Federal court limits scope of Megan's Law

TRENTON, N.J. -- A federal judge has ruled that New Jersey can list sex offenders' names but not their addresses or even their hometowns when it begins posting Megan's Law information on the Internet next month.

U.S. District Judge Joseph E. Irenas declared Thursday that an offender's constitutional right to privacy trumps any state need to broadcast the information.

Chuck Davis, a spokesman for the New Jersey attorney general, said the state has not decided whether to appeal.

Seven-year-old Megan Kanka was abducted, raped and murdered in 1994 by a convicted sex offender who lived across the street. Her parents were unaware of his background. He is now on death row.

Shuttle Endeavour docks with space station

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Space shuttle Endeavour docked with the international space station on Friday, delivering a new three-member crew to relieve the men who have been up there since August.

The shuttle pulled up as the two spacecraft orbited 250 miles above Eastern Europe, ending a two-day chase.

Space station commander Frank Culbertson and his crewmates, Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Tyurin, will move out of the space station today. Taking their places will be Russian Yuri Onufrienko, the next commander, and Americans Carl Walz and Daniel Bursch. They will stay aboard until May.

During Endeavour's 11-day mission, two shuttle astronauts will venture out on a spacewalk to perform space station maintenance.

Striking teachers agree to return to work

FREEHOLD, N.J. -- Striking Middletown teachers agreed Friday to go back to work next week, ending the walkout that put more than 200 of them in jail for defying a judge's order.

"It was people desiring to go back to work" that led to the resolution, which was hashed out Friday morning, said Michael Gross, a lawyer for the district's board of education.

The jailed teachers began leaving the Monmouth County Jail early Friday afternoon, going by bus to a courthouse parking lot where they were met by family, friends and colleagues who brought flowers and balloons.

Judge Clarkson S. Fisher Jr. had begun sending teachers to jail Monday in an effort to persuade them to end the strike. He had issued a back-to-work order shortly after the walkout began Nov. 29.

By the end of Thursday, the number of teachers behind bars had reached 228, or about a quarter of the staff.

-- From wire reports