The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday sent the cases of six Texas death row inmates, including one of the infamous "Texas 7" gang of escapees, back to a lower court for reviews of whether attorneys in earlier stages of appeals let the men down.

The decisions are in line with last week's ruling in another Texas case where the justices, in a 5-4 vote, said a condemned prisoner had deficient legal help early because appeals lawyers didn't raise challenges that his trial lawyers were ineffective.

The high court returned the cases to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for review. None of the six has a pending execution date, although some had come close to being put to death in the past before their punishment was delayed by the courts.

Among the condemned prisoners is Donald Newbury, 51, one of seven inmates who broke out of a South Texas prison in 2000. One fugitive killed himself as Colorado authorities closed in on the gang. The remaining six were convicted of killing a suburban Dallas police officer Aubrey Hawkins during a Christmas Eve robbery in Irving in 2000. Two of the six already have been executed.

A federal appeals court panel has unanimously upheld an Obama administration requirement that dealers in southwestern border states report when customers buy multiple high-powered rifles.

The firearms industry trade group, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, and two Arizona gun sellers argued that the administration overstepped its legal authority in the 2011 regulation, which applies to gun sellers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

But the three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that the requirement was "unambiguously" authorized under the Gun Control Act of 1968.

The challengers argued that the requirement unlawfully creates a national firearms registry, but the court said because it applies to a small percentage of gun dealers, it doesn't come close to creating one.

A self-described anarchist and "hacktivist" from Chicago pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges he illegally accessed computer systems of law enforcement agencies and government contractors.

"As part of each of these hacks, I took and decimated confidential information stored on computer systems websites used by each of the entities," Jeremy Hammond told a judge in federal court in Manhattan. "For each of these hacks, I knew what I was doing was against the law."

Prosecutors had alleged the cyber-attacks were carried out by Anonymous, the loosely organized worldwide hacking group that stole confidential information, defaced websites and temporarily put some victims out of business. Hammond was caught last year with the help of Hector Xavier Monsegur, a famous hacker known as Sabu who later helped law enforcement infiltrate Anonymous.

A criminal complaint had accused Hammond of pilfering information of more than 850,000 people via his attack on Austin, Texas-based Strategic Forecasting Inc., a publisher of geopolitical information also known as Stratfor. He also was accused of using the credit card numbers of Stratfor clients to make charges of at least $700,000. He allegedly bragged he even snared the personal data of a former U.S. vice president and one-time CIA director.

A federal appeals court on Friday denied a second request by California doctors, pharmacists and hospitals seeking to undo the state's 10 percent provider rate cut for treating the poor.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied an appeal from medical providers to rehear their case, which allows Gov. Jerry Brown to begin implementing the cuts retroactively. A three-judge panel had ruled against them in December on the grounds that trial courts cannot block the state from making cuts that were approved by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Health providers vowed they will continue to press lawmakers to restore the 10 percent reimbursement rate cut to the state's Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal.

"While we are not surprised by the 9th Circuit Court ruling, we are certainly disappointed, as the 10 percent cut to Medi-Cal will have devastating effects on California's poorest and most vulnerable patients," said Paul Phinney, president of the California Medical Association, in a statement.

Phinney said the state needs competitive Medi-Cal payments as the state prepares to get millions of Californians health coverage under the Affordable Care Act. The association, which represents 35,000 doctors, says ongoing cuts have left doctors with little option but to stop taking qualified patients because the reimbursements do not meet the cost of overhead and supplies to treat them.

Attorneys for the government and the oil industry will square off against environmental groups Friday in federal court in Montana in a dispute over greenhouse-gas emissions from oil and gas drilling.

The Montana Environmental Information Center and two other groups want U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon to cancel Bureau of Land Management oil and gas leases covering almost 80,000 acres in Montana.

They argue the agency did not fairly consider that greenhouse gas emissions from drilling activities could make climate change worse.

The BLM counters that the emissions from machinery and the venting of excess natural gas are insignificant.

Several industry groups have intervened in the case. They say the environmentalists behind the 2011 lawsuit cannot prove they suffered any specific harm from the lease sales.