The justices refused to review a U.S. appeals court ruling that dismissed the lawsuit because the descendants waited too long to bring their claims demanding that Taylor return van Gogh's "View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint-Remy."

Van Gogh painted the work in 1889. Less than a year later, he killed himself. Taylor's father purchased the painting on her behalf at a Sotheby's auction in 1963 in London for 92,000 British pounds -- about $257,000 at the time. The painting now is estimated to be worth tens of millions of dollars.

Four South African and Canadian descendants of Margarete Mauthner, a Jewish woman who fled Germany in 1939 for South Africa, sued Taylor in 2004 in federal court in California.

The lawsuit claimed the Nazis forced Mauthner to sell the painting under duress before fleeing Germany and that it should be returned to her descendants under the 1998 U.S. Holocaust Victims Redress Act.

Taylor said the record showed the painting was sold through two Jewish art dealers to a Jewish art collector, and that there was no evidence of any Nazi coercion or participation in the transactions.

A U.S. appeals court upheld the dismissal of the lawsuit.

It ruled the descendants had waited to long to bring the lawsuit and the claims under state law were barred by the statute of limitations.

It also ruled that the 1998 federal law refers to the United States and other governments working to return artworks confiscated during the Nazi rule to their rightful owners, but does not give individuals the right to sue private art owners.

Attorneys for the descendants appealed to the Supreme Court. "The issue is of pressing importance, given the advanced age of Holocaust survivors and their heirs," they said.

"There is a strong recent trend toward permitting claimants of Holocaust-era artwork to seek to recover them, regardless of the statute of limitations," the attorneys said in asking the Supreme Court to hear the case.

Taylor's attorneys opposed the appeal and said the appeals court's judgment was correct. They said the policy arguments by the descendants over the 1998 law should be directed to the U.S. Congress, not the Supreme Court.

In siding with Taylor, the high court turned down the appeal without any comment or recorded dissent.

A video of it was posted on the video-sharing Web site YouTube.

"I'm telling you all just like it is. I need some money," the Democratic nominee tells the crowd. "I got some stuff that I got to do, but if you all can give me $20. You're all going to need me in Traffic Court, am I right about that?"

Singletary, 26, is a pastor from Southwest Philadelphia. He said he was only assuring his supporters that he would "give them a fair trial in the courtroom."

Singletary's attorney, Richard W. Hoy, said: "He hasn't done anything wrong. Everyone needs a friend in Traffic Court. You need a friend in Traffic Court. He was just promising people they would get a fair trial."

The Traffic Court oversees moving violations issued in Philadelphia and its judges earn nearly $80,000 per year. The judges need not be lawyers, but each must complete a course and pass an exam.

Singletary is seeking the job at a time when he is not allowed to drive.

His license is suspended through at least 2011 and, at the time he won the Democratic primary, he owed the court $11,427.50 for not paying 55 violations including reckless driving, driving without a license, careless driving without registration, and driving without insurance.

Singletary's father paid the fines soon after the May primary, canceling a bench warrant that had been issued for his son.

Singletary's campaign reports show that he had raised $5,239 for the primary election.

Insider trading "appears to be rampant" among Wall Street securities professionals, she added.

Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general with the Justice Department's criminal division, echoed Thomsen's sentiment and said: "The number of insider trading cases don't seem to be going away."

In the past year, SEC enforcement lawyers have brought increasing numbers of insider trading lawsuits and settlements. Recent high-profile cases include charges against a husband and wife in Hong Kong for trades in Dow Jones & Co Inc shares ahead of News Corp's $5 billion takeover bid, and guilty pleas from three former Countrywide Financial Corp executives for trading company shares ahead of a disappointing profit report.

Also, in March U.S. prosecutors charged 13 people, including employees at top Wall Street banks UBS, Morgan Stanley  and Bear Stearns Cos Inc in what they called one of the most pervasive trading rings since the 1980s. The SEC also brought civil charges against 11 people, as well as against three hedge funds.

