The White House is set to propose major changes to the NSA phone metadata surveillance program amid criticism over citizens' privacy.

President Obama is set to announce a new proposal designed to scale back one of the most sweeping and controversial U.S. national security surveillance programs, according to a report published late Monday.

The proposal, which will be presented to Congress, would end the National Security Agency's collection of vast amounts of data about phone calls made by U.S. citizens, according to the New York Times, which cited "senior administration officials."

The Obama plan is the most significant White House effort yet to address the global furor that was sparked after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked reams of classified documents about the NSA's secret snooping programs. The proposal would end the NSA's bulk collection of so-called phone "metadata," which includes the number the target called, when the call was made and how long the conversation lasted.

The metadata collection program is part of a secret surveillance cqmpiagn that President George W. Bush approved after the 9/11 attacks. It remained hidden from the public for years until the Snowden revelations.

Under the proposal, the phone records would instead be kept in the hands of phone companies. Those companies would not be required to retain the data for a longer period of time than they do now, the Times reported. The proposed policy shift was not unexpected — it was one of the major recommendations of the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, which delivered its report in December.

READ MORE: Obama to Propose Ending NSA Phone Data Collection

Report: Obama to give up NSA's phone call sweep

The European Union's plan for an integrated banking union passed a decisive milestone today after member states and the European Parliament reached agreement on the Single Resolution Mechanism, a centralised resolution body and accompanying €55 billion fund that will be responsible for winding-up troubled banks.

While agreement on the complex piece of financial legislation was reached between member states in December after months of talks, the Greek presidency of the council had been tasked with reaching agreement between member states and the European Parliament under the EU's co-decision system.
Following months of talks, the Parliament finally signed off on the deal this morning following 16 hours of talks in Brussels.
The negotiations began at 3 pm yesterday afternoon, with bleary-eyed negotiators, including euro group president Jeroen Dijsselbloem emerging with a deal at 7am. At least one phone call was made to German finance minister Wolfgang Sch äuble at 5.30am on the deal which is largely seen as favouring smaller countries such as Ireland, by accelerating the pace at which the €55 billion fund will be fully mutualised.
The European Parliament secured a number of changes from the original position agreed by member states, which itself had conceded to a number of German demands in the early set of discussions regarding mutualisation.
Under the package agreed, the period during which the €55 billion fund will move from being a pool of different national funds towards a fully shared fund has been reduced from 10 years to eight. The new proposal also sets out a quicker pace of mutualisation, with 70 per cent of the fund fully pooled within the first three years, compared to 30 per cent in the first draft, which had conceived of a gradual mutualisation of 10 per cent per year over a decade. Under the revised package 40 per cent of the fund will be mutualised in the first year, 20 per cent in the second year, and the rest equally over a further six years.

READ MORE: EU leaders reach deal to complete banking union

Scientists working with NASA's Van Allen Probes spacecraft have spotted a new constant structure, resembling slanted zebra stripes, in one of the two radiation belts surrounding Earth -- a discovery that highlights a new revelation about the planet.

According to the scientists, the structure in the inner radiation belt of the Earth is produced by the slow rotation of the planet, which was previously considered incapable of affecting the motion of particles in the radiation belt. The findings were published in Nature on Thursday.

"It is because of the unprecedented resolution of our energetic particle experiment, RBSPICE, that we now understand that the inner belt electrons are, in fact, always organized in zebra patterns," Aleksandr Ukhorskiy of The Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, or APL, in Laurel, Md. and the study's lead author, said in a statement. "Furthermore, our modeling clearly identifies Earth's rotation as the mechanism creating these patterns."

Due to the Earth's tilted magnetic field axis, the planet's rotation generates an oscillating, weak electric field that permeates through the entire inner radiation belt, scientists said.

To understand how that field affects the electrons, Ukhorskiy suggested imagining that the electrons are like a thick liquid solution. The global oscillations slowly stretch and fold the solution, much like taffy is stretched and folded in a candy-store machine.

This stretching and folding process results in the striped pattern observed across the entire inner belt, which extends from above Earth's atmosphere, about 500 miles above the planet's surface, up to about 8,000 miles into space. According to scientists, the radiation belts are dynamic doughnut-shaped regions around the Earth, extending high above the atmosphere and made up of high-energy particles, including both electrons and charged particles called ions.

"During active times, radiation levels can dramatically increase, which can create hazardous space weather conditions that harm orbiting spacecraft and endanger humans in space," NASA said in the statement. "It is the goal of the Van Allen Probes mission to understand how and why radiation levels in the belts change with time."

READ MORE: NASA's Van Allen Probes Discover Zebra Stripes In Space, Created By Earth's Rotation

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As Russian president Vladimir Putin signed a treaty on Tuesday making Crimea part of Russia, a little-known region in neighboring Moldova has also pleaded to join the country.

Russian loyalists in the breakaway region of Trans-Dniester, which shares a border with Ukraine, asked the parliament in Russia to write new laws that would allow them to join the country.

