Google: "We're Not in Cahoots with the NSA"
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"We're not in cahoots with the NSA," Google's top lawyer said Wednesday, as the search engine behemoth tries to assuage customers' fears that its email and Internet browsing history might be subject to government spying. David Drummond, the company's chief legal officer, made his appeal to Google users in a live web chat with The Guardian — which broke the story of the U.S. government's data surveillance programs with the help of contractor Edward Snowden's leaks this month — on Wednesday. He vehemently denied reports that the National Security Agency's data collection programs had given it "direct access" to Google servers, and he said the company only turns over data in response to "legitimate" requests relating to criminal or terror investigations. Drummond's remarks came a day after his company had sued in a secret intelligence court, claiming gag orders barring the company from informing customers of the data it is forced to turn over to the feds violates its First Amendment rights.
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Stocks Tumble on Doubts Over Fed's Stimulus Plans
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The Federal Reserve will hold rates steady and keep up its bond-buying — though Chairman Ben Bernanke also hinted that its days of easing could be coming to an end, CNBC reported. The Fed said Wednesday that it would continue buying $40 billion a month in mortgage-backed securities and another $45 billion in Treasury bonds and that it would keep interest rates steady for now, after its earlier mixed signals to investors on what its future stimulus plans might be. But it also suggested it could wind down its bond-buying toward the end of 2013 if the economy keeps improving. Stocks fell sharply Wednesday after the announcements, with the Dow down closing down more than 200 points. And at Wednesday's news conference, Bernanke refused to address questions about his future heading the Fed as his second term there nears its end.
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Driver Charged in Death of Soccer Fan Dribbling to Brazil
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An Oregon man, who police say fatally struck Richard Swanson, the man who was on a mission to dribble a soccer ball from Seattle to Brazil for the World Cup, was arrested Monday on a charge of criminally negligent homicide, NBC News reported. Swanson, 42, was walking along busy U.S. 101 on May 14, when he was struck from behind by a pickup truck. Scott Van Hiatt stayed at the scene and has been cooperative, police said, but would not elaborate on the circumstances that led to the crash. Swanson started his journey in Seattle on May 1 partly to promote the Berkeley, Calif.-based One World Futbol Project, which donates durable blue balls to people in developing countries. In an interview with a Seattle TV station, Swanson joked that he hoped he wouldn't be run over on the coastal road. "I'll be on Highway 101, but I'll also try to utilize any of the trails that run along the coast, just trying to get off the beaten path, there's a lot of cars and just not get run over," he said.
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HPV Infections Fell by Half in Teen Girls After Vaccine
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HPV infections in American teen girls fell by more than half after the HPV vaccine was introduced in 2006, despite political controversy surrounding the vaccine, a study has found. The gains also happened even though just a third of teens aged 13 to 17 had the full series of shots to prevent HPV infection, said Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 19,000 cancers caused by HPV infections occur in women in the U.S. each year, with cervical cancers the most common, according to the CDC. Vaccination is recommended starting at age 11 or 12. Frieden said the study should be a national "wake-up call" to "protect the next generation by increasing HPV vaccination rates."
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FBI Chief: We Use Drones for U.S. Surveillance
FBI director Robert Mueller acknowledged Wednesday that his agency uses drones for surveillance on U.S. soil, but said it does so only on a "very, very minimal basis,” NBC News reported. "We are in the early stages of doing that, and I will tell you that our footprint is very small, we have very few, and have limited use. And we're exploring not only the use, but the necessary guidelines for that use,” Mueller, who is set to retire this year, said at a Senate hearing Wednesday morning. The FBI director's words come amid a raging national debate in recent months over how much information the government should be able to gather in its law enforcement and anti-terrorism activities and how it should be allowed to collect it.
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GOP's Sen. Murkowski Backs Same-Sex Marriage
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Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska on Wednesday has thrown her support behind legalizing same-sex marriage, joining GOP Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio and Mark Kirk of Illinois in backing the right of gay and lesbian couples to wed. Her announcement comes days before the Supreme Court is set to issue decisions on the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s ban on same-sex marriage. "When government does act, I believe it should encourage family values,” Murkowski wrote in an op-ed explaining her position. "I support the right of all Americans to marry the person they love and choose." A veteran GOP senator, Murkowski had previously said her views on same-sex marriage were "evolving," using the language President Barack Obama had once used to describe his own position before endorsing marriage rights.
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India to Shut Down Last Telegraph Service in July
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While at least 90 percent of Americans use cell phones to communicate, people in India still rely on the telegraph service to reach certain corners of the country. But that is soon to change. The country's 160-year old telegraph company, BSNL, will deliver its last telegram on July 14, leaving lawyers, soldiers and government officials without a trusty communication tool. The Indian government will shut down the service, which played a key role in the mid-nineteenth century during the British Raj, due to losses of $23 million a year connected to the rising popularity of text messages and smartphones. Telegram companies still exist as part-Web services, but India is the last country to use the service on a large scale -- 5,000 telegrams are sent sent in India per day. In the U.S., the Western Union delivered its last telegram in 2006.
