Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/281401
By Sam Hananel The Associated Press WASHINGTON » She was a 24-year-old swimming in- structor who had a sexual affair with a male student under 16. The woman was convicted in Virginia in 1993 of unlaw- ful sex with a teenager and served 30 days in jail. She was listed on the state's sex offender registry, and could have tried to get her name removed at some point, but didn't. Fifteen years later, the state passed a new law that reclassified her and thou - sands of others as violent sex offenders. The woman — identified in court papers only as Jane Doe — has un - successfully challenged the law, and now her lawsuit is on the agenda today when the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court meet in private to con - sider taking up new cases. Her appeal comes as states around the country face grow- ing public pressure to protect people from repeat sexual predators. Those labeled sex offenders are being subjected to a host of new limitations, in - cluding where they can live, work or travel. But courts in Georgia and Ohio have ruled that sex offender laws in those states went too far. Under Virginia's 2008 law the woman, who is now mar - ried with three young chil- dren, cannot enter public or private school property or attend church services with- out seeking permission from the state court or the local school board. But she hasn't done that because she said it risks revealing her chil - dren's identity and could take years to resolve. She wants the Virginia law thrown out, claiming the new restrictions inter- fere with her constitutional rights to raise and educate her children and violate her right to due process. ScOTuS Court may take up sex registry case By Bradley Klapper The Associated Press WASHINGTON » Adding heat on the CIA, the Senate will investigate a computer net- work that contained a still- secret review of U.S. terror interrogations that led to dueling criminal referrals to the Justice Department and a dramatic collapse in relations between the na - tion's spy agencies and the lawmakers entrusted with their oversight. In letters to the heads of the CIA and Justice De - partment, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the CIA's decision to search the Senate intelligence commit - tee's network and computers without approval was "abso- lutely indefensible" and car- ried serious implications for the separation of powers be- tween the executive and leg- islative branches. Reid said he had in- structed his Senate's chief cop to examine how Senate staffers obtained an inter- nal CIA review, which the agency accused them of im- properly copying, although Reid described the CIA's al- leged monitoring of Senate computers as more serious. Meanwhile, legislative aides said the Senate intel - ligence committee will push soon for declassification of parts or all of its 6,000-page report on the agency's "war on terror" interrogation tac - tics at secret sites, the start- ing point of the entire dispute. The parameters of the ser- geant-at-arms's investigation are unclear and it's unknown what cooperation he'll receive from the CIA, which has been locked in a bitter rift with the intelligence committee's chairman, Sen. Dianne Fein - stein, D-Calif. The agency accuses committee staffers of illegally accessing certain documents; Feinstein and other senators say the CIA broke the law by monitoring its computer use and delet - ing files. "To my knowledge, the CIA has produced no evi- dence to support its claims that Senate committee staff who have no technical train- ing somehow hacked into the CIA's highly secure classi- fied networks, an allegation that appears on its face to be patently absurd," Reid said in a letter, dated Wednes - day, to CIA Director John Brennan. A previous review, he said, appears to corrobo- rate committee findings and contradict CIA claims. CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said the agency was committed to resolving its differences with senators. The CIA, he said, "believes in the necessity of effective, strong and bipartisan con - gressional oversight." The clash between Con- gress and the CIA is arcane in its particulars but poten- tially broad in scope, with the sides battling over who will write the official his- tory of one of the darkest eras in American spying — the waterboarding and bru- tal interrogations of al-Qa- ida prisoners in undeclared "black site" prisons over- seas. Feinstein's claim that the CIA has undermined separation of powers makes it a constitutional fight, too. The disagreement had been kept under wraps un - til this month and broke out fully into the open after the California Democrat took the Senate floor to outline her case last week. It was an extraordinary interven - tion for a senator who has been among the staunch- est defenders of U.S. in- telligence agencies since former National Security Agency