Bystander video of South Carolina shooting fuels outrage
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — A white South Carolina police officer who claimed he killed an unarmed black man in self-defense has been fired after being charged with murder, the city’s mayor announced Wednesday after a video exposed him firing eight shots from a safe distance at the fleeing 50-year-old man.
The mayor also announced that he has ordered enough body cameras so that every uniformed officer wears one in North Charleston.
Protests began within hours of the murder charge against 33-year-old Michael Thomas Slager, a five-year veteran of the city’s police force.
Iran sends navy vessels to waters near Yemen
SANAA, Yemen — Iran dispatched a destroyer and another naval ship to waters off Yemen on Wednesday, raising the stakes amid a Saudi-led air campaign targeting Iranian-backed Shiite rebels fighting forces loyal to the country’s embattled president.
The Iranian maneuver came as the U.S. deepened its support for the Saudi-led coalition, boosting weapons supplies and intelligence-sharing and carrying out the first U.S. aerial refueling mission of coalition fighter jets.
The Iranian warships were sent to the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait as part of an anti-piracy campaign to “safeguard naval routes for vessels in the region,” Iranian Rear Adm. Habibollah Sayyari was quoted as saying by the English-language state broadcaster Press TV.
Senate creating secret encyclopedia of US spy programs
WASHINGTON — Trying to get a handle on hundreds of sensitive, closely held surveillance programs, a Senate committee is compiling a secret encyclopedia of American intelligence collection. It’s part of an effort to improve congressional oversight of the government’s sprawling global spying effort.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein launched the review in October 2013, after a leak by former National Security Agency systems administrator Edward Snowden disclosed that the NSA had been eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone. Four months earlier, Snowden had revealed the existence of other programs that vacuumed up Americans’ and foreigners’ phone call records and electronic communications.
Feinstein and other lawmakers say they were fully briefed about the most controversial programs leaked by Snowden, the NSA’s collection of American phone records and the agency’s access to U.S. tech company accounts in targeting foreigners through its PRISM program. Those programs are conducted under acts of Congress, supervised by a secret federal court.
But when it comes to surveillance under Executive Order 12333, which authorizes foreign intelligence collection overseas without a court order, there are so many programs that even the executive branch has trouble keeping track of them, Feinstein said. Many are so sensitive that only a handful of people are authorized to know the details, which complicates the management challenge.
By wire sources