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  • Iran arrests more than 100 people over suspected poisonings of schoolgirls | CNN

    Iran arrests more than 100 people over suspected poisonings of schoolgirls | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Iran has arrested more than 100 people “in connection with” the suspected poisoning of hundreds of schoolgirls across the country, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.

    Citing a statement from Iran’s Interior Ministry, IRNA said the people had been “identified, arrested and investigated” in several cities, including the capital Tehran.

    “Initial inquiries show that a number of these people, out of mischief or adventurism and with the aim of shutting down classrooms and influenced by the created psychological atmosphere, have taken measures such as using harmless and smelly substances,” the statement read.

    Iran has seen a wave of suspected poisonings, carried out almost entirely at girls’ schools, in recent months.

    While Iranian politicians have suggested the girls could have been targeted by hardline Islamist groups, activists believe that the poisonings may be linked to the nationwide protests that erupted last September over the death of Mahsa Ami. Many schoolgirls have been active in the protests, removing their mandatory headscarves in classrooms, tearing up pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and calling for his death.

    Medics, parents and teachers have accused the Iranian government of attempting to silence the victims.

    Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei previously called the suspected poisonings an “unforgivable crime” and called for “severe punishment” for anyone found responsible.

    Among those arrested, the ministry said, were “individuals who have had hostile motives, tried to create fear and horror among people and students, shut down schools, and created pessimism toward” the Iranian government.

    They would remain “under investigation until required assurances are achieved,” the statement said, adding that the number of poisoning cases at girls’ schools across the country had been decreasing “over the past several days.”

    The first suspected poisonings happened in November at a high school in the city of Qom which saw 18 schoolgirls hospitalized, according to Iranian state media.

    A mother of two daughters from Qom previously told CNN that both girls, who attended different schools, had suffered significant health issues after being poisoned.

    One girl experienced nausea, shortness of breath and numbness in her left leg and right hand while the other now had “difficulty walking,” she said.

    Growing alarm in Iran after report hundreds of schoolgirls were poisoned

    Another incident in the city took place in February when more than 100 students from 13 schools were hospitalized after what Iranian state news agencies described as “serial poisonings.”

    Both the United States and United Nations have called on Iranian authorities to fully investigate the suspected poisonings and hold those responsible to account.

    The White House on Monday said there must be a “credible, independent” investigation of poisonings among schoolgirls in Iran, suggesting it could be within the purview of the United Nations to look into the matter.

    Previously, the Biden administration had noted Iran itself was conducting an investigation. But questioned by CNN’s Phil Mattingly on Monday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the situation could fall within the mandate of the UN’s independent fact-finding mission on Iran.

    “We are closely following this deeply concerning situation that we’re seeing in Iran,” she said. “The continued poisoning of schoolgirls across Iran is unconscionable. There must be a credible, independent investigation (and) accountability for those responsible.”

    She said if the poisonings were related to recent protests, it was “well within” the UN fact-finding mission’s mandate.

    “The possibility that girls in Iran are being possibly poisoned for simply for trying to get an education is shameful, it’s unacceptable,” she said.

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  • ‘Y’all ain’t never been to Mexico.’ How a road trip over the border took a deadly turn | CNN

    ‘Y’all ain’t never been to Mexico.’ How a road trip over the border took a deadly turn | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    Four South Carolinians in a white minivan pulled out the parking lot of a Motel 6 surrounded by palmettos and onto an expressway in Brownsville, Texas – zooming past strip malls lined with taquerias, auto repair shops and law offices with Spanish names – for the short drive to the Mexican border city of Matamoros.

    At one of the busiest border crossings in the country, the American citizens that Friday morning joined other motorists and pedestrians on trips for work or to see family, cheaper medical procedures and medications, or margarita lunches at brightly painted restaurants where menu prices are listed in pesos and dollars.

    About 9:20 a.m., LaTavia Washington McGee, a 33-year-old mother of six, and her three friends from South Carolina crossed the Brownsville and Matamoros Express International Bridge. They were already running late for Washington McGee’s appointment for a medical procedure.

    Around that time, the minivan moves along a rundown section of Matamoros, according to a livestream video taken by one of the minivan’s occupants that was obtained and analyzed by CNN.

    “Y’all ain’t never been to Mexico,” said one of the men inside the van. “Y’all don’t know what it’s like in Mexi.”

    Moments later, the man said, “Hola,” and there was laughter during a road trip that would soon take a deadly turn in the lawless border town.

    In broad daylight, at 11:45 a.m., the van was intercepted and fired upon. All occupants were shot except for Washington McGee. A Mexican woman was killed by a stray bullet about a block and a half away.

    Video showed the attackers, armed with rifles and wearing protective vests, tossing Washington McGee – “like trash” in the words of her mother, Barbara McLeod Burgess – onto the bed of a pickup.

    The gunmen, believed to be connected to the Gulf drug cartel, dragged the other victims onto the truck. Two appeared limp, leaving a trail of blood on the ground of the busy intersection. The abductors then drove away.

    Within days Mexican security forces found two of the Americans – Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown – dead in a small wooden shack on a desolate road leading to Playa Bagdad, near the spot where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf of Mexico. Another man, Eric Williams, was wounded. And Washington McGee was found alive following a violent kidnapping that has become a flash point between neighboring countries and brought international attention to a Mexican border city where little-noticed killings and disappearances are part of everyday life.

    “If they were Mexicans this would not have happened with such speed,” Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, an expert on smuggling who is a professor at George Mason University and has lived and worked in near Brownsville border, said of the rescue. “It would not have happened at all. It doesn’t happen with Mexicans, particularly in that state.”

    By Friday, a week after the kidnappings, Mexican authorities announced that five people had been arrested for the attack. A day earlier, the Gulf cartel purportedly issued a letter of apology and handed over five members to local authorities, according to online images and a version of the letter obtained by CNN from an official familiar with the ongoing investigation. A sixth man, who authorities said had been guarding the hostages, was arrested when the Americans were found on Tuesday.

    The four Americans that Friday morning drove into a country where authorities have struggled for small victories in a long and deadly battle against drug cartels. The conflict has claimed the lives of thousands of Mexicans, from innocent bystanders to journalists to government officials and political candidates.

    It’s unclear how much the friends in the rented minivan knew about the crime-ridden border city, where factions of the powerful Gulf cartel have been warring for turf, along with control of human trafficking, kidnapping and extortion rackets. Matamoros is in the northeast state of Tamaulipas, where an explosion of homicides, kidnappings and disappearances rarely make international news.

    “I know her,” said Washington McGee’s best friend, Cheryl Orange, who traveled with the group from South Carolina to Texas on March 2 but stayed behind because she did not have proper identification to cross the border. “She’s not going to travel to danger.”

    The trip was Washington McGee’s second to Mexico for a medical procedure, according to her mother. She had surgery across the border two or three years ago, Barbara Burgess said.

    Matamoros, with a population of more than 500,000 people, sits just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville. The US State Department in October issued a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory for US citizens visiting Tamaulipas, citing gun battles, kidnapping and forced disappearances.

    Cheryl Orange vpx 01

    Friend of Americans kidnapped in Mexico recounts the moments before they went missing

    On the day of the kidnappings, Tamaulipas authorities issued a warning to parents to keep their children home from school in Matamoros because of shootings. The US embassy and consulates in Mexico warned staff to avoid downtown Matamoros.

    The Americans are believed to have been targeted by mistake and were not the intended victims, according to a US official with knowledge of the investigation. Authorities believe cartel members likely mistook them for Haitian smugglers, the official said. US authorities have not identified any concerning criminal history on the part of the Americans.

    On Friday, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador alluded to the purported “criminal background in the United States” of the Americans but did not elaborate on how that related to the deadly kidnapping. López Obrador’s “hugs not bullets” anti-crime policy – focusing on social programs rather than confrontation with criminal gangs – has come under fire at home and abroad.

    CNN is looking into López Obrador’s claims about the criminal history of the US citizens.

    US Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar on Friday declined comment on the motivation behind the kidnappings.

    Asked what she wanted people to know about her friends, Orange said: “I want the world to leave us alone and stop being mean. I want them to have a heart because everyone has a past.”

    The disappearance of the four Americans has become an international incident.

    The FBI launched an investigation and announced a $50,000 reward for their return and the arrest of those involved. The White House and State Department condemned the abduction and killings. Some Republicans in Congress called for a US military invasion of Mexico to combat the cartels. Others called for the US to designate the cartels as “terrorist organizations.”

    Orange said she and the other four Americans embarked on their journey from South Carolina on Thursday.

    “It was a road trip,” she said. They tagged along with Washington McGee, who was scheduled to have a medical procedure across the border, Orange told Brownsville police when she reported her friends missing a day after the kidnapping.

    Mexico is the second most popular destination for medical tourism globally, with an estimated 1.4 million to 3 million patients traveling into the country for inexpensive treatment in 2020, according to Patients Beyond Borders, an international healthcare consulting company.

    Woodard, who was killed in the kidnapping, would have celebrated his 34th birthday on Thursday, according to his father, James Woodard.

    Washington McGee and Shaeed Woodard were cousins – “like two peas in a pod” – and she invited him on the trip to Mexico for an early birthday celebration, James Woodard said.

    “They loved each other,” he said of the cousins.

    Orange said the men were expected to drop off Washington McGee at the doctor’s officer in Matamoros and return to the hotel about 15 minutes later. She fell asleep after taking a shower at the Motel 6. “I was exhausted, you know, from the long hours, from the long ride,” she said.

    She woke up about 5 p.m. and they hadn’t returned. Orange told police she tried calling her friends but couldn’t get through.

    latavia mother mexico vpx

    Victim’s mom reveals what daughter told her about killings

    The four friends never arrived at the doctor’s office for Washington McGee’s 7:30 a.m. appointment. One of them called the office that Friday morning to say they were running late.

    At some point after 11 a.m. a gray Volkswagen Jetta is seen following their minivan, according to surveillance video obtained by Mexican prosecutors.

    About 40 minutes later several vehicles appear to be trailing the minivan and, at 11:45 a.m., the Americans were intercepted by gunmen.

    Burgess said her daughter later told her by phone that the minivan was struck by another vehicle before the shooting started.

    In video that circulated online after the kidnapping, McGee Washington is seen sitting on the ground next to the white minivan. A bullet appeared to pierce the middle of driver’s side window. Three other people can be seen on the road as cars on the busy intersection start steering away from the danger.

    McGee Washington is shoved onto the back of a pickup before her three friends were lifted and tossed beside her.

    “She said the others tried to run and they got shot at the same time,” Burgess said her daughter told her after the Americans were found on Tuesday.

    “She watched them die,” Burgess said of Woodard and Zindell Brown.

    Burgess watched the video, she said, and “I thought she was done,” referring to her daughter.

    In the wee hours after reporting her friends missing, Orange watched the widely circulated video of the abduction.

    “My body clenched up. I dropped the phone. My stomach was in knots and I just began praying for the return of them,” she said.

    James Woodard was also pained by the video he saw on television.

    “That was so hard for me to see,” he said. “He was a baby and for him to be taken from me like that was very hurtful.”

    The missing Americans' van at the scene where they were last seen. Video shows the four being loaded into the back of a pickup truck. Their current whereabouts are unknown.

    Shocking video shows moment kidnapped Americans were loaded into pickup truck

    In the days after the kidnapping, Mexican authorities combed through surveillance video from the downtown intersection. They contacted US authorities after discovering documents in the rented minivan with North Carolina plates, which were traced by officials across the border. Mexican investigators also managed to identify the truck used by the gunmen.

    Investigators processed vehicles, and obtained ballistics and fingerprint data. They also collected biological samples for genetic profiles, Mexican officials said.

    After identifying the truck used by the gunmen, several unsuccessful searches were conducted by heavily armed Mexican security forces from various agencies.

    The Americans had been moved to several places “to create confusion and avoid rescue efforts,” Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal said.

    Burgess said her daughter told her the abductors moved the four Americans “from place to place” and finally hid them in “a little place and it stank.”

    “All of them were hustled in and were staying together,” she said.

    At 10:15 a.m. on Tuesday morning, the Americans were found in a small red wooden shack in a field outside the city. Mexican authorities arrested a man who they said was guarding the house. Images from the scene showed McGee barefoot and covered in dirt, with streaks of blood on her left leg.

    Mexico dispatched hundreds of security forces to Matamoros in what the defense ministry said was a move to safeguard “the well-being of citizens.”

    The swift response by authorities to the Americans’ kidnapping raised eyebrows in a country where desperate relatives of people who have gone missing over the years have banded together to conduct their own investigations. More than 100,000 Mexicans and migrants have disappeared in the country over the years, with no explanation of their fate.

    After the frantic rescue, Orange said hearing Washington MaGee’s voice on the phone was “music to my ears.”

    “This lady was facing death damn near and she said, ‘I was worried about you,’” Orange recalled.

    The bodies of Woodard and Brown were turned over to US authorities on Thursday.

    Washington McGee told CNN Saturday she is grateful to be back home with her family in South Carolina.

