2 MORE DEPUTIES FIRED AFTER FLA. SCHOOL SHOOTING
Two additional deputies have been fired as a result of an internal affairs investigation into the response to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 people, the Broward County sheriff said Wednesday.
At a brief news conference, Sheriff Gregory Tony said deputies Edward Eason and Josh Stambaugh were fired Tuesday for their inaction after the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting.
“In essence, it was neglect of duty. We lost 17 people,” Tony said.
Supreme Court strikes down Tennessee liquor sales law.
WASHINGTON» The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a Tennessee law that makes it hard for outsiders to break into the state’s liquor sales market.
The court voted 7-2 in ruling that a state requirement that someone live in Tennessee for two years to be eligible for a license to sell liquor violates the Constitution.
The outcome was a victory for a family that moved to Tennessee because of their daughter’s disability and a national chain with nearly 200 liquor stores in 23 states.
Former Israeli prime minister Barak stages return to “topple Netanyahu.”
Ehud Barak, former prime minister of Israel, announced Wednesday that he is returning to politics and forming a new party that will aim to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in upcoming elections.
Speaking at a Tel Aviv news conference, Barak called for an end to “Netanyahu’s rule with the radicals, racists and the corrupt, with the Messianists and his corrupt leadership.”
The 77-year-old Barak, who was once Netanyahu’s army commander, served as military chief and then prime minister from 1999 to 2001.
Most recently, he served as Netanyahu’s defense minister.
He retired from politics in 2013, but he has been an outspoken critic of Netanyahu since.
North Korea urges South to stop mediating between North, U.S. SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA»
North Korea says South Korea must stop trying to work as a mediator in talks between Pyongyang and Washington.
The North’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday repeated its demand that the United States must work out mutually acceptable proposals to salvage deadlocked nuclear negotiations by the end of December.
The statement was an apparent expression of displeasure with Seoul and Washington over stalled nuclear diplomacy.
It says North Korea will “never go through” South Korea when it deals with the United States.
It also dismissed as false comments by South Korean officials that inter-Korean talks are underway on various channels.
Repeated mistakes in phone record collection led NSA to shutter controversial program.
WASHINGTON» The National Security Agency purged millions of Americans’ phone records after learning that some of the data was collected in error last fall as part of a controversial counterterrorism program, according to documents made public Wednesday.
It was the second such instance last year of “over-collection” and helped lead to the agency’s decision — which it still has not acknowledged publicly — to shutter the program earlier this year, according to people familiar with the matter.
The law authorizing this data collection, a scaled-down version of a program first disclosed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, is due to expire in December.
Doubts about the collection’s utility go back years, according to current and former officials. And records obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show that it has been marred by more compliance problems than the government has acknowledged publicly. — Denver Post wire services