Bruckner has an impressive track record advising domestic and multinational clients in private equity transactions, with specific expertise advising on large and mid-size management and leveraged buy-outs.

"Volkmar's work on a number of large and mid-market deals has elevated him as a 'rising star' at the German M&A and private equity bar. His experience handling complex domestic and cross-border deals strengthens our capability in Germany.  He has developed a reputation within German private equity circles for being extremely hard-working, having a strong team spirit and possessing an entrepreneurial attitude - qualities that we place high emphasis on. Volkmar joins a strong and ambitious team in Germany, and his experience and attitude will further reinforce our position in Europe," said Jörg Kirchner, Office Managing Partner of Latham & Watkins in Munich.

John Watson, Vice Chair of the Global Corporate Department, commented: "On the corporate side, we are committed to building the leading private equity, M&A and acquisition finance capability in Europe. We have taken great strides in this direction, working on some of the most widely-watched deals in the market, entering new markets and attracting major players in Europe  to join our team. Volkmar's arrival is further evidence of this commitment and ambition."

"I admire Latham's private equity practice and the firm's focus and success at building a deep corporate capability in Europe.  The firm's global platform and culture of integration together with its strong German presence will provide additional opportunities for me to grow my practice and attract new clients," said Bruckner.

Bruckner joins Latham & Watkins from Dechert LLP, where he has been a partner since January 2006. He joined Dechert in 2004 from Baker & McKenzie, where he practiced as an associate since 1999. Bruckner studied law at the University of Erlangen, completing his PhD at Erlangen in 2001. He completed an LL.M. in international comparative law at George Washington University Law School, Washington, D.C. in 1996.  He teaches M&A and private equity related courses at the Nuremberg University Business School.

The high court certified a class covering about 72,000 former and current Wal-Mart workers. One legal expert said the decision "isn't good news for Wal-Mart".

"My speculation is that a jury is likely to find for the plaintiffs, given New Jersey juries and the pretty strong evidence put on elsewhere," said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia. Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, faces more than 70 US wage-and-hour suits, including class actions by employees claiming the company failed to pay for all hours worked or didn't compensate them properly for overtime.

Since December 2005, juries in Pennsylvania and California have awarded Wal-Mart workers a total of $US251 million ($A303 million) in pay and damages over such claims.

"We're disappointed with the decision and we're studying the opinion," Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley said.

Workers' lawyer Judy Spanier said her clients were "very pleased" with the decision. "It essentially adopts every argument we made," she said.

The ruling sends the case back to state court in New Brunswick for pretrial evidence-gathering.

The trial court first refused to grant class-action status, saying the case would be unmanageable. A mid-level appeals court upheld the decision. The Supreme Court found both lower courts were in error.

The workers claim Wal-Mart forced them to work through meal breaks, locked them in retail stores after they clocked out and coerced them into working off the clock.

The New Jersey action class will cover current and former hourly Wal-Mart staff employed from May 30, 1996, to the present.

Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP has combined its two D.C. offices in one location, bringing together more than 200 lawyers and government affairs professionals.

The law firm, resulting from the Jan. 1 merger of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham and Preston Gates & Ellis, has 1,400 lawyers who practice from offices in D.C. and numerous other cities around the globe, including Beijing, Boston, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.

The firm's combined D.C. office is at 1601 K St. NW, a 190,000-square-foot space that was also the previous home of Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham. The firm took an additional 10,000 square feet of space at that location to house the additional workers from Preston Gates & Ellis.

The former D.C. office of Preston Gates & Ellis was at 1735 New York Ave. NW.

In Washington, the firm is known for its work in financial services, including an investment management practice and a mortgage banking and consumer credit group. By merging their operations, Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis also has one of the largest public policy and lobbying practices nationwide.

In addition, the D.C. office has a litigation group that handles a variety of general, commercial, securities, antitrust, government contracts, environmental and insurance coverage matters. The office also focuses on energy, telecom, media, food and drug, transportation and emerging companies.

The trial judge reduced Knoller's conviction to involuntary manslaughter, saying the defendant hadn't known her 140-pound Presa Canario was likely to kill someone. A state appeals court overruled the judge and said a defendant who knows he or she is subjecting someone to a danger of serious injury can be guilty of murder if the victim dies.

On Thursday, the state's high court rejected both the lower-court standards and said Knoller, or any other defendant responsible for unintentional but fatal injuries, can be convicted of murder if they acted with "conscious disregard of the danger to human life.''

A new San Francisco judge, replacing the now-retired trial judge, will now apply that standard, review the trial record and decide whether Knoller is guilty of murder or manslaughter.

"This is a great victory for the prosecution and the victims of a horrendous crime,'' San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris said. "We believe the defendant should be sentenced as originally mandated by the jury."

Knoller, 51, who now lives in Florida, was paroled in 2004 after serving most of a four-year sentence for manslaughter. If her murder conviction is reinstated, she must return to prison for a term of 15 years to life.

Her attorney Dennis Riordan praised the ruling and said Knoller believes the new judge "will again find that the evidence in her case is clearly insufficient to support a second-degree murder conviction.''

