Obama chooses Comey as FBI director
WASHINGTON – As the FBI grapples with scrutiny over government surveillance, President Barack Obama on Friday moved to turn the agency over to James Comey, a top Bush administration lawyer best known for defiantly refusing to go along with White House demands on warrantless wiretapping nearly a decade ago.
Obama cited Comey’s “fierce independence and deep integrity” as he nominated him to replace outgoing FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Mueller has led the agency for 12 years, longer than any previous director except J. Edgar Hoover, after Obama asked him to stay on beyond his initial 10-year term at a time of global threats. Mueller had moved into the director’s office just the week before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and Obama applauded him during a Rose Garden ceremony for leading “one of the biggest transformations of the FBI in history to make sure that nothing like that ever happens again.”
Food Network drops Paula Deen’s contract
SAVANNAH, Ga. – The Food Network said Friday it’s dumping Paula Deen, barely an hour after the celebrity cook posted the first of two videotaped apologies online begging forgiveness from fans and critics troubled by her admission to having used racial slurs in the past.
The 66-year-old Savannah kitchen celebrity has been swamped in controversy since court documents filed this week revealed Deen told an attorney questioning her under oath last month that she has used the N-word. “Yes, of course,” Deen said, though she added, “It’s been a very long time.”
The Food Network, which made Deen a star with “Paula’s Home Cooking” in 2002 and later “Paula’s Home Cooking” in 2008, weighed in with a terse statement Friday afternoon.
U.S. worries about arming Syrian rebels
WASHINGTON – The Syrian opposition’s record so far in handling tens of millions of dollars in U.S. humanitarian and other nonlethal assistance paints a bewildering picture of logistical challenges ahead of any delivery of American weapons and ammunition.
No aid shipments appear to be heading to terrorists or corrupt hoarders, according to U.S. officials, but packages of food, medicine and other lifesaving supplies regularly face long delays because of political rivalries among various rebel factions.
Anecdotes abound.
An American shipment of humanitarian goods was held up for two weeks amid a dispute between opposition groups over whose label should be attached to the boxes, a senior administration official recounted this week. Aid-filled planes have landed in neighboring countries with no trucks at the landing sites for transporting the items into Syria. In Cairo, funds the U.S. was prepared to provide an opposition political office were flat-out rejected, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly.
Although the Syrian opposition’s described dysfunction is nothing new, its problems are getting increased scrutiny since the Obama administration’s decision last week to authorize for the first time lethal military support to units fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad’s regime.
Associated Press
