Ted Stevens, who is the longest-serving Republican in Senate history, is running for re-election this fall. He is charged with seven counts of failing to list on his Senate disclosure forms goods and services provided by long-time associate Bill Allen that were used to refurbish the Stevenses’ family home. The trial has been accelerated at Mr. Stevens’ request, in hopes of obtaining a verdict before Election Day.

Sarah Palin has spent most of this month out of state, campaigning with Senator McCain, and has endorsed neither Senator Stevens nor his opponent. But that has not stopped both candidates from trying to benefit from her enormous popularity in Alaska, which has only grown since she joined the McCain ticket.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has accused Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull of irresponsibility for contradicting the Reserve Bank governor about the financial crisis. Mr Turnbull today appeared to criticise Glenn Stevens’s choice of the words when describing Australian banks’ position in relation to troubled overseas institutions.

The question we want answered is whether the growth slowdown under way will be another mid-cycle correction as in 1996 and 2001, or alternatively the long-predicted business cycle recession, last seen 17 years ago in the recession we had to have? Unfortunately corrections and recessions can look similar in their initial stages.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the cut in official rates would be welcomed by Australian households that were now battling high mortgage rates and petrol prices. “This will provide some relief, some modest relief, but there is much more to be done helping families deal with cost of living,” Mr Rudd said.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the Federal District Court here rejected arguments by Mr. Stevens’s lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, that the senator needed to be in Alaska to campaign for re-election. Judge Sullivan suggested that he might conduct the trial in Washington from Monday to Thursday, to allow Senator Stevens to go back to Alaska on weekends to campaign.

Following yesterday’s board meeting, Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens announced the bank’s new position in a prepared statement. “The board’s view is that scope to move towards a less restrictive stance of monetary policy in the period ahead is increasing,” it read.

The Justice Department announced the charges at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon. The document says that, from the spring of 1999 through the late summer of 2007, Senator Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator in United States history, failed to report “things of value” that he received in connection with his home in the ski resort city of Girdwood, about 40 miles south of Anchorage.