Texas law firm Hughes & Luce LLP will merge with international law firm Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP.

Partners at both firms today voted to merge the two firms, creating a law firm of more than 1,500 lawyers in 23 offices located throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Dallas-based Hughes and Luce has 150 lawyers across its offices in Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth.

The merger will be effective Jan. 1, 2008.

"Partners of both firms believe that K&L Gates will serve Texas businesses as a legal bridge to the globalized economy of the 21st century, just as it has in other parts of the United States, Europe and Asia," says Peter Kalis, K&L Gates' chairman and global managing partner and Edward Coultas, Hughes & Luce's managing partner.

The combined full-service firm will be called Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP and will have offices in Anchorage, Austin, Beijing, Berlin, Boston, Dallas, Fort Worth, Harrisburg, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Newark, New York, Orange County, Palo Alto, Pittsburgh, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Spokane/Coeur d'Alene, Taipei and Washington, D.C.

Patterson could face as many as 25 years in prison when he is sentenced in April, prosecutors said.

Two other men — Kevin James, 31, and Levar Haley Washington, 28 — pleaded guilty in the case last week. A fourth, Hammad Riaz Samana, has been declared mentally unfit to stand trial and is undergoing psychiatric care at a federal prison.

All except Samana, a citizen of Pakistan, are American-born Muslim converts. The men were indicted in 2005 for what authorities said was a plot to attack American military facilities, Israeli government offices and synagogues in the Los Angeles area.

Prosecutors said the plot was orchestrated by Washington, Patterson and Samana at the behest of James, an inmate at California State Prison in Sacramento and founder of the radical Muslim group Jamiyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh.

Patterson has cooperated with authorities, according his attorney, Winston Kevin McKesson.

"He volunteered to work for the government after finding out James lied," McKesson said. "James misled them in what the Quran says."

The plotters were within weeks of being able to carry out an attack before they were discovered about two months before the Jewish holiday Yom Kippur, officials said. Police uncovered the plot in July 2005 while investigating a string of gas station robberies that authorities say were committed to finance the attacks.

Fayose, who was arrested last week after turning himself in to the anti-graft agency EFCC, was brought to the Lagos high court on Monday, they said.

"The former governor was charged with embezzling 1.2 billion naira belonging to Ekiti state, among other corruption and money laundering charges," a senior official of the court told AFP.

He said Fayose pleaded not guilty to the charges and the judge, Tijani Abubakar, ordered his remand in Ikoyi prison until a further hearing on January 10, 2008.

Fayose was impeached for corruption by Ekiti lawmakers last year and fled the country shortly after. He was governor for close to three years.

He returned home last week and on Friday reported to the EFCC, which wanted to question him over allegations of corruption. He was arrested on the spot.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission said it was probing some 15 of Nigeria's 36 former state governors for corruption.

The former governor of oil rich state of Delta, James Ibori, is also facing corruption charges in the northern city of Kaduna. The court denied him bail on Monday and remanded him in prison until January 11.

Ibori, who ruled the Delta state from 1999 to 2007, has also been under investigation by the British police following the discovery of assets in the country suspected to have been acquired with stolen money.

Under the arrangement, PTT will have to pay the state five percent of its revenue from gas transmission as a rental fee for using the network, the company's president Prasert Bunsumpun told reporters.

The transfer of the pipelines was ordered Friday by the Supreme Administrative Court, in a ruling that challenged the legality of PTT's privatisation in 2001.

The verdict upheld the company's listing on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), but acknowledged concerns brought by consumer groups who argued against leaving vital national infrastructure in private hands.

The judges ordered the Finance Ministry, which already holds a 52 percent stake in the company, to take back control of the pipelines.

"The cabinet today agreed in principle for PTT to transfer our assets back to the Finance Ministry," Prasert said as he left the cabinet meeting.

"Also, PTT will have to pay the state a five-year retroactive pipeline rental charge of at least five percent of the revenue generated from gas transmission," he told reporters.

He declined to say what impact that would have on the company's financial results.

PTT, the kingdom's biggest energy firm, is the largest stock on the Thai bourse with a market capitalisation of 1.01 trillion baht (30 billion US dollars).

Following the cabinet decision, the SET allowed shares of the company to resume trading in the afternoon session. The stock had been suspended since early Friday.