systems analyst Ed- ward Snowden's public rev- elations of massive govern- ment collection of telephone and other data. The CIA has thus far dis- missed Feinstein's allega- tions, and the Justice De- partment has said only it is reviewing the competing claims of wrongdoing. The White House has refused thus far to weigh in — even if the origins of the dispute focus on the effectiveness of interrogation methods au - thorized and conducted by the Bush administration in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Intelligence committee members hope President Barack Obama will help make public the 6,000-page report they are close to com - pleting. Last week, the pres- ident said he would declas- sify the "findings so that the American people can under- stand what happened in the past, and that can help guide us as we move forward." WASHINGTON Co ng re ss r ai se s pr es su re o n CI A Torture dispute leads to probe of computer network U.S. Navy, MaSS CoMMUNiCatioN SpeCialiSt 2Nd ClaSS eriC a. paStor — the aSSoCiated preSS in this photo provided by the U.S. Navy, lt. j.g. Kyle atakturk, le, and lt. j.g. Nicholas horton, pilot a U.S. Navy p-8a poseidon during a mission to assist in search and rescue operations for Malaysia airlines flight Mh370 Wednesday. By Kristen Gelineau The Associated Press KuALA LuMPuR, MALAySIA » A freighter used search- lights early today to scan rough seas in one of the remotest places on Earth after satellite images de - tected possible pieces from the missing Malaysia Air- lines plane in the southern Indian Ocean. In what officials called the "best lead" of the nearly two-week-old aviation mys - tery, a satellite detected two objects floating about 1,000 miles off the coast of Australia and halfway to the desolate islands of the Antarctic. The development raised new hope of finding the vanished jet and sent an - other emotional jolt to the families of the 239 people aboard. But Australian author - ities said in a statement early Friday that the search had turned up nothing so far. One of the objects on the satellite image was almost 80 feet long and the other was 15 feet. There could be other objects in the area, a four-hour flight from south - western Australia, said John Young, manager of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's emergency re - sponse division. "This is a lead, it's prob- ably the best lead we have right now," Young said. He cautioned that the ob- jects could be seaborne de- bris along a shipping route where containers can fall off cargo vessels, although the larger object is longer than a container. Four military planes searched the area Thurs - day without success and planned to resume this morning, Australian offi- cials said. The Norwegian cargo vessel Hoegh St. Peters- burg, with a Filipino crew of 20, arrived in the area and used searchlights af- ter dark to look for debris. It will continue the search Friday, said Ingar Skiaker of Hoegh Autoliners, speak - ing to reporters in Oslo. The Norwegian ship, which transports cars, was on its way from South Af - rica to Australia, he said. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said an- other commercial ship and an Australian navy vessel were also en route to the search area. Satellite imagery ex - perts said the lead is worth investigating. "It would be very nice if you could see a whole wing f loating there, then you could say, 'OK that's an air - plane.' When you're looking at something like this you can't tell what it is," said Sean O'Connor, an imag - ery analyst with IHS Janes. But another analyst said the debris is most likely not pieces of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. There have been several false leads since the Boeing 777 disappeared March 8 above the Gulf of Thailand en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. "The chances of it be - ing debris from the air- plane are probably small, and the chances of it being debris from other shipping are probably large," said Ja - son Middleton, an aviation professor at the University of New South Wales in Syd- ney. T h e d e v e l o p m e n t marked a new phase for the anguished relatives of the passengers, who have been critical of Malaysian officials for not releasing timely information about the plane. While they still hope their loved ones will somehow be found, they acknowledged that news of the satellite images could mean the plane fell into the sea. "If it turns out that it is truly MH370, then we will accept that fate," said Sela - mat Bin Omar, the father of a Malaysian passenger. The jet carried mostly Chinese and Malaysian nationals. But he cautioned that rel - atives still "do not yet know for sure whether this is in- deed MH370 or something else. Therefore, we are still waiting for further notice from the Australian gov - ernment." Malaysian officials met with the relatives Thurs- day night in a hotel near Kuala Lumpur, but journal- ists