American woman accused of prominent role in Islamic State
The FBI has arrested an American woman who federal prosecutors said had risen through the ranks of the Islamic State group in Syria to become a battalion commander, training women and children to use assault rifles and suicide belts, the Justice Department disclosed Saturday. The woman, Allison Fluke-Ekren, 42, a former teacher from Kansas, was charged with providing material support to a terrorist organization. The FBI flew her to Virginia on Friday to face prosecution. She traveled to Syria, according to one witness, because she wanted to wage “violent jihad,” Raj Parekh, a federal prosecutor, wrote in a detention memo.
In North Carolina,a pitched battle over gerrymanders and justices
It is the state that set the blunt-force standard for partisan battles over voting rights and gerrymanders that are now fracturing states nationwide. So it is unsurprising that North Carolina’s latest fight, over new political maps that decisively favor Republicans, is unfolding in what has become an increasingly contested and influential battlefield in United States governance: the state Supreme Court. The court meets Wednesday to consider whether a map drawn by the Republican-dominated legislature violates the state constitution. Both sides of a lawsuit have been waging an extraordinary battle over whether three of the court’s seven justices should even hear the case.
Virus cases starting to drop in states where omicron hit later
States where the omicron variant began skyrocketing in late December appear to be turning a corner, with new infections starting to decline. If that trend holds, it would be an encouraging sign that the United States may be through the worst of the omicron wave. But national case numbers, while falling 31% in the past two weeks, are still astronomical. The average remains around 590,000 a day — more than double the worst statistics from last winter. Last weekend, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, told ABC News that he believed the wave would crest by the end of February.
As COVID shots for kids stall, appeals are aimed at wary parents
Since the federal government authorized the coronavirus vaccine for children ages 5-11, Brigham Kiplinger, principal of Garrison Elementary School in Washington, D.C., has been calling parents daily. “The vaccine is the most important thing happening this year to keep kids in school,” he said. The rate of vaccination overall for America’s 28 million children ages 5-11 remains even lower than health experts had feared. According to a new analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, only 18.8% are fully vaccinated, and 28.1% have received one dose. The disparity among states is stark. In Vermont, the share of children who are fully vaccinated is 52%; in Mississippi, it is 6%.
Two NY nurses made more than $1.5M in fake vaccine card scheme, prosecutors say
Two nurses on Long Island are accused of collecting more than $1.5 million by selling forged COVID-19 vaccination cards, according to prosecutors. Julie DeVuono, who owns Wild Child Pediatric Healthcare in Amityville, and Marissa Urraro, her employee, sold fake vaccination cards and entered false information into New York’s immunization database, prosecutors said. They charged $220 for forged cards for adults and $85 for children, according to the district attorney’s office. DeVuono, 49, and Urraro, 44, were arraigned Friday, each charged with one count of second-degree forgery. DeVuono was also charged with one count of offering a false instrument for filing.
US sanctions aimed at Russia could take a wide toll
The sanctions that U.S. officials have threatened to impose on Russia could cause severe inflation, a stock market crash and other forms of financial panic that would inflict pain on its people — from billionaires to middle-class families. U.S. officials’ vow to unleash economic measures if Russia invades Ukraine would inevitably affect daily life in Russia, but the strategy also comes with political and economic risks. No nation has tried to enact broad sanctions against such large financial institutions and on an economy the size of Russia’s. The response U.S. officials have promised could roil major economies and threaten the stability of the global financial system, analysts say.
An ambush fuels outrage in India over impunity for the military
In Nagaland, a remote northeastern Indian state, soldiers keep a heavy hand, provoking rising anger among residents who say change is long overdue. In December, near the village of Oting, Indian army special forces mistook ethnic Naga villagers for rebels and opened fire on a truck, killing six people. Despite a cease-fire struck 25 years ago, heavy military occupation remains, allowed under a special powers act that the Indian government has been reluctant to roll back. Residents complain that the act’s impunity for soldiers has made them abusive, and that the military presence has stunted local law enforcement — and led to deadly mistakes like the one in Oting.
Canadian trucker convoy descends on Ottawa to protest vaccine mandates
After six days spent crossing Canada, a convoy that began as a protest against mandatory vaccination for truckers who travel to the United States was expected to arrive in Ottawa late Saturday afternoon. The loosely organized “Freedom Rally” of trucks and private vehicles has attracted people opposed to all pandemic restrictions, others who want Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to step down and some who simply dislike government. Early Saturday afternoon, streets in and around Parliament were clogged with cars and trucks, most carrying flags or signs denouncing public health measures, as well as protesters often toting signs on hockey sticks.
50 Years on, Bloody Sunday’s wounds are still felt
The events themselves — on Jan. 30, 1972 — took a matter of minutes to unfold in a paroxysm of one-sided gunfire that snuffed out more than a dozen lives, each one of them a new martyr in Northern Ireland’s somber annals of loss. But the effort to unravel what happened in those brief moments — to parse the antecedents and the outcomes, to trace the lines of command on the grisly day that became known as Bloody Sunday — devoured years of costly inquiry. A full half-century after the killings, symbols of division and hostility still held their potency.
By wire sources
