President Obama is taking a major step in reforming the National Security Agency’s collection of records. The president plans to ask Congress to end the bulk collection and storage of American phone records by the NSA, but allow the government to access the “metadata” when needed, a senior administration official said on Monday. If the proposal is approved, the Obama administration would stop collecting the information, known as metadata, which lists millions of phone calls made in the United States. Read about it here…[Reuters]
A Mississippi woman is about to be executed for a crime her son committed. According to Jezebel: Michelle Byrom, 57, was convicted of hiring a friend of her son’s to murder her husband in 1999. The problem, as multiple media outlets,including The Atlantic, have pointed out , is the jury was never presented key pieces of evidence that may prove her innocence. One major piece of evidence are letters written by her son Edward Byrom Jr., in which he confesses to the crime. “There’s no way justice was done in this case,” said former state Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr. “If an execution is allowed to proceed, we all are complicit in it in Mississippi.” You can read the full letter here…[Jezebel]
More police brutality? A homeless New Mexico man is dead after cops shot him during an arrest for illegally camping in the Albuquerque foothills. Graphic video of the arrests, released by the Albuquerque Police Department on Friday, shows 38-year-old James Boyd turns his back to officers before being shot dead. Despite criticism of the officers behavior, the department says they were justified. Watch the sad video here…[HuffPost]
Health officials in Canada are reporting a possible case of Ebola after a man who recently traveled from Liberia started exhibiting symptoms consistent with viral hemorrhagic fevers. Ebola has already killed over 50 people in West Africa. “There is no risk to the general public at all about this incident. We recognize that there’s going to be a fair amount of concern, and that’s why we wanted to go public with this as soon as possible and dispel some of those myths that are out there,” Denise Werker, deputy chief medical health officer at the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health said. Read about it here…[CNN]
VIDEO SOURCE: News, Inc.