But Deputy Attorney General Amy Haddix, the state's lawyer, said Knoller was the "poster child'' for a murder case under the new standards. Haddix said the evidence showed that Knoller had taken a dangerous, aggressive and unmuzzled dog, which she knew she could not control, into an area where it was likely to encounter people.

"I don't think that's any different than driving a car at high speeds when highly intoxicated, which has long been recognized as an act that knowingly endangers human life,'' Haddix said.

Knoller and her husband and law partner, Robert Noel, were keeping two Presa Canario dogs for their owner, a state prison inmate whom they later adopted. On the day of the attack, Knoller took the male dog, Bane, to the roof of her apartment building at Pacific Avenue and Fillmore Street, then returned to the sixth-floor hallway where Whipple, a 33-year-old lacrosse coach, was entering her apartment with two bags of groceries.

Bane charged at Whipple and jumped on her. The dog's 100-pound mate, Hera, bolted out of the couple's apartment and may have joined the attack. Medical examiners found that Whipple suffered 77 wounds, including a fatal puncture to the neck.

Noel was convicted of manslaughter for leaving the dogs with his wife, and was paroled in 2004. Their trial was transferred to Los Angeles after the couple's pretrial statements generated widespread hostility.

In interviews after the attack, Knoller said she had tried to protect Whipple and suggested that her neighbor was responsible for her own death by remaining in the hallway. At her trial, she described Bane as "gentle and loving and affectionate'' and denied having been warned that the dogs were dangerous.

But the Supreme Court said Thursday that there had been about 30 incidents before the attack on Whipple in which the dogs were out of control or threatening humans and other dogs. In response to neighbors' complaints, the couple "responded callously, if at all,'' the court said.

The justices also noted that Knoller and Noel had agreed with the prisoner who owned the dogs that they would name a dog-breeding enterprise "Dog-O-War.''

After the jury verdict, Superior Court Judge James Warren said he was convinced Knoller had been aware that the dogs were dangerous. But he said she was innocent of murder because she had not known her conduct posed a "high probability of death."

As an additional ground for reducing Knoller's conviction, Warren said he thought Noel, charged only with manslaughter, was the guiltier of the two because he had left his wife alone with the dogs, despite knowing that she could not control them.

The now-retired Warren applied the wrong legal standards to both questions, the state's high court said Thursday.

A defendant who knowingly subjects others to a risk of death can be guilty of murder, regardless of whether the conduct created a high probability of death, Justice Joyce Kennard said in the unanimous ruling. She also said judges generally can't second-guess prosecutors' decisions on whether defendants should face different charges.

US District Judge Reggie B. Walton said Thursday that he will release more than 150 letters he has received in relation to next week's sentencing of former vice-presidential aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. While Libby opposed the release of the letters, saying that the writers did not intend for them to become public, various news sources argued that the letters were now matters of public record. Walton agreed that transparency is needed and will release the letters, minus addresses and other personal information, after Tuesday's sentencing.

Walton said that the letters run the full spectrum, with some urging leniency while others call for a substantial sentence. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald recommended a sentence of two-and-a-half to three years, following Libby's March conviction of perjury and obstruction of justice related to the investigation of the Valerie Plame CIA leak case.

"The United States takes this issue seriously,"  Mr Bush said.

"The new initiative I'm outlining today will contribute to the important dialogue that will take place in Germany next week."

He promised that America would work with other countries "to establish a new framework for greenhouse gas emissions for when the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012".

The President's language is a marked contrast to that of earlier in his administration when he questioned whether climate change was a man-made problem and refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, not least because it exempted China and India – who were emerging as competitors – from the first round of emissions cuts.

But his administration also made plain today that it remained opposed to Germany's call for the imposition of a strict upper limit, allowing global temperatures to increase by no more than 2C.

These would mean a worldwide reduction in emissions effectively of 50 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Nor is Mr Bush willing to accept EU proposals for a global carbon-trading program under which companies would buy and sell pollution permits.

Paula Dobriansky, the US Under Secretary of State, told reporters today  that the administration doubted the effectiveness of measures that "would restrict economic growth and investment for new research".

She added: "There is not a one-size-fits-all or silver-bullet solution to climate change."

The US argues that its own progress in cutting carbon dioxide emissions in 2005 shows that a less rigid policy of promoting new technology can also achieve results.

Mr Bush said that all countries, including "rapidly growing economies like India and China" needed to "establish midterm management targets and programmes that reflect their own mix of energy sources and future energy needs".

His proposals did little to impress environmental groups.

Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, branded them a "a complete charade", adding: "It is an attempt to make the Bush administration look like it takes global warming seriously without actually doing anything to curb emissions."

There was a more muted reaction from European leaders such as British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, who have led international pressure for more action on climate change.

Mr Blair, speaking in South Africa, said there was now a "real chance" of a deal on global warming at the G8 summit and then appealed for greater understanding over Mr Bush's position.

Mr Bush has also sought to dampen down growing tensions with Russian President Vladimir Putin, over the stationing of US interceptor missiles in Eastern Europe, inviting him to a meeting at the Bush's family holiday residence at Kennebunkport, Maine, next month.

Today, however, Mr Putin raised the rhetorical stakes further, saying that the recent test of a new Russian missile was a direct response to US actions and "imperialism" in world affairs.

"We are not the initiators of this new round of the arms race," he added.