The high court on Thursday voided the convictions of many youth offenders who appeared before former Luzerne (loo-ZURN') County Judge Mark Ciavarella (shiv-uh-REL'-uh) from 2003 to 2008.

Federal prosecutors charged Ciavarella and another judge with taking $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in private lockups.

The judges pleaded guilty to fraud last month and face sentences of more than seven years in prison.

The juveniles whose records were expunged were low-level offenders who appeared in Ciavarella's courtroom without lawyers.

The case was turned over to the Los Angeles Superior Court jury Thursday after the prosecution concluded a rebuttal to the defense closing arguments.

Spector is being retried on a second-degree murder charge in the shooting of actress Lana Clarkson six years ago.

His first trial ended in a jury deadlock in 2007 with the majority favoring conviction. This time the jury has the option of considering a lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter.

Clarkson died of a gunshot fired inside her mouth as she sat in the foyer of Spector's home. The 40-year-old star of the cult film "Barbarian Queen" had met Spector hours earlier at her job as a hostess at the House of Blues.

The brother of convicted Ponzi scheme mastermind Bernard Madoff had his assets frozen by a New York state judge as part of a $2 million lawsuit filed by an investor who lost $470,000 in Madoff’s fraud.

New York Supreme Court Justice Stephen Bucaria yesterday signed an order temporarily freezing assets of Peter Madoff, who was chief compliance officer of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, according to a copy of the order. Bucaria will hold a hearing on April 3 in Nassau County.

Peter Madoff served as trustee for a $470,000 inheritance that 22-year-old law student Andrew Samuels received in 2003, his father, Howard Samuels, said in an interview. The judge issued the order in a lawsuit filed yesterday by the younger Samuels, who is suing Peter Madoff for $2 million for breaching his fiduciary duty by investing his inheritance with Bernard Madoff.

“All of his assets” are frozen, Howard Samuels said. “Everything.”

The order prohibits Peter Madoff, who lives in Old Westbury, New York, on Long Island, from removing, transferring or encumbering any funds or property and requires him to disclose all assets he owns. Andrew Samuels’ lawyer, Steven Schlesinger, said the freeze order reaches all of Madoff’s assets.

The vouchers have helped cover the cost of private school for foster children and disabled students. The justices ruled Wednesday that the programs run afoul of the Arizona Constitution's bans on using tax dollars to support private schools.

Lower courts had split on the issue.

Arizona's high court previously upheld another state effort to help defray the costs of private-school education. In 1999 it said an income tax credit for individuals making donations for private school scholarships was constitutional.

Republican Norm Coleman, trying to regain his U.S. Senate seat, visited the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday and didn't rule out an appeal if a Minnesota court rules against him in his recount battle against Democrat Al Franken.

One of Minnesota's two Senate seats has been vacant this year after an election last November was so close it triggered a statewide recount. Coleman's first Senate term expired in January, and he is contesting the recount outcome that put Franken ahead by 225 votes.

The uncertainty has eroded Democratic party sway, and with it President Barack Obama's agenda, in the U.S. Senate. Democrats now control 58 of the 100 Senate seats, and they have sometimes struggled to get the 60 votes required to clear procedural hurdles under Senate rules.

The Minnesota court decision on Coleman's old seat could come "any day," Coleman told reporters in the Capitol, where he had come to attend the Senate Republican's weekly luncheon and brief senators on his court battle.

"We'll have to see what they (the Minnesota judges) do and see what the next step is," Coleman said. "I'm not anticipating at this point being across the street," he continued, looking out the window at the U.S. Supreme Court building.

But "this is about getting it right," he said. "If this court doesn't do that, we'll kind of look at the next level."

The Obama administration on Thursday detailed its wide-ranging plan to overhaul financial regulation by subjecting hedge funds and traders of exotic financial instruments, now among the biggest and most freewheeling players on Wall Street, to potentially strict new government supervision.

The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, outlined the plan Thursday before the House Financial Services Committee. He said the changes were needed to fix a badly flawed system that was exposed by the current financial crisis. Mr. Geithner, in his opening statement, called for “comprehensive reform. Not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game.”

Included in the plan would be the establishment of one single agency “with responsibility for systemic stability over the major institutions and critical payment and settlement systems and activities.”

To that end, Mr. Geithner said: “Financial products and institutions should be regulated for the economic function they provide and the risks they present, not the legal form they take,” Mr. Geithner said. “We can’t allow institutions to cherry pick among competing regulators, and shift risk to where it faces the lowest standards and constraints.”

He did not provide details for how all this will work, saying that the proposals would be outlined over the coming weeks.

The plan, which would require Congressional approval, would give the government new powers over “systemically important” banks and other financial institutions that are so big that their collapse would jeopardize the economy as a whole.

The government would have the power to peer into the inner workings of companies that currently escape most federal supervision — insurance companies like the American International Group, multibillion-dollar hedge funds like the Citadel Group and private equity firms like the Carlyle Group or Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts.

If regulators decided that a company had become “too big to fail,” as was the case with A.I.G. in September, they would subject it to much stricter capital requirements than smaller rivals and much closer scrutiny of its borrowing levels and its trading partners, or counterparties.

The 2003 campaign used eight, 60-square-foot (5.6-sq. meter) panels depicting images of factory farms next to Jewish concentration camp inmates and the slogan "Holocaust on your plate."

The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe on Thursday ruled that the ad campaign was not protected under freedom of speech laws.

PETA — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — claimed its goal was to compare Nazi-run concentration camps with contemporary animal abuse.

Paul Spiegel, former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, filed the suit against the ad campaign along with several other Jewish organizations.