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  • Parents of sailor who died by suicide urge Pentagon to implement mental health measure named in his honor that became law over a year ago | CNN Politics

    Parents of sailor who died by suicide urge Pentagon to implement mental health measure named in his honor that became law over a year ago | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    More than a year after Congress signed into law a bill meant to help service members struggling with severe mental health problems, the Pentagon still has not issued guidance to the services to put the bill into practice.

    “We hear the rhetoric all the time, but we need action,” said Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton, who co-sponsored the Brandon Act. “They’ve been sitting on their hands and more Americans die every day as a result.”

    The Brandon Act is named after Brandon Caserta, a young sailor whose parents described him as a “very charismatic and upbeat young man” who “always helped everyone he could.”

    But in June 2018, Caserta took his own life at Naval Air Station Norfolk, Virginia. In letters to his parents and to his friends, Caserta said he was constantly hazed and bullied in the Navy, and he saw no other way out.

    He notified his commanders he was depressed but they took no action and showed no sympathy, according to Brandon Caserta’s father Patrick, who served 22 years in the Navy.

    “They said, ‘Suck it up and get back to work,’” Patrick Caserta told CNN. “You can’t have that. That’s now how you deal with it.”

    The Brandon Act was included in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act. If a service member seeks mental health services or self-reports a problem, the Act requires a mental health evaluation. It also allows service members to seek confidential help outside the chain of command.

    “His letter led us to this,” Teri Caserta, Brandon’s mother, told CNN. “He wanted us to do something about suicide and the toxicity that happens in our military system. That’s why we created the Brandon Act.”

    But 15 months after it was passed the law has not been implemented and the Defense Department hasn’t followed through its requirements and issued guidance for the military. Therefore, the mental health evaluations and the confidential reporting required by the law are still not available to service members.

    In 2021, the latest year for which numbers are available, 519 US service members died by suicide. Though a slight decrease from the previous year’s 582 suicides, the trend over the last decade and more has been increasing.

    Last year, three sailors assigned to the USS George Washington died by suicide in a single week. Then, in December, four sailors at a faculty in Norfolk, Virginia died by suicide in one month.

    “DoD needs to do this,” said Moulton bluntly. “Active-duty service members don’t have a way to report mental health issues outside the chain of command because DoD just hasn’t gotten out of their own bureaucratic way to implement this act. It just requires the Secretary of Defense and his department to do their job.”

    The issue of military suicides has plagued the Department of Defense for decades. According to a 2021 study from Brown University, more than 30,000 active-duty personnel and veterans died by suicide during the 20-year War on Terror, which is more than four times the number of combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

    The Defense Department is currently working on implementing the requirements of the Brandon Act, according to a spokesperson.

    “Due to the complexity of the requirement, publication of policy to establish self-initiated referrals for a mental health evaluation via a commander or supervisor is currently in development,” said Cmdr. Nicole Schwegman, who stressed that there are mental health services available for members of the military seeking help or an evaluation.

    “A full continuum of mental health and wellness support is available worldwide to ensure access to care,” Schwegman said, including specialty and primary care clinics, as well as virtual health platforms.

    Last month, the Pentagon’s Suicide Prevention and Response Independent Review Committee unveiled 127 recommendations to combat military suicides, including a waiting period for gun purchases on base and raising the minimum age for buying firearms on base.

    The Pentagon said it would review the recommendations closely.

    “Even one suicide is too many, and we will exhaust every effort to promote the wellness, health, and morale of our total force,” said Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder after the release of the recommendations.

    But for the parents of Brandon Caserta, the committee’s recommendations and the Pentagon’s promises to review its report smack of more waiting and less action.

    “As painful as this has been, had someone else done this before us, our son would still be alive,” said Patrick Caserta. “We want to be that person that saves lives later on.”

    Editor’s Note: If you or a loved one have contemplated suicide, call The National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to connect with a trained counselor.

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  • ‘Cop City’ protester’s hands were raised when fatally shot by officers, family says | CNN

    ‘Cop City’ protester’s hands were raised when fatally shot by officers, family says | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    A “Cop City” protester’s hands were raised when law enforcement officers who were attempting to clear the site of a planned police and fire training facility near Atlanta opened fire, an autopsy commissioned by the activist’s family found, attorneys say.

    The hands of Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, 26, who was killed in January, showed exit wounds in both palms, according to a news release from attorneys on Friday. “The autopsy further reveals that Manuel was most probably in a seated position, cross-legged when killed.”

    The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has said the officers shot Terán after the activist seriously wounded a state trooper during the move to clear activists from the site.

    Terán was near a planned $90 million, 85-acre law enforcement training facility where opponents had camped out for months in an attempt to halt construction, CNN previously reported.

    Attorneys for the Terán family said they plan to release the private autopsy Monday at a news conference. They claim the GBI, which is investigating the shooting, has not been transparent.

    The activist’s mother, Belkis Terán, flew to Atlanta from Panama to show solidarity with the movement opposing the facility, dubbed “Cop City” by opponents.

    “Imagine the police killed your child. And now then imagine they won’t tell you anything. That is what we are going through,” she said in Friday’s release on the second autopsy.

    The GBI counters such claims, saying it is being careful about not making “inappropriate” releases of information, so as to “preserve the integrity of the investigation and to ensure the facts of the incident are not tainted. The GBI investigation still supports our initial assessment.”

    According to the GBI, Terán opened fire on law enforcement from inside a tent after failing to comply with verbal commands, wounding the trooper. A handgun recovered from the scene matched the projectile from the trooper’s wound, the agency said.

    There is no bodycam footage of the shooting.

    “The GBI cannot and will not attempt to sway public opinion in this case but will continue to be led by the facts and truth,” the agency said. “We understand the extreme emotion that this has caused Teran’s family and will continue to investigate as comprehensively as possible.”

    In a statement late Friday, the GBI said attorneys for the protester’s family incorrectly said the agency conducted the first autopsy. Rather, the GBI said, the DeKalb County Medical Examiner’s Office did the autopsy.

    “The GBI continues to work diligently to protect the integrity of the investigation and will turn our findings over to an appointed prosecutor for review and action,” the statement says.

    Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, 26, was fatally shot by police during a protest over Atlanta's proposed

    The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center is set to be built on a controversial piece of land that used to be a prison farm. Though it’s just outside city limits, that plot of land is owned by the city, meaning residents who live around the site don’t have voting power for the leaders who approved it.

    Those backing the facility say it’s needed to help boost police morale and recruitment efforts. Previous facilities are substandard while fire officials train in “borrowed facilities,” the Atlanta Police Foundation has said. The foundation says the center will focus on “community-oriented” policing.

    But “Cop City” has received fierce pushback since its conception by residents who feel there was little public input, conservationists who worry it will carve out a chunk of much-needed forest land and activists who say it will militarize police forces and contribute to further instances of police brutality.

    Activists associated with protesting the facility have called Terán a “forest defender” working to fight environmental racism. They said Terán identified as nonbinary and was a “sweet, warm, very smart and caring” person. Belkis Terán said if her child had a gun, it was to protect against animals in the woods.

    Twenty-three people arrested last weekend after violent protests at the site were charged with domestic terrorism and all but one were denied bond. Atlanta police say they were “violent agitators” who infiltrated a peaceful protest at the site and conducted a “coordinated attack” on officers and construction equipment.

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  • Chinese city proposes lockdowns for flu — and faces a backlash | CNN

    Chinese city proposes lockdowns for flu — and faces a backlash | CNN


    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    A Chinese city has sparked a backlash on social media after saying it would consider the use of lockdowns in the event of an influenza outbreak.

    The city of Xi’an – a tourism hotspot in Shaanxi province that is home to the famous terracotta warriors – revealed an emergency response plan this week that would enable it to shut schools, businesses and “other crowded places” in the event of a severe flu epidemic.

    That prompted a mixture of anxiety and anger on China’s social media websites among many users who said the plan sounded uncomfortably similar to some of the strict zero-Covid measures China had implemented throughout the pandemic and which have only recently been abandoned.

    “Vaccinate the public rather than using such time to create a sense of panic,” one user wrote on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.

    “How will people not panic given that Xi’an’s proposal to suspend work and business activities were issued without clear instruction on the national level to classify the disease?” asked another.

    While cases of Covid in China are falling, there has been a spike in flu cases across the country and some pharmacies are struggling to meet demand for flu remedies.

    However, Xi’an’s emergency response plan will not necessarily be used. Rather, it outlines how the city of almost 13 million people would respond to any future outbreak based on four levels of severity.

    At the first and highest level, it says, “the city can lock down infected areas, carry out traffic quarantines and suspend production and business activities. Shopping malls, theaters, libraries, museums, tourist attractions and other crowded places will also be closed.”

    “At this emergency level, schools and nurseries at all levels would be shut down and be made responsible for tracking students’ and infants’ health conditions.”

    The backlash comes as the central government in Beijing has emphasized the need to open the country back up following the removal of all Covid restrictions in January.

    Throughout the pandemic, China had enforced some of the world’s most severe Covid restrictions, including lockdowns that stretched into months in some cities. It was also one of the last countries in the world to end measures such as mass testing and strict border quarantine periods, even amid growing evidence of the damage being done to its economy.

    Xi’an itself was subject to a draconian lockdown between December 2021 and January 2022, with 13 million residents confined to their homes for weeks on end – and many left short of food and other essential supplies. Access to medical services was also affected. In an incident that shocked and angered the nation, a heavily pregnant woman was turned away from a hospital on New Year’s Day because she didn’t have a valid Covid-19 test, and suffered a miscarriage after she was finally admitted two hours later.

    Residents take nucleic acid tests in a closed community in Xi'an in January 2022.

    Shortly before China removed its pandemic era restrictions the country had been rocked by a series of demonstrations against its zero-Covid policy.

    Memories of being confined to their homes and of panic buying that in some areas led to food shortages remain fresh in people’s minds and the idea of a return to Covid-style measures appears to have hit a nerve.

    However, some voices called for calm.

    Epidemiologist Ben Cowling, from the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health, said he saw the rationale of the move.

    “I think it’s quite rational to make contingency plans. I wouldn’t expect a lockdown to be needed for flu, but presumably there are different response levels,” he said.

    One user on Weibo expressed a similar sentiment: “It is merely the revelation of a proposal, not putting it in place. It is quite normal to take precautions given this wave of flu is coming at us very strong.”

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  • Mental health startup exposes the personal data of more than 3 million people | CNN Politics

    Mental health startup exposes the personal data of more than 3 million people | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    A mental health startup exposed the personal data of as many as 3.1 million people online. In some cases, possibly sensitive information on mental health treatment was leaked, according to a company statement and a Department of Health and Human services filing.

    Cerebral, a California-based firm that connects people suffering from anxiety and depression with mental health professionals via video calls, said it discovered the “inadvertent” data exposure more than three years after it started using “pixels” – a common method that companies and advertisers use to track user behavior for marketing purposes.

    The company determined in January that tracking pixels had been sharing client and user data to “third-party platforms” and “subcontractors” that it didn’t name, according to a privacy notice near the bottom of its website.

    Cerebral said it was unaware of any misuse of the protected health information that was disclosed. But privacy advocates have for years warned that such data troves can be used to aggressively market products at consumers and infringe on their privacy.

    Some of the data potentially exposed in the Cerebral breach includes answers to online “self-assessments” about mental health that Cerebral asks prospective clients to fill out. That can include questions on whether someone is experiencing panic attacks, abusing alcohol or has a personality disorder, CNN’s review of the online assessments found.

    Cerebral said in a statement to CNN on Friday that it was “committed to correcting historical errors and leading the industry in privacy standards moving forward.”

    Cerebral notified the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which said in a filing this month that the breach affects over 3.1 million users. The department investigates potential violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a law that requires medical providers to safeguard patient data.

    Rachel Seeger, a spokesperson for the HHS Office for Civil Rights, said the office typically “does not comment on open or potential investigations.”

    Cerebral said in its public statement that it had disabled the tracking pixels on its platforms and stopped sharing data with subcontractors “not able to meet all HIPAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] requirements.”

    “It is important to note that Cerebral never impermissibly transmitted clinician generated notes or clinician communications,” the company told CNN.

    Cerebral spokesperson Chris Savarese did not respond to emailed questions about which and how many platforms and contractors to which the company disclosed the client health information.

    Some analysts argue that the broader market for data tracking tools is out of control. A group of conservative Catholics has spent millions of dollars to buy mobile data that identified priests who used gay dating and hookup apps, the Washington Post reported this week.

    Andrea Downing, who has done extensive research on pixel tracking and privacy, said patients are often unaware of how much personal data health care startups collect and potentially transmit to other parties.

    “What is in the fine print or the details of how data is being shared for advertising is not apparent to us when we’re going through the trauma of a diagnosis and seeking knowledge,” said Downing, who is co-founder of Light Collective, a digital rights nonprofit.

    “The only thing that is incentivizing change right now is the threat of liability,” Downing told CNN.

