AddieStan

One reporter, whom your blogstress could not identify, asked the president's new press secretary something like this: Why won't you address the USA Today story on the NSA's use of the phone records of ordinary Americans? Snow's reply? "Because it's inappropriate."

The Associated Press (AP) is reporting BellSouth's assertion that it did not turn over records to the NSA, and that the company "has no evidence," in the AP's words, of a contract with the super-secret spy agency: The regional Bell, which offers telecommunication services in nine Southeastern states, said Monday it had conducted a ''thorough review'' and established that it had not given the National Security Agency customer call records. On Thursday, USA Today expanded on earlier reports by other news agencies of a massive database of the nation's phone call and e-mail traffic being amassed by the National Security Agency. The USA Today piece claimed that Verizon, BellSouth and AT&T had all turned over phone records to the NSA, but that Qwest Communications had refused.

Amid all the intrigue about the FBI monitoring the calls of reporters, the NSA monitoring the calls of the rest of us, and the vice president's handwritten talking points that apparently led to the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, your blogstress has found it difficult to concentrate on bigger things, like what the heck is going on with the global economy? Oh, mes amis , do not groan. Your loving Webwench promises to make this painless, and perhaps even amusing. But she asks your forbearance as she begins with a rather dry report in yesterday's New York Times : Under U.S. Pressure, China Allows Yuan to Gain By KEITH BRADSHER Published: May 15, 2006 HONG KONG, May 15 — China allowed its currency to strengthen today past the psychologically significant level of 8 to the dollar for the first time since 1994, in a concession to political pressures from Washington and the dollar's own weakness. The actual rise in the currency, known as the yuan or renminbi, was tiny: not