Insider trading involving hedge funds is the focus of one of the four internal working groups the SEC has set up to tap expertise and coordinate efforts throughout the agency. The $1.8 trillion hedge fund industry guards its secrecy and complex trading strategies.

Abreu was the director of records at the medical examiner's office. Her co-defendant and former boss, Natarajan Venkataran, was scheduled to go to trial on Nov. 26. Abreu was Venkataran's assistant.

Abreu was responsible for supporting computer systems used to track and identify forensic evidence, including DNA, from crime scenes, prosecutors said. After the Sept. 11 attack, the office needed more computer services to identify victims through evidence collected at ground zero.

The two, charged in 2005, steered more than $13 million in computer service contracts and purchase orders between 1999 and 2004 in exchange for cash payments to companies that did little or no work, according to U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia.

The two also directed millions of dollars to three shell companies they created, withdrew cash and made payments to personal accounts and transferred money overseas, prosecutors said.

Many of the office's Sept. 11-related expenses were reimbursed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which forwarded more than $46 million to the office in 2002 and 2003, federal authorities said.

Wilson was acquitted of raping another 17-year-old girl at the party.

The 1995 law Wilson violated was changed in 2006 to make oral sex between teens close in age a misdemeanor, similar to the law regarding teen sexual intercourse. But the state Supreme Court later upheld a lower court's ruling which said that the 2006 law could not be applied retroactively.

Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears wrote in the majority opinion that the changes in the law "represent a seismic shift in the legislature's view of the gravity of oral sex between two willing teenage participants."

Sears wrote that the severe punishment makes "no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment" and that Wilson's crime did not rise to the "level of adults who prey on children."

The state Supreme Court had turned down Wilson's appeal of his conviction and sentence, but the justices agreed to hear the state's appeal of a Monroe County judge's decision to reduce Wilson's sentence to 12 months and free him. That judge had called the 10-year sentence a "grave miscarriage of justice."

Dissenting justices wrote that the state Legislature expressly stated that the 2006 change in the law was not intended to affect any crime prior to that date.

They said Wilson's sentence could not be cruel and unusual because the state Legislature decided that Wilson could not benefit from subsequent laws reducing the severity of the crime from a felony to a misdemeanor.

They called the decision an "unprecedented disregard for the General Assembly's constitutional authority."

A spokeswoman for Wilson's lawyer said his legal team received no advance notice of the decision.

The Internal Revenue Service intends to improve international tax administration in an effort to reduce the tax gap.

As part of that effort, the IRS said it would increase its outreach to international taxpayers, as well as taxpayers in U.S. territories such as Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, while it beefs up enforcement. "We are challenged by a lack of information reporting on many cross-border transactions," said the IRS in a page recently posted on its Web site.

The IRS intends to strengthen its information reporting and withholding systems, enhance its access to international data, and "ensure adherence to professional standards by tax professionals."

The IRS also wants to improve its cooperation with treaty partners to identify inappropriate tax arbitrage and abusive schemes, and provide greater transparency on cross-border transactions. One goal is to detect financial criminal activity involving offshore entities.

Modernization of technology, staff and business processes will play a role in the effort. The IRS hopes to improve its systems for capturing and using information reported by treaty partners to improve U.S. taxpayer compliance.

The agency intends to identify the workforce skills it needs to address emerging international issues and develop training for its employees so they can get these skills. The IRS will also improve its forms and processing systems, and assess its referral systems and resources to make sure that high-risk issues are dealt with in a timely way.

Beginning in 2006, certain corporations that had assets greater than $50 million were required to file their basic tax forms electronically. Approximately 15,500 of them filed their returns electronically last year. Starting in 2007, certain businesses with assets of more than $10 million had to file electronically.

"Corporations of all sizes are seeing the long range advantages of integrating their tax filing in an electronic environment along with their tax and financial accounting," said IRS Treaty Administration Director Elvin Hedgpeth. "While large and mid-size corporations are required to e-file, many small corporations are seeing the advantages of e-filing voluntarily."