DE B LASIO DROPS B ID FOR 2020

YORK» New York City NEW

Mayor Bill de Blasio ended his campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination Friday after struggling to gain traction in a sprawling field of candidates.

Announcing his decision in an MSNBC interview, de Blasio did not throw his support behind any candidate but said he would support the eventual Democratic nominee “with energy.”

“I feel like I’ve contributed all I can to this primary election, and it’s clearly not my time,” de Blasio told the hosts of the “Morning Joe” program.

Remaining Three Mile Island reactor shuts down.

HARRISBURG,

» The money-losing

PA.

Three Mile Island, the 1979 site of the United States’ worst commercial nuclear power accident, was shut down Friday by its energy giant owner. The end of the 45-year electricity-producing career of Three Mile Island Unit 1 came after Chicago-based Exelon Corp. tried and failed to get financial aid from Pennsylvania in the spring.

Dengue epidemic deadly in Honduras.

HONDURAS» At least 135 people have died from dengue this year in Honduras, nearly two-thirds of them children. Many other suspected deaths await lab confirmation. Honduras has by far the highest death rate from dengue in Latin America this year, and the country’s most prevalent strain also happens to be the most aggressive and the deadliest.

The epidemic hit a country roiled by social unrest and led by a president who has lacked credibility since he won another term in spite of a constitutional ban on his re-election in 2017. Juan Orlando Hernández has also been named a co-conspirator in his brother’s U.S. drug trafficking case. Doctors and nurses spent weeks marching against his proposed reforms, which they feared were a step toward privatizing the country’s health care system.

Greek archaeologists uncover riches overlooked by robbers.

GREECE» ArchaeolATHENS, ogists in northern Greece have explored more than 200 new graves in a vast ancient cemetery that was plundered in antiquity but still retained rich finds, including a gold mask and bronze helmets.

In a statement Friday, the Culture Ministry said the most impressive finds came from the graves of warriors who died in the sixth century B.C. and were members of a powerful military aristocracy.

Recovered artifacts included the valuable face mask, made specially for funerals, four bronze helmets, iron spearheads and fragmented iron swords, a large bronze urn with ornate handles and an iron model of a farm car.

Civil rights group says airline forced girl, 12, to remove hijab.

SANFRAN

A Muslim civil rights advocacy group is demanding changes at Air Canada after a 12-year-old U.S. Squash Team player says she was forced to remove her hijab while boarding at San Francisco International Airport.

The San Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a letter sent Friday that federal and state laws were violated when an Air Canada gate agent demanded that Fatima Abdelrahman remove her religious head covering. — Denver Post wire services