INSIDE Police file on Newtown yields chilling portrait Connecticut police released thousands of pages Friday from their investigation into the Newtown massacre, providing the most detailed and disturbing picture yet of the rampage and Adam Lanza's fascination with murder. Page 2 Home won't take 'brain-dead'girl A San Francisco Bay Area nursing home that had agreed to provide long-term care for a 13-year-old Oakland girl declared brain dead has backed out. Page 2 - Delta website error gives crazy fares An error on Delta Air Lines' website produced super low fares Thursday morning before the problem was corrected a couple of hours later. Page 2 - Stocks end day mostly flat in quiet trading The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 1.47 points, or 0.01 percent, to 16,478.41. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell 0.62 point, or 0.03 percent, to 1,841.40 and the Nasdaq composite was down 10.59 points, or 0.3 percent, at 4,156.59. Page 6 - Car bombing kills pro-Western Lebanese politician A powerful car bomb killed a Lebanese politician critical of Syria and Hezbollah, hitting his SUV Friday as it drove through a business district near Beirut's waterfront. - Page 10 - I 'II III~ II IIIII he "Wire h eJ 1 4 |iwww.sunnewspapers.net SATURDAY DECEMBER 28, 2013 Judge: NSA spying legal A federal judge upheld the agency's tapping of phone records By LARRY NEUMEISTER ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER NEW YORK -The heated debate over the National Security Agency's bulk collection of millions of Americans' telephone records fell squarely into the courts Friday, when a federal judge in Manhattan upheld the legality of the program and cited its need in the fight against terrorism just days after another federal judge concluded it was likely not constitutional. The ruling by U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III and an opposing view earlier this month by U.S. District Judge Richard 1.3 million jobless lose benefits today By BRADLEY KLAPPER ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER WASHINGTON More than 1 million Americans are bracing for a harrowing, post-Christmas jolt as extended federal unemployment benefits come to a sudden halt this weekend, with potentially signif- icant implications for the recovering U.S. economy. A tense political battle likely looms when Congress reconvenes in the new, midterm election year. Nudging Congress along, a vacationing President Barack Obama called two sen- ators proposing an extension to offer his support. From Hawaii, Obama pledged Friday to push Congress to move quickly next year to address the "urgent economic priority," the White House said. For families dependent on cash assis- tance, the end of the federal government's "emergency unemployment compensation" will mean some difficult belt-tightening as enrollees lose their average monthly stipend of $1,166. Jobless rates could drop, but analysts say the economy may suffer with less money for consumers to spend on everything from clothes to cars. Having let the "emergency" program expire as part of a budget deal, it's unclear if Congress has the appetite to start it anew. An estimated 1.3 million people will be cut off when the federally funded unem- ployment payments end Saturday. Some 214,000 Californians will lose their payments, a figure expected to rise to more than a half-million by June, the Labor Department said. In the last 12 months, Californians received $4.5 billion in federal jobless benefits, much of it if plowed back into the local economy. More than 127,000 NewYorkers also will be cut off this weekend. In New Jersey, 11th among states in population, 90,000 people will immediately lose out. Started under President George W Bush, the benefits were designed as a cushion for the millions of U.S. citizens who lost their jobs in a recession and failed to find new ones while receiving state jobless bene- fits, which in most states expire after six months. Another 1.9 million people across the country are expected to exhaust their JOBLESS 15 Military sex Leon in Washington, D.C., sets the stage for federal appeals courts to confront the delicate balance 0 developed when the need to | - protect national security clashes with civil rights established in the Constitution. Pauley concluded the program was a necessary extension of steps taken after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He said the J program lets the government connect fragmented and fleeting communications and "represents / . the government's counter-punch" to the al-Qaida terror network's use of technology to operate AP FILE PHO This June 6 photo shows a sign outside the National Security NSA 15 Agency (NSA) campus in Fort Meade, Md. AP PHOTO Karen Gibbs walks through a labyrinth of icy broken trees and downed power lines to her home on Maplehurst Drive in Belgrade, Maine, on Thursday. Thousands shiver in the dark By DAVID EGGERT and COREY WILLIAMS ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITERS EAST LANSING, Mich.- Staring at a sixth day without power in a house as cold as a refrigerator, a frustrated John Johnson finally was able to borrow a generator from a neighbor Friday. He "never in a million years" thought his tree-lined city neighborhood near Michigan State University would be without electricity this long. But it could be Sunday or even the middle of next week before the power is back after a weekend ice storm that tore off tree limbs and snuffed out lights from Michigan to Maine and into Canada over the Christmas holiday. "Hopefully, I make it through with- out any frozen pipes until the (utility) gets in here," said Johnson, 63, as he tried setting up the generator to warm up the house above 40 degrees before giving it back to his neighbor. Michigan bore the brunt of the storm as nearly 600,000 homes and businesses lost power, and as of Friday afternoon, about 60,000 customers remained in the dark. Maine reported almost 12,000 outages and in eastern Canada, nearly 62,000 still hadn't had their power restored, including 33,000 SHIVER15 assault reports jump by 50 percent AP FILE PHOTO In this June 4 file photo, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, center, testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing investigating the growing epidemic of sexual assaults within the military. By LOLITA C. BALDOR ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER WASHINGTON -The num- ber of reported sexual assaults across the military shot up by more than 50 percent this year, an increase that defense officials say may suggest that victims are becoming more willing to come forward after a tumultuous year of scandals that shined a spotlight on the crimes and put pressure on the military to take aggressive action. A string of high-profile assaults and arrests triggered outrage in Congress and set off months of debate over how to change the military justice system, while military leaders launched a series of new programs intended to beef up accountability and encourage victims to come forward. According to early data obtained by The Associated Press, there were more than 5,000 reports of sexual assault filed during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, compared to the 3,374 in 2012. Of those 2013 reports, about 10 percent involved incidents that occurred before the victim got into the military, up from just 4 percent only a year ago. That increase, officials said, suggests that confidence in the system is growing and that victims are more willing to come forward. ASSAULT 5