MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) –
The Minnesota Supreme Court on Tuesday declared Democrat Al Franken the winner of a tight Senate race over Republican Norm Coleman, effectively giving Democrats a critical 60-seat majority needed to push through President Barack Obama's agenda.

Coleman told reporters in St Paul, Minnesota: "I will abide by (the court's) result."

Under state law, the court's decision gives Franken, a well-known satirist and a former writer and actor for the popular Saturday Night Live television show, the right to occupy the seat.

The vote count was the subject of recounts and legal battles since last November's election.

Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty has said he would certify the election winner based on what the state court decides. Pawlenty, considered a possible presidential contender in 2012, said he would not run for governor again next year, which clears an avenue for Coleman to run for governor.

The Minnesota court, in its 32-page ruling, knocked down each of Coleman's five legal arguments that an earlier vote recount had been unfair.

The court said Franken was "entitled" to the certificate of election, which must be signed by Pawlenty and Minnesota's Secretary of State, Democrat Mark Ritchie.

Democrats will now control 60 of the 100 Senate seats -- enough to overcome Republican procedural roadblocks.

However, Senate Democrats may not be able to rely on the votes of some members, including Arlen Specter, the former Republican from Pennsylvania who switched parties in April. Specter has said he will vote his own way and not necessarily along party lines.

SEE-SAW RACE

Coleman, seeking a second term, held a razor-thin 206-vote lead in initial results after the November 4 election.

But the close vote triggered an automatic recount of the 2.4 million ballots cast for the two men, and Franken edged to a 225-vote lead. That was challenged by Coleman and a judicial panel agreed to add only a few hundred previously rejected absentee ballots. That tally expanded Franken's lead to 312.

Franken would be the 58th Senate Democrat, the most the party has had since 1981. They could muster the 60 votes needed to clear Republican procedural hurdles known as filibusters -- provided all Democrats stick together and are joined by two independents who routinely vote Democratic.

The last time either party had a filibuster-proof 60 was 1979 when Democrats held 61 and Democratic Jimmy Carter was president.

Gaining the 60 Senate votes could help President Barack Obama move his ambitious agenda through the chamber, and thus Congress. Democrats also control the House of Representatives, 256 to 178 with one vacancy.

There is no guarantee Senate Democrats would all fall in line to pass Obama's top initiatives, and the Democratic president knows it.

"I am under no illusions that suddenly I'm going to have a rubber-stamp Senate," Obama said in April after Specter switched parties.

"I've got Democrats who don't agree with me on everything, and that's how it should be," the president said.

The Franken-Coleman duel was the longest contested Senate election since a 1974 New Hampshire race, which was voided 10 months later due to voting irregularities, according to the Senate historian's office.

(Additional reporting by Tom Ferraro in Washington; Writing by Andrew Stern; Editing by David Storey)

MOSCOW – Nearly two decades after the Soviet collapse set Russia's roulette wheels spinning again, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is calling in the chips on the gambling industry — a symbol of the glitz and excess of Russia's oil-fueled boom.
It's all part of a Kremlin crusade to clean up a country that has long had a fascination with games of chance — and to rein in an industry seen as a breeding ground for corruption and organized crime.
The government ordered the closure of all casinos and gambling halls Wednesday — confining gambling to four special zones in far-flung regions of Russia, most thousands of miles and half-a-dozen time zones away from Moscow.
There is a downside, though. It deprives the federal budget of billions of dollars a year in taxes, while leaving more than 400,000 people without work amid the country's economic crisis.
"They've killed the industry overnight," said an embittered Michael Boettcher, the British founder of Storm International, a casino group that includes the gaudy Shangri-La in central Moscow.
"It's like closing all the five-star restaurants in London because you're eating too much, and saying that if you do want to have them, you'll have to relocate to North Wales," he said. "Who's going to go? Nobody."
More than once Russia has seen officials announce sweeping reforms, only to later back down. So when the gambling law was introduced in 2006, many wondered whether the Kremlin would actually follow through on its threat to pack the $3.6 billion a year gambling industry off to Siberia and other obscure locations.
Many casinos and hole-in-the wall slot machine parlors stayed open until the last possible moment, while the owners of a few gambling dens took the opportunity to expand their business abroad.
"For Rent" signs are up on Moscow's premier tourist boulevard, the Novy Arbat, where the biggest casinos were open for business just days ago. On glitzy Tverskaya Street — Moscow's Fifth Avenue — the Shangri-La was one of the few casinos still doing a brisk trade as customers placed their final bets.
Gambling has exploded in recent years in Russia. Following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, casinos mushroomed across the country, especially in the capital, drenched in oil wealth. Slot machines quickly spread beyond gaming halls to shops and malls across the country.
As gambling grew, so did the problems. The Russian casino culture quickly became synonymous with ostentatious displays of wealth and organized criminal activity. Compulsive gambling wreaked destruction on players and their families.
The evils of playing the odds are penned into Russia's collective consciousness. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote "The Gambler" in a desperate race against time to pay off mounting debts run up at the roulette wheel, vividly depicting a gambler's rollercoaster ride from exultation to despair.
When Russian lawmakers signed the casino closure law in 2006, the move was in step with the image Putin wanted to project: that of a clean-living, tee-totaling and workaholic president. But equally, say analysts, the government saw an opportunity to weed out the criminal element in the casino business.
Gambling was also seeping into every corner of Russia's public life, moving Putin to assert that the vice "was as addictive as alcohol in this country," according to the Itar Tass news agency. Slot machines were everywhere: grocery stores, railway stations, bus stations and clinics.
"You could buy slot machines for $100 each. It was ludicrous, and something had to be done," said Boettcher.
Russia's diplomatic relations, meanwhile, soured with neighboring Georgia over a damaging spy scandal. With a large percentage of the gaming industry controlled or overseen by Georgians — much of it rumored to be mafia-linked — the government appeared to be sending a message that it was cracking down on organized crime.
Many casino owners say they'd sooner take their business to nearby Belarus and Kyrgyzstan than relocate to the zones.
Bettors, meanwhile, are expected to turn in their thousands to online gaming or poker, which is classified as a sport.

Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, a prominent critic of the gambling industry, said Tuesday he would now turn his attention to Internet gambling and poker halls.

"We've approached the government for a decision on poker clubs and Internet gambling for cash, which is pretty much the same as the gambling business," Luzhkov told Itar Tass. "Poker clubs — how can you say that's a sport?"

Starting Wednesday, casinos and slot machines will be allowed to operate only in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, the Primorsky region on the Pacific coast, the mountainous Altai region in Siberia and near the southern cities of Krasnodar and Rostov, host to the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

It could take five years before some of the outposts are ready to open their doors. In two, not even the location has been settled on.

In the meantime, gambling will go underground, critics fear, creating a breeding ground for corruption and organized crime.

"It could very well turn out to be Russia's Prohibition," said Chris Weafer, a strategist at Uralsib Bank in Moscow, referring to the U.S. drinking ban in the 1920s that rapidly proved unenforceable and ushered in organized crime. "People are not going to give up their gambling fix that easily."

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Associated Press Writer Nataliya Vasilyeva contributed to this report

LOS ANGELES – Santa Barbara County officials are in a meeting about Michael Jackson plans, and E! Online reports they are discussing a possible memorial service at his Neverland Ranch.
Lt. Butch Arnoldi, a Sheriff's Department spokesman, told E!: "Our guys are meeting as we speak with the California Highway Patrol to discuss the security issues."
Santa Barbara County Fire spokesman Capt. David Sadecki confirmed to The Associated Press that fire officials, California Highway Patrol and county sheriffs officials were meeting Tuesday morning to discuss "the whole Michael Jackson thing."
"The Santa Barbara County Fire Department is willing to accommodate the Jackson family with whatever request they have regarding a funeral procession should they have one," Sadecki said.
Sadecki said he had not yet talked representatives in the ongoing meeting but expected an update later in the afternoon.
Neverland is located in the rolling hills of central California's wine country, about 150 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
Rick Quintero, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol, said the CHP had not received a request for a motorcade as of Tuesday morning. He said if the motorcade crosses through CHP jurisdiction, as it likely would from Los Angeles to Neverland, they would need to be notified.
"They would definitely need to notify us because it's going to impact the motoring public. At the point they decide it is going to happen we have to be involved because it's going to impact our jurisdiction," Quintero said.
At once a symbol of Jackson's success and excesses, Neverland became the site of a makeshift memorial after his death Thursday. Scores of fans have streamed past the gated entrance to leave handwritten notes, photographs, balloons and flowers.
He was 29 and at the height of his popularity when he bought the ranch, naming it after the mythical land of Peter Pan, where boys never grow up. There, he surrounded himself with animals, rides and children.
Jackson fled the ranch — and the country — after his acquittal on charges that he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor in 2003 at the estate after getting him drunk.
Jackson moved luxury cars, artwork, jewelry, costumes and other property off the ranch last year for an auction that never occurred.

