Watching the watchers

October 22, 2013 - Daily News Briefing

The latest exposé of National Security Agency (NSA) spying – this time in France’s Le Monde newspaper – alleges that during a 30-day period beginning late last year the agency gathered data on 70.3 million phone calls in France and captured millions of text messages.

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A European Parliament committee on Monday approved sweeping new data protection rules that would strengthen online privacy and outlaw the kind of data transfers that the United States used for its secret spying program. The draft regulation was beefed up after Edward Snowden’s leaks about allegedly widespread US online snooping to include even more stringent privacy protection and stiff fines for violations. The legislation will have significant implications for US Internet companies, too.

A female suicide bomber blew herself up on a city bus in southern Russia on Monday, killing six people and injuring about 30, officials said. The attack in Volgograd added to security concerns ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi. The suspected bomber was from the North Caucasus, a region in southern Russia where an Islamic insurgency has been simmering for more than a decade following two separatist wars in Chechnya. A local official said the suspected attacker was married to an Islamic militant.

Gov. Chris Christie (R) of New Jersey dropped his legal challenge to same-sex marriages on Monday, removing the possibility that the vows of couples who began getting married hours earlier could be undone by a court. New Jersey became the 14th state to allow gay marriages Monday, three days after the state Supreme Court unanimously rejected Christie’s request to delay the start of the nuptials. He has said residents, not a court or legislators, should decide on the issue.

Hurricane Raymond strengthened to a Category 3 storm early Monday and threatened to hurl heavy new rains onto a sodden region of Mexico’s Pacific Coast already devastated by last month’s tropical storm Manuel. The US National Hurricane Center said the newly formed storm had nearly stalled offshore, with winds of about 120 m.p.h. Raymond was centered about 115 miles south of the beach resort of Zihuatanejo, and it was expected to move only a little closer to the coast by today before veering back out to sea on Wednesday.

Eleven years after the Supreme Court barred states from executing mentally disabled inmates, the justices said Monday they will take up a Florida case over how authorities determine who is eligible to be put to death. The outcome could answer a question left unresolved by the court’s 6-to-3 decision in Atkins v. Virginia, the 2002 case that spares the mentally disabled from the death penalty. The ruling essentially left it to states to decide whether an inmate is mentally disabled.

A student at a Sparks, Nev., middle school opened fire on campus just before the starting bell Monday, wounding two boys and killing a staff member who was trying to protect other children, Sparks police said Monday. Twenty to thirty students witnessed the tragedy that also left the lone suspected gunman dead, police said. It’s unclear whether the student committed suicide, but authorities say no shots were fired by law enforcement. The motive of the gunman wasn’t known.

Compiled from wire service reports

“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.

Compiled from wire service reports

“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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