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companies have said they do not want to take responsibility for overseeing the data under standards set by the NSA.
• Warning that the NSA's massive daily intake of calling records "raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties," a three-member majority of the oversight board said the government should end the surveillance program and "purge the database of telephone records that have been collected and stored during the program's operation." The board said the NSA should instead seek records directly from phone service providers using "existing legal authorities."
• ___

• RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- Virginia's attorney general has concluded that the state's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional and he will no longer defend it in federal lawsuits challenging it, his office said Thursday.
• In an email to The Associated Press, Michael Kelly, a spokesman for Attorney General Mark Herring, said the state will instead side with the plaintiffs who are seeking to have the ban struck down.
• Herring planned to file a brief Thursday morning with the federal court in Norfolk, where one of the lawsuits is being heard, notifying the court of the state's change in position in the case, Kelly said.
• The attorney general decided the ban was unconstitutional after a thorough legal review of the matter, Kelly said.
• Virginia has emerged as a critical state in the nationwide fight for gay marriage. The state's shift comes on the heels of recent court rulings in which federal judges struck down gay marriage bans in Utah and Oklahoma.
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• HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- A Mexican national was executed Wednesday night in Texas for killing a Houston police officer, despite pleas and diplomatic pressure from the Mexican government and the U.S. State Department to halt the punishment.
• Edgar Tamayo, 46, received a lethal injection for the January 1994 fatal shooting of Officer Guy Gaddis, 24.

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