Diane Zamora

A Texas judge ruled yesterday that he will let Court TV air live the capital murder trial of former Naval Academy Midshipman Diane Zamora.Prosecutors had asked that television cameras be kept out of the courtroom, arguing that they would influence jurors and witnesses, some of whom might think less about justice in the high-profile case than being invited onto television talk shows and signing book contracts.But Tarrant County District Judge Joe Drago said Court TV, a cable network that shows many high-profile trials, could broadcast the trial from beginning to end, as long as it does not film jurors, spectators or family members.

The Naval Academy will be run this year by officers with more combined rank than has commanded the school in its 152-year history.Capt. Gary Roughead, the incoming commandant of midshipmen, has been selected for the rank of rear admiral, designated by one star.No rear admiral has ever served under Adm. Charles R. Larson, the only four-star flag officer ever to be superintendent. The combined five stars give the academy more influence within the Navy than at any time in its past. And the promotion comes two months after a review board implored the Pentagon to commit more resources to the officer-training school as a way of enhancing its stature within the Navy.

IN THE PUBLIC'S mind, rectitude used to be synonymous with the U.S. Naval Academy. Now it seems the word "scandal" has replaced it. No sooner than furor over one disgrace dies down -- be it cheating, drugs, car theft, pedophilia, sexual harassment -- another one seems to pop up and take its place.Academy Superintendent Adm. Charles R. Larson must feel like a modern-day Sisyphus, stuck in a rut that he can't exit despite his best efforts. Instead of having to roll a rock up a hill only to see it roll back down again, as in the Greek myth, every couple of weeks Admiral Larson is condemned to pick up the morning paper and read about another incident tarnishing his school.

FORT WORTH, Texas -- Diane Zamora called her former best friend a "liar" yesterday, a Naval Academy officer "inaccurate," and others who testified against her "confused" when they implicated her in the death of 16-year-old Adrianne Jones.Under intense, rapid-fire questioning from her prosecutor, Zamora called a police officer from the nearby city of Grand Prairie to whom she confessed after her arrest "untrustworthy."Zamora, a former midshipman, was arrested in September 1996 after telling her Naval Academy roommates about Jones' killing.

FORT WORTH, Texas -- In the year leading to today's trial of Diane Zamora, lawyers on both sides have proclaimed that it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the defendant in such a high-profile murder case to receive a fair trial in her hometown.But the prosecution's attempt to move the trial failed, and the defense has failed in its efforts to corral some of the publicity.So Zamora's fate will be decided by seven men and five women -- all of whom said they had heard, seen or read of the case.

FORT WORTH, Texas - Sobbing and in a hoarse, quivering voice, Diane Zamora took jurors at her murder trial through a chilling account of what happened in the early hours of Dec. 4, 1995, when 16-year-old Adrianne Jones was shot to death in a cow pasture.Her daylong testimony on the witness stand yesterday differed wildly from the confession she gave police and from what friends remembered her telling them about the slaying.This time, she blamed her boyfriend, depicting David Graham as a rapacious, gun-toting crazy.

Off to the races with the armiesErnest F. Imhoff wrote a most interesting article Sept. 4, headlined, ''History resurfaces in Barney's barges.''I was especially intrigued by his description of the engagement at Bladensburg in which the British tagged their rout of the American forces as the ''Bladensburg Races.`Sixteen years previously, almost to the day, on Aug. 27, 1798, known in Ireland as the Year of the French, Irish rebels aided by French forces under General Humbert struck such terror into the British army at Castlebar that they didn't stop running except to burn the bridge behind them when they reached their headquarters in Tuam.

ANNAPOLIS - Virtue. An old-fashioned word, scarcely heard these days. It looks strange, projected on a screen in this U.S. Naval Academy classroom on this unseasonably sweltering spring morning."

WASHINGTON - Naval Academy superintendents have long weathered all types of squalls, beset during the past 25 years by everything from sexual assault allegations against midshipmen to widespread cheating, drug rings and car theft syndicates. But yesterday, perhaps for the first time in the 158-year history of the premier naval officers' school, a superintendent resigned under fire, and less than a year after arriving at the banks of the Severn. Vice Adm. Richard J. Naughton, a brusque fighter pilot and a 1968 academy graduate, told top Navy officials at the Pentagon on Tuesday that the investigative cloud over him convinced him that he could no longer "lead effectively," said one source familiar with the meeting.

A Naval Academy midshipman has resigned and is leaving today after admitting he failed to report that classmate Diane M. Zamora told him more than a month ago that she had been involved in a Texas murder.Jay L. Guild, 18, signed resignation papers Friday and will return to his Kankakee, Ill., home today, said his mother, Cheryl Guild. He believed he would be dismissed under the academy's honor code and chose to resign instead, she said.The first-year student told police from Grand Prairie, Texas, that in long walks on academy grounds since early last month, Zamora gradually revealed to him how she and her fiance -- Air Force Academy cadet David C. Graham -- had killed a teen-age girl who had a single sexual encounter with Graham.