News Center

Only three candidates out of the more than half dozen vying for the White House have a viable path to the nomination, a senior official for the Mike Bloomberg campaign told reporters Tuesday.

POSTED FEBRUARY 18, 2020 1:46 PM

Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has said the “top levels” of the Malaysian government long suspected that the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 almost six years ago was a mass murder-suicide by the pilot. Australia, working on Malaysia's behalf, coordinated what became the largest search in aviation history, but it failed to find the plane before being ended in 2017. Speaking in a Sky News documentary to air on Wednesday and Thursday, Abbott said high-ranking Malaysian officials believed veteran pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah deliberately downed the jet.

POSTED FEBRUARY 19, 2020 3:02 AM

A U.S. official told CBS News that the government source is someone who has provided information on Russian intelligence services.

POSTED FEBRUARY 18, 2020 9:09 PM

Authorities managing dams in Tennessee and Mississippi must make difficult decisions as floodwaters swell along the states’ rivers; the surging water pressing against the dams has to be released at some point, and when it does, it often spells disaster for individuals living downstream from the dams.Case in point: two large homes slid into the flood-swelled waters of the Tennessee River over the weekend.

POSTED FEBRUARY 17, 2020 2:18 PM

China expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters in retaliation for a headline on a column about coronavirus that Beijing said was "racist."

POSTED FEBRUARY 19, 2020 11:48 AM

Report finds 80% of migrants waiting have been abducted by the mafia and 45% have suffered violence or violationA score or so migrants crouch in the dark corridor of the safe house where they have been waiting for a month. Today, their turn has come to go back on the road again – not across the US border, however, but deeper into Mexico, to save their skins.Outside, a minivan pulls up, driven by Baptist pastor Lorenzo Ortiz to take the migrants to relative safety, and away from kidnap, extortion and violation.This is Nuevo Laredo, in the north-west corner of Tamaulipas state, opposite Laredo, Texas, the world’s busiest commercial trans-border hub. The people waiting to board the van have already crossed into the USA, but have been sent back under the Trump administration’s so-called Migrant Protection Protocols - known as “Remain in Mexico” – whereby would be asylum seekers must await their appointed hearing south of the border.MPP was rolled out in January last year, since when an estimated 57,000 people now wait south of the border for their asylum hearing date. Tens of thousands more are waiting just for the initial application for asylum.These are the faces behind statistics in a shocking report by Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which found 80% of migrants waiting in Nuevo Laredo under MPP to have been abducted by the mafia, and 45% to have suffered violence or violation. The door of the safe house opens and blinding sunlight beckons those awaiting, as does Pastor Ortiz, who arrives across the border from Laredo each morning to take a vanload to the larger city of Monterrey, Nuevo León.There can be no tarrying, explains another local pastor, Diego Robles, from the First Baptist church. “If they walk to the corner of the block,” he says, “they’re likely to be kidnapped.”Robles knows the risk he runs. Last August, criminals approached Aarón Méndez, a Seventh Day Adventist managing another shelter nearby, demanding he hand over Cubans in his care, whose relatives in the USA might pay high ransoms for their release.He refused – and has not been seen since, joining the 50,000 disappeared in Mexico’s undeclared war since 2006. The safe house – its gate kept closed with padlock and chain – is crammed with some 180 people, mostly indoors, some in a back yard enclosed by breeze blocks.Their stories are terrifying and consistent.Moy Eduardo fled his home in El Salvador after members of the MS-13 gang abducted and killed his brother after the family failed to pay sufficient extortion money. He eventually arrived at Nuevo Laredo bus station, only to be forced into a car and taken to a farm some distance from town. There, he was pistol-whipped, while the kidnappers called his cousin in Atlanta and demanded an $8,000 ransom.“They said if I didn’t pay, they’d hand me over to ‘other people in our organisation’,” he recalled. Four days later, his desperate relative wired money, and Moy Eduardo was released.He told the story to US authorities when applying for asylum, “but they didn’t believe me and sent me back”. Moy Eduardo has a court date in April, but is desperate to leave Nuevo Laredo. “I cannot stay here – they said if they saw me again, they’d kill me”.“It’s become big business,” says Pastor Robles “It’s a way for the drug cartels to diversify. It is worse in Tamaulipas than other border states, and worse in Nuevo Laredo than anywhere else in Tamaulipas. There’s no formula to the abductions and disappearances – they are kidnapped, beaten, women violated; most return, but not all”.Nuevo Laredo was for years controlled by the hyper-violent Zetas group, and is now territory of its offshoot, the North-east cartel. But their one-time associate, now rival, the Gulf cartel is knocking at the gates, backed by the Jalisco cartel, eager for access to the city’s vast commercial transit routes into the USA. .While the Zetas/North-east cartel control migrant movement within Nuevo Laredo, the Gulf and Jalisco cartels often bring migrants to the city. And each group sees migrants and asylum seekers as a source of easy money.“They go after the ones who’ve been brought here by a rival cartel. They have to pay twice,” says Pastor Ortiz “And the Cubans – because they know the Cubans have richer relatives.”Inside the safe house, Yaqueline and her daughter Lisbeth, described how she was given a code by their coyote after fleeing gang violence in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.She was told that in Nuevo Laredo, the word “rana” – frog – would ensure safe passage. But when three thugs approached them outside the government migrant registration offices, they were told the word meant they were property of the enemy; mother and child were bundled into an SUV.Relatives north of the border were again contacted. After five days, they were still unable to find the ransom money, and Yaqueline and Lisbeth were released to find their own way to Pastor Robles’ church. Asked if she had been maltreated, Yaqueline lowers her eyes, gestures towards the child, and crossed herself. “The gangs were bad in Honduras, but it is even more dangerous here.”All these people have US “Notice to Appear” papers for dates months away, when they will re-cross the bridge into Laredo, Texas, and enter a tent court beside the Rio Grande, for a cursory video-link hearing to a judge hundreds of miles away in San Antonio. Less than 1% are granted asylum.Those summoned to court begin gathering on the Mexican side of the bridge before 4am. A group from Cuba and Venezuela assembles first, manifestly nervous.There are 67 on the docket to appear at the tent court, but by 6am, only 29 are shuffled through into the canvas corridor, to plead their case, and await judgment on a screen from 150 miles away. The rest are presumed to have given up and returned home. Reporters have never been admitted into the Laredo tent court.“The authorities make no attempt to intervene, says Pastor Ortiz, “the mafia is right there in the open, and there’s nothing done to stop them. It’s total impunity for the cartels.”Local and national governments play down the abduction emergency. Edwin Aceves, the chief investigator for the Office of Disappeared Persons in Nuevo Laredo, said he had received “no reports of kidnapping and extortion of migrants. These are just rumours.”Meanwhile, Mark Morgan, acting commissioner for US Customs and Border Protection, told a round-table of reporters last year he was unaware of reports of kidnapping, while Mexico’s foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, has said kidnaps were “not a massive number”; his department had information on 20 cases nationally.Mexico’s leftwing government cooperates enthusiastically with President Trump’s MPP. In contrast to the pastors’ buses helping migrants wait in relative safety, government buses chartered depart daily from Nuevo Laredo’s state migration centres to take migrants back to the border with Guatemala. Even one of those was hijacked last autumn, surrounded by gunmen aboard pickup trucks, and migrants taken. But here at the safe house, the minivan is ready to take people on a round-trip, to relative safety away from Nuevo Laredo, and then back again to cross the border when their date arrives. The group shuffles out of the front door on to the sidewalk and scrambles onboard. Pastor Robles says a prayer for the road through the front passenger window – and off they go, in the opposite direction to that of their plans, but away from the clutches of the mafia.

