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ommended new legal requirements before the government could search anyone's phone records.
• The phone companies don't want the job. Executives and their lawyers have complained about the plan in confidential meetings with administration officials and key congressional intelligence and other committees, according to interviews by The Associated Press. Two phone executives familiar with the discussions said the cellular industry told the government that it prefers the NSA keep control over the surveillance program and would only accept changes if they were legally required. The executives spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the private discussions. But there have been public complaints, too.
• "Our members would oppose the imposition of data retention obligations that would require them to maintain customer data for longer than necessary," said Jot Carpenter, vice president of government affairs for CTIA-The Wireless Association, the trade group for the cellular phone industry.
• ___

• COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) -- When federal emergency unemployment benefits expired last month, the effects ran deep in a Colorado county marked by two exit ramps off Interstate 25 -- one leading to the conservative religious group Focus on the Family, the other to the Fort Carson Army post.
• Hardly a liberal bastion, El Paso County has the largest number of people in the state who lost unemployment benefits, and many aren't happy about it. Plenty of Republicans, too, depend on jobless aid that Republicans in Congress are hesitant to prolong. The ideological argument for standing against an extension of benefits -- that the aid can ultimately make it harder to find work -- meets a more complex reality where people live.
• Democrats propose to extend the emergency benefits for people who have been or are about to be out of work for more than six months; Republicans are less inclined to take that step, particularly if it means the government borrows more money. The paralysis led to the expiration of benefits for 1.3 million long-term unemployed on Dec. 28. Lawmakers are still working on a compromise.
• The standoff infuriates people such as Lita Ness, who lost her job as a civilian contractor at Peterson Air Force Base in August 2012 and just received her final check from the unemployment office.

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