WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said. The agency’s monitoring of domestic e-mail messages, in particular, has posed longstanding legal and logistical difficulties, the officials said. Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation. Both the former analyst’s account and the rising concern among some members of Congress about the N.S.A.’s recent operation are raising fresh questions […]
The dollar fell against the euro and yen on Wednesday after major emerging economies cast doubt on its long-term future as the world’s main reserve currency, dealers said. In late morning trading in London, the European single currency climbed to 1.3867 dollars from 1.3838 dollars in New York late on Tuesday. Against the Japanese currency, the dollar slipped to 96.30 yen from 96.42 yen on Tuesday. Leaders of the so-called BRIC nations — Brazil, Russia, India and China — had on Monday called for a ‘more diversified’ currency system. ‘The BRIC leaders are divided between supporting the US dollar — as it is the only choice for now — and advancing the march for an alternative,’ said Phil McHugh, who heads the corporate foreign exchange desk at currenciesdirect.com. ‘The (BRIC) meeting… will affect future sentiment on the dollar,’ he added. Elsewhere on Wednesday, investors awaited an announcement from US President Barack Obama on reforms of the financial system. Obama was expected later in the day to propose wide reforms that would result in the Federal Reserve gaining broad powers and a national bank supervisor being created to avoid a repetition of the financial […]
WASHINGTON — At its core, President Obama’s overhaul of regulations for the financial industry seeks a fundamental change: Make the federal bureaucracy work for consumers, not just Wall Street. And Wall Street, not surprisingly, doesn’t like it. Striking a populist tone, Obama complained in a White House speech Wednesday that average Americans were often baffled by such intricacies as the terms of credit cards, home loans and other financial products. That confusion helped fuel the subprime mortgage meltdown that sent the U.S. and foreign economies reeling. Much of his reform package involves complex changes to the inner workings of the financial system, but Obama said that better consumer protection — a priority — was a key to avoiding future financial crises. Such safeguards could reach far down the line to such everyday matters as bank overdraft protection. A new agency would have the power to write federal rules that, for instance, prohibit prepayment penalties on loans, require better disclosures, order financial companies to offer easily understood options, and levy fines and penalties for lenders that don’t comply. ‘The most unfair practices will be banned,’ Obama said. ‘Those ridiculous contracts with pages of fine print that no […]
Climate change is visible and occurring throughout the U.S., but the choices we make now will determine the severity of its impacts in the future, according to a Texas Tech University climate scientist who served as a lead author on a report released today by the White House. Katharine Hayhoe, a research associate professor in the Department of Geosciences, was one of 31 scientists from 13 U.S. government science agencies, major universities and research institutes that produced the study. In 2007, she was invited to serve as the lead author for the Great Plains chapter of the report, which includes Texas. ‘During the next decade or two, we are likely to see an increase of 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit across the United States, Hayhoe said. ‘How much temperatures rise after that depends primarily on our emissions of heat-trapping gases during the next few decades. Under lower emissions, temperatures could increase 4 to 7.5 degrees. With higher emissions, we can expect 7 to 11 degrees, with the greatest increases in summer. Using projections such as these, authors crafted what they call the most comprehensive, plain-language report to date on national climate change. Global Climate Change Impacts in […]
The use of the powerful antibiotic streptomycin as a growth-promoting agent in turkeys also quickly promotes the growth of dangerous streptomycin-resistant coliform bacteria, according to researchers at University of California, Davis. Perhaps such a finding should be cause for alarm, considering how agribusiness pumps more than 20 million pound of antibiotics into healthy livestock each year, constituting more than 70 percent of all antibiotics used in the United States. Then again, the aforementioned study was published in 1951. Hundreds of similar studies have since been published. But no one seems to care. Yet as serious questions arise about U.S. food safety nearly monthly, and with antibiotic abuse rampant and with antibacterial-resistant ‘super bugs’ reaching epidemic proportions, maybe it’s time to rethink the practice of industrial-scale animal production. Scientists at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore and the Pew Charitable Trusts are now calling for a phase-out and eventual ban of antibacterial agents for nontherapeutic use in livestock. They have taken their cause to Washington this month with ads in the Metro subway system and elsewhere. Old MacDonald had some drugs Antibiotics down on the industrial farm serve two purposes. They make […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
