QUOTE OF THE DAY “We don’t know that the water’s not safe. But I can’t say that it is safe.” Jeff McIntyre,
president of West Virginia American Water, speaking
about a chemical spill near the Elk River that affected the state’s capital Article, 1A
Spy-program reviewers brief Obama
WASHINGTON - The independent oversight board reviewing the U.S. government’s surveillance programs briefed President Barack Obama this week on recommendations and key sections of its coming report, the task force’s chairman said Friday.
The White House said Friday that Obama will announce results of his review of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs Jan. 17. Obama intends to lay out the changes he will make to the agency’s practice of collecting Americans’ phone records and other surveillance operations.
David Medine, who heads the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, said the board’s five members discussed details of their report with the president during a meeting Wednesday in the White House. Medine said the task force agreed to give the president a preview of its recommendations to help shape his decisions about changing the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.
Obama has also been meeting with lawmakers, intelligence officials, technology companies and privacy groups. He is considering more than 40 recommendations from a presidential commission, the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, that proposed broad changes to the agency’s powers.
House to vote on stopgap spending bill
WASHINGTON - The House will take up a short-term spending bill next week to fund federal government operations past Wednesday, House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers said.
The spending bill would provide funding at current levels for three days, through Jan. 18, Rogers said. He said he planned to introduce the short-term bill Friday, and the House might vote on it as soon as Monday.
The move would give appropriators more time to agree on a $1.01 trillion spending bill to fund the government through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.
Talks on the long-term spending bill are complicated in part because it would require Republicans who control the House to vote to fund things they’ve already voted to repeal, such as implementation of the health law and Environmental Protection Agency regulations opposed by the coal industry.
The total spending level was agreed on by lawmakers in December as part of a two-year budget deal.
Obama to make 3 Fed nominations
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama plans to nominate Stanley Fischer, former head of the Bank of Israel, as the next vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, the White House said Friday.
It also announced plans to nominate Lael Brainard, a former Treasury Department official, to an open seat on the Fed’s board of governors, and said that Jerome Powell, a Republican financier who joined the board in 2012, would be nominated to a full term.
The nominations would replenish the Fed’s board with officials who are generally aligned with the views of its incoming chairman, Janet Yellen. They are also likely to support the Fed’s efforts to stimulate the economy.
Fischer, 70, will replace Yellen as the Fed’s vice chairman. The Senate confirmed Yellen as the Fed’s new chairman earlier this week, and she will take over from the current chairman, Ben Bernanke, next month.
Midshipman’s sex-assault counts tossed
ANNAPOLIS, Md. - A U.S. Naval Academy midshipman accused in a sexual-assault case will not face charges, the school announced Friday, leaving just one of three original defendants in the case remaining.
A Naval Academy spokesman said charges against Midshipman Eric Graham of Eight Mile, Ala., were dismissed after a recommendation from prosecutors.
Prosecutors initially accused three men of sexually assaulting a woman, also a midshipman, in 2012 at an off-campus house in Annapolis, Md. The woman said she didn’t remember being sexually assaulted after a night of heavy drinking but heard from others that she had had sex with multiple partners at a party. The men were all football players at the academy at the time of the purported assault.
The decision to drop charges against Graham was made by U.S. Naval Academy superintendent Vice Adm. Michael Miller. At an earlier stage of the case, Miller decided not to pursue charges against Tra’ves Bush of Johnston, S.C.
The third midshipman involved in the case, Joshua Tate of Nashville, Tenn., still faces charges.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 01/11/2014