were kept away. After the meeting, groups of peo- ple left looking distraught. Hamid Amran, who had a child on Flight 370, said questions asked at the meeting made it "apparent that Malaysia's military is incapable of protecting its own airspace." He said he "believes that my child and all the other passengers are still alive. I will not give up hope." A man who would only give his surname, Lau, said he was there to support a Chinese couple who had lost their only son. "It appears some fam - ilies are slowly accepting the worst outcome," he said. Malaysian Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said the relatives in Kuala Lum - pur were being given up- dates by high-level officials "two or three times a day." "We do take care of the next of kin, and assuming it is confirmed, that the air - craft is located somewhere close to Australian, we will obviously make arrange- ments to fly the next of kin there," he said. DigitalGlobe, a Long- mont, Colo.-based company, said it provided the images to Australian officials. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority released two im - ages of the whitish objects. They were taken March 16, but Australian Air Commo- dore John McGarry said it took time to analyze them. "The task of analyzing imagery is quite difficult, it requires drawing down frames and going through frame by frame," he said. 'Best lead' in missing plane search continues Australian authorities had announced satellite images of two objects MALAySIA By Alicia chang The Associated Press The first day of spring? Some people in Maine were shoveling 6 inches of new snow. And in Michigan, col - lege students couldn't even burn a snowman. Ok, so it was a fake snow- man. But it was real snow that got in the way. For many Americans, it feels like winter is hanging on like a bad cold. And now government forecasters are predicting a cooler-than-usual spring across the northern U.S. Even just next week, frigid Arctic air is expected to blanket parts of the East. "This is one of those win - ters — the gift that keeps on giving," said Jon Gottschalck of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administra - tion. The stubborn cold is de- laying any flooding into April in the upper Midwest to New England. While major flood- ing is not expected during the next three months, fore- casters said the greatest threat exists in the south- ern Great Lakes because of above-normal snowpack, thick ice on streams and riv- ers, and snow on the ground. Experts warned of possi- ble isolated flooding in cer- tain areas depending on how fast snow melts and how much rain falls. After a miserable winter, residents in parts of Maine dug out again on the first day of spring. The snowfall knocked out power to some. "I'm just looking forward to not bundling up," said 33-year-old Rich Maggi, while taking a smoke break in the downtown Portland area where the snow had melted by midday. "I think this was hard on even the most winter-hardened peo - ple." In the West, parched con- ditions that have gripped California and the South- west will continue with lit- tle relief, the federal govern- ment reported in its annual spring outlook. California is in its third consecutive dry year, forc - ing some rural communities to ration water and farmers to sell their cattle. Below-average rainfall and snowfall coupled with the upcoming dry season could cause parts of Ari - zona, New Mexico and west Texas to develop drought conditions. WeATHeR Forecast: Cool in North, dry in West The Associated Press ALAMOGORDO, N.M. » New Mexico environmental reg- ulators are blocking two companies from digging up an Alamogordo landfill in search of a rumored cache of what some consider the worst Atari video game of all time. The Alamogordo News reports "E.T. The Extrater - restrial" game cartridges were rumored to have been dumped in the landfill in the 1980s. New Mexico Environ - ment Department spokes- man Jim Winchester says an approved waste excava- tion plan is needed before any dig. Winchester says the orig- inal excavation plan was re- jected Feb. 27 and the com- panies haven't yet submitted a new one. Fuel Entertainment and LightBox Interactive re - cently announced plans to search the landfill for the game that proved a finan- cial drain for Atari. The games were part of truckloads of Atari mer- chandise that were suppos- edly disposed of there. GAMING Landfill search for 'E.T.' game halted Smog Check (MOST CARS & PICK-UPS) 527-9841 • 195 S. Main St. starting at $ 29 95 + $ 8 25 certificate SERVICES AT LOWER PRICES All makes and models. We perform dealer recommened 30K, 60K, 90K Members Welcome STOVE JUNCTION The The North State's premier supplier of stoves 22825 Antelope Blvd., Red Bluff 530-528-2221 • Fax 530-528-2229 www.thestovejunction.com Over 25 years of experience Tues-Sat 9am-5pm • Closed Sun & Mon Now Carrying! 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