ANCHORAGE, Alaska

Rower reaches shore after 3,750 miles on Pacific Ocean

A 28-year-old British adventurer became the first woman to row solo from Japan to Alaska, arriving late Monday at a small town in the Aleutian Islands after 150 days and 3,750 miles at sea.

“I have had some of the most intense and memorable months of my life out on the Pacific, it has been brilliant and brutal at the same time,” Sarah Outen said in a statement. “And it has been a privilege.”

Outen celebrated with a bottle of champagne in Adak, Alaska, and greeted community members and supporters, her first human contact in nearly five months, as first reported by the Anchorage Daily News.

“I have pushed myself to my absolute limits both physically and mentally to make land here in Alaska, and body and mind are now exhausted,” she said.

She left Choshi, Japan, on April 27. It’s part of her plan for a global trek by an ocean rowing shell, kayak and bike.

On Monday afternoon, Outen came within a half mile of the Alaska shore before winds and currents started pushing her onto the rocks. Her support team decided it was safer to tow her into Adak’s small harbor.

BEIRUT

Groups warn of potential for mass Syrian starvation

Syrian opposition groups and international relief organizations are warning of the risk of mass starvation across the country, especially in the besieged Damascus suburbs where a gas attack killed hundreds last month.

With the world’s attention focused on the regime’s chemical weapons, activists said six people — including an 18-month girl — have died for lack of food in one of the stricken suburbs in recent weeks.

Save the Children said in an appeal Monday that more than 4 million Syrians, more than half of them children, do not have enough to eat. Food shortages have been compounded by an explosion in prices.

“The world has stood and watched as the children of Syria have been shot, shelled and traumatized by the horror of war,” said Roger Hearn, Save the Children’s regional director for the Middle East. “The conflict has already left thousands of children dead, and is now threatening their means of staying alive.”

Thousands of people are believed trapped in suburbs east and west of the capital that have been held for months by rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad. Regime troops are besieging the areas, and residents say food is increasingly had to find. Rebels say they are trying to break the blockade.

WASHINGTON

Leahy calls for an end to NSA phone records program

A senior U.S. senator on Tuesday called for an end to the National Security Agency’s phone records collection program, arguing that it treads too heavily on Americans’ privacy rights without having proved its value as a counterterrorism tool.

In a speech at Georgetown Law’s Center on National Security and the Law, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he has introduced bipartisan legislation that would stop the controversial program, which allows the NSA to amass a database of Americans’ call logs. He said he is working on a bill to address concerns about a separate program that collects the emails and phone calls of foreigners overseas, including their communications with Americans.

The measure he introduced, he said, would allow a more limited form of phone records collection under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is the subject of intense public debate in light of revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

“Congress did not enact FISA to give [the government] dragnet surveillance powers to sweep in the data of countless innocent Americans,” said Leahy, who noted that his first vote as a senator in 1975 was in favor of creating the Church Committee, which investigated intelligence agency abuses, including spying on civil rights leaders.

— From news service reports