"The status of the company is not affected (by the verdict). The company is still entitled to use such assets but has to pay the rental fee at the rate specified by the ministry of finance," PTT said in its filings to the bourse.

"The company believes that there is no effect on the company's operations and there will be minor effect on its financial status," it added.

Prasert said the cabinet resolution would cost PTT up to 11 billion baht (326 million dollars) to settle the five-year pipeline rental charges and to cover the taxes on transferring the company's assets.

"We have to pay up to nine billion baht for pipeline usage since 2001, including taxes and interest payments," he told reporters.

"Another two billion baht is for taxes for transferring our pipeline assets. The total amount would be paid in the last quarter of 2007," Prasert added.

The California law, however, cannot be enforced without the approval of the Bush administration's Environmental Protection Agency. The state asked the EPA two years ago for a waiver that would allow it to exceed federal clean-air requirements and regulate cars' greenhouse gas emissions starting with 2009 models.

The EPA has never denied California such a waiver, but the agency has been lobbied by auto companies and by Bush's transportation secretary to deny the request. The state has sued the agency to force a decision, and EPA Administrator Steven Johnson has promised to decide by the end of the year.

Ishii's ruling "leaves the Bush administration as the last remaining roadblock to California's regulation of tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions," said state Attorney General Jerry Brown, whose office defended the law.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed another groundbreaking law last year seeking a 25 percent reduction in all greenhouse gases emitted in California by 2020. He said Wednesday that with motor vehicles contributing nearly 30 percent of those emissions, "it is imperative that we be granted the fuel waiver from the federal government."

Environmental groups that joined the defense of the state law praised the ruling. The law's author, former Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, a Los Angeles-area Democrat now with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the decision "affirms California's legal right to clean its air and protect the health of its citizens."

The ruling was the result of a 2004 lawsuit filed by auto industry trade organizations that wanted to overturn the California law. On Wednesday, the auto industry groups were noncommittal on whether they would appeal, apparently awaiting the EPA decision on the state's waiver request. Dave McCurdy, chief executive of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, repeated his group's position that the issue should be off-limits for individual states.

"We need a consistent national policy for fuel economy, and this nationwide policy cannot be written by a single state or group of states - only the federal government," he said.

Ishii, however, disagreed with the auto industry's claim that the state's curb on greenhouse gas emissions amounted to a forbidden intrusion on federal regulation of gas mileage. There is no conflict between the federal government's efforts to improve fuel economy and a state's attempts to protect its residents' health and resources by reducing air pollution, the judge said.

The ruling is the latest in a series of court decisions in favor of states and environmental groups that have argued that laws originally enacted to fight smog can be used against greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide and other fumes from tailpipes and smokestacks that scientists believe cause global warming.

Bush opposes mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions and says the nation should address the problem through voluntary industry action and modest increases in fuel economy standards. But in April, over Bush administration objections, the Supreme Court ruled that the emissions are pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act, and that the EPA must regulate them unless it can back a refusal to do so with scientific evidence.

In September, a federal judge in Vermont upheld a state law identical to California's auto emissions statute, a ruling that automakers have appealed. Last month, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the federal government's new miles-per-gallon standards for SUVs and light trucks were too lax because they failed to account for the effect of fuel consumption on global warming.

The California law requires car manufacturers to lower emissions gradually, to 23 percent below current new-car levels by 2012 and 30 percent by 2016. It does not specify how the reductions are to be accomplished, but the state Air Resources Board says automakers can reach the goals by a combination of improving gas mileage, implementing new technology, using alternative fuels and reducing leaks of greenhouse gases from air conditioners.

The lawsuit by auto trade groups, manufacturers and dealers argued that the California statute conflicts with federal law. The suit contended that the only practical way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to increase gas mileage, a subject regulated exclusively by the federal government.

In Wednesday's 57-page ruling, Ishii said California is not directly regulating fuel economy even if its law has the effect of forcing increases in gas mileage.

"The required increase in fuel economy is incidental to the state law's purpose of assuring protection of public health and welfare under the Clean Air Act," Ishii said.

Compliance with the law, he said, "can be at least partially achieved through changes that are not directly reflected in fuel economy improvements," such as using other fuels and improving air conditioners.