Spitzer was scheduled to announce his resignation midday, according to a second top Spitzer staffer. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made.

Spitzer and his wife, Silda, left their apartment around 11 a.m. and got into a black SUV to take them to his office. Cameras aboard news helicopters tracked the movement of Spitzer's three-vehicle motorcade from his apartment on the Upper East Side to his office in midtown Manhattan.

Spitzer would be replaced by Lt. Gov. David Paterson, who will become New York's first black governor.

The scandal erupted Monday when allegations surfaced that Spitzer, a 48-year-old married man with three teenage daughters, spent thousands of dollars on a call girl named Kristen at a swanky Washington hotel on the night before Valentine's Day.

"I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates my — or any — sense of right and wrong," the governor said at a news conference with his wife at his side. "I apologize to the public, whom I promised better."

Calls for his resignation came immediately. Republicans began talking impeachment if he didn't step aside. Meanwhile, Spitzer stayed holed up in his Manhattan apartment, where he was reportedly weighing his options, including waiting to use resignation as a bargaining chip with federal prosecutors to avoid indictment.

The case involving Spitzer started when banks noticed frequent cash transfers from several accounts and filed suspicious activity reports with the Internal Revenue Service, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The accounts were traced back to Spitzer, leading public corruption investigators to open an inquiry.

A law enforcement official said Tuesday that Spitzer had spent tens of thousands of dollars with the call-girl service Emperors Club VIP. Another official said the amount could be as high as $80,000.

Still another law enforcement official said investigators found that during the tryst with Kristen, Spitzer used two rooms at Washington's Mayflower Hotel — one for himself, the other for the prostitute. Sometime around 10 p.m., Spitzer sneaked away from his security detail and made his way to her room, the official said.

According to an affidavit, a federal judge approved wiretaps on the escort service's telephone in January and February. FBI agents in Washington had the Mayflower under surveillance when Spitzer was in town, a senior law enforcement official said.

The officials spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Spitzer, a first-term Democrat, built his political reputation on rooting out government corruption, and made a name for himself as attorney general as crusader against shady practices and overly generous compensation. He also cracked down on prostitution.

He was known as the "Sheriff of Wall Street." Time magazine named him "Crusader of the Year," and the tabloids proclaimed him "Eliot Ness." The square-jawed graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law was sometimes mentioned as a potential candidate for president.

He rode into the governor's office with a historic margin of victory on Jan. 1, 2007, vowing to stamp out corruption in New York government in the same way that he took on Wall Street executives with a vengeance while state attorney general.

His term as governor has been fraught with problems, including an unpopular plan to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants and a plot by his aides to smear his main Republican nemesis. The prostitution scandal, some said, was too much to overcome.

Barely known outside of his Harlem political base, Paterson, 53, has been in New York government since his election to the state Senate in 1985. He led the Democratic caucus in the Senate before running with Spitzer as his No. 2.

Though legally blind, Paterson has enough sight in his right eye to walk unaided, recognize people at conversational distance and even read if text is placed close to his face. While Spitzer is renowned for his abrasive style, Paterson has built a reputation as a conciliator.

At a morning news conference, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, Spitzer's chief rival, said he had not yet heard from the governor but that he was moving on with the business of the state. Lawmakers were set to vote on budget bills Wednesday afternoon.

"We are going to partner with the lieutenant governor when he becomes governor," said Bruno. "David has always been very open with me, very forthright ... I look forward to a positive, productive relationship."

Bruno, though the next highest-ranking official, does not become lieutenant governor upon Paterson's ascension to governor. The lieutenant governor's office would remain vacant until the next general election in 2010 under state law. However, whenever Paterson is out of state or if he were to become incapacitated, Bruno would be acting governor.

Final orders on complaints about judges will be posted on appeals court Web sites and, in most cases, judges will be named if they have been sanctioned.

The changes were adopted by the Judicial Conference of the United States, a 27-judge body led by Chief Justice John Roberts that met Tuesday at the Supreme Court. The new rules take effect in 30 days.

Only a handful of the complaints that are filed annually against federal judges advance beyond a preliminary review. Five of the 841 complaints filed in the government spending year that ended Sept. 30 resulted in the formation of special investigative committees of judges to look into allegations against a colleague.

In one recent case, judges from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said there was evidence to support impeachment of U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr. for misconduct, including lying in bankruptcy court and accepting gifts from lawyers with cases before him.