LOS ANGELES – The Jackson family is determined to move on in order to protect Michael Jackson's legacy and make sure his three children are well, family friend Al Sharpton said Tuesday.
"They've had challenges before," Sharpton said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "They always rallied."
Jackson's parents wasted little time demanding authority over their son's financially strained empire and guardianship of their fatherless grandchildren. The big question is who, if anyone, will contest them?
Early Monday — just four days after the death of the King of Pop — lawyers for Katherine and Joe Jackson won temporary custody of Michael Jackson's three children and moved to become administrators of his estate.
Judge Mitchell Beckloff granted 79-year-old Katherine Jackson temporary guardianship of the children, who range in age from 7 to 12. He also gave her control over some of her son's personal property that is now in the hands of an unnamed third party. But the judge did not immediately rule on her requests to take charge of the children's and Jackson's estates.
The swiftness of the legal motions underscore the fact that Jackson's death leaves a vacuum if he died without a valid will. If no will is filed, the number of potential claimants that could emerge seeking custody of the children or a piece of his empire are many.
Jackson's parents claimed in documents filed in Superior Court on Monday that there is no will. A person with knowledge of Jackson's business matters, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the material, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday that there is a will. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the will splits Jackson's estate between his three children, his mother and some charities.
"No one that I know of has ever seen the will," Jackson family attorney Brian Oxman said on CBS' "The Early Show" on Tuesday. "We simply don't know."
About the same time a judge granted Katherine Jackson authority over at least some of her son's estate Friday, pickup trucks and a large dump truck towing a flatbed were seen entering the 2,500-acre Neverland Ranch, a major piece of the singer's debt-strapped financial empire. It was not clear who had requested the fleet or for what purpose.
Clearly one of his most valuable assets is his recording catalog, which his father could potentially rerelease through his new record company if the family gains control of his assets. There could also be recordings in Jackson's estate that he had never released.
There's also a financial bonanza to be had in the Sony/ATV Music Publishing catalog of which Jackson owned 50 percent. The 750,000-song catalog includes music by the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, Lady Gaga and the Jonas Brothers, and is estimated to be worth as much as $2 billion.
When Jackson died Thursday, he also left behind a 12-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter by his ex-wife Deborah Rowe, as well as a 7-year-old son born to a surrogate mother.
The Jackson family said the children — Michael Joseph Jackson Jr. (known as Prince Michael), Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince Michael II — are living at the Jackson family compound in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley.
"They have a long established relationship with paternal grandmother and are comfortable in her care," the family said in court documents.
Family patriarch Joe Jackson, 79, said at a news conference that the children were enjoying playing with other kids — something they do not normally do.
The documents state that although Rowe is the mother of the two older children, her whereabouts are unknown. The document simply listed "none" for the mother of the youngest child, Prince Michael II.
The Jacksons say they have not heard from Rowe since their son's death. Rowe's attorney, Marta Almli, did not respond to an e-mail message seeking comment Monday. She previously said, "Ms. Rowe's only thoughts at this time have been regarding the devastating loss Michael's family has suffered."
Sharpton said on ABC that the Jackson family's status as a longtime show-biz family gives them valuable experience in dealing with the children.

"You must remember, they're going to have to grow up as Michael Jackson's children," he said. "They need someone that understands that culture, that scrutiny, that unusual life they're going to have to live."

The legal steps were taken even as investigators continued their probe into the singer's death. Officials with the Los Angeles County coroner's office returned to the mansion he was renting at the time of his death and left with two large plastic bags of evidence.

Assistant Chief Coroner Ed Winter said the bags contained medication. He declined to elaborate.

Lawyers for Jackson's cardiologist Dr. Conrad Murray, who was with Jackson when he collapsed, said the physician never prescribed the powerful drugs Demerol or Oxycontin for Jackson and did all he could to revive the singer.

Attorney Matt Alford said it took as long as 30 minutes for paramedics to be called after Murray found Jackson with a faint pulse and performed CPR.

The delay was partly because Jackson's room in the rented mansion didn't have a telephone and Murray didn't know Jackson's street address to give to emergency crews, Alford said.

Eventually, Murray found a chef in the house and had him summon a security guard, who called for help while the doctor continued to perform CPR.

Lou Ferrigno, the star of TV's "Incredible Hulk" who was helping Jackson train for a planned concert tour, said that Jackson didn't look like he was in pain the last time they met; he was helping Jackson train for his tour.

"He might have been a little thin because he was under a lot of stress because of the tour," Ferrigno said on "Good Morning America." But he said he believed Jackson would have made it through his concert tour. He said Jackson was a vegetarian who ate only one meal a day.

Jackson's father told reporters at the family compound that his son's funeral was still in the planning stages but added that his son would not be buried at Neverland.

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Associated Press writers Gregory Katz in London, AP Music Writer Nekesa Mumbi Moody in Los Angeles, business writers Ryan Nakashima and Alex Veiga in Los Angeles and writers Stevenson Jacobs and David Bauder in New York contributed to this story.