FBI: Suspect had bomb components

FBI: Suspect had bomb components

SAN FRANCISCO

A search of a social-media expert’s apartment in San Francisco turned up ball bearings, screws and components needed to make a homemade bomb designed to kill or maim, the FBI said in an affidavit unsealed Tuesday.

Investigators said they found the materials inside a bag at the apartment of Ryan Kelly Chamberlain during a search over the weekend. The discovery prompted a manhunt for the 42-year-old Chamberlain that ended with his arrest Monday in San Francisco.

The FBI has not said what, if any, specific plans Chamberlain might have had for the device, or how they were alerted to the material.

Church under fire over children’s grave

Dublin

The Catholic Church in Ireland is facing fresh accusations of child neglect after a researcher found records for 796 young children believed to be buried in a mass grave beside a former orphanage for the children of unwed mothers.

The researcher, Catherine Corless, says her discovery of child death records at the Catholic nun-run home in Tuam, County Galway, suggests that a former septic tank filled with bones is the final resting place for most, if not all, of the children.

County Galway death records showed that the children, mostly babies and toddlers, died often of sickness or disease in the orphanage during the 35 years it operated from 1926 to 1961.

Attorney: Girl in stabbing plot is ill

MILWAUKEE

A defense attorney for a 12-year-old girl accused of stabbing her friend nearly to death says Wisconsin’s tough laws automatically charging children as adults in some cases could mean his client won’t get the help she needs.

The girl and another 12-year-old face attempted- homicide charges as adults in connection with the attack Saturday. Prosecutors say they conspired for months to kill their friend to please a fictional character named Slenderman that they read about online.

Crucial East Coast highway bridge closed

WILMINGTON, DEL.

Highway engineers say a crucial bridge on the Eastern Seaboard’s interstate highway system could imperil drivers if traffic is allowed back on it.

The bridge, near Wilmington, Del., was closed Monday when its support pillars where found to be tilting. The bridge won’t reopen anytime soon, highway officials said Tuesday, and the 90,000 vehicles that cross it every day are being diverted onto the main north highway, I-95, further overloading one of the most-crowded arteries in America.

Engineers say ground under the pillars moved and caused the supports to tilt on the Interstate 495 bridge. Officials said they believe the bridge over the Christina River is stable enough to support itself, but that reopening it to traffic could overload the structure.

Officer: Bergdahl case isn’t closed

WASHINGTON

The nation’s top military officer said Tuesday the Army could still throw the book at Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the young soldier who walked away from his unit in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan and into five years of captivity by the Taliban.

Charges are still a possibility, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told The Associated Press as criticism mounted in Congress about releasing five high-level Taliban detainees in exchange for Bergdahl.

Associated Press