Obama, lawmakers plan to discuss NSA today
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is inviting a bipartisan group of lawmakers to the White House today to discuss their concerns about the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.
A White House official says the top Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate intelligence panels will attend. So will Democrats Mark Udall of Colorado and Ron Wyden of Oregon, two senators raising the alarm about the NSA’s sweeping domestic programs. Two others calling for more NSA oversight, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, will also attend.
A Senate official says the White House initiated the meeting.
Budget cuts could hurt military, Hagel warns
WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned Wednesday that the Pentagon may have to mothball up to three Navy aircraft carriers and order additional sharp reductions in the size of the Army and Marine Corps if Congress doesn’t act to avoid massive budget cuts beginning in 2014.
Speaking to Pentagon reporters, and indirectly to Congress, Hagel said that the full result of the sweeping budget cuts during the next 10 years could leave the nation with an ill-prepared, under-equipped military doomed to face more technologically advanced enemies.
Going from 11 to eight or nine carrier strike groups would bring the Navy to its lowest number since World War II. And the troop cuts would shear the Army back to levels not seen since at least 1950, eroding the military’s ability to keep forces deployed and combat ready overseas.
Pro-Morsi protesters prepare for crackdown
CAIRO – Protesters holding sticks and wearing helmets and makeshift body armor stand behind mounds of sandbags, tires and brick walls. They change guards every two hours to ensure they stay alert.
With Egypt’s military-backed government signaling a crackdown is imminent, supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi are taking no chances with security at their two protest camps in Cairo.
On Wednesday, the Cabinet ordered the police to break up the sit-ins, saying they pose an “unacceptable threat” to national security.
Kidnapped Ohio women reportedly kept diaries
CLEVELAND – Three women held captive in a run-down home for a decade kept diaries documenting the physical and sexual abuse they suffered on a daily basis, prosecutors said Wednesday.
The women’s kidnapper, Ariel Castro, lured one of them into his Cleveland home with the promise of a puppy for her son and later locked all of them in a vehicle in his garage for three days when someone visited him, prosecutors said. Castro, a former school bus driver, claimed he didn’t have an exit strategy from his complicated double life and finally gave the women a chance to escape by leaving a door unlocked, they said in court documents.
One of the women broke free and called for help.
Associated Press
