Steele paid more than $37,000 to a Maryland company run by his sister, Monica Turner, for work related to his unsuccessful 2006 Senate campaign. If she was not reimbursed, both he and his sister would be violating campaign finance laws, said Steele.

"It was a legitimate reimbursement of expenses," Steele said on ABC's "This Week."

Steele became the first black national chairman in the RNC's history last month. He was the first black candidate elected to statewide office in Maryland in 2002, when he became lieutenant governor, and was chairman of the Maryland Republican Party and then chairman of GOPAC, an organization that recruits and trains Republican political candidates.

Steele's former finance chairman, Alan B. Fabian, claimed to federal prosecutors that Steele made the payment to the company, which was then out of business, as Fabian was seeking leniency on unrelated fraud charges, The Washington Post reported Saturday. Prosecutors gave Fabian no credit for cooperation when he was sentenced in October, the newspaper said.

The charges were made in a confidential sentencing memorandum sent by the U.S. Attorney's office in Maryland inadvertently along with other documents requested by the Post.

The request filed Wednesday with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York seeks to cut those benefits to 15,000 salaried retirees as soon as April 1. The Troy, Mich.-based company said the moves would save about $70 million annually, or $200 million through 2011.

Cutting the benefits also would allow Delphi to reduce its balance sheet liabilities by $1.1 billion, the company said.

Delphi said in the filing that its plan to emerge from bankruptcy protection had been based on assumptions of industrywide light vehicle production of 14.2 million units in 2009 and up to 16.3 million units in 2011.

The forecast also included expectations that General Motors Corp., the supplier's former parent and still largest customer, would build at least 3.15 million light vehicles in 2009 and up to 3.61 million in 2011.

But the overall industry took a turn for the worse in the fourth-quarter of 2008 and the U.S. based automakers now say that the best the industry will be able to do this year will be about 12 million to 12.5 million units, Delphi said in its filing.

Delphi has been operating under Chapter 11 protection since October 2005. A hearing on the request is set for Feb. 24.

The list was made public Wednesday in a court filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. It supplied a handful of bold-faced names that further evidenced the reach into the entertainment world of Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme.

Larry King's spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, said the CNN host suffered "not substantial losses." Rubenstein declined to answer further questions on King's investments with Madoff.

Managers for Malkovich, whose films include "Dangerous Liaisons" and "In the Line of Fire," didn't return messages left Thursday.

Prosecutors say Madoff admits he lost more than $50 billion belonging to investors. Defense lawyers say he has cooperated with authorities to help identify assets.

The list — compiled by AlixPartners LLP, a Dallas company hired as claims agent by the trustee overseeing the liquidation of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC — wasn't necessarily comprehensive since some may have invested through an intermediary investment firm.

The Minnesota Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Franken's request for a certificate of election now, at least on an interim basis, so that Minnesota's empty seat can be filled without waiting the months it may take for the courts to resolve Coleman's separate lawsuit over the recount, which gave Franken a 225-vote advantage.

The justices took the case under advisement and didn't say when they might rule, but their many questions suggested they were skeptical of Franken's arguments.

GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie have rejected Franken's demand for the certificate, which he would need under Senate rules to take the seat Coleman had to vacate early last month as the new Congress convened.

Franken lawyer Marc Elias told the court Thursday that citizens are being deprived of their right to have two senators as Congress decides critical questions. He suggested that Minnesota was obligated under the Constitution and federal statutes to have two senators in place when Congress convened early last month.

A smiling Khan emerged from his house and addressed reporters face-to-face for the first time since 2004 but indicated he would not be talking about Pakistan's secretive atomic program or about who was involved in leaking its secrets around the world.

"We don't want to talk about the past things," he said as the guards who have enforced his long isolation stood aside for a throng of TV crews and journalists.

Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear program, took sole responsibility in 2004 for leaking the nuclear secrets but was immediately pardoned by former President Pervez Musharraf and placed under de facto house arrest. The government insists neither it nor the Pakistani military was aware of his activities.

The 72-year-old scientist, who has suffered a string of illnesses, began agitating for an end to the restrictions after last year's ouster of Musharraf. Over the past year, he has been allowed to occasionally meet friends outside his house and has often spoken to reporters over the phone.

The pink-eyed giant rat appears at union protests around the state. The case has pitted a local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers against a central New Jersey town, and a ruling is expected Thursday.

Lawrence Township fined the union for using the rat in a 2005 protest. The township says the union violated an ordinance against balloons and other inflatable signs.

Union lawyers argue the law violates their right to free expression and suppresses protest.

The township claims the union's use of the rat is a form of commercial speech and is less deserving of First Amendment protections.

During a question-and-answer session Wednesday after an address at the University of Arizona's law school, Roberts was asked whether growing partisanship in the confirmation process poses a significant threat to the independence of the judiciary.

"The courts as a whole are very concerned about partisanship, politicization, seeping into the judicial branch," he said.

Roberts said he thought he was treated fairly during his confirmation hearings, receiving "significant support from both sides of the aisle. But that's not always the case, and what do we do about it?

"I think we need to have a broader recognition that we are not part of the political process, that we are not representatives of either an administration or a confirming Senate on the court," Roberts added. "Your perspective on everything changes the moment you take the judicial oath."

Roberts' lecture focused on his predecessor, the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Roberts called Rehnquist one of the two or three most significant Supreme Court chief justices in history — responsible for a "seismic shift" away from political science and public policy "to the more solid grounds of legal arguments" in case presentations before the court.

"Today, for the first time in its history, every member of the court was a federal court of appeals judge before joining the court — a more legal perspective and less of a policy perspective," Roberts said.

Roberts was named to the high court in September 2005 to succeed Rehnquist. He gave the college's third annual Rehnquist Center Lecture.

Roberts said that during Rehnquist's 33-year tenure on the Supreme Court, he argued 39 cases before him. "Each of those arguments was a lesson, sometimes a hard one in lawyering," he said.