In a statement, Countrywide denied that a raid had occurred but didn't address the general subject of an investigation.

"Even if there were [such a probe], it's company policy not to comment on anything to do with our regulators," a spokesman said.

In the insider trading case, the former executives — Alan Cao, 38, of Woodland Hills; Jun Shi, 43, of Moorpark; and Quan Zhu, 43, of Santa Monica — admitted in plea agreements that they had made tens of thousands of dollars by selling Countrywide shares, including some stock they had borrowed to profit from a price drop in a technique known as short selling, and by buying options giving them the right to sell Countrywide shares.

Countrywide reported Oct. 20, 2004, that its third-quarter profit was 7 cents a share lower than analysts had forecast. The company also cut its earnings forecast. Its stock sank 11.5% that day.

Prosecutors said the illegal profits amounted to $47,668 for Cao, who was Countrywide Financial's vice president of financial planning; $35,547 for Zhu, executive vice president of portfolio risk management; and $19,995 for Shi, first vice president of planning at Countrywide Bank.

Cao and Shi settled a related Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit in March 2006 by returning their earnings plus interest and paying a fine equal to their profit, the SEC said.

In the plea agreements, prosecutors said they would recommend home confinement and probation if pre-sentencing reports turn up no other wrongdoing. No one else is expected to be charged in the case, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Beong-Soo Kim in Los Angeles, the prosecutor in the case.

In a statement about the trading case, Countrywide said it was "committed to the highest ethical standards."

"The company's policies prohibiting illegal insider trading are strictly enforced," Countrywide said.

The company described the three executives as "mid-level managers" and said it had cooperated fully with regulators and prosecutors in the case.

Hose's attorney, Jim Ecker, said he is pleased with the outcome for his mentally ill client. The judge left the opportunity for Hose to receive mental health treatment in prison, he said.

"He has suicidal tendencies, and he's at high risk for that," Ecker said.

Hose was charged with several sex crimes related to the disappearance and alleged abuse of Tanya Kach, a runaway who was 14 when she vanished Feb. 10, 1996.

The trial was originally set to begin in February of this year, but Hose tried to kill himself the day before it began. It was delayed again in May because Hose was being treated at a mental hospital.

The majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, who was appointed to the court by President George W. Bush, said the law is unconstitutional as applied to issue ads that a Wisconsin anti-abortion group wanted to broadcast before the 2004 election.

The ruling was a victory for the group Wisconsin Right to Life, which argued the law violated its free-speech rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution.

"The First Amendment requires us to err on the side of protecting political speech rather than suppressing it," Roberts wrote. "Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor."

The court upheld a ruling that the ads were not election ads covered by the law, but were general issue ads that did not aim to influence voters.

The court's four liberals dissented and said campaign finance reform laws seek to protect the integrity of elections from huge amounts of money.

"After today, the ban on contributions by corporations and unions and the limitation on their corrosive spending when they enter the political arena are open to easy circumvention," Justice David Souter said for the dissenters.

The part of the law at issue in the ruling bans corporations, unions and special interest groups from using unrestricted money to run television or radio ads that refer to a candidate for federal office two months before a general election or one month before a primary election.

In 2003, the Supreme Court by a 5-4 vote upheld the law, including the ban on certain issue ads broadcast before an election.

But since then, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who cast the decisive vote in 2003, has retired and has been replaced by the more conservative Justice Samuel Alito, Bush's other appointee to the court, who joined the majority opinion.

The ads criticized Sen. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin for supporting efforts to block confirmation of several of Bush's judicial nominees. Because Feingold, a Democrat, was running for re-election at the time, the ads were prohibited.

Feingold had co-written the landmark campaign finance law, along with Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who is running for president.

McCain called it regrettable that the court carved out a narrow exception by which some corporate and labor expenditures can be used to target a federal candidate in the days and weeks before an election.

"It is important to recognize, however, that the court's decision does not affect the principal provision of the (law), which bans federal officeholders from soliciting soft money contributions for their parties to spend on their campaigns," he said.

One of McCain's Republican presidential rivals, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, hailed the ruling "Score one for free speech," he said.

Griles, the highest ranking official convicted in the scandal, pleaded guilty in March to charges of lying about his relationship with Abramoff.

"This has been the most difficult time in my life," Griles said before the verdict was announced Tuesday. "My guilty plea has brought me great shame and embarrassment. I have lost my business, my income and, most importantly, my reputation."

However, Huvelle pushed aside Griles' claims of remorse.

"You held a position of trust as number two in the Department of Interior, and I will hold you to a higher standard," Huvelle told Griles. "I find that, even now, you continue to minimize and try to excuse your conduct and the nature of your misstatements."

EU regulators took legal action against Germany on Wednesday for Berlin's refusal to change a law shielding Deutsche Telekom AG's high-speed Internet network from rivals.

The European Court of Justice will now have to decide if Germany can keep a law giving Deutsche Telekom a de facto monopoly on a glass-fiber DSL internet network it built to allow it recoup the cost without of setting up an infrastructure with sharing it with others.

The EU executive's arm said this departure from normal regulation breaks Europe-wide telecom rules giving new providers the right to use telephone and Internet networks.

"The Commission has repeatedly warned Germany that its new telecoms law violates EU telecom rules but without success," said EU Telecom Commissioner Viviane Reding. "We want to ensure Germany can benefit from a healthy, competitive and fully functioning market."

Despite last-ditch negotiations, the EU said the German government was unwilling to change the law the way the EU wanted and continued to defend its position.

Deutsche Telekom aims to roll out a high-speed optical fiber network that will transmit data up to 20 times faster than current offerings.

The plan is to provide Germany's 50 largest cities with high-speed broadband lines by 2007. Berlin had agreed with Deutsche Telekom's argument that it could only make a decent profit on the network if it was exempt from any requirement to offer its lines to rivals.

However, the Commission says Deutsche Telekom's heavy share of the German market already give it a major advantage over other companies. It controls more than 9 million telephone lines out of the country's 12.9 million connections.

Sedgwick Detert Moran & Arnold LLP bought a boutique law firm that specializes in representing landlords, expanding the San Francisco firm's real estate practice.

Led by Jeffery Woo, the boutique focuses on institutional and regional property holders and real estate professionals. Along with Woo, associates David Blumenfeld, Harrison Nam, Scott Okamoto, Stanley Riddell and Stephen Sherman join Sedgwick.

Sedgwick's real estate offerings already include litigation and transactional services for a wide range of commercial real estate owners, developers, managers, lessees and professionals.

The move by Woo and his associates to Sedgwick is part of a growing trend among small firms that move their practice to firms with a national or international presence. Larger firms offer a network of administrative support and can provide a platform to launch services into new geographic markets.

http://www.sdma.com

The two will be sentenced in November, along with four other defendants who pleaded guilty in Milwaukee in April.

Rockwell Automation produces, among other products, specialized factory management software. The majority of the software applications sold by these defendants on eBay had retail prices ranging from about $900 to $11,300.

From September 2003 to September 2004, Koster offered counterfeit software in 105 or more online auctions, receiving a profit of more than $23,000, the DOJ said. The retail value of the software was more than $5 million.

From December 2003 to August 2004, Yamamoto initiated at least 92 auctions, for a profit of $6,000, the DOJ said. The retail value of the software was about $543,000.

Including Monday's pleas, the DOJ has gotten nine convictions involving eBay auctions of counterfeit Rockwell Automation software. In addition to six pleas in Wisconsin, there have been two convictions in the Eastern District of Michigan and another in the Southern District of Indiana. The combined retail value of the counterfeit software in all nine prosecutions is approximately $30 million, the DOJ said.