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safe.
• Obama was to detail his decisions in a much-anticipated speech Friday morning at the Justice Department. The speech follows an internal review spurred by disclosures about the government's sweeping surveillance programs by former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden.
• But the president's address may leave many questions about reforms to the surveillance programs unanswered. He was expected to recommend further study on several of the 46 recommendations he received from a presidential review group, including a proposal to strip the NSA of its ability to hold Americans' phone records and ideas for expanding privacy protections to foreigners.
• Many of the changes Obama was expected to announce appeared aimed at shoring up the public's confidence in the spying operations. That included a move to add an independent privacy advocate to the secretive court that approves the phone record collections.
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50 years later, surgeon general sees far more work to fight smoking, top preventable killer
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- It's no secret that smoking causes lung cancer. But what about diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, erectile dysfunction? Fifty years into the war on smoking, scientists still are adding diseases to the long list of cigarettes' harms -- even as the government struggles to get more people to kick the habit.
• A new report from the U.S. Surgeon General's office says the nation is at a crossroads, celebrating decades of progress against the chief preventable killer but not yet poised to finish the job.
• "The real emphasis needs to be put on the fact that we still have a major and tragic catastrophe going on," said acting Surgeon General Boris Lushniak.
• The report is being released Friday at a ceremony at the White House, after a week of headlines marking the 50th anniversary of the landmark 1964 surgeon general's report that launched the anti-smoking movement. Far fewer Americans smoke today -- about 18 percent of adults, down from more than 42 percent in 1964.
• But the government may not meet its goal of dropping that rate to 12 percent by 2020, the new report cautioned.
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