Key Parts of Patriot Act Expire Temporarily as Senate Moves Toward Limits on Spying
WASHINGTON — The government’s authority to sweep up vast quantities of phone records in the hunt for terrorists expired at 12:01 a.m. Monday after Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, blocked an extension of the program during an extraordinary and at times caustic Sunday session of the Senate.
Still, the Senate signaled that it was ready to curtail the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection program with likely passage this week of legislation that would shift the storage of telephone records from the government to the phone companies. The House overwhelmingly passedthat bill last month. Senators voted, 77 to 17, on Sunday to take up the House bill.
Mr. Paul’s stand may have forced the temporary expiration of parts of the post-9/11 Patriot Act used by the National Security Agency to collect phone records, but he was helped by the miscalculation of Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, who sent the Senate on a weeklong vacation after blocking the House bill before Memorial Day.
Solar Impulse 2 makes unscheduled stopover in Japan
Poor weather conditions force solar-powered plane to touch down in Nagoya during attempted flight from China to Hawaii
A solar-powered plane attempting to make an unprecedented flight across the Pacific has been forced to make an unscheduled stop in Japan due to poor weather conditions.
Solar Impulse 2 was en route from China to Hawaii when it made the detour to Nagoya. It had taken off early on Sunday for a six-day, six-night, flight over the Pacific Ocean.
Pilot André Borschberg, 62, left the ground in Nanjing, in eastern China, at about 2.40am, following extended delays due to weather-related safety concerns. The 5,270-mile (8,500km) flight would have been a record for duration by a single pilot.
Solar Impulse 2 is powered by more than 17,000 solar cells built into wings that, at 72 metres, are almost as long as those of an Airbus A380 superjumbo.
Chinese internet police joining Weibo and other sites to post about what is being censored
Turkey's elections expose rift in Kurdish society
The success or failure of a pro-Kurdish party will be a key factor in Turkey's upcoming elections. But divisions mean real challenges for a peaceful Kurdish society, writes Jacob Resneck in Diyarbakir.
As Turkey heads into elections a pro-Kurdish party's performance could swing the election. But while the forward momentum of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) could be historic in bringing Turkey's Kurdish minority closer to achieving linguistic and cultural rights, the left-leaning party is not the sole voice representing the country's Kurds, analysts warn.
"Kurdish society is not homogenous," Gareth Jenkins, an Istanbul-based researcher with the Silk Road Studies Program at John Hopkins University told DW. "Both inside Turkey and internationally there's a tendency to take a simplistic approach toward the Kurds and say the HDP is synonymous with the Kurds and they are not."
The HDP's socially liberal platform is distrusted among religiously conservative Kurds. And HDP's links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) further alienates Kurdish tribes who allied themselves with Turkish security forces in the war against the PKK.
NATIONAL
Sexism no barrier for Japanese exile building India subways
BY NATALIE OBIKO PEARSON
BLOOMBERG
NEW DELHI – Reiko Abe became a civil engineer, but she couldn’t find a job in Japan. An ancient Shinto superstition, made part of the national labor law, held that if a woman entered a tunnel under construction, she would anger the jealous mountain goddess and cause worker accidents.
Two decades later, Abe has become the face of Japan’s global engagement as it seeks to overcome the image of an economic laggard and a wasteland for career women. Television ads featuring her have run on CNN and the BBC. She’s been lauded by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for showcasing the nation’s strengths abroad and symbolizing why it needs to promote more women in a workforce where less than 5 percent of managers are female.
The irony? Abe, 51, had to leave Japan.
Venezuelans Mass For Year's Largest Anti-Government Protests
| By HANNAH DREIER
Thousands donned white and took to the streets in cities across the country Saturday in the biggest show of frustration with Venezuela's socialist administration since a wave of bloody anti-government protests a year ago.
The day of marches was called less than a week ago by imprisoned opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez. In a video leaked from his prison cell, Lopez urged demonstrations to demand a firm date for this year's legislative elections and freedom for jailed opposition politicians like himself who human rights groups consider political prisoners.
A Harvard-educated former mayor, Lopez has been jailed for 15 months in connection with his leadership of the spring of 2014 protests that resulted in dozens of deaths on both sides of Venezuela's yawning political divide.
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