TV News LIES

The Massachusetts state employees' pension fund will receive more than $11 million as part of a settlement with Countrywide Securities Corp., state Attorney General Martha Coakley said Monday.

The settlement was announced as part of Coakley's industry-wide review of residential mortgage securitization practices in Massachusetts.

The total settlement with Countrywide is $17.3 million. It includes a $6 million payment to the state.

Hackers who stole data for up to 40 million credit cards and debit cards used in Target stores removed encrypted data containing personal identification numbers — but the theft isn't expected to compromise cardholder accounts — the company said Friday.

"We remain confident that PIN numbers are safe and secure," said a statement issued Friday by Target spokeswoman Molly Snyder.

According to the company, Target does not have access to or store the encryption key within the company's computer systems. When a Target customer uses a debit card in one of the company's stores and enters his or her PIN, the number is encrypted at the keypad with a widely used security program known as Triple DES, the company said.

A federal judge in New York ruled Friday that the massive collection of telephone records by the National Security Agency is lawful.

But last week another judge found that the NSA’s program was likely unconstitutional, making it more likely that the Supreme Court will make its own ruling.

In a statement, the ACLU, which brought the lawsuit after former NSA leaker Edward Snowden brought the program to light, said it would appeal the case.

A Roman Catholic church official who has been jailed for more than a year for his handling of priest sex-abuse complaints had his landmark conviction reversed and was ordered released Thursday.

A three-judge Superior Court panel unanimously rejected prosecution arguments that Monsignor William Lynn, the first U.S. church official ever charged or convicted for the handling of clergy-abuse complaints, was legally responsible for an abused boy's welfare in the late 1990s.

Wyoming will challenge a U.S. government ruling that more than one million acres of the western state's land still legally belongs to two Native American tribes, Governor Matt Mead said on Friday.

In a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week, Mead said he has directed the Wyoming attorney general to take aggressive action to overturn the agency's decision, which he said would adversely affect the state.

The top leaders from world’s biggest technology companies called on the US to "move aggressively" to reform the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance operations after discussions with President Obama on Tuesday, resisting attempts by the White House to portray the encounter as covering a range of broader priorities.

Executives from 15 companies, including Google, Apple, Yahoo and Twitter, used a face-to-face meeting with Obama and vice-president Joe Biden to express their concern that the NSA’s wide-ranging surveillance activities had undermined the trust of their users.