting some high-profile help — including from a former Illinois governor.

In a friend-of-the-court brief to be filed Wednesday with the Illinois Supreme Court, ex-Gov. Jim Thompson and more than 60 current and former prosecutors, judges and lawmakers are asking for new evidentiary hearings for inmates who say their convictions were based on coerced confessions.

The brief marks the first effort on behalf of alleged Burge victims as a group and not separate individual cases, attorneys said.

Burge's name has become synonymous with police abuse in the nation's third-largest city, and more than 100 men — most of them African-American and Latino— have alleged Burge and his men tortured them from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Burge was convicted last year of lying about whether he ever witnessed or participated in the torture of suspects. He's serving a 4 1/2-year sentence at Butner Federal Correctional Complex in North Carolina.

Burge never has faced criminal charges for abuse. He was fired from the police department in 1993 over the 1982 beating and burning of Andrew Wilson, a suspect later convicted of killing two police officers.

The first lawsuit to go to trial in a massive class action against Toyota Motor Corp. over acceleration problems that led the company to recall 14 million cars will involve a crash that killed two people in western Utah, a federal judge said Friday.

U.S. District Judge James Selna told attorneys the case of 38-year-old Charlene Jones Lloyd and 66-year-old Paul Van Alfen, whose Toyota Camry slammed into a wall in Utah in 2010, is scheduled to go to trial in February 2013.

The case — Van Alfen v. Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. — will be the first of several bellwether lawsuits, intended to determine how the rest of the litigation will proceed.

Selna wrote in a tentative order that he hoped the selection would "markedly advance these proceedings."

"The Court believes that selection of a personal injury/wrongful death case is most likely the type of case to meet that goal," Selna said.

Toyota said it welcomes the Utah case as the first suit to reach court.

"We are pleased that the initial bellwether will address plaintiffs' central allegation of an unnamed, unproven defect in Toyota vehicles, as every claim in the multi-district litigation rests upon this pivotal technical issue," the company said in a statement.

Toyota has previously argued the plaintiffs have been unable to prove that a design defect in its electronic throttle control system is responsible for vehicles surging unexpectedly. It has instead blamed driver error, faulty floor mats and sticky accelerator pedals.