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  • Opinion: I was diagnosed with colon cancer at a young age. We’re seeing a lot more cases like mine | CNN

    Opinion: I was diagnosed with colon cancer at a young age. We’re seeing a lot more cases like mine | CNN

    Editor’s Note: Sara Stewart is a film and culture writer who lives in western Pennsylvania. The views expressed here are solely the author’s own. View more opinion articles on CNN.



    CNN
     — 

    If I could pick one refrain I heard the most from doctors and nurses during my months of treatment for colon cancer in 2018, it’d be this: “You’re so young!” Often, they would follow this up by telling me they were seeing more and more people my age, and younger, being similarly diagnosed. Their distress has been confirmed in a new report released last week, at the start of Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month.

    “(T)he proportion of colorectal cancer cases among adults younger than 55 increased from 11% in 1995 to 20% in 2019. There also appears to be an overall shift to more diagnoses of advanced stages of cancer. In 2019, 60% of all new colorectal cases among all ages were advanced,” CNN noted from the report.

    I was 45 the year I received my shocking diagnosis: stage-3 colon cancer. It was just a few months after the American Cancer Society changed its recommendation for the age at which people should get routine colonoscopies, revising it downward from age 50 to, wouldn’t you know it, 45.

    Because I’m a relentlessly inquisitive patient — sometimes to the annoyance of my doctors — I would always ask their thoughts on the reason for this trend of younger colorectal cancer diagnoses. And always the answer would be the same: some variation of “well, it’s hard to say.”

    While I recognize medical professionals find it difficult to speculate, and might be in legal jeopardy if they do, I also find it infuriating that there isn’t more open discussion about the link between industrially-produced toxins and colorectal cancer. The National Cancer Institute reported in 2020 on scientists “examining factors in the environment as potential causes of early-onset colorectal cancer. Such factors include things like air and water pollution, chemicals in soil and food, and pesticide use.”

    A Spanish study concluded that same year that “residing in the proximity of industries may be a risk factor for colorectal cancer.” But there have been scant studies since then focusing on connecting colorectal cancer and environmental toxins. Considering it’s the fourth most commonly-diagnosed cancer in this country and the second leading cause of cancer deaths, it stands to reason there ought to be substantially more studies dedicated exclusively to it.

    There is a tendency, when one experiences the terror of a potentially fatal disease, to want to deal with it and then, if you’re very lucky, put it behind you. But as the years go on in the wake of my treatment — I’ll be at my five-year mark of no evidence of disease this summer — I find myself increasingly frustrated with a lack of systematic investigation of possible environmental causes.

    In the category of “risk factors” for younger colorectal cancer patients, there are a few regular culprits, grouped under “lifestyle”: certain diets, lack of exercise, excessive weight. For what it’s worth: I am a healthy eater, a thin person and a fitness fanatic with no genetic conditions that would favor colorectal cancer. I’m not arguing that these conditions aren’t contributors, but given the scope of the increase in diagnoses, it seems worth considering that something else could be at play.

    A couple of recently-interviewed experts seem to agree. Dr. Kimmie Ng, director of the Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, told NBC News that “it isn’t just diet and lifestyle, there is something else. We see so many young patients with colorectal cancer who follow very healthy lifestyles and diets.” And Dr. Folasade P. May, an associate professor of medicine in the University of California, Los Angeles Vatche and Tamar Manoukian Division of Digestive Diseases, says that “when something is affecting people who have their birth years in common, then we know it’s something in the environment that has led this whole group of people to have higher rates.”

    Yes! Finally!

    There are an alarming number of reports linking cases of cancer, including colon cancer, to environmental toxins. Industrial toxins and heightened colon cancer rates (often, among other cancers) have been linked in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey; Merrimack, New Hampshire; Satellite Beach, Florida; Akron, Ohio; a school near Ground Zero; Rikers Island, a jail in New York; Juliette, Georgia; and Peterborough, Ontario – the latter being the former site of a General Electric plant.

    Of course, as the Satellite Beach story acknowledges, “The complex interplay of genes and infectious and chemical agents obscure cancer’s many causes. Relatively small numbers of cases to work with, limited available data on occupational risks, lifestyle and demographic factors also complicate cluster investigations.” I’m aware that it’s rare for cancer cluster investigations to find an increase in cancer rates because cancer is so common, and it’s rarer still to find a clear cause for the cancer.

    But I don’t think anyone could reasonably argue there isn’t a large-scale problem with carcinogens in our environment. We are at a global tipping point where, as The Guardian reported last year, “the cocktail of chemical pollution that pervades the planet now threatens the stability of global ecosystems upon which humanity depends.” A study released just last month found that “at least 330 species are contaminated with cancer-causing ‘forever chemicals.’” Those chemicals, known as PFAS and present in widely-used items such as nonstick pans and firefighting foam, are only just now under consideration by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to restrict their presence in drinking water in this country.

    The sheer scale of the problem seems completely overwhelming. So we need to do the things that are within our power, prevention-wise: making healthy choices and being more open in talking to doctors about worrying symptoms, even if it’s embarrassing (it is). Colonoscopies should be available, maybe even recommended, for people in their 30s and early 40s. Perhaps even in their 20s.

    For prevention on an environmental level, I’d like to suggest a model I found here in western Pennsylvania, when I wrote about a tiny town called Grant Township. The people here were fighting an oil and gas company’s attempt to install a fracking waste well that could potentially poison their groundwater with cancer-causing chemicals. As the residents in this coal-centric region know all too well, the only way to prevent toxic pollution is to stop it from happening in the first place. Once it’s in the ground, or air, or water, deep-pocketed companies can and will obfuscate and litigate for years while regular people get sick and die. (I’m still regularly freaked out by the sight of neon-orange streams and rivers in this part of the country, visible proof of the dangers of mine runoff.)

    Six years after my story ran, I’m thrilled Grant is still free from toxic dumping – and has garnered some major attention for its efforts. Jon Perry, a then-township supervisor in Grant, asks in a New Republic story: “Should a polluting corporation have the right to inject toxic waste, or should a community have the right to protect itself?” Their case is currently in front of the state supreme court, so we will soon know Pennsylvania’s stance. (The oil and gas company, for its part, has said in federal district court that Grant’s pushback “is deliberate, arbitrary, and irrational, exceeds the limits of governmental authority, amounts to an abuse of official power, and shocks the conscience.”)

    As we watch colorectal cancer numbers ticking disturbingly upward in the young, maybe it’s time to start asking that kind of question more often and more loudly. Is it easy? No. Is it worth it? Ask anyone who’s survived the hell of chemotherapy, and you’ll have your answer.

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  • The US economy added 311,000 jobs in February, outpacing expectations | CNN Business

    The US economy added 311,000 jobs in February, outpacing expectations | CNN Business


    Minneapolis
    CNN
     — 

    The US economy added 311,000 jobs in February, according to the latest monthly employment snapshot from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, released Friday.

    That’s a pullback from the blockbuster January jobs report, when a revised 504,000 positions were added, but shows the labor market is still emitting plenty of heat.

    The unemployment rate ticked up to 3.6% from 3.4%.

    February’s net job gains surpassed economists’ estimates for a more modest month, with only 205,000 to be added. Separately, downward revisions to December’s and January’s totals weren’t that drastic.

    While Friday’s report is a strong one, that’s actually bad news in the broader context of the Federal Reserve’s campaign to curb high inflation, said PNC Financial Services chief economist Gus Faucher.

    “It’s much hotter than the economy can run, and so this means the Fed is going to have to continue to hike interest rates,” he told CNN. “And that makes a recession more likely.”

    Barring a surprisingly low Consumer Price Index inflation report next week, Faucher said he expects the Fed to go forward with a half-point rate hike at its March 21-22 meeting, which would be a higher pace than the recent, more moderate quarter-point increase.

    The Fed has been battling for almost a year to slow the economy and crush the highest inflation in 40 years, but the labor market continues to defy those efforts.

    “Coming up on the one-year anniversary of the Fed’s first rate hike, we never thought we would see the economy churning out 311,000 more jobs this month,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist of FwdBonds, in a statement. “The party is on and the labor market is having a blast. The economy clearly is not landing, it is soaring.”

    The monthly job gains remain well above pre-pandemic norms, when roughly 180,000 jobs were added per month between 2010 and 2019, BLS data shows. However, the labor market remains tight and imbalances continue to persist in the ongoing recovery efforts from the devastating pandemic.

    Labor turnover data released earlier this week for January showed that there were 1.9 job openings for every person looking for one. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has frequently highlighted how the labor market remains short of pre-pandemic growth projections by more than 3 million people.

    The pandemic accelerated expected demographic trends (the aging out of the massive Baby Boom generation) with increased retirements; people also dropped out of the workforce for care-related needs and health concerns such as long Covid; and there were hundreds of thousands of workers who died from Covid.

    February’s employment report showed a 0.1 percentage point increase in the labor force participation rate to 62.5% — the highest its been since April 2020. However, it remains below pre-pandemic levels of 63.4%.

    Additionally, there was some upward movement in the jobless rate, which increased 0.2 percentage points to 3.6%.

    “Contributing to upward pressure here, there were more people looking for work,”said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.

    Industries with notable job gains included leisure and hospitality, retail trade, government and health care. After being crushed during the pandemic, the leisure and hospitality has been steadily adding back employees and trying to meet increased demand from consumers shifting their spending from goods to services.

    Average hourly earnings — a closely watched metric as the Fed seeks to evaluate the impact of rising wages on inflation — grew 0.2% month-on-month and were up 4.6% over the year before.

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  • McConnell treated for concussion after suffering fall at DC hotel | CNN Politics

    McConnell treated for concussion after suffering fall at DC hotel | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is being treated for a concussion and is staying at a hospital for observation after a fall at a hotel in Washington, DC, on Wednesday evening.

    “Leader McConnell tripped at a dinner event Wednesday evening and has been admitted to the hospital and is being treated for a concussion. He is expected to remain in the hospital for a few days of observation and treatment,” David Popp, communications director for McConnell, said in a statement released Thursday afternoon.

    “The Leader is grateful to the medical professionals for their care and to his colleagues for their warm wishes,” the statement said.

    The fall happened at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Washington, DC, which was formerly the Trump International Hotel, according to a source familiar with the matter.

    McConnell was attending an event for the Senate Leadership Fund, a McConnell-aligned super PAC, another source familiar with the matter said.

    The 81-year-old is the Senate’s longest-serving GOP leader, known for helping the party achieve key Republican priorities, including stocking the Supreme Court with conservative justices, passing Trump-era tax cuts and frequently thwarting Democrats’ legislative agenda.

    His hospitalization this week comes as the Senate is narrowly divided, with Democrats controlling the chamber by a 51-49 margin.

    Democratic Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Dianne Feinstein of California have also been hospitalized in recent weeks, with Fetterman seeking treatment for depression and Feinstein for shingles.

    Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have publicly sent McConnell well wishes.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer opened his floor remarks on Thursday by wishing McConnell a “speedy and full recovery” and noted that he called McConnell Thursday morning and spoke briefly with his staff.

    House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he and his fellow House Democrats were praying for a “swift and a full and a speedy recovery,” a sentiment echoed by Senate Minority Whip John Thune, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate.

    The minority leader previously fell at his Kentucky home in 2019, fracturing his shoulder.

    This story and headline have been updated with additional information.

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  • Bodies of 2 Mexico kidnapping victims expected to be returned to the US for further autopsies, source says | CNN

    Bodies of 2 Mexico kidnapping victims expected to be returned to the US for further autopsies, source says | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The bodies of two Americans killed in an armed kidnapping in Mexico are expected to be returned to the US on Thursday, a source from the Mexico Attorney General’s Office tells CNN, after two survivors of the attack returned to the US for treatment at a hospital.

    The remains of Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown likely will be transported to a funeral home in Brownsville, Texas, a US official familiar with the investigation said. The repatriation would come two days after the bodies were discovered alongside their two surviving friends in a house around the Mexican city of Matamoros.

    Autopsies were completed Wednesday morning in Mexico, an official from the Tamaulipas Prosecutor’s Office told CNN, though Mexican authorities have not released causes of death. Second autopsies will be performed in the US, the US official said.

    CNN has reached out to the US State Department about the repatriation of remains.

    The deceased were part of a group of four friends from South Carolina who had driven Friday into Matamoros so one of them, Latavia Washington McGee, could undergo a medical procedure, two family members told CNN. But their trip was violently interrupted when unidentified gunmen fired on their van, then loaded the Americans into a vehicle and drove them away, the FBI said.

    An innocent Mexican bystander was also killed by a stray bullet almost a block and a half from where the Americans were kidnapped, according to Tamaulipas Gov. Américo Villarreal.

    Survivor Eric Williams was shot three times in the legs, his wife Michele Williams told CNN. When he and McGee were discovered alive Tuesday, Williams was taken to a hospital in Texas for surgery, she said.

    Washington McGee was also taken to the hospital, her mother, Barbara Burgess, told CNN, though Mexican authorities said she was uninjured.