The Judicial Conference will decide by September whether to recommend that the House consider impeaching Porteous, said Chief Judge Thomas Hogan of U.S. District Court in Washington, the chairman of the conference's executive committee.

The increased attention to allegations of improprieties by judges grew out of a report released in 2006 by a committee headed by Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. The report found problems in the way judges have handled high-profile complaints against their colleagues.

On a separate matter, Hogan said judges oppose legislation that would tie a pay raise to a ban on most paid seminars for judges. Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., attached the travel restrictions to the pay raise bill that passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in January.

"The way it's written is far too broad," said Hogan, noting that one commentator has remarked that under the proposal, "the Supreme Court could travel to Europe but not come back."

Societe Generale spokeswoman Laura Schalk confirmed that investigators searched its offices on Wednesday, taking some records and detaining the employee, whose name she declined to provide. She called the search part of "normal proceedings" in the probe.

Christophe Reille, a spokesman for Kerviel, declined to comment.

A French court is scheduled to rule Friday on whether Kerviel should be freed from a Paris prison during the investigation. Investigators have said they want to prevent him from speaking with any possible accomplices.

Kerviel says he acted alone, but that his bosses must have been aware of his massive risk-taking, and turned a blind eye as long as he was making money for the bank. Investigators are searching for others who could have known about, or participated in, what the bank says was Kerviel's unauthorized activity.

A preliminary internal probe by Societe Generale found no evidence that anyone helped Kerviel hide his positions. The report did say bank officials failed to follow up on 74 warnings about questionable trades, uncovering Kerviel's positions only on the 75th.

Kerviel's lawyer Guillaume Selnet told The Associated Press last week he will be asking why the alerts "didn't provoke any reaction."

Societe Generale says Kerviel forged documents and e-mails to suggest he had hedged his positions.

The bank reported a trading loss of nearly 4.9 billion euros ($7.58 billion) on Jan. 24 from liquidating 50 billion euros ($73 billion) in unauthorized futures positions Kerviel had taken.

Solner gave Fairplay, whose real name is Jon Dalton, 20 days to amend his complaint to explain why the producers of Fox Reality Channel's "Really Awards" were negligent and involved in the alleged battery.

The lawsuit stems from an October 2007 altercation in which Fairplay, a competitor on "Survivor: Pearl Islands," jumped into Bonaduce's arms on stage during the awards show to give him a hug.

Bonaduce, 48, responded by tossing Fairplay over his shoulders. Fairplay landed face first, losing one tooth, breaking another and loosening two more.

Fairplay, 34, sued Bonaduce, Fox Reality Channel and the show producers for battery, negligence and emotional distress. He claims the producers encouraged Bonaduce to go on stage uninvited, did not provide security and failed to provide prompt medical care afterward.

Vicki Greco, a lawyer for Fox and the producers Natural 9 Entertainment, said Bonaduce's actions were unplanned and the companies were not responsible for the incident.

Fairplay's lawyer, Daniel C. Lapidus, claimed Bonaduce told the producers "what he wanted to do and they told him to do it."

Bonaduce, a child actor on "The Partridge Family," starred in the 2005 reality show "Breaking Bonaduce." The next hearing in the case is scheduled for May 12.

William Constable, 54, a self-employed contractor, was arrested in October when he tried to retrieve a camera he left in a Cape Cod hotel room. A hotel employee who found the camera called police after seeing images of a man having sex with young girls.

Prosecutors said the camera and dozens of cassettes and compact discs later seized from Constable's Nantucket home showed him sexually assaulting girls as young as 5, sometimes two at a time.

During a hearing in U.S. District Court, Constable pleaded guilty to seven counts of sexual exploitation of children and one count of possession of child pornography. According to a plea agreement filed with the court, the recommended sentence will be 25 years in prison and a $50,000 fine, with restitution to be determined when Constable is sentenced on June 10. He also faces lifetime supervision after his release.

The suit against South Carolina-based Force Protection on behalf of shareholder Allan Candelore seeks class-action status. The Post and Courier of Charleston reports the lawsuit claims top company officials did not warn investors about delays in delivering bomb-resistant vehicles to the U.S. military.

Force Protection shares plummeted earlier this month after the company announced it was reshuffling management and told shareholders it had major accounting problems.