World/Nation

• Internet firms release new data on NSA spying

WASHINGTON - Freed by a recent legal deal with government lawyers, major technology firms released new data Monday on how often they are ordered to turn over customer information for secret national security investigations - figures that show that the government collected data on thousands of Americans.

The publications disclosed by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, LinkedIn and Tumblr provided expanded details and some vented criticism about the government's handling of customers' Internet data in counter-terrorism and other intelligence-related probes. The figures from 2012 and 2013 showed that companies, such as Google and Microsoft, were compelled by the government to provide information on as many as 10,000 customer accounts in a six-month period. Yahoo complied with government requests for information on more than 40,000 accounts in the same period.

The companies earlier provided limited information about government requests for data, but a new agreement reached last week with the Obama administration allowed the firms to provide a broadened, though still circumscribed, set of figures to the public.

Seeking to reassure customers and business partners alarmed by revelations about the government's massive collection of Internet and computer data, the firms stressed details indicating that only small numbers of their customers were targeted by authorities. Still, even those small numbers showed that thousands of Americans were affected by the government requests approved by judges of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

• Al-Qaida shuns militant group in deadly infighting

CAIRO - Al-Qaida's central leadership broke with one of its most powerful branch commanders in an apparent attempt to stem the deadly infighting that has erupted in Syria among the militant Islamic factions trying to bring down President Bashar Assad.

More broadly, the announcement Monday appeared to be a move by al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri to reassert the terror network's prominence in the jihad movement across the Middle East amid the mushrooming of extremist groups during the upheaval of the past three years.

The dispute is between al-Qaida's central leadership and a faction known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of al-Qaida's branch in Iraq, formed the Islamic State last spring to expand his operations into neighboring Syria, defying direct orders by al-Zawahri not to do so. Al-Zawahri named a different group, the Nusra Front, as al-Qaida's branch in Syria.

Now, the break is likely to spark a competition for resources and fighters between the two sides in what has become a civil war within a civil war. The test for al-Zawahri's influence will be whether his decision leads fighters to quit the Islamic State.

• Convicted killer captured after prison escape

IONIA, Mich. - A convicted killer who peeled a hole in two fences with his hands to escape from a Michigan prison before abducting a woman and fleeing to Indiana was captured Monday evening after a chase, authorities said.

Officials were stunned by the brazen escape Sunday night of Michael David Elliot, who had a record of good behavior during his 20 years in custody. He wore a white kitchen uniform to evade security and blend in with snow at the Ionia Correctional Facility in western Michigan, prisons spokesman Russ Marlan said.

Indiana State Police Sgt. Ron Galaviz said Elliot was captured in LaPorte County after a police chase.

That chase began after authorities there got a report of a car stolen from a factory in the city of LaPorte, said sheriff's Maj. John Boyd. A deputy who happened to be nearby spotted the stolen Chevrolet Monte Carlo "within a few seconds," Boyd said.

Authorities chased the car through the city and into a rural area of Kankakee Township several miles away, where law enforcement used stop sticks to disable the vehicle.

• Charges filed in YouTube sexual abuse case

RIVERSIDE, Calif. - A Southern California school administrator who quit her job after a former student aired sexual abuse allegations on a YouTube video that has since been seen nearly a million times was charged Monday with 16 counts of sexually abusing two girls, prosecutors said.

Andrea Cardosa, 40, was charged with five counts of aggravated sexual assault on a child and 11 other counts of abuse and could get life in prison, the Riverside County District Attorney's office said.

She was arrested by deputies in the city of Perris soon after the charges were filed, and was expected to be arraigned Thursday, district attorney's spokesman John Hall said.

Cardosa's lawyer, Randy Collins, said after charges were filed that he couldn't immediately comment because prosecutors hadn't informed him yet. In a second attempt to reach him after the arrest, Collins' phone was not accepting messages, and he did not immediately reply to an email.

The case came to light after a now 28-year-old woman posted the video on YouTube Jan. 17 showing her making a call to confront Cardosa about the abuse allegations that she said began when she was 12 and Cardosa was her basketball coach.

The video also was sent to the Alhambra Unified School District.

- The Associated Press