    “She watched them die,” Burgess said, recounting what Washington McGee told her about the kidnapping. “They were driving through and a van came up and hit them, and that’s when they started shooting at the car, shooting inside the van. … She said the others tried to run and they got shot at the same time.”

    Washington McGee and Brown are cousins who were raised together as closely as siblings, Burgess said.

    “He was a good person, and I miss him,” Burgess said of Brown. “I loved him. (There’s) nothing I wouldn’t do for him.”

    Investigators believe the group was targeted by a Mexican cartel who mistook them for Haitian drug smugglers, a US official familiar with the investigation told CNN on Monday, and the kidnapping has renewed attention to efforts by US and Mexican officials to combat organized crime in Mexico.

    During a Wednesday news briefing held by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a government-sponsored fact-checking agency claimed reports of the Americans being mistaken for Haitian drug traffickers are false. The president said “adversaries” in Mexico and the US are attempting to make a “scandal” of the case.

    CNN has reached out to investigators in the US and Mexico, as well as the fact-checking agency.

    Mexican authorities are still investigating the kidnapping. One person, identified as 24-year-old Jose “N,” was detained when the Americans were found Tuesday, according to Villarreal, though officials would not confirm whether he is connected to a criminal organization.

    The kidnapping of the four friends on Friday spurred a days-long investigation by local and federal Mexican officials, who say they were in almost-constant contact with US authorities until the two survivors and the victims’ bodies were finally discovered.

    The four friends had booked a hotel in Brownsville, Texas, and were planning to drive to a doctor’s office in Matamoros on Friday for Washington McGee to undergo a medical procedure, a close friend who did not want to be identified told CNN.

    matamoros mexico kidnapping scene

    Video shows Americans kidnapped in Mexico being loaded into pickup truck

    At about 9:18 a.m. Friday, the group crossed into Matamoros, Villarreal said. But on their way to the clinic, the group became lost and were struggling to contact the doctor’s office for directions due to a poor phone signal, the close friend said.

    Suddenly, another vehicle collided into the group’s van and gunmen began shooting at the group, sending some of the friends running, according to Burgess, who recounted her daughter’s experience. “They all got shot at the same time,” she said.

    A video obtained by CNN shows Washington McGee being shoved onto the bed of a white pickup truck by a group of armed men, who then begin dragging at least two other limp bodies into the truck. Burgess, when asked about the video, said her daughter was treated “like trash.”

    The Americans were then taken from the scene in the vehicle, according to an FBI account of the kidnapping.

    Over the next few days, the groups was moved to several different locations to “create confusion and avoid rescue efforts,” Villarreal said.

    Meanwhile, Mexican investigators were searching for the missing group, sifting through surveillance footage and processing the vehicles and ballistics found at the scene, officials said.

    After noticing the Americans’ van had North Carolina license plates, Mexican authorities reached out to US officials, who were able to run the plates, according to Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica. They were also able to identify the gunmen’s truck, he said.

    “Several searches” were then initiated across multiple agencies, and the group was ultimately found in a “wooden house” in or near Matamoros on Tuesday morning, Villarreal said.

    Though US law enforcement were not involved in the search on the ground, federal and local agencies in Mexico were cooperating in the effort and a joint task force was created to communicate with US officials, Barrios Mojica said.

    The fatal kidnapping – and the possibility it was carried out by a cartel – has brought increased attention to ongoing efforts by US and Mexican officials to curb cartel activity that is a primary driver of the fentanyl trade between the countries.

    A US delegation traveled to Mexico this week to “discuss our governments’ ongoing cooperation in combating illicit fentanyl,” a national security council spokesman told CNN Wednesday.

    The visit comes as fentanyl – a potent synthetic opioid – fuels a record number of overdose deaths in the US, with Mexico being the “dominant source” of the drug in the US, according to a government report released last year.

    The delegation plans to address the kidnapping and discuss a “fundamental strategy to attack the cartels,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Wednesday.

    President Joe Biden promised “strong penalties to crack down on fentanyl trafficking” in his State of the Union address last month. His administration has since sanctioned several cartel members and associated groups for their participation in the drug trade.

    López Obrador said there was “good cooperation” underway between the two countries on anti-drug efforts, but resisted calls from some Republican lawmakers in the US to designate cartels as terrorist organizations, saying it would infringe on Mexican sovereignty.

    “We do not get involved in seeing what the gangs in the United States that distribute fentanyl are doing or how the drug is distributed in the United States,” López Obrador said at his daily news conference in Mexico City.

    Ongoing talks between the US and Mexico are “working in a coordinated manner with respect to sovereignty,” he said.

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  • Michigan Senate votes to repeal 1931 abortion ban | CNN Politics

    Michigan Senate votes to repeal 1931 abortion ban | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    The Michigan state Senate on Wednesday voted to repeal the state’s 1931 abortion ban as well as its sentencing guidelines.

    The bills were passed 20-18, along party lines in the Democratic-controlled Senate after passing the House last week and were sent to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer for her signature. Democrats control the governor’s office and the state legislature for the first time in four decades.

    Whitmer has been a vocal supporter of abortion rights, using the issue as a driving force in her 2022 reelection campaign. The governor filed a lawsuit against several county prosecutors in her state last year in an attempt to prevent the 1931 ban from taking effect after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

    The Michigan law, which was invalidated by the 1973 high court decision but remained on the state’s books, prohibits abortions even in cases of rape or incest, except to preserve the woman’s life.

    Michigan state Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks previously told CNN one of the first priorities of the new legislature would be to repeal the ban that was put back in play after the Supreme Court’s ruling last summer.

    In September, a state court declared the abortion ban unconstitutional and blocked it from being enforced, allowing abortion to remain legal in the state.

    Michigan voters enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution during the midterms, a move that was intended to help block the ban from taking effect.

    But reproductive rights advocates see the bills’ passage through the legislature as “major step forward.”

    “This is proof positive that elections matter,” Mini Timmaraju, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, said in a statement. “Michiganders made clear in the midterms that they overwhelmingly support reproductive freedom, and repealing this oppressive pre-Roe ban sends an unmistakable signal that Michigan will always fight for abortion access.”

    Democratic state senators celebrated the bills’ passage in the legislature Wednesday.

    “My abortion was necessary to save my life,” state Sen. Rosemary Bayer said on Twitter. “I’m glad I’m here today because of that, and to be able to vote on this bill and ensure this life-saving healthcare is protected and kept safe and legal here in Michigan.”

    Republicans in the Michigan state Senate, however, oppose the new effort and have described it as “dangerous.”

    “While Senate Republicans have introduced legislation to strengthen safeguards for women, Senate Democrats are rushing dangerous bills to repeal long-standing protections for women and the unborn,” GOP state Sen. Joseph Bellino said in a statement.

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  • Newsom to shut Walgreens out of California state business following abortion pill decision | CNN Politics

    Newsom to shut Walgreens out of California state business following abortion pill decision | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    California will cease all its business with Walgreens, the retail drugstore chain, Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Monday, days after the company announced it would not dispense abortion medication in 21 Republican-dominated states.

    “California won’t be doing business with @walgreens – or any company that cowers to the extremists and puts women’s lives at risk,” the Democratic governor tweeted. “We’re done.”

    Newsom’s pushback came at an already fraught time for the future of medication abortion, which is used in more than half of all procedures nationwide, as a Texas judge weighs issuing a ban on Mifepristone, the first pill in a two-drug abortion regimen. Walgreens had responded to legal pressure from Republican attorneys general in 21 states – including a handful where abortion remains legal – in deciding to partially halt its efforts to sell the drug.

    “We intend to be a certified pharmacy and will distribute Mifepristone only in those jurisdictions where it is legal and operationally feasible,” the company said last week in a statement.

    Walgreens declined to comment on Newsom’s tweet.

    The clash between Newsom and Walgreens, a massive chain with thousands of stores around the country, marks the latest round of fallout following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The ruling, handed down in June of last year, shook up national politics ahead of the 2022 midterms – with many Democrats crediting the backlash for helping their candidates in tough, swing state and seat races – and complicated relationships between political and business leaders.

    The state is currently “reviewing all relationships between Walgreens and the state,” said Newsom spokesman Brandon Richards. He also accused the company of giving in to “right wing bullies.”

    Newsom’s office announced Wednesday that California would be “pulling back” a renewal of a $54 million contract with Walgreens that would have taken effect May 1, 2023.

    California’s Department of General Services holds a contract with the retailer “to procure specialty pharmacy prescription drugs,” mostly used by the state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and its correctional health care system, Newsom’s office said in a news release.

    The state will explore other options “for furnishing the same services,” his office said.

    CNN has reached out to Walgreens for comment on Wednesday’s announcement.

    Late last week, Democratic California state Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a statement slamming Walgreens for bowing to political pressure from GOP officials.

    “Medication abortion is safe, effective, and serves as a lifeline for people in need of critical care, especially those from vulnerable and underserved communities,” Bonta said on Friday. “I am disappointed that Walgreens has decided to give in to political pressure from anti-abortion states, and cut off access to these necessary and lifesaving medications.”

    The company on Monday sought to clarify its position, though their latest statement only added to the confusion.

    “Walgreens plans to dispense Mifepristone in any jurisdiction where it is legally permissible to do so,” the company said. Medication abortion is legal and accessible in states like Kansas and Iowa, among others, despite opposition from top Republicans, who have threatened legal action.

    In a letter addressed to Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, an anti-abortion Republican, from last month, Walgreens said it “does not intend to dispense Mifepristone within your state and does not intend to ship Mifepristone into your state from any of our pharmacies.”

    Abortion remains protected under Kansas state law. Last summer, the state voted overwhelmingly to block efforts by lawmakers to ban the procedure following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade less than two months earlier.

    The US Food and Drug Administration said in early January that pharmacies certified to dispense Mifepristone can do so directly to someone who has a prescription from a prescriber.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Texas sued by women who say state’s abortion bans put their health at risk | CNN Politics

    Texas sued by women who say state’s abortion bans put their health at risk | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    Several women who say Texas’ abortion bans posed significant risks to their health have sued the state this week, opening a new front in the legal battles that have emerged since the Supreme Court overturned national abortion rights protections last year.

    Five women allege in the lawsuit that uncertainty around when medical emergency exemptions in Texas’ abortion laws apply exacerbated medical emergencies that put their lives, health and fertility in danger.

    “To the extent Texas’s abortion bans bar the provision of abortion to pregnant people to treat medical conditions that pose a risk to the pregnant person’s life or a significant risk to their health,” the lawsuit says, “the Bans violate pregnant people’s” rights under the state constitution’s provisions protecting fundamental rights and the right to equality.

    The lawsuit is not seeking to block Texas’ abortion bans outright. Rather, the women – who are joined by two medical providers in the lawsuit – ask the court to clarify that abortions can be performed when a physician makes a “good faith judgment” that “the pregnant person has a physical emergent medical condition that poses a risk of death or a risk to their health (including their fertility).”

    The women’s complaint details harrowing stories of being denied abortion care when they faced emergency complications in their pregnancies, which were all wanted. They filed the lawsuit in state court in Austin, Texas.

    Texas, its Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Texas Medical Board and its Executive Director Stephen Brint Carlton are listed as defendants in the lawsuit. Neither Paxton’s office nor a spokesperson for the state medical board responded to a request for comment from CNN. Gov. Greg Abbott’s office also did not immediately respond to CNN’s inquiry.

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  • 4 Americans missing in Mexico identified by family members as a South Carolina mother and her friends who were traveling for a medical procedure | CNN

    4 Americans missing in Mexico identified by family members as a South Carolina mother and her friends who were traveling for a medical procedure | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    The four Americans who authorities say were kidnapped in Mexico on Friday were a tight-knit group of friends traveling from South Carolina so one of them – a mother of six – could undergo a medical procedure across the border, two family members told CNN.

    Latavia “Tay” Washington McGee, 33, drove to Mexico with Shaeed Woodard, Zindell Brown and their friend Eric for the procedure but she never made it to her doctor’s appointment on Friday, her mother Barbara Burgess told CNN.

    On Sunday, Burgess said she was informed by the FBI that her daughter had been kidnapped and was in danger. “They said if she calls me to call them,” she said.

    Mexican authorities are still searching for the missing Americans, who drove into the border city of Matamoros on Friday, where they were fired upon by unidentified gunman and “placed in a vehicle and taken from the scene by armed men,” according to the FBI.

    An innocent Mexican bystander was also killed in the encounter, US Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar said.

    Investigators believe the Americans were mistakenly targeted by a Mexican cartel that likely mistook them for Haitian drug smugglers, a US official familiar with the ongoing investigation tells CNN.

    The US citizens have no concerning criminal history that has been identified by investigators, the source said.

    The group of friends, who were bonded “like glue,” grew up together in South Carolina, Brown’s sister Zalandria Brown told CNN. She added, that she and her brother are also close. “Zindell is like my shadow, he’s like my son, he’s like my hip bone. We’re just tight like that.”

