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would have to sign off on spying on just about anything deemed sensitive.
• The 300-page report released Wednesday by a five-member panel of intelligence and legal experts proposed 46 recommendations that, taken together, call for more oversight of the government's vast spying network. Still, few programs would be ended.
• Obama is not bound by a single recommendation. He's already rejected one of them -- that oversight of the NSA and the Cyber Command be split, allowing a civilian to head the NSA. The White House said he is considering the other recommendations.
• ___
The Fed chair finds a way to temper the news that many had been dreading
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- In his final performance, Ben Bernanke rewrote the script.
• Investors had been on edge for months about when the Federal Reserve might slow its economic stimulus. A pullback in the Fed's bond purchases, they feared, could jack up interest rates and whack stocks. Bernanke's mere mention of the possibility in June had sent stocks tumbling.
• So on Wednesday, Bernanke showed something he'd learned from leading the Fed and addressing the public for eight years: Tough news goes down best when it's mixed with a little sweetener.
• At his last news conference as chairman, he explained that the Fed would trim its monthly bond purchases by $10 billion to $75 billion -- a prospect that had worried the markets.
• Yet Bernanke also calmed nerves by walking back a plan to consider raising short-term rates once unemployment reaches 6.5 percent from the current 7 percent.
• ___
White House greets modest budget deal with caution but hope for a better year
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- There were no champagne corks popping at the White House after Congress passed a two-year budget deal, no declarations of a new era of cooperation in President Barack Obama's second term.
• Instead, the modest agreement that passed Wednesday served as a stark year- (Continued on page 22)
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