The company will also pay for the cost of setting up the trust and will work with the retiree committee to explore offering life insurance conversions when and if the underlying policies allow for conversions.

The group is targeting former Attorney General Phill Kline, now the Johnson County District Attorney. Its clinic in Overland Park falls within Kline's jurisdiction, and he investigated it while attorney general.

The court's order was filed under seal, like all other documents in the case. There has been no public explanation of why Planned Parenthood is suing Kline or why Morrison wants to intervene.

J. Kerry Clayton, Assurant's interim president and chief executive officer, said "We remain focused on disciplined capital management to assure value for our shareholders. We will continue to make investments that support the organic growth of our businesses and continue to evaluate opportunities to make strategic acquisitions in our existing core business segments or in new specialty areas."

In August the company repurchased 1.3 million shares at a cost of $65.5 million, for a 2007 total of 5.7 million shares at a cost of $312.6 million. The current authorization, which was approved on November 10, 2006, has $261 million remaining, although the current program has ended as noted above. Total shares outstanding are 118 million as of August 31, 2007. Since 2004, Assurant has repurchased 26 million shares for $1.1 billion.

Assurant is a premier provider of specialized insurance products and related services in North America and selected international markets. Its four key businesses -- Assurant Solutions; Assurant Specialty Property; Assurant Health; and Assurant Employee Benefits -- have partnered with clients who are leaders in their industries and have built leadership positions in a number of specialty insurance market segments worldwide. Assurant, a Fortune 500 company and a member of the S&P 500, is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol AIZ. Assurant has over $25 billion in assets and $7 billion in annual revenue. www.assurant.com

An unbroken line of precedents dating back 220 years makes clear the Senate does not consider misdemeanor private conduct to be a fit subject of inquiry, asserted Washington attorney Stan Brand.

"We ought to seek to have the committee dismiss this outright," Brand said of a Senate ethics panel's investigation. "The Republican leadership called for an ethics investigation that had nothing to do with his office," said Brand on NBC's "Today" show.

Craig says he may still fight for his Senate seat, a spokesman says — if the lawmaker can clear his name with the Senate ethics panel and a Minnesota court.

The Republican lawmaker, who has represented Idaho for 27 years, announced Saturday that he intended to resign.

"It's not such a foregone conclusion anymore that the only thing he could do was resign," Sidney Smith, Craig's spokesman in Idaho's capital, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

CNET Networks said Tuesday that the Securities and Exchange Commission ended an inquiry into the company's stock option grants.

Regulators won't take any action against San Francisco-based CNET, which is a media company.

CNET's founder Shelby Bonnie quit as chairman and CEO last October -- on the same day the company said it had back dated some stock options grants between its 1996 IPO and 2003.

The costs of the ensuing stock options investigation and related litigation cost CNET Networks $2.9 million in the second quarter, ended June 30, and pushed it to a $76,000 loss.

CNET's loss would have been greater but for a $1.6 million gain on private investments, which partially offset the costs of its stock options investigation.

Neil Ashe, Bonnie's replacement as CEO, said it was a "transition year" for his company.

Restoring the department's reputation also could give the administration more elbowroom to pursue its own agenda.

"The Justice Department needs to be depoliticized," said Guy Lewis, who oversaw the U.S. attorneys' offices under former Attorney General John Ashcroft. "Loyalty to the president is a wonderful thing, but it can't be the be-all and end-all."

For the most part, Justice Department lawyers said, the scandal did little to disrupt the day-to-day prosecution of cases. But Gonzales' handling of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys and his subsequent shifting testimony damaged morale and the public's perception of a politically impartial Justice Department.

The department's standing was especially hurt by revelations that Gonzales' aides had screened job applicants based on their political credentials and by allegations that they had pressured Justice Department lawyers who were overseeing politically sensitive cases, current and former officials said.

Adding to the concern about the department's ability to remain impartial, Gonzales changed policy in a way that allows White House officials unprecedented access to information about pending criminal and civil cases. When Congress confronted him about the change, he testified that he, too, was concerned when he realized the possible effect.

Gonzales appears to have had little sense of the inner workings of his own department, some lawyers said.

When he was told that budget cuts meant that U.S. attorneys would be filing fewer cases, Gonzales turned to aides and asked, "When were you going to tell me this?" people familiar with the meeting said.

Paul Charlton, one of the Republican-appointed U.S. attorneys whom Gonzales fired, recalled that the attorney general raised eyebrows when he spoke at an annual meeting with U.S. attorneys about what he saw as the department's mission.

"He told us to remember that we work for the president," Charlton said. "Many of us, particularly the career people, were taken aback by that. Yes, we serve at the pleasure of the president. But we work for the people, not just the president."

Gonzales attempted to exert tight control over the U.S. attorneys' offices, unlike prior Republican administrations, which had worked to ensure that their top prosecutors had greater independence.

The attorney general and his aides pushed department lawyers in the field to carry out the president's priorities, sometimes to the detriment of local needs.

"It's OK to tell a U.S. attorney that they're not cutting the mustard because they're not prosecuting immigration cases," said Bill Mateja, a former federal prosecutor in Texas and a former senior counsel under Ashcroft. "But it's not OK to bring politics to bear, and in some cases it appears there was more of a focus on the politics and less of a focus on actually fulfilling the president's initiatives."

In its UK 200 Annual Report, The Lawyer ranked Weil, Gotshal & Manges 8th on its list of the top 30 international firms in London by UK turnover. The publication also cited Weil Gotshal for its “growing number of roles on some of the biggest domestic deals in the market.” The firm was involved in seven of the top 40 deals in 2006 in which a US-based firm provided legal counsel. In 2007, Weil Gotshal acted as counsel in seven of the top 10 deals in the period between January and July, including advising Terra Firma on the £3.3 billion takeover of EMI. According to Mike Francies, the managing partner of Weil Gotshal’s London office, "our strategy is clear: we want to compete with the biggest UK firms for the best and biggest UK and European work. The EMI deal says, 'yes, we're doing that.' And clearly we need to be of a certain size and shape to advise on those deals."