Black has served nearly 15 months of a 6 1/2-year prison term following his conviction in July 2007.

In early May, the high court agreed to hear an appeal from Black and two other former executives of the Hollinger International media company who were convicted in connection with payments of $5.5 million they received from a Hollinger subsidiary.

In an order released by the court, Justice John Paul Stevens denied Black's request for bail pending his appeal.

The Supreme Court probably won't hear arguments in the case until late this year and a decision is unlikely before late winter.

Black can still ask a federal trial judge for bail. The judge who presided over the trial has already said one of the men, John Boultbee, can be released on bond.

Hollinger once owned the Chicago Sun-Times, the Daily Telegraph of London, the Jerusalem Post and hundreds of community papers across the United States and Canada. All of Hollinger's big papers except the Sun-Times have now been sold and the company that emerged changed its name to Sun-Times Media Group.

The judge's order will require estimates of how forest projects may harm endangered or threatened plants and animals such as the California condor and the gnatcatcher.

"This ruling is a great victory for the rare and endangered species that call the Southern California forests home," said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued the federal agencies.

The U.S. Forest Service revised its plans for the Cleveland, Los Padres and San Bernardino forests in 2005, laying out how the land and resources would be overseen for the next decade, including the management of roads, trails and recreation.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service provided estimates on the potential impact of these plans on wildlife, but critics said they didn't include required measures to minimize harm to endangered species.

Judge Marilyn Hall Patel ruled Monday in San Francisco that the agencies did not follow the species protection law by omitting statements detailing how the forest plans may harm endangered species. The agencies said they planned to do so when specific projects were undertaken.

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.