He's restricted to the home except under certain circumstances, including medical appointments and court appearances. He cannot own any firearms and cannot have contact with any witnesses or informants in the case.

Noting that T.I has a team of highly qualified attorneys, the judge said: "You shouldn't do anything that will undermine their ability to represent you."

Defense lawyer Ed Garland argued that based on the amount of money being put up, there's no reason not to release his client.

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.

"We stay his execution pending the Supreme Court's resolution of Baze vs Rees," the court said, referring to the high court's decision last month to review whether lethal injections cause unacceptable pain.

Siebert's lawyers had argued that the drug combination used for lethal injection might interact with his medication for pancreatic cancer and hepatitis C and cause undue pain.

Siebert was convicted of the 1986 strangling deaths of Sherri Weathers, her two young sons and Weathers' friend Linda Jarman. Also convicted of murdering another woman, Siebert claims to have murdered others in various U.S. states.

Bryan Stevenson, director of the Equal Justice Initiative, which helped bring the suit on Siebert's behalf, said: "It would grossly inappropriate to carry out executions that may soon be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court."

Louella Kelley, Jarman's sister, lamented the ruling. "He's beaten the system again," she said in an interview. "He got himself educated in law while he's been in prison and his lawyers are very, very good. But all along he's been smarter than our justice system."

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley had said on Monday the execution would go ahead. It would have been the first since the beginning of a "creeping moratorium" that has halted executions in at least six U.S. states. 

In a 6-3 split decision, the court refused to grant Ryan or co-defendant Larry Warner the so-called "en banc" hearing.

Ryan, a Republican who gained national prominence as governor for his opposition to the death penalty, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in federal prison after his conviction. But the sentence had been put on hold and he remained free while the request for another hearing was pending.

It was not clear from Thursday's ruling whether Ryan would now be required to report to prison. Ryan did not return a message left on his cell phone, and the office of his attorney James R. Thompson said it had had no immediate comment. Thompson, himself a former governor, had said earlier that the case would be fought to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

Ryan was convicted of taking payoffs from political insiders in exchange for state business while he was secretary of state from 1991 to 1999 and governor from 1999 to 2003.

In 2000, Ryan declared a moratorium on executions after 13 Illinois death row inmates were found to have been wrongly convicted. Then, days before he left office, he emptied out the state's death row, commuting the sentences of all 167 inmates to life in prison.

But the federal investigation of the secretary of state's office under Ryan eventually ensnared him. It had been speeded up after six children died in 1994 in a fiery accident involving a truck driver who got his license illegally.

Authorities eventually found that unqualified truck drivers had obtained licenses through bribes. Federal prosecutors began convicting his employees and friends, moving closer and closer to Ryan.

Thursday's order from the six majority judges was just one paragraph long and gave no explanation for their refusal to hold a hearing.

Ryan's request for a new trial cited problems that had surfaced during the jury's lengthy deliberations, including the dismissal of a juror who had allegedly snored and another who failed to disclose her arrest record. His lawyers argued that the questioning of jury panel members about the problems had intimidated them and affected their impartiality. Prosecutors scoffed at the notion.