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New Mexico congressional map that was approved by Democrats can stand, a judge says

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:05 GMT

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — New congressional boundaries approved by Democrats that divided up a politically conservative oil-producing region in New Mexico don’t violate the state constitution, a judge ruled in an order published Friday. Judge Fred Van Soelen wrote that the redistricting plan enacted by Democratic state lawmakers in 2021 succeeded in substantially diluting votes of their political opponents, but that the changes fell short of “egregious” gerrymandering.“Because ‘entrenchment’ is the touchstone of an egregious partisan gerrymander which the New Mexico Constitution prohibits, the court finds that the congressional redistricting map enacted under Senate Bill 1 does not violate the plaintiff’s equal protection rights,” the judge wrote.An attorney for the state Republican Party indicated that the decision will be appealed to the New Mexico Supreme Court. A final decision could influence which party represents a congressional swing district along the U.S. border with Mex...

Colorado funeral home owner where 115 decaying bodies found tried to conceal improper storage

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:05 GMT

CAÑON CITY, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado funeral home owner where 115 decaying bodies were found tried to conceal the improper storage of corpses and claimed he was doing taxidermy, according to a suspension letter sent to him by state regulators.The facility in the small Colorado town of Penrose had also been unregistered for 10 months after the owner for Return to Nature Funeral Home let it expire in November 2022.On Wednesday – the day after an “abhorrent smell” from the facility was reported, launching the investigation – owner Jon Hallford spoke by phone with a state regulator. Hallford acknowledged that he had a “problem” at the property. The document doesn’t explain what he meant.The document also doesn’t explain what Hallford was referring to with this taxidermy claim or exactly how he tried to conceal the improper storage of human remains.Hallford nor anyone else has been arrested or charged yet in relation to what authorities on Friday called a “disturbing discovery.” THI...

18 migrants killed, and 29 injured in a bus crash in southern Mexico

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:05 GMT

MEXICO CITY (AP) — At least 18 migrants from Venezuela and Peru died early Friday in a bus crash in southern Mexico, authorities said.Mexico’s National Immigration Institute said the dead include two women and three children, and that 29 people were injured. There was no immediate information on their condition.Photos distributed by the institute showed the bus rolled over onto its side on a curvy section of highway in the southern state of Oaxaca. The cause of the crash on the town of San Pablo Huitzo, near the border with the neighboring state of Puebla, is under investigation.The institute said a total of 55 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, were aboard the vehicle.It was the latest in a series of migrant deaths in Mexico amid a surge in migrants traveling toward the U.S. border. Because migration agents often raid regular buses, migrants and smugglers often seek out risky forms of transportation, like unregulated buses, trains or freight trucks.Last week, 10 Cuban migrants ...

Migrating Venezuelans undeterred by US plan to resume deportation flights

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:05 GMT

LAJAS BLANCAS, Panama (AP) — At the edge of Panama’s Darien jungle Friday, Venezuelans made up the majority of migrants waiting for buses to speed them across the country to Costa Rica, where they planned to continue moving north.Annie Carrillo, a 38-year-old Venezuelan migrant traveling with her Colombian husband and another friend, said they had crossed the dense, lawless jungle from Colombia in three days after paying $350 each to a guide. When she heard about the U.S. government’s plan to restart deportation flights to Venezuela in the coming days, Carrillo said it was discouraging.“No one emigrates from their country because they want to. One migrates because you have basic needs and there isn’t support in your native country,” she said, starting to cry. The U.S. government hopes the threat of deportation will be enough to make Venezuelans reconsider trying to enter the United States illegally and opt instead for the online appointment system to make asylum claims or other lega...

NY appeals court declines to halt Trump’s civil fraud trial while he contests a pretrial ruling

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:05 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York appeals judge declined Friday to halt Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial, rebuffing the former president’s request to postpone it while he fights a pretrial ruling that could strip him of control of such assets as Trump Tower.The appellate judge agreed that control over the holdings will stay as-is for now. Friday’s decision came five days into the closely watched trial, which drew Trump to the courthouse to observe — and fulminate — for days this week. Trump’s lawyers had asked the state’s intermediate appellate court to suspend the trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit and prevent Judge Arthur Engoron from enforcing his ruling of last week, which revokes the Republican frontrunner’s business licenses and puts a court-appointed receiver in charge of his companies.“This is a massive error. It is irreparable,” Trump attorney Christopher Kise told an appeals judge Friday afternoon. Kise argued that the ruling will make def...