    This was the second time Washington McGee, a mother of six children, had gone to Mexico for a medical procedure, her mother said. About two to three years ago, Burgess said, her daughter traveled to the country for a surgery.

    Mexico has become a popular destination for “medical tourism,” attracting travelers who may be seeking cheaper alternatives or medical treatments that are unapproved or unavailable in the US. But the CDC warns the growing trend can carry dangerous risks depending on the destination and facility, including infection and possible post-procedure complications.

    Receipts found in the group’s vehicle also indicated the Americans were in Mexico for medical procedures, a US official with knowledge of the investigation tells CNN.

    Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Monday that the group had crossed the border to “buy medicines” and assured the “whole government” is working to resolve the case.

    Federal and local Mexican authorities are participating in the effort to locate the missing Americans, Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios Mojica said Monday.

    The White House and US State Department are “closely following” the case, spokespeople said in briefings Monday.

    “These sorts of attacks are unacceptable. Our thoughts are with the families of these individuals and we stand ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Monday, adding that the State and Homeland Security departments are coordinating with Mexican authorities.

    “We will continue to coordinate with Mexico and push them to bring those responsible to justice,” Jean-Pierre said.

    CNN has reached out to the FBI, the Tamaulipas Secretary of Public Security’s office and the Mexican Attorney General’s Office for more information.

    Washington McGee’s aunt, Mary McFadden, told CNN that when the family hadn’t heard from the group of friends by Sunday, they began searching online for any news related to their travel destination. Then, the family saw a video McFadden described as showing her niece being kidnapped.

    “We recognized her and her blonde hair,” McFadden said. She said she also recognized her niece’s clothing from a live video Washington McGee had posted to Facebook earlier Friday.

    “This happened in plain daylight. We don’t know if she is dead or alive. The last picture we saw, she was walking alive,” McFadden said.

    “She is a mother and we need her to come back here for her kids,” she said, adding that Washington McGee’s children range in age from 6 to 18 years old.

    A video obtained by CNN shows a woman and other unidentified people being roughly loaded into a white pickup truck. CNN has confirmed the video matches the incident but has not independently confirmed it is the four Americans shown in the video.

    The video shows the woman being pulled or pushed onto the bed of the truck by two unidentified people as a third visibly armed man watches. The three men then appear to drag at least two limp people onto the truck bed, the video shows.

    Additionally, photos obtained by CNN appear to show fragments of the scene where the situation occurred, including the car believed to have been driven by the Americans crashed with another vehicle before they were taken at gunpoint from the scene.

    The US citizens were driving a white minivan with North Carolina plates, according to the FBI in San Antonio.

    The FBI would not confirm the authenticity of the photos, but CNN has geolocated the images and confirmed their authenticity with a US official with knowledge of the investigation.

    Two vehicles rest in Matamoros, Mexico, at the scene which a US official said is connected to the missing Americans.

    The photos also show a woman looking at and then sitting next to three people lying on the ground outside a white minivan. All the doors of the van are open. It is unclear whether the four people in the photos are the US citizens.

    The woman then appears to have been loaded onto the bed of a white pickup truck, beside which several people can be seen lying on the street, the photos show.

    One photo shows that an ambulance arrived, but it’s unclear if medical attention was being provided.

    Investigators trying to locate the US citizens and identify those involved in the alleged kidnapping have been working to gather surveillance footage, collect ballistics and fingerprint evidence, take biological samples for genetic profiles and process the vehicles involved, Tamaulipas officials said.

    A joint task force of federal and state agencies has been created for “processing all the information related to the case” and maintaining constant communication with US officials, Barrios Mojica, the Tamaulipas Attorney General, said.

    “Given the presumption that they are American citizens, a line of direct communication was established with US authorities to exchange information and dedicated to locating them. These communications are being carried out at the highest level between the State Government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the United States Embassy in Mexico,” Barrios Mojica said.

    The FBI is also requesting the public’s help in finding the Americans and identifying anyone involved in the incident. The agency announced a $50,000 reward for the return of the victims and the arrest of those responsible.

    Ongoing violence has plagued some Mexican cities as they become the backdrop of organized crime and drug trafficking operations, which the country’s government has been battling since at least 2006.

    Matamoros, a city in the state of Tamaulipas, has a population of more than 500,000 people and is located just across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas. The city has recently been the site of a large encampment of asylum-seeking migrants hoping to cross into the US.

    The US State Department has issued a “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory for US citizens thinking of going to Tamaulipas, citing crime and kidnapping.

    “Criminal groups target public and private passenger buses, as well as private automobiles traveling through Tamaulipas, often taking passengers and demanding ransom payments,” the State Department advisory says.

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  • DeSantis agenda — and potential campaign platform — in the spotlight as Florida lawmakers return to work | CNN Politics

    DeSantis agenda — and potential campaign platform — in the spotlight as Florida lawmakers return to work | CNN Politics



    CNN
     — 

    In the coming weeks, Gov. Ron DeSantis is poised to show Floridians – and the country – just how much further he is willing to go than any other Republican leader to turn his state into a conservative vision where abortion is nearly outlawed, guns can be carried in public without training, private schools are subsidized with taxpayer dollars and “wokeness” is excised.

    DeSantis’ agenda is expected to dominate the debate in Tallahassee when state lawmakers return to action on Tuesday for what is perhaps the most anticipated legislative session in recent memory. With a decision on his presidential ambitions waiting on the other side of the 60-day session, DeSantis has hyped the humdrum of parliamentary proceedings and legislative sausage-making into a spectacle worth following.

    “People look at Florida like, ‘Man, the governor has gotten a lot done,’” DeSantis told “Fox & Friends” last month. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

    With DeSantis’ backing or urging, Republican lawmakers have filed a slate of bills that will keep Florida at the forefront of the culture wars that are raging in statehouses across the country. There are legislative proposals targeting drag shows, treatments for transgender children, diversity and equity programs at public universities, gender studies majors, professor tenure, teachers unions, libel protections for the media, so-called “woke” banking and in-state college tuition for undocumented residents. Other proposals would extend DeSantis’ powers as governor, including to control the hiring of professors on every public campus through his political appointees and put him in charge of picking the board that oversees scholastic athletics in the state. Another would amend a longstanding “resign to run” law so DeSantis could launch a bid for president without stepping down as Florida governor.

    Though no governor in Florida’s modern history has wielded executive power or the bully pulpit quite like DeSantis, it’s the closely aligned, Republican-held legislature that has handed the governor many of the policy wins that have fueled his political rise. Already this year, the legislature has met in special session to shore up several of DeSantis’ priorities, including the freedom to transport migrants from anywhere in the country to Democratic jurisdictions and fewer hurdles for his new election crime office to charge people for voting errors and violations.

    Lawmakers in the special session also approved DeSantis’ plans for a takeover of Disney’s special government powers – punishment for the entertainment giant’s objection last year to the Parental Rights in Education law, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by critics, which prohibited the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity until after third grade. Under the new law, DeSantis chooses the board members that oversee the taxing district around Disney’s Orlando-area theme parks. Last week, he appointed to the board a political donor, the wife of the state GOP chairman and a former pastor who once suggested tap water could turn people gay.

    Now, lawmakers have proposed taking up the legislation at the heart of that feud once again, by extending the prohibited topics in the Parental Rights in Education law to eighth grade. The bill also declares “it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person’s sex” and it prohibits school districts from requiring teachers or other employees to use a student’s preferred name or pronouns.

    For his part, DeSantis will deliver the state of the state address on Tuesday and then spend much of the following weeks on the road to promote his new book, “The Courage to be Free,” a memoir transfixed on the political battles from his first term. It will be up to Republican lawmakers to give DeSantis fresh material from which he can build a narrative for a presidential campaign, should he choose to run. DeSantis has said he intends to decide after the session if he will jump into the 2024 contest.

    Privately, DeSantis’ political team believes that as a sitting governor, DeSantis’ ability to stack policy wins is critical to mounting a campaign against former President Donald Trump. Like Trump and former Gov. Nikki Haley, the only other major declared candidate, many potential contenders for the nomination are out of office and unable to dictate an agenda for other Republicans to match. And, unlike DeSantis, their records may not reflect what animates GOP primary voters at the moment.

    In a speech behind closed doors last week to the conservative Club for Growth, DeSantis also suggested he is a singular force among elected Republicans in pushing the party to engage in ideological battles.

    “I’m going on offense,” DeSantis said, according to audio of his speech obtained by CNN. “Some of these Republicans, they just sit back like potted plants, and they let the media define the terms of the debate. They let the left define the terms of debate. They take all this incoming, because they’re not making anything happen. And I said, ‘That’s not what we’re doing.’”

    Democrats, a perennial minority in Tallahassee with even fewer members after the last election, have little recourse to stop DeSantis and Republican lawmakers. Democrats have asserted that the Republican agenda is failing to address the problems many Floridians are facing, including skyrocketing rents, a housing shortage and fast-rising property insurance rates.

    “Just a reminder, eggs are still $5 for a dozen,” Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book said Monday. “It’s $3.50 for a gallon of gas. If you live in the state of Florida in a high rise, you still have to buy flood insurance. But the Republicans want to fight about drag and which bathroom people use.”

    Still, there are signs of dissent among Republicans in how hard to push on several fronts. Some Republicans have raised concern at the price tag for a DeSantis-backed expansion of a school voucher program that currently allows low-income parents to offset the cost of sending their children to private and religious school. Under the latest proposal, the program would be open to virtually all parents regardless of income, including those who choose to home school their kids.

    At a committee meeting last week, state Sen. Erin Grall, a Republican, warned that the “potential for abuse rises significantly with the dollar amount and keeping a child at home.”

    Republicans also have not settled on a new legislative framework for the future of abortion access in the state. Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, DeSantis signed a bill to ban abortion at 15 weeks without exception. He recently signaled he would support legislation that banned abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected; however, he has not publicly advocated for it with the same fervor as his other priorities. Meanwhile, the state’s Senate President Kathleen Passidomo previously said she wanted a 12-week ban that included exemptions for rape and incest.

    John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, an influential conservative group, said he expects a compromise heartbeat bill will pass that includes some exceptions. Other anti-abortion groups want to see DeSantis sign a complete ban on abortion.

    “While exceptions are important and represent real human beings, the bottom line is they are small in number, so it’s a huge victory even with exceptions and I think the governor and his staff are thinking the same way,” Stemberger said. “He’s certainly committed to signing a heartbeat bill.”

    It remains to be seen, too, how Republicans respond to DeSantis’ immigration agenda. DeSantis has proposed repealing a measure that granted in-state tuition for undocumented students who were brought to the US by their parents. The law, championed by his own lieutenant governor, Jeanette Nuñez, when she was a state representative, was a top priority of his predecessor, then-Gov. Rick Scott, and passed the GOP-controlled legislature with help from many of the party’s Latino members. Additionally, DeSantis wants lawmakers to mandate that employers check the immigration status of all workers against a federal database called E-Verify, a proposal opposed for years by the state’s influential hospitality and agriculture industries that bankroll many Republican campaigns.

    Republicans have also faced pressure from the right on another DeSantis priority: eliminating the state permit to carry a concealed weapon in Florida. Under the proposal, eligible Floridians could carry a concealed gun in Florida without seeking approval from the state, which currently requires proof of training and a background check to obtain.

    While Democrats and gun-control advocates have criticized DeSantis for removing one of the few checks on firearms in the state, gun-rights activists have said the measure doesn’t go far enough. They want Florida to allow people to carry a gun in public in the open and for the state to eliminate gun-free zones. In Florida, it’s currently illegal to carry a firearm at a school or on a college campus.

    “The title of ‘constitutional carry’ for this bill is a lie,” Luis Valdes, the Florida director of Gun Owners of America, said during a recent committee hearing on the bill. “Why are Republicans defending (former Democratic attorney general) Janet Reno’s gun control policies?”

    DeSantis has suggested, at times, that it is up to the legislature to put these bills on his desk. But for some conservatives, DeSantis has set the expectation that he can bully Republican lawmakers into supporting any measure he gets behind.

    DeSantis himself has said his political philosophy is guided by taking political risks that others won’t.

    “Boldness is something that voters reward,” DeSantis said Sunday in California. “The lesson is swing for the fences. You will be rewarded.”

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  • Elite athletes with genetic heart disease can safely return to play with diagnosis and treatment, early study suggests | CNN

    Elite athletes with genetic heart disease can safely return to play with diagnosis and treatment, early study suggests | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    In a new study, most elite athletes with a diagnosed genetic heart disease did not experience serious or fatal symptoms of their condition, such as sudden cardiac death. The research suggests it can be “feasible” and “safe” for athletes to continue to participate in their sport.

    Among a sample of 76 elite athletes with a genetic heart disease who had competed or are still competing in either Division I university or professional sports, 73 out of the 76 did not experience a cardiac event triggered by their disease during the study period, according to researchers behind a late-breaking clinical trial presented Monday at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Session Together With the World Congress of Cardiology.

    Among those elite athletes with a genetic heart disease, 40 of them – 52% – were asymptomatic, the study abstract finds.

