Sex Offender Laws Modified:  AP writer Greg Bluestein reports that the Georgia Legislature has changed the state's tough sex offender law, removing the residency requirement, in response to a federal judge's threat to throw out the entire law.  Originally the law prohibited all sex offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools, parks and other gathering places for children.  The revision waives this requirement for roughly 13,000 offenders who committed sex crimes before June 4, 2003.  It also allows some offenders to get off the state registry.  Iowa has also scaled back its sex offender law, removing its 2,000 foot residency restriction for all but the worst offenders. A spokesman for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children thinks these changes could backfire,  "Lessening those kinds of restrictions is dangerous --it could lead to more crime, more offenders," he said.

Mississippi Execution Set for Wednesday:  Joseph Daniel "JoJo" Burns is scheduled for execution by lethal injection this week for the robbery and brutal 1994 murder of hotel manager Mike McBride.  Elizabeth Crisp of the Clarion Ledger reports that a clemency request has been made to Governor Haley Barbour and that Burns' defense attorney is seeking a stay.  In November of 1994, Burns and an accomplice who knew McBride, decided to steal the receipts from the hotel in Tupelo which he managed.  Burns stabbed McBride to death with a knife, a fork and a Phillips head screwdriver, before taking the cash and leaving.  The pair spent the money at casinos in the resort town Tunica, about 120 miles away.  In his six years in office, Governor Barbour has never granted a clemency request.  Burns would be the third murderer executed in Mississippi this year.