Given access to a large trove of the NSA documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, the New York Times has published an aerial view of the agency—cataloging numerous and varied surveillance programs—which the paper says shows that President Obama and other high-ranking officials who defend the agency by citing its counterterrorism credentials are using “a misleadingly narrow sales pitch for an agency with an almost unlimited agenda.”

Though critical and informative on many levels, however, the approach and perhaps unintended consequences of the story raises some questions.

According to the Times, “the scale and aggressiveness” of the NSA’s global spying apparatus detailed in the Snowden documents “are breathtaking.”

And in three key paragraphs, the Times rattled off a series of acronym-laden programs and clandestine cyber-operations conducted by the NSA:

As access continues to open to the areas worst hit by Super Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines over the weekend, scenes of total destruction are emerging alongside a growing humanitarian disaster.

With the death toll previously reported at 10,000 people or more the new phase of the calamity is now being experienced by those who survived the terrifying storm but now face a crippled infrastructure with little or no access to food, water, electricity, or even basic medical care.

“The scene is one of utter devastation.” Tata Abella-Bolo, Oxfam International

With relief organizations and the government mobilizing to search for survivors and deliver aid to the victims of the storm, the reports, images, and video footage from the islands and communities hardest hit—some of them leveled completely by storm surges and wind gusts from one of the most powerful tropical storms ever recorded—showed the extent of Haiyan’s destructive force.

“The scene is one of utter devastation,” said Tata Abella-Bolo, a member of Oxfam International’s emergency team on the central island of Cebu. “There is no electricity in the entire area and no water. Local emergency food stocks have been distributed but stocks are dwindling. The immediate need is for water, both for drinking and cleaning.”

The team reported that nearly all the houses and buildings in the areas they visited were damaged, with power lines down and no electricity in the entire municipality. The team spoke of seeing children begging for help, holding up signs that read: “Help. We need water, food and medicines.”

Oxfam warns that there at least 18 million people living in the worst affected regions and that millions more have been negatively impacted across the nation.

At a government press conference, Cabinet Secretary Rene Almendras said, “The situation is bad, the devastation has been significant. In some cases the devastation has been total.”

“The only reason why we have no reports of casualties up to now is that communications systems … are down,” added Colonel John Sanchez of the Philippines armed forces.

Showing newly available aerial photographs from eastern islands that took the brunt of the storm’s wrath, Sanchez added, “One hundred percent of the structures either had their roofs blown away or sustained major damage.”

U.S. lawmakers will allow the essential food aid program Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to lose $5 billion in funding when a stimulus boost ends on Friday.

The massive blow to the program means that the roughly 47 million people with food stamp assistance—that’s one in every seven Americans, 49 percent of whom are children—will have their monthly assistance gouged.

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As Colorlines reports, “The total cuts will amount to about a five percent reduction for families who already struggle to make ends meet, and some states already began making cuts.”

“Instead of receiving an average of a buck-fifty for a meal, individuals in need of food assistance will get about $1.40,” explains Greg Kaufmann, poverty correspondent for The Nation. “For families of three, the cut means they will receive $29 less in food stamps every month.”

The cardiovascular health of kids across the globe has fallen, according to research presented Tuesday at a meeting of the American Heart Association.

Today’s kids are running more slowly and with less endurance than their parents did, the researchers found.

Based on an analysis of data covering 1964 to 2010, the study found that kids now are about 15 percent less heart healthy than their parents were as youngsters. In the U.S., the study found that from 1970 to  2000 kids’ cardiovascular endurance fell an average of 6 percent per decade.

And this doesn’t bode well for the young generation, stated Grant Tomkinson, Ph.D., lead author of the study and senior lecturer in the University of South Australia’s School of Health Sciences, because “The most important type of fitness for good health is cardiovascular fitness.”

“If a young person is generally unfit now, then they are more likely to develop conditions like heart disease later in life,” Tomkinson stated.

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“The face of tar sands resistance in the Northwest” appeared again on Monday when 16 people were arrested in Oregon after blockading a “megaload” of equipment on its way to the Athabasca oil fields in Alberta, Canada.

Organizers with the climate activism group Portland Rising Tide say protesters set up two blockade sites along Highway 26 near the town of John Day, locking themselves to disabled vehicles in front of the 376-foot long, 901,000-lb load carrying a heat exchanger to be used in tar sands extraction.

While the activists succeeded in at least temporarily halting the transport of equipment, Portland Rising Tide says police used “pain compliance to extract” the four protesters who had locked themselves to the two vehicles, and aggressively arrested others “who were actively trying not to obstruct the load or police activity.”

Among the arrested were the group’s photographers and videographers.

“Transporting loads of such sizes presents a huge threat to rural Oregon’s roads, and rivers,” said Nicole Brown, who grew up in Eastern Oregon and was present at the actions last night. “Law enforcement should focus on protecting Oregon’s roads and rivers and people, rather than multinational fossil fuel interests.”

Portland Rising Tide says that a similar megaload toppled last week in Gladstone, Ore., blocking part of I-205 for hours.

Privacy advocates and a prominent civil liberties group sued the U.S. government on Monday, demanding disclosure of how key spy agencies and the executive branch interpret and execute legal authorities that govern a vast foreign electronic surveillance program that also sweeps up the communication data of millions of Americans each year.

Filed in a district court in New York, the suit was filed jointly by the ACLU and the Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School and called on the National Security Agency, the CIA, and the Defense, Justice, and State Departments to offer details about how Executive Order 12,333 guides the collection and processing of billions of phone and internet records around the world.

ACLU staff attornery Alex Abdo, writing at his organization’s blog, explained that the suit was prompted by recent newspaper revelations made possible by leaks by Edward Snowden. Abdo described EO 12,333 as the “most important surveillance order we know almost nothing about,” explaining:

The legal complaint filed by the groups seeks access to relevant documents that will show how the government is interpreting the authority given to it under the executive order—which was first signed in 1981, long before the technical capabilities now available to the NSA were developed.

Part of what the Snowden leaks exposed recently was the way in which the NSA uses both domestic and foreign internet interchanges and data hubs owned by companies like Google and Yahoo to sweep up the international communications of people living or traveling across the globe.

Separate stories based in internal NSA dcouments show how the NSA is able to track cell phone locations across the globe and that Americans traveling abroad are also targeted by the same technology. It remains unclear how the information collected abroad or surveillance against foreign targets is sifted from that of Americans who enjoy, in theory at least, special protections from being spied on by their own government.

Disney has pulled the plug on a pro-fracking and drilling tour of elementary schools and science centers across Ohio, bankrolled by the state’s oil and gas industry, after drawing fury from environmental activists and concerned parents.

Yet critics charge Disney’s withdrawal, which was announced publicly on Thursday, falls short. “This is an important first step, but we want a policy to ensure children are not having fossil fuel energy promoted to them in Radio Disney’s programs across the country,” said Lisa Hoyos, director of the group Climate Parents that played a lead role in the campaign against Disney, in an interview with Common Dreams.

Billed as an educational program, “Rocking in Ohio” visited elementary schools and science centers across the state, with a total of 26 stops last month. It was led by Radio Disney staffers based in Cleveland, who presented workshops promoting oil and gas pipelines to youth attendees. The presentations created party-like atmospheres with thumping pop music and pipeline-building contests, in what critics have slammed as propaganda for the oil and gas industry in a state that is ground zero for fracking.

All of the program’s funding came from the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP), which is in turn funded by the state’s oil and gas industry.

Radio Disney, which does nation-wide youth programming, had planned to bring the tour to other states if proven a success, The Hill reports.