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You probably know, or should know, that your cellphone is tracking your location everywhere you go. But whether law enforcement officials should have access to that data is at the center of a constitutional debate.

Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania, says location tracking is key to how the cell system operates.

"As you move around, your phone is constantly checking to see whether the tower that it's currently registered with is the best one, or whether there's a better tower with a stronger signal coming in range," he says. Cellphone companies store that information so they can deliver better service.

That's handy for the police. Law enforcement agencies across the country already subpoena phone location data regularly. The district attorney for Suffolk County, Mass., regularly asks phone companies for cellphone location information.

The subpoenas are "part of almost every major case, including homicide, in some cases, sexual assault, drug trafficking cases," says Jake Wark, a spokesman for the office.

While the National Security Agency has conceded that it does collect records of U.S. phone traffic, it says it does not currently track the location of cellphones. But the agency also says that it would be legal to collect that information.

In Massachusetts, A Test Case

In many states, the use of that data has led to a movement to protect cellphone location information. One cellphone search, in particular, could serve as a test case for civil liberties groups challenging law enforcement's access to such information.

Shabazz Augustine stands accused of murdering a former girlfriend nine years ago. Massachusetts state prosecutors want to use information they got about the location of his cellphone at the time.

Matt Segal, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, told the state's high court that the evidence should be thrown out, because police got it using a simple subpoena, not a search warrant.

"All the government has to show is that the information they're requesting is relevant and material to an ongoing investigation," Segal says.

“ What we're focused on is the possibility that governments are obtaining this kind of location information on many people who have not committed crimes.

On a quiet fall morning in the Delaware countryside, a lone sustained whistle pierces the air. Within moments, a train sweeps around a broad curve, its two heavy locomotives hauling dozens of white, cylindrical rail cars, loaded with 70,000 barrels of crude oil.

It's a scene playing out with growing frequency across the United States and Canada. The U.S. is awash in oil, due in large part to advances in drilling techniques such as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. U.S. production hit a 24-year-high in September. Yet there is a challenge getting the crude from the field to the refinery.

Most oil is moved by pipeline and, five years ago, refiners pinned their hopes on the Keystone XL project. The 1,700-mile, Canadian-built pipeline would carry millions of gallons of crude oil from Alberta, Canada, south to refineries along the Gulf Coast. But the Obama administration has yet to decide whether to allow the project to go forward, in large part because of environmental concerns.

In the meantime, soaring production in the U.S. — especially light sweet crude coming out of North Dakota and Texas — has outpaced U.S. pipeline capability. So oil refiners and producers are turning increasingly to other transportation networks to move crude: barges, trucks and, in particular, railways.

The use of rail cars to ship crude is growing enormously, jumping from 9,500 carloads in 2008 to 234,000 carloads last year, according to the Association of American Railroads. Canadian National Railway says moving crude oil by rail is one of its fastest growing businesses — despite increasing questions about rail safety, especially in the wake of a deadly crash in Quebec last July, when an oil train derailed, killing dozens of people.

Sandy Fielden, an analyst with RBN Energy, says that hasn't slowed down refiners wanting to move oil. It's less expensive to transfer crude by pipelines, but that can be offset by storage costs refiners have to pay if the pipelines are too congested. Fielden says laying rail track or upgrading refineries for trains is not as expensive as building a new pipeline. He says railways also require shorter and less rigid agreements with refiners.

"They only need to commit to about two years' worth, compared to 10 to 15 years on a pipeline — which means there's much less risk," says Fielden.

Refineries, Railways Making Necessary Changes

Michael Murray, a Roman Catholic priest in Elkton, Md., has studied and written about the rail industry for 40 years, and knows some of the best vantage points for spotting trains and studying oil refineries along the East Coast.

On a recent morning, he peers across an open field overlooking the PBF Energy refinery in Delaware City, Del. From here, a mile-long Norfolk Southern train being unloaded is visible.

Murray says the railroad recently reconfigured its tracks outside the refinery, apparently to better maneuver the oil trains. PBF Energy says it installed new oval tracks — which Murray calls "loops" — at the refinery to more efficiently unload the large amounts of oil coming in by rail.