    Over the years, researchers have become more aware of alarming reports about elite athletes experiencing heart problems, or even suddenly collapsing during games.

    “For athletes with genetic heart conditions, and I would add non-athletes, the tragedies occur when we don’t know of their condition,” said Dr. Michael Ackerman, a genetic cardiologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who was a senior author of the new research. “When we know of their condition, and we assess the risk carefully and we treat it well, these athletes and non-athletes, they can expect to live and thrive despite their condition.”

    The new research has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, but the findings suggest that many athletes with a genetic heart disease can decide with their health care professionals on whether to continue competing in their sport and how to do so safely, instead of being automatically disqualified due to their health conditions.

    “In sports, historically, we’ve been paternalistic and de-emphasize patient preference and risk tolerance, but we know that athletes come from all walks of life. They are intelligent and when there’s scientific uncertainty, their values should be incorporated in medical decision-making,” Dr. J. Sawalla Guseh, cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, who was not involved in the new study, said during Monday’s scientific session.

    “Shared decision-making when done well can have very favorable outcomes,” he said.

    Elite basketball, hockey, soccer and football players, were among the 76 athletes included in the new study, conducted by researchers at Mayo Clinic and other institutions in the United States. They wrote in their study abstract that this is the first study to their knowledge describing the experience of athletes competing at the NCAA Division I level or in professional sports with a known genetic heart disease that puts them at risk of sudden cardiac death.

    The athletes in the study were cleared for return-to-play at either a NCAA Division I school or at the professional level. They were studied over an average of seven years, and all had been diagnosed with a genetic heart disease in the past 20 years, being treated at either Mayo Clinic, Morristown Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital or Atrium Health Sports Cardiology Center.

    “Only three of them had a breakthrough cardiac event, which means after they were diagnosed and treated, they were still having an event,” said Katherine Martinez, an undergraduate student at Loyola University in Baltimore, who helped conduct the research as an intern in the Mayo Clinic’s Windland Smith Rice Sudden Death Genomics Laboratory.

    Fainting was the most common event, and one athlete received a shock with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, or ICD. None of the athletes died.

    “The majority of these athletes went on to continue their career with no events at all,” Martinez said. But most of the athletes in the study – 55 of them, or 72% – were initially disqualified from competing by their primary provider or institution after their diagnosis. Most ultimately opted to return to play with no restrictions after undergoing comprehensive clinical evaluations and talking with their doctors.

    While each sports league has its own set of rules, historically, some people diagnosed with a genetic heart disease that puts them at an increased risk for sudden cardiac death have been restricted from competitive sports, the researchers wrote in their study abstract.

    “Just because you were given this diagnosis, doesn’t mean that your life, your career, the future that you see for yourself is over, but taking a second opinion from an expert who knows what they’re doing and is comfortable with shared decision-making is the next step,” said Martinez, who worked on the new research alongside her father, Dr. Matthew Martinez, director of Atlantic Health System Sports Cardiology at Morristown Medical Center and an author of the new research.

    Regarding the new study, “the take-home message is, if you have one of these findings, seek out an expert who’s going to help you identify a safe exercise plan for you and determine what level you can continue to safely participate in,” he said. “This is the next best step – the next evolution – of how we manage athletes with genetic heart disease.”

    Leaving their sport due to a genetic heart disease can be “very destructive” for athletes who have devoted their lives to excelling in competitions, said Dr. Lior Jankelson, director of the Inherited Arrhythmia Program at NYU Langone Heart in New York, who was not involved in the new research.

    Yet he added that these athletes still need to consult with their doctors and be watched closely because some genetic diseases could be more likely to cause a serious cardiac event than others.

    The new study highlights that “the majority of athletes with genetic heart disease could probably – after careful, meticulous expert risk-stratification and care strategy – participate in sports,” Jankelson said. “But at the same time, this is exactly the reason why these patients should be cared only in high-expertise genetic cardiology clinics, because there are other conditions that are genetic, that could respond very adversely to sports, and have a much higher risk profile of developing an arrhythmia during intense activity.”

    Separately, the NCAA Sports Science Institute notes on its website, “Though many student-athletes with heart conditions can live active lives and not experience health-related problems, sudden fatality from a heart condition remains the leading medical cause of death in college athletes.”

    For athletes with a genetic heart disease, their symptoms and their family history of cardiac events should be considered when determining their risks, said Dr. Jayne Morgan, a cardiologist with Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta, who was not involved in the new research.

    “Certainly, there is concern with elite athletes competing and whether or not they are being screened appropriately,” Morgan said. But she added that the new research offers “some understanding” to the mental health implications for athletes with a genetic heart disease who may be required to step away from a competitive sport that they love.

    “This study, I think, begins to go a long way in identifying that we may not need to pull the trigger so quickly and have athletes step away from something that they love,” Morgan said.

    The new study is “timely” given the recent national attention on athletes and their risk of sudden cardiac death, Dr. Deepak Bhatt, director of Mount Sinai Heart in New York City, who was not involved in the research, said in an email.

    “These are some of the best data showing that the risk of return to play may not be as high as we fear,” Bhatt said about the new research.

    “Some caveats include that the majority of these athletes were not symptomatic and about a third had an implantable defibrillator,” he added. “Any decision to return to the athletic field should be made after a careful discussion of the potential risks, including ones that are hard to quantify. Input from experts in genetic cardiology and sports cardiology can be very helpful in these cases.”

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  • Turkey’s earthquake caused $34 billion in damage. It could cost Erdogan the election | CNN

    Turkey’s earthquake caused $34 billion in damage. It could cost Erdogan the election | CNN

    Editor’s Note: A version of this story first appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.


    Abu Dhabi, UAE
    CNN
     — 

    The devastating earthquake that hit Turkey on February 6 killed at least 45,000 people, rendered millions homeless across almost a dozen cities and caused immediate damage estimated at $34 billion – or roughly 4% of the country’s annual economic output, according to the World Bank.

    But the indirect cost of the quake could be much higher, and recovery will be neither easy nor quick.

    The Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation estimates the total cost of the quake at $84.1 billion, the lion’s share of which would be for housing, at $70.8 billion, with lost national income pegged at $10.4 billion and lost working days at $2.91 billion.

    “I do not recall… any economic disaster at this level in the history of the Republic of Turkey,” said Arda Tunca, an Istanbul-based economist at PolitikYol.

    Turkey’s economy had been slowing even before the earthquake. Unorthodox monetary policies by the government caused soaring inflation, leading to further income inequality and a currency crisis that saw the lira lose 30% of its value against the dollar last year. Turkey’s economy grew 5.6% last year, Reuters reported, citing official data.

    Economists say those structural weaknesses in the economy will only get worse because of the quake and could determine the course of presidential and parliamentary elections expected in mid-May.

    Still, Tunca says that while the physical damage from the quake is colossal, the cost to the country’s GDP won’t be as pronounced when compared to the 1999 earthquake in Izmit, which hit the country’s industrial heartland and killed more than 17,000. According to the OECD, the areas impacted in that quake accounted for a third of the country’s GDP.

    The provinces most affected by the February 6 quake represent some 15% of Turkey’s population. According to the Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation, they contribute 9% of the nation’s GDP, 11% of income tax and 14% of income from agriculture and fisheries.

    “Economic growth would slow down at first but I don’t expect a recessionary threat due to the earthquake,” said Selva Demiralp, a professor of economics at Koc University in Istanbul. “I don’t expect the impact on (economic) growth to be more than 1 to 2 (percentage) points.”

    There has been growing criticism of the country’s preparedness for the quake, whether through policies to mitigate the economic impact or prevent the scale of the damage seen in the disaster.

    How Turkey will rehabilitate its economy and provide for its newly homeless people is not yet known. But it could prove pivotal in determining President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political fate, analysts and economists say, as he seeks another term in office.

    The government’s 2023 budget, released before the earthquake, had planned for increased spending in an election year, foreseeing a deficit of 660 billion liras ($34.9 billion).

    The government has already announced some measures that analysts said were designed to shore up Erdogan’s popularity, including a near 55% increase in the minimum wage, early retirement and cheaper housing loans.

    Economists say that Turkey’s fiscal position is strong. Its budget deficit, when compared to its economic output, is smaller than that of other emerging markets like India, China and Brazil. That gives the government room to spend.

    “Turkey starts from a position of relative fiscal strength,” said Selva Bahar Baziki of Bloomberg Economics. “The necessary quake spending will likely result in the government breaching their budget targets. Given the high humanitarian toll, this would be the year to do it.”

    Quake-related public spending is estimated at 2.6% of GDP in the short run, she told CNN, but could eventually reach as high as 5.5%.

    Governments usually plug budget shortfalls by taking on more debt or raising taxes. Economists say both are likely options. But post-quake taxation is already a touchy topic in the country, and could prove risky in an election year.

    After the 1999 quake, Turkey introduced an “earthquake tax” that was initially introduced as a temporary measure to help cushion economic damage, but subsequently became a permanent tax.

    There has been concern in the country that the state may have squandered those tax revenues, with opposition leaders calling on the government to be more transparent about what happened to the money raised. When asked in 2020, Erdogan said the money “was not spent out of its purpose.” Since then, the government has said little more about how the money was spent.

    “The funds created for earthquake preparedness have been used for projects such as road constructions, infrastructure build-ups, etc. other than earthquake preparedness,” said Tunca. “In other words, no buffers or cushions have been set in place to limit the economic impacts of such disasters.”

    The Turkish presidency didn’t respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    Analysts say it’s too early to tell precisely what impact the economic fallout will have on Erdogan’s prospects for re-election.

    The president’s approval rating was low even before the quake. In a December poll by Turkish research firm MetroPOLL, 52.1% of respondents didn’t approve of his handling of his job as president. A survey a month earlier found that a slim majority of voters would not vote for Erdogan if an election were held on that day.

    Two polls last week, however, showed the Turkish opposition had not picked up fresh support, Reuters reported, citing partly its failure to name a candidate and partly its lack of a tangible plan to rebuild areas devastated by the quake.

    The majority of the provinces worst affected by the quake voted for Erdogan and his ruling AK Party in the 2018 elections, but in some of those provinces, Erdogan and the AK Party won with a plurality of votes or a slim majority.

    Those provinces are some of the poorest in the country, the World Bank says.

    Research conducted by Demiralp as well as academics Evren Balta from Ozyegin University and Seda Demiralp from Isik University, found that while the ruling AK Party’s voters’ high partisanship is a strong hindrance to voter defection, economic and democratic failures could tip the balance.

    “Our data shows that respondents who report being able to make ends meet are more likely to vote for the incumbent AKP again,” the research concludes. “However, once worsening economic fundamentals push more people below the poverty line, the possibility of defection increases.”

    This could allow opposition parties to take votes from the incumbent rulers “despite identity-based cleavages if they target economically and democratically dissatisfied voters via clear messages.”

    For Tunca, the economic fallout from the quake poses a real risk for Erdogan’s prospects.

    “The magnitude of Turkey’s social earthquake is much greater than that of the tectonic one,” he said. “There is a tug of war between the government and the opposition, and it seems that the winner is going to be unknown until the very end of the elections.”

    Nadeen Ebrahim and Isil Sariyuce contributed to this report.

    This article has been corrected to say that the research, not the survey, was conducted by the academics.

    Sub-Saharan African countries repatriate citizens from Tunisia after ‘shocking’ statements from country’s president

    Sub-Saharan African countries including Ivory Coast, Mali, Guinea and Gabon, are helping their citizens return from Tunisia following a controversial statement from Tunisian President Kais Saied, who has led a crackdown on illegal immigration into the North African country since last month.

    • Background: In a meeting with Tunisia’s National Security Council on February 21, Saied described illegal border crossing from sub-Saharan Africa into Tunisia as a “criminal enterprise hatched at the beginning of this century to change the demographic composition of Tunisia.” He said the immigration aims to turn Tunisia into “only an African country with no belonging to the Arab and Muslim worlds.” In a later speech on February 23, Saied maintained there is no racial discrimination in Tunisia and said that Africans residing in Tunisia legally are welcome. Authorities arrested 58 African migrants on Friday after they reportedly crossed the border illegally, state news agency TAP reported on Saturday.
    • Why it matters: Saied, whose seizure of power in 2021 was described as a coup by his foes, is facing challenges to his rule at home. Reuters on Sunday reported that opposition figures and rights groups have said that the president’s crackdown on migrants was meant to distract from Tunisia’s economic crisis.

    Iranian Supreme Leader says schoolgirls’ poisoning is an ‘unforgivable crime’

    Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday said that the poisoning of schoolgirls in recent months across Iran is an “unforgivable crime,” state-run news agency IRNA reported. Khamenei urged authorities to pursue the issue, saying that “if it is proven that the students were poisoned, the perpetrators of this crime should be severely punished.”

