The orders were expected after the U.S. Justice Department last week concluded prosecutors improperly handled evidence in the 2007 trials of former Alaska House Speaker Pete Kott and former Rep. Vic Kohring, both Republicans.

U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick on Wednesday ordered U.S. marshals to transport Kott and Kohring from federal prisons to Anchorage as soon as is reasonable for bail hearings. Last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder had asked that the former lawmakers be released on their own recognizance.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals earlier in the day granted Kott's request for bail, subject to terms set by Sedwick. The judges ordered the immediate release of Kohring, again with Sedwick setting conditions.

Four Illinois riverboat casinos failed to get the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their challenge to a law requiring them to share their profits with the state's ailing horse racing tracks.

The court's Monday decision means Illinois tracks expect to share in an estimated $80 million -- money set aside under a 2006 law requiring state riverboat casinos that gross over $200 million annually to give 3 percent of their take to the horse racing industry.

The boats -- in Aurora, Elgin, and two in Joliet -- asked the high court to review whether the law violated the U.S. Constitution's prohibition on unwarranted seizure of assets. The Illinois Supreme Court ruled last year that the "takings" clause applies to government acquisition of private land, not taxes.

The casinos had paid the fee in protest and money was set aside in a special state account during the three-year life of the law. About $79 million was in the account at the time of last June's state court ruling.

Jefferson, a Louisiana Democrat who represented parts of New Orleans until losing his bid for re-election last year, goes on trial Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on allegations that he received more than $400,000 in bribes in return for using his influence to broker business deals in Africa.

Defense attorneys are expected to attack the credibility of a witness who frequently wore a wire for the government. They have to hope a jury will accept a fairly legalistic distinction that Jefferson's conduct wasn't bribery, but was more technically akin to influence peddling. And there's the money in the freezer — $90,000 wrapped in aluminum foil, found by federal agents in August 2005 in Jefferson's Washington home.

Just days earlier, agents videotaped him at a northern Virginia hotel accepting a suitcase stuffed with $100,000 cash from a cooperating witness.

The freezer funds became such a headline that Robert Trout, Jefferson's lawyer, suggested at a recent hearing that potential jurors need to be reminded during the jury selection phase of the trial that the Jefferson case is the one about "the money in the freezer" to try to weed out jurors exposed to pretrial publicity.

The lawsuit filed in bankruptcy court Friday in Manhattan said six longtime investors wiped out by the scandal together lost life savings of $9 million — the amount on fictitious statements issued by Madoff's defunct firm in 2008.

It challenges rules that could disqualify the plaintiffs from collecting up to $500,000 in government-backed compensation because over the years they withdrew more money — believing it was profit — than they originally invested.

By law, trustee Irving Picard has an obligation "to protect a customer's legitimate expectations of what the broker held in his account — even if the broker never purchased any securities in the first place," the suit argues.

Among the plaintiffs named in the suit filed last week: a 73-year-old New Jersey widow who's been forced to take a part-time job at Macy's to cover basic living expenses; a 76-year-old California man who had to sell his home and move in with his daughter; and an 88-year-old Manhattan woman who lives with her ailing husband of 69 years and has stopped paying medical bills because they need the money for food.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is to hear arguments Friday afternoon from attorneys representing Chrysler LLC, Fiat Group SpA and a trio of Indiana state pension and construction funds, the latter of which say the deal unfairly favors the interests of the company's unsecured stakeholders ahead of those of secured debtholders such as themselves.

Late Tuesday, the appeals court halted the sale pending the Indiana state funds' appeal. Chrysler had hoped to close the sale by the end of this week.

Auburn Hills, Mich.-based Chrysler has maintained that the sale is its only hope of avoiding selling itself off piece by piece. If the sale doesn't close by June 15, Fiat has the option of pulling out of the deal. In addition, production at Chrysler's manufacturing plants remains halted pending the closing of the sale.

The funds, which include the Indiana State Police Pension Fund, the Indiana Teacher's Retirement Fund, and the state's Major Moves Construction Fund, also are challenging the constitutionality of the Treasury Department's use of Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, funds to supply Chrysler's bankruptcy protection financing. They say the Treasury did so without congressional authority.

In addition, he ordered officials in Maine, New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont and Missouri to halt their investigations of the telecommunication companies for their alleged participation in the once-secret surveillance programs.

U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker also deferred a decision on whether to sanction the government for refusing to turn over a top secret document in one of the few wiretapping cases still pending.

The judge's dismissals of most of the lawsuits were widely expected after Congress in July agreed on new surveillance rules that included protection from legal liability for telecommunications companies that allegedly helped the U.S. spy on Americans without warrants.

Walker upheld the constitutionality of the new surveillance rules in a written ruling Wednesday. Lawyers representing the telecom customers said they would appeal the judge's ruling.

The judge said congressional actions didn't prohibit telephone and e-mail customers who believe they were targets of warrantless wiretaps from suing federal government officials, whom he called "the primary actors in the alleged wiretapping activities."

He noted that several lawsuits that directly accuse the government, rather than the companies, of wrongdoing are still pending.