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A Moldovan dancer who was on the bridge of the ill-fated Costa Concordia on the night that it crashed and sank nearly two years ago has admitted in court that she and the captain were lovers after having repeatedly denied the rumors in public.

Domnica Cemortan, 26, acknowledged her affair "under intense pressure during cross examination" in the trial of Captain Francesco Schettino, according to The Telegraph. Schettino is charged with manslaughter in the deaths of 32 people aboard the ship, which hit a rocky shoal off the island of Giglio on Jan. 13, 2012. He is also accused of abandoning the liner's 4,200 passengers and crew on the night of the wreck.

The Telegraph says Cemortan:

"[Refused] at least three times to answer the question of whether she and the 53-year-old married commander had had a relationship, prompting Giovanni Puliatti, the judge, to threaten her with criminal proceedings unless she told the truth.

The hearing had to be suspended while Ms Cemortan's lawyer explained to her the gravity of refusing to testify.

After the hearing reconvened, Miss Cemortan reluctantly admitted to prosecuting lawyer Michelina Suriano that she had been having an affair with the captain, telling the court in Moldovan, 'Yes, I had a relationship with him'.

Prosecutors say the presence of the dancer on the bridge that night distracted Capt Schettino and contributed to the accident, which cost the lives of 32 people."

Ed Marksberry is the longest of longshots against Kentucky GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell.

While the unknown Democrat-turned-independent is given little chance of defeating the Senate minority leader, Marksberry could still play an important role in the 2014 race — as a spoiler candidate in a contest that many expect will be decided by a close margin.

It's not McConnell who's most threatened by the third party candidate. Rather, it's the all-but-certain Democratic nominee Alison Lundergan Grimes, who already had her work cut out for her prior to Marksberry's decision late last month to drop out of the Democratic primary to run as an independent.

In a tight race, if Marksberry is able to capture even a small percentage of the anti-McConnell vote, that could spell trouble for Grimes in a red state where she has little room for error: Kentucky has not elected a Democratic senator since 1992.

Marksberry, a building contractor who ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat in 2010, told NPR one of the main reasons he decided to run as an independent was because he was disappointed with the direction of the party.

He even sued the state Democratic Party in July, claiming it was violating its own bylaws by favoring Grimes over other candidates in the primary.

"There is no voice for the progressive- or liberal-minded voters here," Marksberry said.

He brushed off concerns that he could serve as a spoiler to Grimes, arguing it "would be short-sighted to try to get rid of McConnell at any cost." Marksberry did admit, though, that "the Grimes campaign is probably scratching their heads" over his decision.

Matt Wyatt, a Kentucky-based Democratic operative, said he could see Marksberry potentially winning over some liberal voters who are disenchanted with Grimes, especially her more conservative stance on coal. But, he argued, that wing of the party is usually not active enough to make a major difference.

"The vast majority of Democrats will stick with their best chance to upset Mitch McConnell," Wyatt said.

Veteran Kentucky Democratic political consultant Jim Cauley said the Grimes campaign should be less concerned with Marksberry taking Democratic votes than the "middle vote" — those who may not be engaged in politics on a regular basis but don't view McConnell favorably.

"I don't want to give them another place to go," Cauley said. "In that sense, a third party could make all the difference."

In 2012, for example, Republicans contended that Libertarian candidate Dan Cox cost them a shot to take out incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester in Montana.

In Kentucky, a Reform Party candidate nearly tipped the balance in a 1998 Senate race by winning just over one percent in a contest that Republican incumbent Jim Bunning won by a razor-thin six-tenths of a percentage point.

So far, the Democratic establishment has coalesced around Grimes and is committed to making the 2014 election McConnell's toughest campaign in decades.

Both the McConnell and Grimes campaigns, along with a handful of outside groups, have already engaged in an aggressive advertising war with Election Day still more than a year away. Each candidate reported raising more than $2 million from the beginning of July through the end of September.

But before McConnell can focus solely on the general election, he must also deal with a Tea Party challenge from Matt Bevin, who earned the endorsement of the influential Senate Conservatives Fund last week.