A money-market mutual fund that held more than $60 billion before it notoriously "broke the buck" a year ago said Wednesday it will hand out $1 billion in a fifth distribution to investors from the fund's remaining assets.

The $1 billion distribution, the smallest of five partial payouts since the Reserve Primary Fund's collapse, will be made to shareholders on or about Oct. 2, said New York-based Reserve Management Co., which ran the fund.

After that payout, the fund will hold about $3.5 billion. The final distribution and its timing is tied up in a pending civil fraud case brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission against Reserve Management and its two top executives.

At a hearing in New York on Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Paul Gardephe said he was inclined to set a Dec. 23 deadline by which the bulk of the remaining assets should be distributed to the fund's thousands of shareholders.

The fund had held more than $64 billion shortly before Sept. 16, 2008, when its net asset value fell below the $1 level needed to ensure investors a dollar-for-dollar return of their principal put into the fund. The fund declared $785 million that it held in Lehman Brothers debt worthless after the investment bank's bankruptcy filing. That sank the fund's net asset value to 97 cents, leading to the fund's collapse as institutional investors demanded cash back and fund managers were forced to sell assets at steep discounts amid plunging markets.

The doors are closed at the California Supreme Court, the tiny courthouse in Alpine County and every state courthouse in between in an unprecedented attempt to close a historic budget deficit.

The Judicial Council, which oversees California's courts, plan to shutter the courts on the third Wednesday of every month from September through July. The move is expected to save the state $84 million.

The closures will cost 20,000 court employees a day's pay each month.

The state's 1,700 judges are protected by state law from having their paychecks altered and are exempt from the cuts. Chief Justice Ron George says all seven high court justices have voluntarily given up a day's pay and that a large number of other judges have followed suit.

The Supreme Court's conservative bloc sounded poised Wednesday to strike down on free-speech grounds a 102-year-old ban against corporations spending large amounts of money to elect or defeat congressional and presidential candidates.

If the justices were to issue such a ruling in the next few months, it could reshape American politics, beginning with the congressional campaign in 2010. Big companies and industries -- and possibly unions as well -- could fund campaign ads to support or defeat members of Congress.

For example, the health insurance industry would have a much greater ability to target for defeat lawmakers who supported a so-called public option for medical insurance. Banks and investment firms could oppose representatives who favored stricter regulation of the financial industry.

And far more money could flow into elections. Last year, the political parties spent about $1.5 billion on campaigns, while corporations earned more than $600 billion in profits.

Since 1907, federal law has prohibited corporations from giving money to candidates. And since 1947, corporations and unions have been barred from spending money on their own to urge voters to elect or defeat federal candidates.

Of course, corporate executives, as individuals, can contribute money to a corporate political action committee, or PAC, but these amounts are modest compared with the funds available to corporate treasuries.

An appeals court panel upheld on Wednesday the conviction of a pharmacist for conspiracy to unlawfully distribute prescription drugs through a Wichita-based Internet pharmacy.

But the panel from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver also threw out the conviction of a co-defendant who worked as a computer technician for Red Mesa Pharmacy.

Pharmacist Jerry Lovern and computer technician Robert Barron were convicted in February 2008 of one count of conspiracy and three counts of unlawfully distributing controlled substances.

Prosecutors said Red Mesa Pharmacy distributed more than 9,200 orders between December 2005 and March 2006 for prescriptions approved by doctors who did not physically examine the buyers or have any communication with them. The prescriptions cited included Ambien, a controlled drug used for insomnia; and phentermine, a stimulant that is sometimes contained in prescription drugs used for weight loss.

Red Mesa's owner, Dr. Wilbur Hilst of Wewoka, Okla., is serving a 33-month sentence after pleading guilty to conspiracy to unlawfully distribute prescription drugs.

Federal prosecutors have asked an appeals court to stay its decision that government agents illegally seized the drug testing records and samples of more than 100 baseball players.

The move could keep baseball's infamous drug list from being destroyed for at least a few months.

In a filing late Monday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco said the Solicitor General, in consultation with the criminal division of the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney's office, was considering whether to ask the Supreme Court to review the decision.

The deadline for a filing with the Supreme Court is Nov. 24.

"There is good cause for a stay," the government wrote in a motion filed by Joseph P. Russoniello, the U.S. attorney in San Francisco, and signed by Barbara J. Valliere, chief of his appellate section.

The ruling by a three-judge panel will allow the lawsuit to go forward and put the Texas delegate system closer to facing a potential review by the Justice Department, which Latino advocates sought in the aftermath of last year's intense Democratic primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In a lawsuit filed last year, the Latino groups argued that the way Texas Democrats awarded presidential delegates unfairly discriminated against Latinos by awarding fewer presidential delegates to heavily Hispanic areas. They did not contest to whom the delegates were awarded, but rather how the allotment was made.

Latino advocates saw Tuesday's ruling as clearing the way for the party's complex process of awarding delegates through a primary and caucus to be done away with entirely.

Oral arguments will be made in St. Paul before a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. The NFL hopes for a quick ruling that would let it suspend the players for four games at the start of the season.

The players took the weight-loss supplement StarCaps, which contained an unlisted but banned diuretic that can mask the presence of steroids.

Their legal fight remains alive in a Minnesota state court. But the NFL is asking the federal appeals court to rule that the players' union contract and federal law trump state law in this case.