    • Background: Concern is growing in Iran after reports emerged that hundreds of schoolgirls had been poisoned across the country over the last few months. On Wednesday, Iran’s semi-official Mehr News reported that Shahriar Heydari, a member of parliament, said that “nearly 900 students” from across the country had been poisoned so far, citing an unnamed, “reliable source.”
    • Why it matters: The reports have led to a local and international outcry. While it is unclear whether the incidents were linked and if the students were targeted, some believe them to be deliberate attempts at shutting down girls’ schools, and even potentially linked to recent protests that spread under the slogan, “Women, Life, Freedom.”

    Iran to allow further IAEA access following discussions – IAEA chief

    Iran will allow more access and monitoring capabilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), agency Director General Rafael Grossi said at a press conference in Vienna on Saturday, following a trip to the Islamic Republic. The additional monitoring is set to start “very, very soon,” said Grossi, with an IAEA team arriving within a few days to begin reinstalling the equipment at several sites.

    • Background: Prior to the news conference, the IAEA released a joint statement with Iran’s atomic energy agency in which the two bodies agreed that interactions between them will be “carried out in the spirit of collaboration.” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said he hopes the IAEA will remain neutral and fair to Iran’s nuclear energy program and refrain from being affected “by certain powers which are pursuing their own specific goals,” reported Iranian state television Press TV on Saturday.
    • Why it matters: Last week, a restricted IAEA report seen by CNN said that uranium particles enriched to near bomb-grade levels have been found at an Iranian nuclear facility, as the US warned that Tehran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb was accelerating. The president of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Mohammad Eslami, rejected the recent IAEA report, which detected particles of uranium enriched to 83.7% at the Fordow nuclear facility in Iran, saying there has been ‘“no deviation” in Iran’s peaceful nuclear activities.

    A new sphinx statue has been discovered in Egypt – but this one is thought to be Roman.

    The smiling sculpture and the remains of a shrine were found during an excavation mission in Qena, a southern Egyptian city on the eastern banks of the River Nile.

    The shrine had been carved in limestone and consisted of a two-level platform, Mamdouh Eldamaty, a former minister of antiquities and professor of Egyptology at Ain Shams University said in a statement Monday from Egypt’s ministry of tourism and antiquities. A ladder and mudbrick basin for water storage were found inside.

    The basin, believed to date back to the Byzantine era, housed the smiling sphinx statue, carved from limestone.

    Eldamaty described the statue as bearing “royal facial features.” It had a “soft smile” with two dimples. It also wore a nemes on its head, the striped cloth headdress traditionally worn by pharaohs of ancient Egypt, with a cobra-shaped end or “uraeus.”

    A Roman stela with hieroglyphic and demotic writings from the Roman era was found below the sphinx.

    The professor said that the statue may represent the Roman Emperor Claudius, the fourth Roman emperor who ruled from the year 41 to 54, but noted that more studies are needed to verify the structure’s owner and history.

    The discovery was made in the eastern side of Dendera Temple in Qena, where excavations are still ongoing.

    Sphinxes are recurring creatures in the mythologies of ancient Egyptian, Persian and Greek cultures. Their likenesses are often found near tombs or religious buildings.

    It is not uncommon for new sphinx statues to be found in Egypt. But the country’s most famous sphinx, the Great Sphinx of Giza, dates back to around 2,500 BC and represents the ancient Egyptian Pharoah Khafre.

    By Nadeen Ebrahim

    Ziya Sutdelisi, 53, a former local administrator, receives a free haircut from a volunteer from Gaziantep, in the village of Buyuknacar, near Pazarcik, Kahramanmaras province on Sunday, one month after a massive earthquake struck southeast Turkey.

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  • Woman missing more than 30 years and thought to be dead found living in Puerto Rico nursing home | CNN

    Woman missing more than 30 years and thought to be dead found living in Puerto Rico nursing home | CNN



    CNN
     — 

    A Pennsylvania woman who disappeared more than 30 years ago and was believed to be dead by her family was recently found living in a nursing home in Puerto Rico, her family and police said at a news conference Thursday.

    Patricia Kopta, 83, was last seen in Pittsburgh in the summer of 1992, according to a missing person flier posted by the Pennsylvania Emergency Response Center.

    Her husband, Bob Kopta, reported her missing a few months later in the fall. At the time, he advised authorities that it wasn’t uncommon for his wife to “drop out of sight for short periods,” according to the flier.

    “I come home one night and she’s gone, and nobody knew where she was at,” Kopta said at the news conference with Ross Township Police.

    Police said they were first informed about the discovery of the missing woman when an agent from the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) and a social worker from Puerto Rico contacted them last year saying that they believed Patricia was living in an adult care home in Puerto Rico.

    “What they reported to us was that she came into their care in 1999, when she was found in need in the streets of Puerto Rico,” Ross Township Deputy Chief Brian Kohlhepp said.

    INTERPOL and the social worker said Patricia was found wandering the streets and through the years she had “refused to ever discuss her private life or where she came from,” Kohlhepp said.

    In her advanced age, Patricia started revealing nuggets that would eventually spur those around her to contact Ross police, Kohlhepp said.

    When she was in Pittsburgh, Patricia was a “well-known street preacher,” according to the missing person flier. She would approach strangers, telling them she had visions of the Virgin Mary and that the world was coming to an end, the flier said.

    Police said her disappearance wasn’t overtly suspicious because they “knew she had a mental health history and she had made statements to other family individuals that she was leaving, that she was concerned that she was going to be placed into a care facility here,” Kohlhepp said. Kohlhepp said police knew she had likely left of her own volition.

    Her husband said that his wife had talked about wanting to go to Puerto Rico to live in a tropical environment.

    “I even advertised in the paper down in Puerto Rico looking for her,” Kopta said at the news conference, adding that he spent a lot of money over the years searching for her.

    Patricia and Bob were married for 20 years before she went missing, Kohlhepp told CNN. He added that Patricia had no known family or connections in Puerto Rico.

    Police determined the woman was in fact Patricia through a nine-month-long process in which they compared DNA samples provided by her sister, Gloria Smith, and her nephew.

    “We really thought she was dead all those years,” Smith said at the news conference.

    Even before DNA testing was completed, the family knew it was Patricia as soon as they saw her photo, Kohlhepp said.

    Smith said that she has called the adult care home in Puerto Rico several times but has been unable to hold a conversation with her sister because she has dementia.

    “We didn’t expect it. It was a very big shock to see – to know that she’s still alive,” her sister said. “You know, we’re so happy and I hope I can get down to see her.”

    CNN has not been able to directly contact the woman’s family.

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  • Fact check: Republicans at CPAC make false claims about Biden, Zelensky, the FBI and children | CNN Politics

    Fact check: Republicans at CPAC make false claims about Biden, Zelensky, the FBI and children | CNN Politics


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Conservative Political Action Conference is underway in Maryland. And the members of Congress, former government officials and conservative personalities who spoke at the conference on Thursday and Friday made false claims about a variety of topics.

    Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio uttered two false claims about President Joe Biden. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia repeated a debunked claim about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama used two inaccurate statistics as he lamented the state of the country. Former Trump White House official Steve Bannon repeated his regular lie about the 2020 election having been stolen from Trump, this time baselesly blaming Fox for Trump’s defeat.

    Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida incorrectly said a former Obama administration official had encouraged people to harass Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina inaccurately claimed Biden had laughed at a grieving mother and inaccurately insinuated that the FBI tipped off the media to its search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence. Two other speakers, Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and former Trump administration official Sebastian Gorka, inflated the number of deaths from fentanyl.

    And that’s not all. Here is a fact check of 13 false claims from the conference, which continues on Saturday.

    Marjorie Taylor Greene said the Republican Party has a duty to protect children. Listing supposed threats to children, she said, “Now whether it’s like Zelensky saying he wants our sons and daughters to go die in Ukraine…” Later in her speech, she said, “I will look at a camera and directly tell Zelensky: you’d better leave your hands off of our sons and daughters, because they’re not dying over there.”

    Facts First: Greene’s claim is false. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky didn’t say he wants American sons and daughters to fight or die for Ukraine. The false claim, which was debunked by CNN and others earlier in the week, is based on a viral video that clipped Zelensky’s comments out of context.

    19-second video of Zelensky goes viral. See what was edited out

    In reality, Zelensky predicted at a press conference in late February that if Ukraine loses the war against Russia because it does not receive sufficient support from elsewhere, Russia will proceed to enter North Atlantic Treaty Organization member countries in the Baltics (a region made up of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) that the US will be obligated to send troops to defend. Under the treaty that governs NATO, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. Ukraine is not a NATO member, and Zelensky didn’t say Americans should fight there.

    Greene is one of the people who shared the out-of-context video on Twitter this week. You can read a full fact-check, with Zelensky’s complete quote, here.

    Right-wing commentator and former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon criticized right-wing cable channel Fox at length for, he argued, being insufficiently supportive of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Among other things, Bannon claimed that, on the night of the election in November 2020, “Fox News illegitimately called it for the opposition and not Donald J. Trump, of which our nation has never recovered.” Later, he said Trump is running again after “having it stolen, in broad daylight, of which they [Fox] participate in.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense. On election night in 2020, Fox accurately projected that Biden had won the state of Arizona. This projection did not change the outcome of the election; all of the votes are counted regardless of what media outlets have projected, and the counting showed that Biden won Arizona, and the election, fair and square. The 2020 election was not “stolen” from Trump.

    NATIONAL HARBOR, MARYLAND - MARCH 03: Former White House chief strategist for the Trump Administration Steve Bannon speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on March 03, 2023 in National Harbor, Maryland. The annual conservative conference entered its second day of speakers including congressional members, media personalities and members of former President Donald Trump's administration. President Donald Trump will address the event on Saturday. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

    Bannon has a harsh message for Fox News at CPAC

    Fox, like other major media outlets, did not project that Biden had won the presidency until four days later. Fox personalities went on to repeatedly promote lies that the election was stolen from Trump – even as they privately dismissed and mocked these false claims, according to court filings from a voting technology company that is suing Fox for defamation.

    Rep. Jim Jordan claimed that Biden, “on day one,” made “three key changes” to immigration policy. Jordan said one of those changes was this: “We’re not going to deport anyone who come.” He proceeded to argue that people knowing “we’re not going to get deported” was a reason they decided to migrate to the US under Biden.

    Facts First: Jordan inaccurately described the 100-day deportation pause that Biden attempted to impose immediately after he took office on January 20, 2021. The policy did not say the US wouldn’t deport “anyone who comes.” It explicitly did not apply to anyone who arrived in the country after the end of October 2020, meaning people who arrived under the Biden administration or in the last months of the Trump administration could still be deported.

    Biden did say during the 2020 Democratic primary that “no one, no one will be deported at all” in his first 100 days as president. But Jordan claimed that this was the policy Biden actually implemented on his first day in office; Biden’s actual first-day policy was considerably narrower.

    Biden’s attempted 100-day pause also did not apply to people who engaged in or were suspected of terrorism or espionage, were seen to pose a national security risk, had waived their right to remain in the US, or whom the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement determined the law required to be removed.

    The pause was supposed to be in effect while the Department of Homeland Security conducted a review of immigration enforcement practices, but it was blocked by a federal judge shortly after it was announced.

    Rep. Ralph Norman strongly suggested the FBI had tipped off the media to its August search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and resort in Florida for government documents in the former president’s possession – while concealing its subsequent document searches of properties connected to Biden.

    Norman said: “When I saw the raid at Mar-a-Lago – you know, the cameras, the FBI – and compare that to when they found Biden’s, all of the documents he had, where was the media, where was the FBI? They kept it quiet early on, didn’t let it out. The job of the next president is going to be getting rid of the insiders that are undermining this government, and you’ve gotta clean house.”

    Facts First: Norman’s narrative is false. The FBI did not tip off the media to its search of Mar-a-Lago; CNN reported the next day that the search “happened so quietly, so secretly, that it wasn’t caught on camera at all.” Rather, media outlets belatedly sent cameras to Mar-a-Lago because Peter Schorsch, publisher of the website Florida Politics, learned of the search from non-FBI sources and tweeted about it either after it was over or as it was just concluding, and because Trump himself made a public statement less than 20 minutes later confirming that a search had occurred. Schorsch told CNN on Thursday: “I can, unequivocally, state that the FBI was not one of my two sources which alerted me to the raid.”

    Brian Stelter, then CNN’s chief media correspondent, wrote in his article the day after the search: “By the time local TV news cameras showed up outside the club, there was almost nothing to see. Websites used file photos of the Florida resort since there were no dramatic shots of the search.”

    It’s true that the public didn’t find out until late January about the FBI’s November search of Biden’s former think tank office in Washington, which was conducted with the consent of Biden’s legal team. But the belated presence of journalists at Mar-a-Lago on the day of the Trump search in August is not evidence of a double standard.

    And it’s worth noting that media cameras were on the scene when Biden’s beach home in Delaware was searched by the FBI in February. News outlets had set up a media “pool” to make sure any search there was recorded.

    Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a former college and high school football coach, said, “Going into thousands of kids’ homes and talking to parents every year recruiting, half the kids in this country – I’m not talking about race, I’m just talking about – half the kids in this country have one or no parent. And it’s because of the attack on faith. People are losing faith because, for some reason, because the attack [on] God.”

