In Brief | Nation & World | 5-31-15

Surveillance provisions set to expire

A look at the post-Sept. 11 surveillance provisions that, barring a last-minute deal in Congress, are set to expire when Sunday turns into Monday:

Section 215 of the Patriot Act

This has been used to authorize the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of domestic telephone records, although an appeals court ruled recently that the law could not fairly be read to support that program. The ruling was put on hold pending the debate in Congress. Section 215 is also used by the FBI about 200 times a year to obtain all manner of business records, including hotel bills, travel vouchers and Internet data relevant to a terrorism investigation. The FBI says that collection is extremely useful, though a recent Justice Department report said the bureau could not point to any terrorism cases cracked because of the program, as of 2009. If the program lapses, the FBI will have to go back to pre-Sept. 11 language that is much more restrictive.

Will new focus on rape kit testing across US put more sexual predators behind bars?

The evidence piled up for years, abandoned in police property rooms, warehouses and crime labs. Now, thousands of sexual assault kits are giving up their secrets — and rapists who’ve long remained free may finally face justice.

A dramatic shift is now taking hold across the country as police and prosecutors scramble to process these kits, and use DNA matches to track down predators, many of whom have attacked more women while evidence of their crimes sat in storage.

“There’s definitely momentum,” says Sarah Haacke Byrd, managing director of the Joyful Heart Foundation, an advocacy group working on the issue. “In the last year we really are seeing the tide turn where federal and state governments are offering critically needed leadership and critically needed resources to fix the problem.”

In Cleveland, the county prosecutor’s office has indicted more than 300 rape suspects since 2013, based on newly tested DNA evidence from old kits. Ultimately, 1,000 are expected to be charged.

In Houston, authorities recently cleared a backlog of nearly 6,700 kits, some decades old. The project turned up 850 matches in a national DNA database.

Suicide bomber, rocket grenades kill 30, bring new terror to Nigerian birthplace of Boko Haram

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — A suicide bomb blast outside a mosque and rocket-propelled grenades that exploded into homes as people slept killed at least 30 people in the Nigerian city Maiduguri on Saturday, residents and officials said.

The explosion killed people who were prostrating themselves for afternoon prayers outside the mosque, including traders from the nearby crowded marketplace in the largest city in Nigeria’s troubled northeast, survivors said.

Trader Ali Bakomi said the bomber was pushing a wheelbarrow and pretending to be an itinerant trader when he joined them.

Borno state Gov. Kashim Shettima toured the scene where one wall was reduced to rubble and another was splattered with blood. Officials told him the bomber killed himself and 16 other people.

Earlier Saturday, rocket-propelled grenades killed at least 13 others in the city and injured more, according to resident Idrissa Mandara. Such grenades are a new tactic that has brought terror to the city that is the birthplace of Boko Haram.

Central Texas search team finds woman’s body along river

A search team has recovered a woman’s body from the Blanco River bank near San Marcos.

A Hays County statement says the body was found about 5 miles upstream from San Marcos and about 5 miles downstream from Wimberley.

The statement says no identification has been made pending autopsy on her body or that of a man whose body was found Thursday at the Hays-Blanco county line upstream.

That brings to seven the number of bodies found in Hays County and 26 the number of deaths in Texas storms. It still isn’t known if the two unidentified bodies are on the Hays County list of six missing or the 11 missing across Texas.

By wire sources.