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Karzai Quits U.S.-Taliban Peace Talks
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Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Wednesday he will not participate in peace talks with the Taliban and accused the U.S. of "a contradiction" over its decision to meet with the militant group. He said Afghanistan would not take part "until the peace process is totally under Afghan control." Karzai earlier Wednesday announced he had suspended talks with the U.S. on a new security deal over how many troops should remain in Afghanistan beyond 2014 in protest of how the talks were announced. Government sources in Kabul told NBC News the Afghan leader was angered by the Taliban's decision to open a new office in Qatar under the name of the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" -- the name of its regime in the 1990s -- and fly its own flag outside.
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Radioactive Substance Found Near Fukushima Nuclear Reactor
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High levels of toxic Strontium-90 have been found in the groundwater at the site of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, its operator said on Wednesday. Nearly 30 times the permitted level of the radioactive isotope was discovered in a well dug up last month outside one of the reactors at the tsunami-stricken plant, according to the Tokyo Electric Power. The company said it believed the Strontium-90 was trapped during the initial 2011 nuclear fallout and there was no detectable rise in the substance in the sea water, NBC reported. The plant plans to inject chemicals into the ground to prevent any leaks into the ocean.
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Liberals Brace for High Court Decision on Voting Rights
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Liberals are bracing for a Supreme Court decision soon that could limit the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and experts and advocates are debating on what to do if the court strikes down a central part of the law, NBC News reported. In the case before the high court, Shelby County, Ala., is challenging Section 5 of the act under which some states, mostly those in the South with a history of discrimination, are required to get permission from the Department of Justice or federal court before making changes to voting laws. County lawyers argue that the coverage formula relying on data from the 1960s and 1970s to determine which states fall under the provision is outdated. This charges Congress with the task of deciding which states to cover and which ones to leave free of federal supervision. Click through to read what legal experts and advocates are saying about this debate.
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Obama in Berlin: Time to Cut Cold War Nuke Arsenals
Fifty years after John F. Kennedy's famous speech in Berlin, President Barack Obama spoke Wednesday in front of the Brandenburg Gate, saying "our work is not yet done" on confronting global challenges. Speaking to a cheering crowd, Obama proposed reducing the American nuclear arsenal by as much as a third. “We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe,” Obama said. The U.S. will seek cooperation with Russia for further cuts “to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures,” he added. Obama's visit comes just a few days shy of JFK festivities which include photo exhibits, lectures, panel discussions and commemorations at Berlin's John F. Kennedy School to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Kennedy's speech. This is Obama's first state visit to the German capital, though Berlin hosted a foreign policy address during his 2008 presidential campaign.
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Journalist Michael Hastings Dies at 33
Michael Hastings, the journalist best known for the 2010 Rolling Stone profile that led to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation, died in a car crash in Los Angeles, according to his employers at BuzzFeed and Rolling Stone. Reporters and others he worked with through the years took to social media to pay their respects. Hasting's Rolling Stone piece "Runaway General," which featured McChrystal, then head of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, criticizing the Obama administration's handling of the war. McChrystal handed in his resignation to the White House days after the article was published. Hastings was 33 years old.
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Feds Mull Overhaul of Phone Surveillance Program
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The National Security Agency is considering whether to stop stockpiling records of Americans' phone calls, the most controversial element of its just-leaked data surveillance programs, U.S. officials told Congress on Tuesday. The feds could instead let telecom companies keep the data until intelligence officials have a specific reason to review it for possible connections to terror plots, the officials told the House Intelligence Committee on Tuesday. NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander said the agency would re-examine "how we actually do this program." The NSA's collection of millions of phone records was disclosed earlier this month after a former NSA contractor, Edward Snowden, leaked documents on the program to The Guardian. Under the program, the NSA doesn't eavesdrop on calls but rather collects the metadata on the calls — the phone numbers, times and length of each call.
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Obesity Is a Disease, Doctors' Group Says
Obesity was officially designated a disease Tuesday by the American Medical Association. The influential doctors' group doesn't have any official say in the matter — but its designation could have major implications for medical treatment, public policy and even job security, the group said. The designation could also make it easier for policymakers to enact changes in the way obesity is treated on a public health level — as such a designation did for smoking. "More widespread recognition of obesity as a disease could result in greater investments by government and the private sector to develop and reimburse obesity treatments," also, the AMA said. "Employers may be required to cover obesity treatments for their employees and may be less able to discriminate on the basis of body weight."
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Immigration Bill Would Trim Deficit by $200B: Report
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The Senate's immigration reform bill would trim the federal budget deficit by $197 billion over the next decade and would give about 8 million undocumented immigrants legal status, the Congressional Budget Office said in a report released Tuesday. Those numbers were a boon to supporters of the bipartisan bill now facing debate in the Senate — a bill conservatives have deemed dead on arrival in the Republican-led House and which House Speaker John Boehner called "laughable" Tuesday. The much-anticipated new CBO report also estimated that while passing the bill would create new federal outlays of $262 billion in the first decade, it would also increase revenues — primarily from creating new income and payroll taxes — by $459 billion. The report also estimated that in the decade thereafter, deficits would drop by another $700 billion. Sen. Chuck Schumer, a "Gang of Eight" sponsor of the bill, called the report "a huge momentum boost for immigration reform."
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- HPV infections fell by half in teen girls after vaccine, study shows
- FBI director tells Congress agency uses drones for surveillance on U.S. soil
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- Duchess Kate to give birth in same hospital as Princess Diana
- Kerry calls Afghanistan's Karzai to ease anger over Taliban office
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