Nation briefs

NATION

Drawdown plan called for

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican leading a bipartisan delegation to Afghanistan, called on President Barack Obama yesterday to announce a decision on his plans for future troop levels in the country on the assumption a much-delayed security pact eventually will be signed with Kabul. Ayotte stressed no American forces would remain in the country without a bilateral security agreement, but she also said Obama shouldn't wait for that to give an idea of what the U.S. presence would look like after the NATO-led combat mission ends at the end of this year. Ayotte, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said she also urged President Hamid Karzai, who has refused to sign the deal, to change his mind.

Reports: NSA hit tech giant

U.S. intelligence agencies hacked into the email servers of Chinese tech giant Huawei five years ago, around the time concerns were growing in Washington that the telecommunications equipment manufacturer was a threat to U.S. national security, two newspapers reported yesterday. The National Security Agency began targeting Huawei in early 2009 and quickly succeeded in gaining access to the company's client lists and email archive, German weekly Der Spiegel reported, citing secret U.S. intelligence documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The New York Times also published a report yesterday about the documents.

TEXAS

Oil spilled in Galveston Bay

A barge carrying 924,000 gallons of fuel oil collided with another ship yesterday in the Houston ship channel and was leaking oil, officials said. The U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement yesterday that it received a call about 12:30 p.m. from the captain of the 585-foot ship Summer Wind reporting its collision with a barge. The Coast Guard did not give an estimate of how much oil had leaked into Galveston Bay. Tomorrow marks the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez spill.