    Facts First: Tuberville’s claim that half of American children don’t have two parents is incorrect. Official figures from the Census Bureau show that, in 2021, about 70% of US children under the age of 18 lived with two parents and about 65% lived with two married parents.

    About 22% of children lived with only a mother, about 5% with only a father, and about 3% with no parent. But the Census Bureau has explained that even children who are listed as living with only one parent may have a second parent; children are listed as living with only one parent if, for example, one parent is deployed overseas with the military or if their divorced parents share custody of them.

    It is true that the percentage of US children living in households with two parents has been declining for decades. Still, Tuberville’s statistic significantly exaggerated the current situation. His spokesperson told CNN on Thursday that the senator was speaking “anecdotally” from his personal experience meeting with families as a football coach.

    Tuberville claimed that today’s children are being “indoctrinated” in schools by “woke” ideology and critical race theory. He then said, “We don’t teach reading, writing and arithmetic anymore. You know, half the kids in this country, when they graduate – think about this: half the kids in this country, when they graduate, can’t read their diploma.”

    Facts First: This is false. While many Americans do struggle with reading, there is no basis for the claim that “half” of high school graduates can’t read a basic document like a diploma. “Mr. Tuberville does not know what he’s talking about at all,” said Patricia Edwards, a Michigan State University professor of language and literacy who is a past president of the International Literacy Association and the Literacy Research Association. Edwards said there is “no evidence” to support Tuberville’s claim. She also said that people who can’t read at all are highly unlikely to finish high school and that “sometimes politicians embellish information.”

    Tuberville could have accurately said that a significant number of American teenagers and adults have reading trouble, though there is no apparent basis for connecting these struggles with supposed “woke” indoctrination. The organization ProLiteracy pointed CNN to 2017 data that found 23% of Americans age 16 to 65 have “low” literacy skills in English. That’s not “half,” as ProLiteracy pointed out, and it includes people who didn’t graduate from high school and people who are able to read basic text but struggle with more complex literacy tasks.

    The Tuberville spokesperson said the senator was speaking informally after having been briefed on other statistics about Americans’ struggles with reading, like a report that half of adults can’t read a book written at an eighth-grade level.

    Rep. Jim Jordan claimed of Biden: “The president of the United States stood in front of Independence Hall, called half the country fascists.”

    Facts First: This is not true. Biden did not denounce even close to “half the country” in this 2022 speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. He made clear that he was speaking about a minority of Republicans.

    In the speech, in which he never used the word “fascists,” Biden warned that “MAGA Republicans” like Trump are “extreme,” “do not respect the Constitution” and “do not believe in the rule of law.” But he also emphasized that “not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans.” In other words, he made clear that he was talking about far less than half of Americans.

    Trump earned fewer than 75 million votes in 2020 in a country of more than 258 million adults, so even a hypothetical criticism of every single Trump voter would not amount to criticism of “half the country.”

    Rep. Scott Perry claimed that “average citizens need to just at some point be willing to acknowledge and accept that every single facet of the federal government is weaponized against every single one of us.” Perry said moments later, “The government doesn’t have the right to tell you that you can’t buy a gas stove but that you must buy an electric vehicle.”

    Facts First: This is nonsense. The federal government has not told people that they can’t buy a gas stove or must buy an electric vehicle.

    The Biden administration has tried to encourage and incentivize the adoption of electric vehicles, but it has not tried to forbid the manufacture or purchase of traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines. Biden has set a goal of electric vehicles making up half of all new vehicles sold in the US by 2030.

    There was a January controversy about a Biden appointee to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission, Richard Trumka Jr., saying that gas stoves pose a “hidden hazard,” as they emit air pollutants, and that “any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” But the commission as a whole has not shown support for a ban, and White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a January press briefing: “The president does not support banning gas stoves. And the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is independent, is not banning gas stoves.”

    Rep. Ralph Norman claimed that Biden had just laughed at a mother who lost two sons to fentanyl.

    “I don’t know whether y’all saw, I just saw it this morning: Biden laughing at the mother who had two sons – to die, and he’s basically laughing and saying the fentanyl came from the previous administration. Who cares where it came from? The fact is it’s here,” Norman said.

    Facts First: Norman’s claim is false. Biden did not laugh at the mother who lost her sons to fentanyl, the anti-abortion activist Rebecca Kiessling; in a somber tone, he called her “a poor mother who lost two kids to fentanyl.” Rather, he proceeded to laugh about how Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had baselessly blamed the Biden administration for the young men’s deaths even though the tragedy happened in mid-2020, during the Trump administration. You can watch the video of Biden’s remarks here.

    Kiessling has demanded an apology from Biden. She is entitled to her criticism of Biden’s remarks and his chuckle – but the video clearly shows Norman was wrong when he claimed Biden was “laughing at the mother.”

    Rep. Kat Cammack told a story about the first hearing of the new Republican-led House select subcommittee on the supposed “weaponization” of the federal government. Cammack claimed she had asked a Democratic witness at this February hearing about his “incredibly vitriolic” Twitter feed in which, she claimed, he not only repeatedly criticized Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh but even went “so far as to encourage people to harass this Supreme Court justice.”

    Facts First: This story is false. The witness Cammack questioned in this February exchange at the subcommittee, former Obama administration deputy assistant attorney general Elliot Williams, did not encourage people to harass Kavanaugh. In fact, it’s not even true that Cammack accused him at the February hearing of having encouraged people to harass Kavanaugh. Rather, at the hearing, she merely claimed that Williams had tweeted numerous critical tweets about Kavanaugh but had been “unusually quiet” on Twitter after an alleged assassination attempt against the justice. Clearly, not tweeting about the incident is not the same thing as encouraging harassment.

    Williams, now a CNN legal analyst (he appeared at the subcommittee hearing in his personal capacity), said in a Thursday email that he had “no idea” what Cammack was looking at on his innocuous Twitter feed. He said: “I used to prosecute violent crimes, and clerked for two federal judges. Any suggestion that I’ve ever encouraged harassment of anyone – and particularly any official of the United States – is insulting and not based in reality.”

    Cammack’s spokesperson responded helpfully on Thursday to CNN’s initial queries about the story Cammack told at CPAC, explaining that she was referring to her February exchange with Williams. But the spokesperson stopped responding after CNN asked if Cammack was accurately describing this exchange with Williams and if they had any evidence of Williams actually having encouraged the harassment of Kavanaugh.

    Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana boasted about the state of the country “when Republicans were in charge.” Among other claims about Trump’s tenure, he said that “in four years,” Republicans “delivered 3.5% unemployment” and “created 8 million new jobs.”

    Facts First: This is inaccurate in two ways. First, the economic numbers for the full “four years” of Trump’s tenure are much worse than these numbers Kennedy cited; Kennedy was actually referring to Trump’s first three years while ignoring the fourth, which was marred by the Covid-19 pandemic. Second, there weren’t “8 million new jobs” created even in Trump’s first three years.

    Kennedy could have correctly said there was a 3.5% unemployment rate after three years of the Trump administration, but not after four. The unemployment rate skyrocketed early in Trump’s fourth year, on account of the pandemic, before coming down again, and it was 6.3% when Trump left office in early 2021. (It fell to 3.4% this January under Biden, better than in any month under Trump.)

    And while the economy added about 6.7 million jobs under Trump before the pandemic-related crash of March and April 2020, that’s not the “8 million jobs” Kennedy claimed – and the economy ended up shedding millions of jobs in Trump’s fourth year. Over the full four years of Trump’s tenure, the economy netted a loss of about 2.7 million jobs.

    Lara Trump, Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law and an adviser to his 2020 campaign, claimed that the last time a CPAC crowd was gathered at this venue in Maryland, in February 2020, “We had the lowest unemployment in American history.” After making other boasts about Donald Trump’s presidency, she said, “But how quickly it all changed.” She added, “Under Joe Biden, America is crumbling.”

    Facts First: Lara Trump’s claim about February 2020 having “the lowest unemployment in American history” is false. The unemployment rate was 3.5% at the time – tied for the lowest since 1969, but not the all-time lowest on record, which was 2.5% in 1953. And while Lara Trump didn’t make an explicit claim about unemployment under Biden, it’s not true that things are worse today on this measure; again, the most recent unemployment rate, 3.4% for January 2023, is better than the rate at the time of CPAC’s 2020 conference or at any other time during Donald Trump’s presidency.

    Multiple speakers at CPAC decried the high number of fentanyl overdose deaths. But some of the speakers inflated that number while attacking Biden’s immigration policy.

    Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump administration official, claimed that “in the last 12 months in America, deaths by fentanyl poisoning totaled 110,000 Americans.” He blamed “Biden’s open border” for these deaths.

    Rep. Scott Perry claimed: “Meanwhile over on this side of the border, where there isn’t anybody, they’re running this fentanyl in; it’s killing 100,000 Americans – over 100,000 Americans – a year.”

    Facts First: It’s not true that there are more than 100,000 fentanyl deaths per year. That is the total number of deaths from all drug overdoses in the US; there were 106,699 such deaths in 2021. But the number of overdose deaths involving synthetic opioids other than methadone, primarily fentanyl, is smaller – 70,601 in 2021.

    Fentanyl-related overdoses are clearly a major problem for the country and by far the biggest single contributor to the broader overdose problem. Nonetheless, claims of “110,000” and “over 100,000” fentanyl deaths per year are significant exaggerations. And while the number of overdose deaths and fentanyl-related deaths increased under Biden in 2021, it was also troubling under Trump in 2020 – 91,799 total overdose deaths and 56,516 for synthetic opioids other than methadone.

    It’s also worth noting that fentanyl is largely smuggled in by US citizens through legal ports of entry rather than by migrants sneaking past other parts of the border. Contrary to frequent Republican claims, the border is not “open”; border officers have seized thousands of pounds of fentanyl under Biden.

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  • Wave of suspected poison attacks on schoolgirls sparks protests in Iran | CNN

    Wave of suspected poison attacks on schoolgirls sparks protests in Iran | CNN

    Worried parents protested in Iran’s capital Tehran and other cities on Saturday over a wave of suspected poison attacks that have affected schoolgirls in dozens of schools, according to Iranian news agencies and social media videos.

    The so-far unexplained illnesses have affected hundreds of schoolgirls in recent months. Iranian officials believe the girls may have been poisoned and have blamed Tehran’s enemies.

    The country’s health minister has said the girls have suffered “mild poison” attacks and some politicians have suggested the girls could have been targeted by hardline Islamist groups opposed to girls’ education.

    Iran’s interior minister said on Saturday investigators had found “suspicious samples” that were being studied.

    “In field studies, suspicious samples have been found, which are being investigated… to identify the causes of the students’ illness, and the results will be published as soon as possible,” the minister, Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, said in a statement carried by the official news agency IRNA.

    Sickness affected more than 30 schools in at least 10 of Iran’s 31 provinces on Saturday. Videos posted on social media showed parents gathered at schools to take their children home and some students being taken to hospitals by ambulance or buses.

    A woman from the city of Qom previously told CNN that both her daughters, who attended different schools, had been poisoned. One girl suffered significant health issues after being poisoned: experiencing nausea, shortness of breath and numbness in her left leg and right hand as well as difficulty walking.

    A gathering of parents outside an Education Ministry building in western Tehran on Saturday to protest over the illnesses turned into an anti-government demonstration, according to a video verified by Reuters.

    “Basij, Guards, you are our Daesh,” protesters chanted, likening the Revolutionary Guards and other security forces to the Islamic State group.

    Similar protests were held in two other areas in Tehran and other cities including Isfahan and Rasht, according to unverified videos.

    The outbreak of schoolgirl sickness comes at a critical time for Iran’s clerical rulers, who have faced months of anti-government protests sparked by the death of a young Iranian woman in the custody of the morality police who enforce strict dress codes.

    Social media posts in recent days have shown photos and videos of girls who have fallen ill, feeling nauseaous or suffering heart palpitations. Others complained of headaches. Reuters could not verify the posts.

    The United Nations human rights office in Geneva called on Friday for a transparent investigation into the suspected attacks and countries including Germany and the United States have voiced concern.

    Experts have spoken about the difficulties in investigating the situation in Iran and told CNN that the incidents were “remarkably similar” to dozens of incidents at schools in Afghanistan since 2009. “In a few of these incidents, pesticides were strongly suspected but most of the illnesses remain unexplained,” said London based defense specialist Dan Kaszeta from the Royal United Services Institute.

    Iran rejected what it views as foreign meddling and “hasty reactions” and said on Friday it was investigating the causes of the incidents.

    “It is one of the immediate priorities of Iran’s government to pursue this issue as quickly as possible and provide documented information to resolve the families’ concerns and to hold accountable the perpetrators and the causes,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani told state media.

    Schoolgirls were active in the anti-government protests that began in September. They have removed their mandatory headscarves in classrooms, torn up pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and called for his death.

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