More than four months after Election Day, Minnesota voters are only marginally closer to knowing whether Democrat Al Franken or Republican Norm Coleman will represent them in Washington.

The stakes go beyond Minnesota: Franken would put Democrats in position to muscle their agenda through with barely any Republican help, and he could be a difference-maker on the federal budget and a proposal giving labor unions a leg up on management when organizing.

Some Minnesotans, like actor Jared Reise, are past caring who wins and just want the state to regain its second senator.

"This is a very important time to have everybody there, with the way the economy is," said Reise, of suburban Eagan, who didn't vote for either man on Nov. 4. "It's a little long-winded, this whole recount."

The statewide recount ended two months ago, with Franken ahead by 225 votes out of 2.9 million cast. Coleman had held a similar sized lead heading into the recount. The campaigns are now arguing in a special court whether the latest tally is accurate.

U.S. District Judge Marcia S. Krieger on Wednesday told Nacchio to report to the minimum-security Federal Correctional Institution Schuylkill satellite camp in Minersville, Pa., by noon March 23.

A jury convicted Nacchio in 2007 of 19 counts of insider trading while acquitting him on 23 counts of the same charge.

Federal prosecutors alleged Nacchio sold $52 million worth of stock at a time when he knew Denver-based Qwest Communications International Inc. was at risk while other investors did not.

A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the conviction in a 2-1 ruling, saying the trial judge improperly barred a defense expert from testifying. The full appeals court last week disagreed and upheld Nacchio's conviction. The full court ruled 5-4 that the judge was within his discretion.

Nacchio's attorney, Maureen Mahoney, has indicated an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court is likely. Nacchio also has challenged his sentence.

Mahoney was in a meeting Wednesday afternoon and did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Under intense pressure from both sides in the debate over same-sex marriage, the California Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday on the ballot initiative passed by voters last November that outlawed such unions.


For opponents of the measure, Proposition 8, the three-hour hearing is a critical legal test. But it is also, they say, a prime moment to rally their forces and demonstrate resilience after a stinging election loss that many among them believe could have been avoided.

“It’s a need for the community to show that we will not be passive participants to our own struggle,” said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. “I think it goes to the heart of what we’ve seen since Nov. 5, and what we’ve come to appreciate as the critical importance of everyone stepping up and stepping out.”

To that end, Thursday’s hearing is being treated by some activists as a combination of election night and Super Bowl. In San Francisco, for example, Proposition 8 opponents have erected a Jumbotron screen in front of the courthouse for spectators unable to squeeze into the courtroom.

“This is our lives on the line,” said Molly McKay, media director of the volunteer group Marriage Equality USA. “We don’t want them to have to worry about getting in.”

Ms. McKay’s organization, one of several grass-roots groups that have taken a larger role in the debate on same-sex marriage since the election loss, also organized candlelight vigils around the state for Wednesday night. But more established gay rights groups like Equality California are using the hearing as a rallying point as well, having begun a television campaign on Tuesday with advertisements depicting the quest for same-sex marriage as part of a long-term civil rights campaign.

Supporters of Proposition 8, meanwhile, have taken a quieter tack. Frank Schubert, the campaign manager for Protect Marriage, the leading group behind the initiative, said supporters held a day of prayer on Sunday, asking that the justices “be granted wisdom and for our opponents to understand that our support of Proposition 8 is to affirm traditional marriage, not denigrate gays.”

Mr. Schubert also said his side had asked that supporters who choose to show up outside the courthouse on Thursday not provoke confrontations and not carry signs unless they bear positive language.

While the fall campaign was heated — and expensive, with each side spending more than $40 million — the hearing is bound to seem somewhat anticlimactic to many. The court will only hear oral arguments on Thursday, and has 90 days to come to a decision.

The United States is not a member of the court, but the White House and the State Department said that anyone who has committed atrocities should be held accountable.

"As this process moves forward, we would urge restraint on the part of all parties, including the government of Sudan," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters. "Further violence against civilians, Sudanese or foreign interests is to be avoided and won't be tolerated."

Gibbs declined to comment on whether President Barack Obama supported the issuance of the warrant, but the State Department said the indictment could help bring peace to the region.

"This can be a helpful step," State Department deputy spokesman Gordon Duguid said. "We will see how it proceeds from here."

Duguid urged all sides to cooperate with the court's decision and added that the United States, which has an embassy but not an ambassador in Khartoum, would review diplomatic contacts with Bashir in light of the ICC arrest warrant, the first issued against a sitting head of state.

"Because we take the court's actions very seriously, any official contacts with President Bashir would have to be carefully reviewed on a case-by-case basis, very mindful of the indictment," Duguid said, noting that the United States believes "it is evident that the government of Sudan has the brunt of the responsibility for what has happened in Darfur."

Court documents seen on Tuesday said the trustee, New York lawyer Irving Picard, had made the request with the consent of other civil and criminal investigators as part of efforts to recover assets for Madoff's customers.

Madoff, a once-respected Wall Street trader and investment manager, was arrested and charged with fraud on December 11 after authorities said he confessed to running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme over many years. He is the only person charged in the purported scheme, in which early investors are paid with the money of new clients.

The document filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan said Picard was seeking control of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC (BLMIS) and Primex Holdings LLC "and any membership or ownership interest therein." Primex was a digital trading firm that operated out of Madoff's New York headquarters in what is known as the "Lipstick Building."

The trustee said he wanted Madoff to voluntarily hand over "all of his rights, title and interests" to the firms, property and other assets he listed.

The filing comes after a U.S. judge on Monday partially lifted a freeze on assets of Madoff and his wife Ruth Madoff so he can cooperate with Picard. On Monday, lawyers for Ruth Madoff asserted that her $7 million Manhattan apartment and $62 million in accounts were unrelated to the purported fraud.

At issue is the case of William Osborne, who was convicted in a brutal attack on a prostitute in Alaska 16 years ago. He won a federal appeals court ruling granting him access to a blue condom that was used during the attack. Testing its contents would firmly establish his innocence or guilt, says Osborne, who has admitted his guilt in a bid for parole.

But several justices said something more should be required, including a sworn declaration of innocence that would hold out the prospect of additional punishment for lying under oath.

One condition, Justice David Souter said, is that an "individual claiming the right to test claims that he is actually innocent."

People who waived DNA testing at the time of their trial also might not be able to test it later, some justices suggested.

The Obama administration, backing Alaska prosecutors, urged the court to reject the ruling of the federal appeals court in San Francisco in favor of Osborne.

Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal said the decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was too broad and would erase the requirement in the federal DNA testing law that a person must assert his innocence under penalty of perjury before getting access to the evidence.

Osborne has never made that claim and in fact admitted his guilt as part of his parole proceedings, Katyal said.

The New York state appeals panel issued a unanimous and unprecedented ruling in the case of Mark Speranza, 23, who left semen samples at the Repro Lab Inc. in July 1997 and signed a form directing that they be destroyed if he died. He wanted to be able to father a child if he survived his battle with cancer.

Following their son's death in January 1998, Mary and Antonio Speranza of Edison, N.J., told Repro's operator that they wanted a grandchild and wanted to save the sperm so a surrogate mother could be artificially inseminated.

The lab operator, Awilda Grillo, told the Speranzas their son deposited the specimens for his use only and the specimens had not been screened for donation to a member of the public, as required by state law.

The Speranzas paid Grillo storage fees and asked her to preserve the sperm specimens until a court could decide on custody.

State Supreme Court Justice Jane Solomon ruled that the law barred use of the sperm. She noted that the required screening, specifically a blood test of the donor, was now impossible since Mark Speranza was dead.