IMMIGRANT CHILD WITH CEREBRAL PALSY DETAINED AFTER SURGERY

HOUSTON» A 10-year-old girl with cerebral palsy who entered the United States from Mexico without permission a decade ago is facing deportation after having to cross a Border Patrol checkpoint in south Texas for emergency gallbladder surgery, a family lawyer said Thursday.

Immigration advocates are protesting Rosa Maria Hernandez’s case and say Border Patrol should show more discretion in the cases of sick children who are in the U.S. illegally but need medical treatment.

Rosa Maria was taken with a cousin from the Texas border city of Laredo to a children’s hospital in Corpus Christi, about 150 miles away. They had to pass through one of several Border Patrol checkpoints set up in south Texas.

NBC News takes Mark Halperin off air after harassment claims.

YORK» MSNBC says NEW journalist Mark Halperin has been suspended from his role as network contributor after charges from five women who claimed he sexually harassed them while he was an ABC News executive. The network said Thursday it found Halperin’s conduct as described in a CNN story “very troubling” and that the veteran political reporter will be off the air until questions about his past are fully understood.

U.S. agrees to pay Tea Party groups over IRS scrutiny.

The Trump administration has agreed to what a lawyer described as a “very substantial” payout to hundreds of Tea Party groups to settle a class-action lawsuit over the extra IRS scrutiny they received when applying for tax-exempt status during the 2012 election. The settlement would end a chapter in a political scandal that dogged the Obama administration and continues to irk Republicans. In settling the case, the Trump administration is agreeing to government payments to groups that share its political beliefs.

N.Y. woman missing since ’75 found alive in Massachusetts.

N.Y.» A woman who MONTICELLO, disappeared from upstate New York after being dropped off for a doctor’s appointment 42 years ago has been found suffering from dementia and living in an assisted-living facility in Massachusetts, authorities said. The sheriff’s office in Sullivan County, N.Y., said Flora Stevens, 78, was using the last name Harris when detectives tracked her down this week at the residence in Lowell. Officials said they’ve been unable to figure out details of what happened to her between the time she disappeared in August 1975 and when she was finally found.

Hiker missing for days found alive near Mount Hood.

A hiker missing for almost five days near Mount Hood has been found alive, authorities said Thursday. Nathan Mitchell was found by friends in the Salmon-Huckleberry Wilderness. He was about 400 feet off the trail, apparently unaware he was so close to it.

Navy rescues women who were lost in the Pacific for months.

HONOLULU» Two women and their dogs have been rescued after being lost at sea for months while trying to sail from Hawaii to Tahiti. The Navy rescued the women Wednesday after a fishing vessel spotted them about 900 miles southeast of Japan, well off their planned course. The women, Jennifer Appel and Tasha Fuiaba, both of Honolulu, lost their engine in bad weather in late May but believed they could still reach Tahiti using their sails. —AP