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WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Wednesday to overhaul transportation programs and keep aid flowing to thousands of construction projects while strengthening highway and auto safety.

The 74-22 vote stepped up pressure for quick action by House because the government's power to collect about $110 million a day in federal gasoline ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A man stabbed four people at a downtown office building Wednesday afternoon and was shot by a police officer at whom he lunged with his weapon, authorities and a witness said.

Three of the victims are in critical condition, and a fourth received minor injuries, Sgt. ...

Hollywood actor George Clooney on Wednesday accused the Sudanese government of committing war crimes in a mountainous border region, which he and U.S. officials said was teetering dangerously on the brink of a humanitarian crisis.

Mr. Clooney, who returned this week from a trip to Sudan, told the Senate Foreign ...

BEAUMONT, Texas — A man at court with family members opened fire outside a Southeast Texas courthouse Wednesday, killing one person and wounding at least three others, police said.

The gunman also was injured in the incident outside the Jefferson County Courthouse in Beaumont, about 80 miles east of Houston, ...

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, Virtual Curtilage: A Theory of Fourth Amendment Privacy in Public. SSRN Abstract:

This article proposes a new theory of Fourth Amendment privacy in public that builds off the legal construct of curtilage around private homes. Curtilage involves a publicly observable area defined as a protected space outside the home in which intimate activity associated with the sanctity of the home and the privacies of life are conducted. Arising from principles of property law and privacy conceptions that pre-date the Fourth Amendment, the idea is a well-grounded legal fiction that protects individuals beyond the four walls of the home.

This article takes the principle of curtilage applied to property, and applies it to the rest of the Fourth Amendment protections covering “persons,” “papers,” and “effects.” The “virtual curtilage” theory has been developed in response to growing surveillance techniques in public spaces, as well as difficulties in protecting thoughts and writings in the digital realm. The theory looks at the development of an historic legal concept that expanded privacy protections based on fundamental principles of property and privacy – a concept based not on what could be searched, but what should be searched consistent with societal rules. That limiting principle of protecting a zone outside the literal four walls of a home has renewed urgency as surveillance technologies increase on our streets and in our digital lives. In addition, building off the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Jones and other cases that have refocused interest on the property based-nature of the Fourth Amendment, the idea of curtilage remerges as a central organizing principle for redefining a reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment.

CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. — A jury found Virginia Tech negligent on Wednesday for waiting to warn students about a gunman during a 2007 campus massacre that left 33 dead.

Jurors deliberated for 3 ½ hours before siding with the parents of two students who were killed on April 16, 2007, in ...

BROOKVILLE, Ind. (AP) — A southeastern Indiana man who pleaded guilty to fatally shooting five people during an apparent drug dispute was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison without parole after telling a judge he deeply regretted the killings.

David Ison of Glenwood, Ind., avoided a possible death sentence by ...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (AP) — After nearly two weeks of testimony, the case that kick-started national conversations about gay youths and Internet privacy went on Wednesday to a jury that must decide whether a former Rutgers University student is a criminal or just a young man who was confused by ...

NOME, Alaska (AP) — Mushers always pose with their lead dogs under the burled arch in Nome after winning the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

When Dallas Seavey won Tuesday, he posed with Diesel and Guinness, but he could have used a little more podium space.

"I had five lead ...

SEATTLE — A 3-year-old boy fatally shot himself with a gun he found in a car while his family stopped for gas early Wednesday in Tacoma, police said. It was western Washington's third recent shooting by a child.

"It is incredible in light of the other ones," said Tacoma police ...

WASHINGTON — Actor and human rights activist George Clooney on Wednesday warned of a humanitarian crisis in the volatile border area between Sudan and South Sudan, where residents are taking refuge in the Nuba Mountains because of aerial bombardments.

Clooney, just back from a visit to the region, described how ...