15-year-old shot 5 times protecting classmates
PARKLAND, Fla. — A 15-year-old student who was shot five times during last week’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is credited with saving the lives of at least 20 other students.
A fundraising site says Anthony Borges was shot in both legs and his back while attempting to close and lock a classroom door last Wednesday. Seventeen people were killed.
Borges’ friend Carlos Rodriguez told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the two rushed to hide in a nearby classroom when they first heard gunshots. He says no one knew what to do, but that Borges “took the initiative to just save his other classmates.”
Borges’ father Royer Borges says his son called him while lying on the ground after being shot. The father asked him to stay on the line, but at one point, he couldn’t hear the teenager’s voice anymore.
“He told me later ‘I had to drop the phone because I thought he was coming in and I wanted to pretend I was asleep so he wouldn’t continue shooting,” Borges told CNN’s Spanish language service.
Trump urges ban on gun devices like bump stocks
WASHINGTON — As a grieving Florida community demanded action on guns, President Donald Trump on Tuesday directed the Justice Department to move to ban devices like the rapid-fire bump stocks used in last year’s Las Vegas massacre. It was a small sign of movement on the gun violence issue that has long tied Washington in knots.
“We must do more to protect our children,” Trump said, adding that his administration was working hard to respond to the shooting in Parkland that left 17 dead.
After past mass killings yielded little action on tighter gun controls, the White House is trying to demonstrate that it is taking the issue seriously. The president has not endorsed more robust changes sought by gun control activists.
But the White House cast the president in recent days as having been swayed by the school shooting in Florida and willing to listen to proposals.
U.S.: North Korea canceled meeting with Pence at last minute
WASHINGTON — Vice President Mike Pence was all set to hold a history-making meeting with North Korean officials during the Winter Olympics in South Korea, but Kim Jong Un’s government canceled at the last minute, the Trump administration said Tuesday.
A potential meeting between Pence and the North Koreans had been the most highly anticipated moment of the vice president’s visit to Pyeongchang, South Korea, where he led the U.S delegation to the opening ceremonies. Ahead of Pence’s visit, Trump officials had insisted they’d requested no meeting with North Korea, but notably left open the possibility one could occur.
There was no indication that a meeting had indeed been planned — and then canceled on short notice — until Tuesday, more than a week after Pence returned to the United States. The State Department said that Pence had been “ready to take this opportunity” but would have used it to insist Pyongyang abandon its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
“At the last minute, DPRK officials decided not to go forward with the meeting,” said State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, using an acronym for the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “We regret their failure to seize this opportunity.”
A Trump administration official said the U.S. had expected the meeting to occur Feb. 10, the last day of Pence’s three-day visit to the Olympic Games. The administration did not say exactly how much notice it received from North Korea that the meeting had been called off, nor where the meeting would have taken place or under what conditions.
With new elections near, U.S. strains to curb Russia meddling
WASHINGTON — The Russians are going to try it again. Even President Donald Trump’s intelligence chiefs say so. But with congressional primaries just two weeks away, the U.S. has done little to aggressively combat the kinds of Russian election meddling that was recently unmasked in federal court.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s surprise indictment last week in his wide-ranging Russia investigation sounded a fresh alarm to the U.S. government, social media companies and state election officials who are readying for the 2018 midterms.
Mueller’s indictment charged 13 Russian individuals and three Russian companies in a plot to interfere in the 2016 presidential election through a social media propaganda effort that included online ad purchases using U.S. aliases and politicking on U.S. soil. Congressional committees held hearings on the social media attacks last fall, but legislation to require technology companies to enhance openness for online political ads has stalled amid GOP concerns of overregulation.
Palestinian leader calls for peace conference
UNITED NATIONS — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ruled out the United States as a broker for peace with Israel on Tuesday, calling for an international peace conference by mid-2018 with the key goals of full U.N. membership for the state of Palestine and a timeframe for a two-state solution.
Abbas spoke as the Trump administration’s two key Mideast negotiators who are working on a U.S. peace proposal — the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special representative Jason Greenblatt — sat in the Security Council chamber listening. But he left without speaking to them or listening to U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley say that “the United States stands ready to work with the Palestinian leadership,” and the two envoys are “ready to talk.”
The Palestinians are furious at President Donald Trump for overturning decades of U.S. policy and recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, ignoring that east Jerusalem is Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since the 1967 war that the Palestinians want as the capital of their independent state. Abbas called Trump’s pro-Israeli action “dangerous” and has said the president’s action destroyed his credibility as a Mideast peace broker.
By wire sources