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Delta exits bankruptcy leaner than when it entered 19½ months ago
April 30, 2007 - ATLANTA (AP) - Delta Air Lines Inc. emerged from bankruptcy protection Monday as an independent carrier after surviving a hostile takeover bid during a 19½-month reorganization that saw it eliminate jobs, cut costs, restructure its fleet and focus more on international flying. A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in New York had set 9 a.m. EDT as the time the Atlanta-based airline could exit from Chapter 11 by closing on a $2.5 billion loan that would allow it to pay back lenders who gave Delta money to help it operate while in bankruptcy. Delta's chief bankruptcy lawyer, Marshall Huebner, said in a 10:21 a.m. e-mail to The Associated Press that the wire transfers for the loan were completed. Delta, the nation's third-largest carrier, also on Monday released details of a rebranding effort that includes a new paint job for its planes, featuring the company's three-dimensional red logo flying across a blue background.
Auction of rights to OJ Simpson book cancelled
A court-ordered auction of the rights to O.J. Simpson's halted book-TV project If I Did It, Here's How It Happened has been cancelled. O.J. Simpson's surrogate company filed for bankruptcy last week, which has halted Tuesday's auction of the rights to the scrapped book and TV project If I Did It.(Richard Drew/Associated Press) The auction, originally scheduled for Tuesday in California, was scrapped because the former football star's company filed for bankruptcy in Florida late last week, according to a lawyer representing the family of Ron Goldman, who was killed alongside Simpson's ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, in 1994. Simpson was acquitted of murder charges in the case in 1995. However, he subsequently lost a wrongful death civil suit brought by the Goldman family and was ordered to pay damages of $33.5 million US — little of which the family has recovered over the past decade.
Government to take another shot at Wittig, Lake
TOPEKA | The government will retry former Westar Energy executives David Wittig and Douglas Lake on charges of defrauding the company. In a hearing that lasted less than a minute, Assistant U.S. Attorney Rich Hathaway told a federal judge this morning that the government was "ready to proceed with the case." U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson scheduled a status conference for next Monday to determine when the case would go to trial. In January, a federal appeals court unanimously overturned the 2005 convictions of Wittig, Westar's former chairman, president and chief executive, and Lake, its former executive vice president and chief strategic officer, on the grounds of insufficient evidence. The appeals court reversed some of the convictions outright and said those counts could not be retired.
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