Watergate and the power of decency

August 08, 2014 - Daily News Briefing

Amid a mushrooming scandal, Richard Nixon resigned 40 years ago. His successor, the unassuming Gerald Ford, bound up the nation's wounds.

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Sunni militants from the Islamic State group on Thursday seized Iraq's largest dam, placing them in control of enormous power and water resources and access to the river that runs through the heart of Baghdad. After a week of attempts, the radical Islamist gunmen successfully stormed the Mosul Dam and forced Kurdish forces to withdraw from the area, residents living near the dam told The Associated Press. The group's advances came as the capital has been shaken by a string of car bombs that has claimed more than 80 lives in the last two days.

Veterans may soon have easier access to government-paid health care under a bill President Barack Obama signed into law Thursday, the government's most sweeping response to date to a public uproar over systemwide problems that have rocked the Veterans Affairs Department. With service members, lawmakers and military leaders looking on, Obama put his pen to the bill at Fort Belvoir, an Army base south of Washington, where he held up the legislation as a rare example of Republicans and Democrats working together effectively. Denouncing delays in care for veterans as wrong and outrageous, Obama said the government would keep moving ahead with urgent reforms to ensure veterans have the care they've earned.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has been granted permission to stay in Russia for three more years, his lawyer said Thursday. Snowden last year was granted temporary asylum of one year in Russia, but that ran out on Aug. 1. His lawyer, Analtoly Kucherena, was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying Snowden now has been granted residency for three more years, but that he had not been granted political asylum.

Oscar Pistorius was an "appalling witness" who repeatedly lied in his testimony in a crude attempt to defend against a murder charge for killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, the chief prosecutor said Thursday during closing arguments in the athlete's trial. Prosecutor Gerrie Nel also harshly criticized the legal team of the double-amputee athlete, saying it floated more than one theory about what happened on the night that Pistorius shot Steenkamp through a closed toilet door in his home. Defense lawyers, Nel said, had argued that Pistorius acted in self-defense, fearing an intruder was in the house, but also raised the possibility that he was not criminally responsible, accidentally shooting Steenkamp because he was "startled."

Consumer spending has soared since the Great Recession ended five years ago in US states with oil and gas drilling booms and has lagged in states hit especially hard by the housing bust. The figures come from a new annual report the government issued Thursday that for the first time reveals consumer spending on a state-by-state basis. The numbers point to substantial shifts in the economy since the recession ended. Spending jumped 28 percent in North Dakota, the largest gain nationwide, from 2009 through 2012, the latest year for which figures are available. It surged nearly 16 percent in Oklahoma.

A tourist seeking to take pictures of Yellowstone National Park crashed a camera-equipped drone into its largest hot spring, possibly damaging the prized geothermal feature, a park official said on Wednesday. The incident follows the crash earlier this summer of a drone into a marina at Yellowstone Lake and a string of radio-controlled aircraft violations at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. The National Park Service in June announced a ban on so-called unmanned aerial vehicles, but officials say premier national parks in the US West are reporting a sharp rise in the number of drones buzzing bison and boaters.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

“The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” – Mary Baker Eddy

The Daily News Briefing is published Monday through Friday by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts.

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