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SOUTH PORTLAND, MAINE — Researchers have pieced together what's believed to be the first comprehensive map of the entire 3-by-5-mile Titanic debris field and hope it will provide new clues about what exactly happened that night 100 years ago when the superliner hit an iceberg, plunged to the bottom ...

RICHMOND — More work needs to be done to keep young Americans from using tobacco, including creating smoking bans and increasing taxes on tobacco products, the U.S. surgeon general's office said in a report released Thursday.

Almost 1 in 5 high-school-aged teens smokes, down from earlier decades, but the ...

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The Rev. Pat Robertson says marijuana should be legalized and treated like alcohol because the government's war on drugs has failed.

The outspoken evangelical Christian and host of "The 700 Club" on the Virginia Beach, Va.-based Christian Broadcasting Network he founded said the war on drugs ...

Volokh: Concurring Opinions in Jones Lead FBI To Turn Off 3,000 GPS Devices, Considered a “Sea Change” Within the Bureau by Orin Kerr:

Earlier today, I sent off to law reviews a new draft article on the implications of the mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment introduced in the GPS case, United States v. Jones — and specifically the majority opinion for the DC Circuit (under the name United States v. Maynard ) and the concurring opinions of Justice Alito and Sotomayor. A recent speech by the general counsel of the FBI suggests that I’m not the only one who thinks that the mosaic theory is a really big deal — and a lot more complicated than many realize:

A Supreme Court decision has caused a “sea change” in law enforcement, prompting the FBI to turn off nearly 3,000 Global Positioning System (GPS) devices used to track suspects, according to the agency’s general counsel.

When the decision-U.S. v. Jones-was released at the end of January, agents were ordered to stop using GPS devices immediately and told to await guidance on retrieving the devices, FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann said in a recent talk at a University of San Francisco conference. Weissmann said the court’s ruling lacked clarity and the agency needs new guidance or it risks having cases overturned . . .

Weissmann said it wasn’t Scalia’s majority opinion that caused such turmoil in the bureau, but a concurring opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito. Alito, whose opinion was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, agreed with the Court’s conclusion in the case but wrote separately because his legal reasoning differed from the majority.

Alito focused not on the attachment of the device, but the fact that law enforcement monitored Jones for about a month. Alito said “the use of longer-term GPS monitoring in investigations of most offenses impinges on expectations of privacy.” . . .

In his talk at a University of San Francisco Law Review Symposium, Weissmann suggested that Alito’s concurrence means that several members of the court are concerned with long-term surveillance by technologies beyond GPS systems and that the FBI needs new guidance in order to ensure that evidence does not get thrown out.

“I just can’t stress enough,” Weissmann said, “what a sea change that is perceived to be within the department.”

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PITTSBURGH — A gunman opened fire at a psychiatric clinic at the University of Pittsburgh on Thursday in a shooting that killed two people, including the gunman, and wounded seven others.

A man who was in a nearby waiting room when the gunfire erupted said people scrambled to hide and ...

HOUSTON (AP) — The jury that convicted former Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford of operating a massive Ponzi scheme found Thursday that there is sufficient evidence that $330 million in frozen foreign bank accounts he controlled is money he stole from investors, clearing the way for U.S. authorities to go ...

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the pardons issued by former Gov. Haley Barbour during his final days in office, including those of four convicted killers and a robber who had worked at the Governor's Mansion.

Mr. Barbour, a Republican who once considered running for ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — They've long been known as devil dogs, leathernecks and "the first to fight." But U.S. Marines, with their self-described expertise in "killing people and breaking things," now want to promote their kinder side as well.

A new Marine Corps advertising campaign starting this weekend takes its cue ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States should customize emergency plans for each of the nation's 65 nuclear power plants, a change that in some cases could expand the standard 10-mile evacuation zone in place for more than three decades, an expert panel is recommending.

That's one of the lessons to ...