Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said Tuesday it is "within the realm of possibility" that the state will sue BP PLC over any damage the Gulf oil spill causes.

Crist made the comment after meeting with workers at the Escambia County emergency operations center. He said a decision would come soon. BP announced Tuesday that it was giving the state an initial $25 million to cover costs its incurred preparing for the oil's arrival.

Crist said that while it remains unclear when the spill might reach Florida or what its affect would be, the state needs to be prepared. The state Department of Environmental Protection says no landfall is expected in Florida through Thursday. The department is taking air and water samples and about 20 miles of boom has been laid off the Panhandle coast to protect environmentally sensitive areas.

Crist has declared a state of emergency in 19 counties from Escambia in the Panhandle to Sarasota in southwest Florida.

The justices denied Delaware's petition for judicial review without comment, leaving in place a ruling by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that limits sports betting in Delaware to multi-game, or parlay, bets on National Football League games.

The appeals court heard arguments last August on a request by the NFL and other sports leagues for an injunction to prevent Delaware from starting sports betting with the launch of the NFL season. But instead of ruling on the injunction, the appeals court turned directly to the leagues' claim that Delaware's proposal to allow single-game bets on a variety of professional and collegiate sports would violate a 1992 federal ban on sports wagering.

The court declared that the state's new sports betting lottery had to be similar to the betting scheme used in a failed 1976 National Football League lottery that allowed Delaware to be one of only four states to receive grandfathered exemptions from the federal ban.

The ruling stunned attorneys for the state, who were not given the opportunity to defend the merits of the sports betting proposal. Gov. Jack Markell subsequently approved an appeal to the Supreme Court that was funded by Delaware's three slot-machine casinos, which have exclusive rights to offer sports betting.

The Supreme Court has refused to review the case of a British woman on death row in Texas for killing a young mother.

The justices on Monday rejected an appeal from Linda Carty, who was convicted of kidnapping and killing a woman whose child she also snatched in Houston in 2001. Carty has complained that her trial lawyers were deficient.

The British government and human rights groups have aided Carty's cause.

Carty is one of 10 condemned women in Texas. She is a former teacher from St. Kitts in the British Virgin Islands.

In September, a taped voice recording of Carty begging Britons to help save her life was broadcast into London's Trafalgar Square.

A woman on Thursday admitted having her antique dealer husband killed 20 years ago in front of his girlfriend's Manhattan home, then collecting millions in life insurance after his death.

Barbara Kogan pleaded guilty in Manhattan state Supreme Court to first-degree manslaughter, conspiracy to commit second-degree murder and grand larceny. She faces up to 25 years in prison on each count at her May 19 sentencing.

Kogan, 67, was charged two years ago with murder in the Oct. 23, 1990, death of her husband, George, who was shot three times in front of his girlfriend's Upper East Side apartment building.

Prosecutors say she got her lawyer, Manuel Martinez, to hire a hitman to kill Kogan during their bitter divorce fight, then collected $4.3 million in her husband's life insurance.

Kogan's attorney, Barry Levin, said she entered the plea to spare her two sons from being forced to testify against her at trial.

"It had been weighing heavy on her mind," Levin said. "She decided she wanted to put this behind her."

Though long suspected, Kogan wasn't charged until 2008, after information implicating her emerged at Martinez' trial. His prosecution was delayed for years while he was held on unrelated charges in Mexico. Martinez is serving a 25-year-to-life term for the killing.

A hearing resumed for the last of five lawyers accused of ethical violations in the handling of Kwame Kilpatrick's text messages Wednesday with testimony from the former mayor's lawyer Samuel McCargo.

McCargo, who was among the first of the lawyers cited for ethical violations, told the Attorney Discipline Board that Assistant Corporation Counsel Valerie Colbert Osamuede never was shown documents that detailed what the text messages purportedly said. He also said she never saw copies of the actual messages before they were delivered in secret to another of Kilpatrick's lawyers.

McCargo, who has yet to receive his punishment for being found guilty in March on five counts of professional misconduct, also said Colbert Osamuede probably didn't violate the state's Freedom of Information Act by withholding requested documents that showed how the text messages were kept a secret part of an $8.4 million whistle-blower lawsuit settlement in 2007.

The U.S. Supreme Court said on Monday it would decide whether a California law banning the sale and rental of violent video games to minors violated constitutional free-speech rights, the first time it will consider a video game case.

The justices agreed to hear an appeal by the state after a U.S. appeals court based in California struck down the law, which also imposes strict video game labeling requirements, as unconstitutional.

The high court is expected to hear arguments in the case and then issue a ruling during its upcoming term, which begins in October. It will be one of the most important cases so far for the upcoming term.

In appealing to the Supreme Court, the state argued that the free-speech guarantees of the First Amendment do not bar a state from prohibiting the sale of violent video games to minors under 18.

The law, which was adopted in 2005, has never taken effect because of the legal challenge.

The law prohibits the sale of an interactive video game to anyone under 18 if the game was so violent it was "patently offensive," according to prevailing community standards and lacked serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

Michael Gallagher, president and chief executive of the Entertainment Software Association, which represents U.S. computer and video game publishers, said the group looks forward to presenting its arguments and defending the industry's works.

A lawyer for a Dallas man trying to divorce the man he married in Massachusetts told a Texas appeals court Wednesday that his client is entitled to a divorce because he had a valid marriage.

But the Texas Attorney General's Office argued before the three-judge 5th Texas Court of Appeals panel that the marriage isn't recognized by Texas, so they cannot get a divorce. Jimmy Blacklock, an assistant Texas solicitor general, said the men's union can only be voided.

"The parties lack standing to file a divorce case because they're not married," he said.

The Dallas men wed in 2006 in Massachusetts, where gay marriage is legal, and separated two years later.

Attorney General Greg Abbott appealed a Dallas state district judge's ruling in October that granted a divorce to the men and said the state's same-sex marriage ban violates equal rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Abbott is also appealing an Austin judge's ruling this spring that granted a divorce to two women married in Massachusetts.