The Trans-Dniester region split from Moldova around 1990 and made a failed attempt at independence in 2006, when it held a referendum that was unrecognized internationally.

The region did not want to split from the Soviet Union at the time of its collapse and has now requested unity with Russia.

Otilia Dhand, vice president at advisory and intelligence firm Teneo Intelligence said Trans-Dniester has been asking to join the Russian Federation for two decades, so now is an opportune moment to ask again.

Dhand said up until now the Kremlin had shown little interest in absorbing the region as it offers little strategic and economic benefits.
"There are 550,000 citizens of citizens of Trans-Dniester who mostly also claim other citizenships. There are about 150,000 of them that claim dual citizenship with Russia and many others claim Ukrainian citizenship or Romanian so it is kind of a mixed picture," Dhand told CNBC.

"Russia has roughly 1,000 soldiers based there and also some ammunition and equipment that comes with it. They are not such a substantial force as they are in Crimea and Russia does not have common borders with Trans-Dniester, so it would be difficult to service as a territory," she said.

"If they were interested in tactically taking it over – it would just really be for show. Should Russia choose to take Trans-Dniester over, it would be quite intimidating for Ukraine," she added.
Speaker of the high council, Mikheil Burla sent a written address to a speaker in Russia's Duma, the lower house, asking him to consider legislation that would allow the non-recognized republic to become part of Russia, according to media reports.
The President of Moldova Nicolae Timofti has warned that any move to enable the mainly Russian speaking region to join Russia would be a "mistake".

Trans-Dniester is recognized as part of Moldova by the U.N. rather than as an independent state, but the region is self-governed and runs its own institutions.

Moldova has a population of approximately 3.56 million. Crimea has 2.3 million people compared to Trans-Dniester, the thin strip of land between the Dniester river and the Ukraine border, which is populated by approximately 550,000 people and has its own currency, the Trans-Dniester rouble.
At the time of the collapse of the USSR, Moldova as a constitutive republic of the USSR wanted independence but Trans-Dniester wanted to stay with Russia. There was a short, but bloody war in 1992, but the issue has never been fully resolved.

READ MORE: Another Crimea? Ukraine’s neighbor asks to join Russia

President Jose Mujica of Uruguay has said his country will take five prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba.

Mr Mujica said he had agreed to a request from President Barack Obama to take some of the detainees remaining at the controversial US military camp.

He added that the five inmates would be welcome to "work and stay with their families in Uruguay".

President Obama has pledged to free all remaining inmates and close the camp.

There are 154 detainees remaining in the camp, most of them from Yemen.

"The US president wants to solve this problem so he's asking several countries to host them and I told him I will," Mr Mujica told local media. "They are welcome to come here."

The US embassy in the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo, said Washington was "dealing with different countries in the region" and approached Mr Mujica because of his "leadership" in Latin America.

A former guerrilla member, the Uruguayan president spent nearly 15 years in prison during the military government of the 1970s and '80s in the South American country.

He said he had accepted the US request "for human rights reasons".

President Obama has said the prison has damaged America's standing in the world.

Transfers out of Guantanamo to third countries have increased in recent months.

But the US leader's plan to close it has been thwarted in part by Congress.

In the past, the US raised concerns of possible mistreatment if the detainees were sent back to their home countries.

Guantanamo has been criticised by human rights groups.

Most of the inmates there have never been charged or tried for any crime.

The detention facility was opened by former US President George W Bush to hold terrorism suspects rounded up overseas following the 11 September 2001 attacks.

READ MORE: Uruguay accepts US request to take five Guantanamo inmates

Bill Gates has used a speech this week, to warn that the labor market is about to change dramatically, and we aren't ready for it.

Gates addressed the neoliberal economic think tank The American Enterprise Institute last week, and gave a stark pronouncement. In the next 20 years, many of our jobs will disappear, to be replaced by software automation software substitution ("bots" in tech slang).

Here's what he said: "Software substitution, whether it's for drivers or waiters or nurses... it's progressing... Technology over time will reduce demand for jobs, particularly at the lower end of skill set. ... 20 years from now, labor demand for lots of skill sets will be substantially lower. I don't think people have that in their mental model."

And Gates is not alone in his warnings, the red flags are all around us. In January, the Economist ran a piece showing more than a dozen jobs where humans will be replaced by robots in the next 20 years. Among their number, telemarketers, accountants and retail workers.

Of course, Gates didn't call for a rethink of how we do 'economy' and 'work' in light of these technological developments – which would actually be good news in a smarter economy. No. Instead, it he calls for tax cuts, wage cuts and a weakening of labor rights – so disincentives to hiring people, like having to treat them like humans rather than robots, are removed.

He says: "When people say we should raise the minimum wage. I worry about what that does to job creation ... potentially damping demand in the part of the labor spectrum that I'm most worried about."

This is the best that neoliberalism can offer you and your family in the future – let us exploit you, or we have no use for you. It's time to turn our backs on these leaders and their ideology, for they have certainly turned their backs on us.

READ MORE: Bill Gates: Hey Working People, You’re About to be Replaced by Software Bots

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