Shorts (left)
CIA collecting data on international money transfers
WASHINGTON — The CIA is secretly collecting bulk records of international money transfers — including transactions into and out of the United States — under the same law that the National Security Agency uses for its huge database of Americans’ phone records, according to current and former government officials.
The CIA financial records program, which the officials said is authorized by provisions in the Patriot Act and overseen by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, offers evidence that the extent of government data collection programs is not fully known and that the national debate over privacy and security may be incomplete.
Some details of the CIA program were not clear. But it was confirmed by several current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains classified.
The data does not include purely domestic transfers or bank-to-bank transactions, several officials said. Another, while not acknowledging the program, suggested that the surveillance court had imposed rules withholding the identity of any Americans from the data the CIA sees, requiring a tie to a terrorist organization before a search may be run, and mandating that the data be discarded after a certain number of years. The court has imposed several similar rules on the NSA call logs program.
—Charlie Savage and Mark Mazzetti, The New York Times
Passenger train in northeast India hits elephant herd, killing 5
NEW DELHI — A passenger train speeding through northeast India barreled into a herd of elephants as they crossed a set of tracks late Wednesday, killing five. Their bodies were scattered in pieces, so the authorities were at first unable to count them and reported that seven had died.
One female elephant, whose leg was fractured by the train and was unable to stand, fell into a ravine below the track, unreachable by cranes or trucks, so veterinarians descended and set up a camp near her to provide treatment, Bidyut Sarkar, a divisional forest officer in Jalpaiguri district in West Bengal state, said in a telephone interview. One body was left hanging from a railroad bridge.
The authorities said surviving members of the herd returned to the scene of the collision.
—Hari Kumar, The New York Times
Police shoot man fleeing with gun in Wisconsin children’s hospital
Police in a Milwaukee suburb shot and wounded a man brandishing a handgun inside a children’s hospital Thursday after officers had tried to arrest him on a warrant inside the hospital’s neonatal care unit, authorities said. No one else was injured during the shooting.
The man, whose name has not been released by authorities, had been holding an infant inside Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa when Milwaukee police officers approached him and told him he was under arrest for an outstanding weapons charge, said David Clarke, sheriff of Milwaukee County.
The man put the child down and appeared to be willing to cooperate with the officers when he suddenly fled down a hallway with a drawn handgun, Clarke said.
“He turned around several times with the weapon in his hand,” Clarke said.
The officers fired several shots, striking the gunman, authorities said. The man was taken to a nearby hospital. His injuries are not life-threatening, officials said.
—Timothy Williams, The New York Times