Denver-based law firm Holme Roberts & Owen LLP said Friday it is opening a London office in partnership with two British attorneys. HRO said that the London firm Grant Dawe LLP -- formed in 2006 by Tony Grant and Jonathan Dawe -- and HRO attorney Paul Thompson will form a London-based partnership as HRO Grant Dawe LLP.

The Denver firm has often worked with Grant and Dawe in the past.

The partnership "will combine Grant Dawe's successful niche corporate practice in the UK with a major U.S. law firm with a significant presence in the United States and a strong international emphasis," HRO said Friday in a statement. HRO already has an office in Munich.

HRO, founded in 1898, is one of Denver's oldest and largest law firms, with about 150 lawyers locally and 250 worldwide.

Besides Denver, London and Munich, the firm has offices in Boulder, Colorado Springs, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City and San Francisco.

http://www.hro.com

Presidential candidate Barack Obama accused former President Bill Clinton of distorting his words as the Democratic race in South Carolina heated up on Monday.

Meanwhile, Republican presidential hopefuls kept their focus on economics as they began campaigning for the Jan. 29 primary in Florida.

Obama, who was edged out by the ex-president's wife Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Saturday caucuses in Nevada, had harsh words for Bill Clinton, who is beloved in many Democratic circles _ including among many blacks, who could be key to a win in South Carolina's weekend primary.

The former president "has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling" by making statement that are not supported by facts, Obama said in an interview broadcast Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America."

The Clinton campaign has suggested it would continue pointing out inconsistencies in Obama's record.

Republicans are preparing for delegate-rich Florida, where the race remains wide open despite John McCain's recent wins in South Carolina and New Hampshire. A win in Florida would afford the candidate a whopping 57 delegates and a huge jolt of energy in the run-up to Feb. 5, when 22 states hold nominating contests.

Clinton and Obama have been locked in a fierce battle for the party's nomination in a history-making campaign that pits a black man and a woman. Obama won the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses and Clinton emerged triumphant in New Hampshire, five days later.

Their campaign has vacillated between congenial exchanges, a dispute on race and, before Nevada's contest Saturday, charges of dirty politics. So far, no clear front-runner has emerged, making the Jan. 26 contest in South Carolina, where blacks make up about 50 percent of the Democratic electorate, particularly important going into the Feb. 5 de facto national primary.

Trailing candidate John Edwards is looking to make the Democratic contest a three-way race with a strong showing in South Carolina, which neighbors his home state of North Carolina.

Edwards got 4 percent of support in Nevada, compared with Clinton's 51 percent and Obama's 45 percent.

On Sunday, Obama took to the pulpit at Martin Luther King Jr.'s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on the eve of the federal holiday marking the civil rights hero's birth 79 years ago. He based his speech on King's quote that "Unity is the great need of the hour."

Obama is counting on blacks to stick with him in South Carolina to halt his losing streak in the last two state races, and his campaign has worked to overcome concerns among black voters that he would not be able to win an election in white America. He lost Nevada despite winning 83 percent of blacks, who made up 15 percent of the total vote.

Gibson filed the suit on behalf of Keith Kay, Orlando Perez and Shannon Smith, who became incensed when Xbox Live's service was plagued with connectivity issues over the holidays. Smith contacted Microsoft in December in an attempt to determine the cause of the outage, but got in touch with Gibson when he received no response.

As Gibson explained to MTV, the class action suit is a valid way for disgruntled Live subscribers to be heard: "When you have one person who is mad and they can't get a response, and they can't get their complaints addressed by a company like Microsoft, the only way to get their attention is in numbers." According to Gibson, more than 50 people have joined Kay, Perez, and Smith in the suit.

Lawyer Leslie P. Smith brooded over what he knew for a decade: information that might spare the life of an inmate on Virginia's death row. He had thought about disclosing it long ago. But back in 1998, he had been told not to jeopardize the interests of his own client.

The case he could not forget was that of Daryl Atkins, who was convicted in a carjacking murder in York County, Va., and whose appeals spurred the U.S. Supreme Court to a landmark ruling that banned executions of mentally retarded inmates. Ironically, Atkins remained on death row in spite of the historic decision, his own mental limitations still under debate.

All the while, there was Smith, a solo practitioner in Hampton, sometimes pondering his vow of silence. He had been the attorney for Atkins's co-defendant. And what he felt he knew was this: His own client had been coached in his testimony to help ensure that Atkins got the death penalty.

Last spring, Smith, 64, unexpectedly decided to raise the issue again, writing a letter to the Virginia Bar. This time, he was urged to tell what he knew, he testified in court. And the outcome of that revelation came Thursday evening: Atkins's sentence was commuted to life in prison, bringing apparent finality to a case that has bounced from court to court for a decade.

In the end, it seemed one man's disclosure had changed everything. Many lauded Smith for coming forward, although others asked why he waited so long.

"The court finds that Leslie Smith's evidence was indeed credible," Circuit Court Judge Prentis Smiley Jr. said Thursday as the low-key Hampton lawyer watched quietly in the courtroom. The judge noted that Smith had "absolutely nothing to gain."

Atkins's own counsel told the court, "He comes forward at great personal cost to himself."

To some, Smith might seem an unlikely man for the spotlight.

After the ruling was handed down, he left the courthouse without comment. A day later, he was working in his office in Hampton, even though it was a state holiday. Not a showman, not a tough talker, Smith has practiced law 37 years -- half real estate, half criminal work. Other lawyers describe him as honest, forthright.

"He's just a pleasant, down-to-earth, plain-spoken kind of guy," said Ron Smith, a Hampton lawyer who has known him 20 years. "What he did was extraordinary, and he wrestled with it a long time."

"Somebody's sitting on death row, and you know there's evidence . . . they don't know about," said Ron Smith, who is no relation to Leslie Smith. "That's an awful situation for a lawyer to be in."

Over his long career, Leslie Smith has handled five or six capital cases, including the one involving Atkins's co-defendant.

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A woman is appearing in court in connection with the discovery of explosives during a Garda raid of a home.

Two pipe bombs, a shotgun, ammunition and drugs were seized during the search at Barry Park, Finglas, in north Dublin, last Friday. The 22-year-old woman, arrested during the operation, is expected to appear before Dublin District Court on charges linked to the finds.

Army bomb disposal experts were called in to deal with the explosive devices at the time. Cocaine and herbal cannabis believed to have a street value of 10,000 euro was sent to the Garda Technical Bureau for forensic analysis. The woman was being held at Finglas Garda station under Section 2 of the Drug Trafficking Act.

The justices agreed to review claims by Vicky Crawford, who was fired in 2003 after more than 30 years as an employee of the school system for Nashville, Tenn., and Davidson County.

Months earlier, investigators interviewed Crawford about the school district's director of employee relations, Gene Hughes, and Crawford told them Hughes had sexually harassed her and other employees.

The investigation found Hughes had acted inappropriately, but did not recommend that he been disciplined.

Instead, Crawford learned she faced charges of irregularities in her job as payroll coordinator, and she was fired. Crawford then filed a federal lawsuit claiming she had been dismissed in retaliation for alleging harassment by Hughes.

A U.S. district judge and a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the suit. The courts said the anti-retaliation provision of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not apply to Crawford because she didn't raise harassment claims on her own but merely responded to investigators' questions.

The Bush administration is supporting Crawford. "Internal investigations are an integral aspect of Title VII and there is no reason to leave cooperating witnesses unprotected," said Solicitor General Paul Clement.

The justices also will review a separate case involving age-discrimination claims filed by former workers at the Knolls Atomic Power Lab.