POSTED FEBRUARY 18, 2020 10:37 AM

Elizabeth Brooks Hernandez, 29, was last seen by her boyfriend, Miguel Martinez, who told police he dropped her off at a welfare office in Albuquerque, New Mexico on November 16, 2017. Police suspect foul play, but no arrests have been made. The Albuquerque Police Department is investigating.

POSTED FEBRUARY 17, 2020 2:20 PM

South Korea reported 20 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus on Wednesday -- increasing its total by nearly two-thirds -- including a cluster of at least 16 centred on the southern city of Daegu. The trade-dependent nation has been hit by the economic fallout from the virus outbreak in neighbouring China, but until Wednesday's jump, its own case numbers had hardly changed for several days. The Korea Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said in a statement that 20 new coronavirus cases had been confirmed, raising its total from 31 to 51.

POSTED FEBRUARY 19, 2020 3:57 AM

Before he died, the director sent his goodbye to his friends including his son in London: "Farewell to those I love and to those who loved me!"

POSTED FEBRUARY 19, 2020 4:11 AM

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg turned 78 years old last Friday. That makes him the same age as his top rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and six months older than former Vice President Joe Biden.> Today is @MikeBloomberg's birthday; he's turning 78 years old. > > Yesterday, a voter told me he was interested in Bloomberg because "Biden & Bernie are too old."@JoeBiden is 77. @BernieSanders is 78.> > — Maura Barrett (@MauraBarrettNBC) February 14, 2020Everybody is expected to pile on Bloomberg in Wednesday night's Democratic debate in Nevada, and Sanders tested out his salvos in a CNN town hall on Tuesday night. But age isn't the only thing Bloomberg and Sanders have in common. Neither has been a Democrat for most of the past two decades, for example, and both have had two coronary arterial stents inserted near their hearts to relieve blockages.Sanders, who had a heart attack in October, said Tuesday night that he won't release his full medical records. After getting out of the hospital, he had said "the people do have a right to know about the health of a senator, somebody who's running for president of the United States — full disclosure." On Tuesday night, Sanders said the three letters he released from doctors equal "a detailed medical report," and when pressed on whether he plans to release his medical records, he said, "I don't think we will, no."Bloomberg disclosed his 2000 heart operation for the first time in 2007. In December, he released a letter from his longtime physician, Dr. Stephen Sisson at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, attesting that Bloomberg is "in outstanding health," though he developed an irregular heartbeat called an "atrial fibrillation" last year and is treating it with blood thinners. Bloomberg "has had normal cardiac stress testing annually" since he had the stents inserted in 2000, Sisson wrote, and the artery has not become clogged again."Heart problems are extremely common in older adults," The Associated Press notes. At the same time, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday found that 53 percent of voters have "some reservations" or are "very uncomfortable" with a candidate who had a recent heart attack.More stories from theweek.com Mike Bloomberg is not the lesser of two evils The family of 1 new Trump pardon recipient donated $200,000 to Trump's re-election effort last fall Obama poked Trump on the economy. Trump took the bait.

POSTED FEBRUARY 19, 2020 9:59 AM