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PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A woman dubbed the "Black Madam" could face charges in the death of a London tourist who received illegal buttocks-enhancement injections last year in a Philadelphia hotel, police said Thursday....

Star-Starved Christianity 7-21-11

I want An American President 3-31-11

BELTSVILLE, Md. (AP) -- With Maryland poised to legalize gay marriage, some conservative opponents and religious leaders are counting on members of their congregations, especially in black churches, to upend the legislation at the polls this fall....

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A bill that would prohibit state money from being used for sex change surgeries for prison inmates is one step closer to becoming law.

The Senate Corrections and Penology Committee on Thursday approved the bill that now goes to the Senate.

Under current policy, the South ...

HARRISBURG, Ill. (AP) -- Crews cleared splintered plywood and smashed appliances from small-town neighborhoods Thursday, a day after tornadoes killed 13 people in the Midwest and South. But the forecast held a menacing possibility: More twisters may be coming, and they could be even stronger....

Montana Update 12-9-10

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A woman arrested in connection with an illegal buttocks-enhancement injection that left a patient sickened last month is considered a "person of interest" in the death of a tourist who underwent a similar procedure last year, police said Thursday....

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- The New York Police Department ignored one of the key lessons of Sept. 11 by not sharing information with New Jersey law enforcement agencies when it conducted secret surveillance of Muslim communities, Gov. Chris Christie said Thursday....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama is paying tribute to the nation's fallen warriors on Memorial Day, attending a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery and honoring those who died during the Vietnam War....

CHICAGO (AP) -- Officials say one student has died and another is hospitalized after a stabbing at a Chicago school for children with behavioral and emotional needs....

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Conservative media publisher and activist Andrew Breitbart, who was behind investigations that led to the resignations of former Rep. Anthony Weiner of New York and former U.S. Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod, has died in Los Angeles at age 43....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate has defeated a Republican effort to roll back President Barack Obama's policy on contraception insurance coverage....

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) -- Walt Disney World is retooling an Epcot exhibit on childhood obesity after critics complained it was insensitive to obese kids and reinforced stereotypes....

ORLANDO, Fla. — Walt Disney World is retooling an Epcot exhibit on childhood obesity after critics complained it was insensitive to obese kids and reinforced stereotypes.

The interactive exhibit, Habit Heroes, featured animated fitness superheros Will Power and Callie Stenics and super-sized villains Snacker and Lead Bottom, who eat junk ...

PHILADELPHIA — A woman arrested in connection with an illegal buttocks-enhancement injection that left a patient sickened last month is considered a "person of interest" in the death of a tourist who underwent a similar procedure last year, police said Thursday.

Padge Victoria Windslowe, 42, was arrested Wednesday night as ...

PHOENIX (AP) — America's self-proclaimed toughest sheriff finds himself entangled these days in his own thorny legal troubles: a federal grand jury probe over alleged abuse of power, Justice Department accusations of racial profiling, and revelations that his department didn't adequately investigate hundreds of Arizona sex-crime cases.

Rather than seek ...

TRENTON, N.J. — Civil rights organizations are calling for investigations into the New York Police Department's surveillance of Muslims in the U.S. Northeast.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut said Thursday it is among 10 groups that asked for investigations in letters to state police, cities and the presidents ...

The possibility, not even the probability, of remote wiping of a cell phone with applications for nearly all phones, is enough to justify entering the phone to get its number. The question of a more detailed search is saved for another day. United States v. Flores-Lopez, 10-3803 (7th Cir. February 29, 2012):

This appeal requires us to consider the circumstances in which the search of a cell phone is permitted by the Fourth Amendment even if the search is not authorized by a warrant. Lurking behind this issue is the question whether and when a laptop or desktop computer, tablet, or other type of computer (whether called a “computer” or not) can be searched without a warrant—for a modern cell phone is a computer.

. . .

A modern cell phone is in one aspect a diary writ large. Even when used primarily for business it is quite likely to contain, or provide ready access to, a vast body of personal data. The potential invasion of privacy in a search of a cell phone is greater than in a search of a “container” in a conventional sense even when the conventional container is a purse that contains an address book (itself a container) and photos. Judges are becoming aware that a computer (and remember that a modern cell phone is a computer) is not just another purse or address book. “[A]nalogizing computers to other physical objects when applying Fourth Amendment law is not an exact fit because computers hold so much personal and sensitive information touching on many private aspects of life. ... [T]here is a far greater potential for the ‘intermingling’ of documents and a consequent invasion of privacy when police execute a search for evidence on a computer.” United States v. Lucas, 640 F.3d 168, 178 (6th Cir. 2011); see also United States v. Walser, 275 F.3d 981, 986 (10th Cir. 2001); United States v. Carey, 172 F.3d 1268, 1275 (10th Cir. 1999); cf. United States v. Comprehensive Drug Testing, Inc., 621 F.3d 1162, 1175-77 (9th Cir. 2010); United States v. Otero, 563 F.3d 1127, 1132 (10th Cir. 2009). An iPhone application called iCam allows you to access your home computer’s webcam so that you can survey the inside of your home while you’re a thousand miles away. “iCam—Webcam Video Streaming,” http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/icam-webcam-videostreaming/id296273730?mt=8 (visited Feb. 6, 2012, as were the other web sites that we cite in this opinion). At the touch of a button a cell phone search becomes a house search, and that is not a search of a “container” in any normal sense of that word, though a house contains data.

A complication in this case is that, remarkably, the record does not indicate the brand, model, or year of the defendant’s cell phone, so we do not know how dumb or smart it is. But does that matter? Even the dumbest of modern cell phones gives the user access to large stores of information.

. . .

We said it was conceivable, not probable, that a confederate of the defendant would have wiped the data from the defendant’s cell phone before the government could obtain a search warrant; and it could be argued that the risk of destruction of evidence was indeed so slight as to be outweighed by the invasion of privacy from the search. But the “invasion,” limited as it was to the cell phone’s number, was also slight. And in deciding whether a search is properly incident to an arrest and therefore does not require a warrant, the courts do not conduct a cost-benefit analysis, with the invasion of privacy on the cost side and the risk of destruction of evidence (or of an assault on the arresting officers) on the benefit side of allowing the immediate search. Toting up costs and benefits is not a feasible undertaking to require of police officers conducting a search incident to an arrest. Thus, even when the risk either to the police officers or to the existence of the evidence is negligible, the search is allowed, United States v. Robinson, supra, 414 U.S. at 235, provided it’s no more invasive than, say, a frisk, or the search of a conventional container, such as Robinson’s cigarette pack, in which heroin was found. If instead of a frisk it’s a strip search, the risk to the officers’ safety or to the preservation of evidence of crime must be greater to justify the search. Campbell v. Miller, 499 F.3d 711, 717 (7th Cir. 2007), citing Mary Beth G. v. City of Chicago, 723 F.2d 1263, 1273 (7th Cir. 1983). Looking in a cell phone for just the cell phone’s phone number does not exceed what decisions like Robinson and Concepcion allow.

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — A U.S. woman was sentenced to life in prison without parole Thursday for killing a pregnant acquaintance and cutting her baby boy alive from her womb.

Kathy Coy agreed to the sentence in a deal last month in which she avoided a possible death penalty by ...