Sam Bankman-Fried stole customer funds from the beginning of FTX, exchange’s co-founder tells jury

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:05 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Sam Bankman-Fried authorized the illegal use of FTX customers’ funds and assets to plug financial gaps at an affiliated hedge fund from the exchange’s earliest days, FTX’s co-founder Gary Wang told a New York jury on Friday, as prosecutors pressed their case that Bankman-Fried was the mastermind behind one of the biggest frauds in U.S. history. Eventually, the losses at the hedge fund, Alameda Research, became so large that there was no way to hide them any longer, Wang said in his second day of testimony. Prosecutors allege that Bankman-Fried, 31, stole billions of dollars from investors and customers in order to fund a lavish lifestyle in The Bahamas and buy the influence of politicians, celebrities and the public. Wang was FTX’s chief technology officer and is part of what has been referred to as the “inner circle” of FTX executives who have agreed to testify against Bankman-Fried in exchange for leniency in their own criminal cases. Wang h...

Caretaker of Dominican cemetery where bodies of six newborns were found turns himself in

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:05 GMT

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — A cemetery caretaker who was wanted for questioning about the bodies of six newborn babies found discarded near the cemetery in the Dominican Republic’s capital turned himself into authorities Friday, police said.The man, identified as Hilario Pascual, spoke in a video statement posted online before he turned himself in alleging that the bodies had been dropped off at the cemetery after hours and that he had already started drinking and forgot about them. The incident shocked and perplexed many in the Caribbean country. The bodies were found just outside the cemetery in Santo Domingo early Wednesday and prompted police to launch an investigation.A spokeswoman for Juan Bosch City Hospital, located nearby, said the institution had transferred the bodies of six newborns Tuesday to funeral home El Popular for proper burial. The owner of the funeral home, identified as Julián Encarnacion Montero, told Noticias SIN that the bodies were taken ...

Nearly 1,000 migrating songbirds perish after crashing into windows at Chicago exhibition hall

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:05 GMT

David Willard has been checking the grounds of Chicago’s lakefront exhibition center for dead birds for 40 years. On Thursday morning he found something horrible: Hundreds of dead songbirds, so thick they looked like a carpet.Nearly 1,000 songbirds perished during the night after crashing into the McCormick Place Lakeside Center ‘s windows, the result, according to avian experts, of a deadly confluence of prime migration conditions, rain and the low-slung exhibition hall’s lights and window-lined walls.“It was just like a carpet of dead birds at the windows there,” said Willard, a retired bird division collections manager at the Chicago Field Museum, where his duties included administering, preserving and cataloging the museum’s collection of 500,000 bird specimens as well as searching for bird strikes as part of migration research. “A normal night would be zero to 15 (dead) birds. It was just kind of a shocking outlier to what we’ve experienced,”...

A UN rights commission accuses South Sudan of violations more than a year before the next election

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:05 GMT

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — The U.N. Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan accused the country’s National Security Service of threatening media and civil society and undermining prospects for a democratic transition.A new report — based on the U.N. commission’s independent investigations in 2023 — was released on Thursday and gave details about attacks on journalists and members of civil society, both within and outside the country.Journalists have been subjected to surveillance, intimidation and human rights violations, including arbitrary detention, according to the U.N. report.“Independent media and a vibrant civil society represent critical voices in developing accountable governance, and the democratic processes required to enable peace and ensure human rights,” said Yasmin Sooka, the chair of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan.South Sudan is going through a political transition period after a civil war that wracked the country from 2013 until 2018, when a peac...

Liberals’ bail-reform bill sparks concerns about need for more legal aid funding

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:15:05 GMT

OTTAWA — Many in Canada’s legal community are expressing concern about how the overloaded court systemand those needing legal aid could be affected a Liberal bill that proposes to make bail harder to access. Senators on a committee probing Bill C-48 will enter the final phase of their study later this month by going over the legislation clause by clause and suggesting amendments.Federal Justice Minister Arif Virani has encouraged the Senate to pass the bill quickly, saying the fact that all provincial and territorial governments pushed for the measures underlines their urgency.Police leaders also support the bill, saying these are much-needed reforms after a spate of high-profile killings by repeat violent offenders, who in some cases had been released on bail. But civil society groups and legal advocates representing people who are Black, Indigenous or otherwise marginalized say its measures could worsen the overrepresentation of such groups behind bars — something Liberals h...