• U.S. grappling with Middle East intelligence gaps

WASHINGTON - CIA officers in Iraq have been largely hunkered down in their heavily fortified Baghdad compound since U.S. troops left the country in 2011, current and former officials say, allowing a once-rich network of intelligence sources to wither.

That's a big reason, they say, the U.S. was caught flat-footed by the recent offensive by a Sunni-backed al-Qaida-inspired group that has seized a large swath of Iraq.

"This is a glaring example of the erosion of our street craft and our tradecraft and our capability to operate in a hard place," said John Maguire, who helped run CIA operations in Iraq in 2004. "The U.S. taxpayer is not getting their money's worth."

Maguire was a CIA officer in Beirut in the late 1980s during that country's bloody civil war. He spent weeks living in safe houses far from the U.S. Embassy, dodging militants who wanted to kidnap and kill Americans. In Iraq, where Maguire also served, the CIA's Baghdad station remains one of the world's largest. But the agency has been unwilling to risk sending Americans out regularly to recruit and meet informants.

Iraq is emblematic of how a security-conscious CIA is finding it difficult to spy aggressively in dangerous environments without military protection, Maguire and other current and former U.S. officials say. Intelligence blind spots have left the U.S. behind the curve on fast-moving world events, they say, whether it's disintegration in Iraq, Russia's move into Crimea or the collapse of several governments during the Arab Spring.

• Supreme Court: Warrant needed to search phones

WASHINGTON - In an emphatic defense of privacy in the digital age, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police generally may not search the cellphones of people they arrest without first getting search warrants.

Cellphones are unlike anything else police may find on someone they arrest, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. They are "not just another technological convenience," he said, but ubiquitous, increasingly powerful computers that contain vast quantities of personal, sensitive information.

"With all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans the privacies of life," Roberts declared. So the message to police about what they should do before rummaging through a cellphone's contents following an arrest is simple: "Get a warrant."

The chief justice acknowledged that barring searches would affect law enforcement, but he said: "Privacy comes at a cost."

By ruling as it did, the court chose not to extend earlier decisions from the 1970s- when cellphone technology was not yet available - that allow police to empty a suspect's pockets and examine whatever they find to ensure officers' safety and prevent the destruction of evidence.

• Court rules gay couples have right to marry

DENVER - A federal appeals court ruled for the first time Wednesday that gay couples have a constitutional right to marry, extending the movement's legal winning streak and bringing the issue a big step closer to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The three-judge panel in Denver ruled 2-1 that states cannot deprive people of the fundamental right to marry simply because they choose a partner of the same sex.

The court dismissed as "wholly illogical" the notion that allowing gays to wed could somehow undermine traditional marriage.

The decision by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld a lower-court ruling that struck down Utah's gay marriage ban. It becomes law in the six states covered by the 10th Circuit: Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming. But the panel immediately put the ruling on hold pending an appeal.

• European court rulings question assisted-suicide

PARIS - One French court acquitted a doctor of poisoning seven terminally ill patients. Another ordered physicians to suspend treatment for a comatose man, while Britain's top court said the country's ban on assisted suicide may be incompatible with human rights. The decisions of the past few days are fueling the arguments of Europeans who say the duty of doctors is to end the suffering of those beyond treatment.

But emotions run high on all sides around the issue of euthanasia and assisted suicide, as is shown by the bitter case of the comatose Frenchman, Vincent Lambert. Hours after the French court sided with his wife in ordering an end to treatment, the European Court of Human Rights blocked the move at the request of his parents, in a rare late-night ruling.

- The Associated Press