The lawyer, Ed Jacobs, refused to say if Robert Levy's agreement would be a guilty plea. Levy has not been charged with any crime.

"We're going to get it over with in one day of bad publicity," Jacobs said Wednesday.

Levy did not return a call seeking comment from The Associated Press. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office would not comment on the scheduled court appearance.

Levy was elected in 2005 to preside over a city where the political corruption is almost as famous as the casinos. Four of the last nine mayors have been charged with taking bribes; three men who were on the city council last year are now in prison in another bribery case.

Levy disappeared from city life in late September before resurfacing to resign on Oct. 10. He cited ill health and a federal investigation into his Vietnam war record as his reasons for leaving.

The Press of Atlantic City reported last fall that the Vietnam veteran's claims that he was a member of the Green Berets were untrue. He apologized, but federal authorities have been looking into whether Levy made that claim to increase his veteran benefit payments.

During his absence from city hall, Levy spent time in a substance abuse and mental health treatment center in northern New Jersey. Jacobs described the mayor's time there as "a detox situation."

Boston legal powerhouse Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge is expanding across the pond. Edwards Angell announced plans yesterday to acquire U.K. law firm Kendall Freeman, adding some 50 London lawyers to its current stable of 550 attorneys, about half of whom work in Boston.

“London is the largest legal market by far in Britain and one of the largest anywhere in the world,” Edwards Angell’s Chip DeWitt said. “We think this merger gives us a great platform to add to the number of attorneys we have there.”

No cash will change hands as part of the deal, nor are any layoffs planned at Kendall Freeman, which specializes in insurance and reinsurance law. Instead, plans merely call for the British firm to phase in the “Edwards Angell” name over the next 18 months.

DeWitt said the deal also opens the door for Edwards Angell to help Kendall Freeman expand beyond insurance law. The U.S. firm specializes in several areas, including private equity, initial public offerings and patent law.

“The game plan would be to try to increase the number of attorneys in London,” DeWitt said.

Yesterday’s announcement came almost two years to the day after Providence’s Edwards Angell and Boston’s Palmer & Dodge - two old-line New England law firms - merged to create Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge.

Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly ranks the combined entity as the state’s sixth-largest firm in terms of how many Bay State attorneys it employs.

Film footage apparently showing a man's teenage killers appearing in court has been posted on YouTube.

Earlier this month, Glasgow's High Court heard that three of the youths had boasted about the killing of William Smith, 21, in a clip that was reportedly posted on the video-sharing website.

Now, what appears to be more film of the youths taken during a hearing at the High Court, has also surfaced on the website.

The clip, called "Gorbals" which runs for two minutes and 44 seconds, appears to show the teenagers from behind, sitting in the dock with a judge working in the background.

They are made to stand up just before the video ends.

It has been posted by a webuser called "chrismccann1888", and has already had more than 120 views.

Mr Smith was attacked with wooden sticks and punched and kicked in Glasgow's Gorbals area on December 29 last year. He died several days later in the city's Southern General Hospital.

Jason McFadden, 19, George O'Connor, 18, Iain Stevenson, 19 and Alexander Harvey, 18, admitted the culpable homicide of William Smith, 21. They were jailed for eight years.

Whoever shot the film faces a potential contempt of court charge, for which the maximum sentence is two years in jail and an unlimited fine.

She says her complaints to ethics authorities about Sasso's allegedly unjust behavior and her cooperation in an FBI inquiry about Sasso's handling of a case caused a backlash among her superiors because the judge was a "political ally, friend and crony" of the firm.

As for sexual harassment, the suit says D'Onofrio and other women complained about unwelcome sexual comments and touching by DiFrancesco, but no corrective action was taken.

D'Onofrio recently underwent reconstructive surgery after a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2006. Before the surgery, DiFrancesco "asked her if she was planning on ‘getting really big boobs,'" the suit says.

In a telephone interview after the suit was filed, DiFrancesco said of that allegation, "It's absolutely not true. I can't recall saying those things and I know I would not have said things in those ways."

As for the rest of the personal charges against him, "a couple of things were fabricated," he says.

"It's not something I like to read, and I'm very unhappy about it and I'm very angry about it," says DiFrancesco, who was acting governor in 2001 at the end of a 25-year career in the state Legislature.

The suit names the firm, not individual partners, one of whom is Assemblyman Christopher Bateman, R-Somerset.

According to the complaint, DiFrancesco once asked D'Onofrio if she planned to wear a bathing suit to a professional function. In 2002, he asked her to stay a night in his hotel suite in Atlantic City after a League of Municipalities meeting and then go to a Beach Boys concert with him.

The review panel found poor communication between diplomats and military officials and too little oversight of contractors like Blackwater USA, two people familiar with the report's findings told the AP on Monday.

The State Department risks another incident like the Sept. 16 Blackwater shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians unless it quickly installs closer management of the private army guarding diplomats in Iraq, the independent panel privately told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Rice said she wants to discuss the findings with Gates face to face and intends to act quickly.

"The recommendations point a very good way forward," Rice told reporters Monday night. She provided no details but said she and Gates would "discuss how we will carry out better coordination, how we will make certain that the United States government moves this forward with one voice."

The group strongly recommended that Rice coordinate her next move with the Pentagon, and she plans to speak with Gates by phone before he returns from an overseas trip late this week, a State Department official said. A face-to-face meeting would follow.

The panel, named by Rice in the wake of the Sept. 16 killings, made no specific recommendations about what should happen to Blackwater, whose guards were escorting an official from the U.S. Embassy when they fired on civilians in a Baghdad square, those familiar with the report said. The killings have outraged Iraqis and focused attention on the shadowy rules surrounding heavily armed private guards.

"There needs to be unity of effort so that whatever's moving in the battle space is coordinated, and it needs to be understood, especially, by the military out in that battle space," one person said.

Those familiar with the recommendations in the report spoke on condition of anonymity because Rice has not yet decided what changes she will make.

The recommendations would apply to management of all private security contractors in Iraq, and recognize that it is impractical to eliminate such protection altogether. The military has resisted assuming responsibility for guarding large numbers of U.S. officials, and the State Department's own security force is too small and already stretched too thin.

The group's closely held report also identified a gap that left private guards for diplomats in Iraq outside the direct control of U.S. civilian or military law, and outside Iraqi law, a U.S. official said. It was not clear whether the report recommends placing private contractors squarely under U.S. civilian law, but Congress has already acted to place such guards under military law when working for the Pentagon.

The Iraqi government is demanding that Blackwater be expelled from the country within six months and that its employees be subject to Iraqi law.

One person familiar with the report said the group did not focus on the specific events of Sept. 16, looking instead at the rules of engagement, responsibilities and oversight for all security contractors.