NATION & WORLD BRIEFS

Sanders, 82, announces he will run again for Senate

WASHINGTON – Sen. Bernie Sanders, the 82-yearold self-described democratic socialist from Vermont, announced Monday that he plans to seek another term in the U.S. Senate.

In a video statement posted to X, formerly Twitter, Sanders said he would be “in a strong position to provide the kind of help that Vermonters need in these difficult times,” noting his high-level role in multiple committees and in the Senate’s Democratic leadership.

Sanders has emerged as a leading voice of the progressive left. He previously ran to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2016 and 2020, and he caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate.

In his video addressed to Vermont voters, Sanders said he has tried to protect health care, climate resiliency, veterans’ benefits and abortion rights in the state. And he noted his opposition to sending additional funding to Israel, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians while pursuing Hamas in Gaza.

Officials: Missing tourists found dead in well in Mexico were shot

Three bodies recovered in Mexico last week are those of three tourists who disappeared during a surfing trip, and three people were in custody in connection to their deaths, officials in the country confirmed Sunday.

American Jack Carter Rhoad, 30, of San Diego, and Australian brothers Jake Robinson, 30, and Callum Robinson, 33, vanished April 27 while on the trip in Ensenada, less than 100 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border. The victims were found shot at the bottom of a 50-foot well after it appears the trio tried to intervene in an apparent carjacking, per the Baja California State Attorney General’s Office.

Jesús Gerardo “N,” alias “El Kekas,” was in custody Sunday, charged with forced disappearance of people, according to Baja chief state prosecutor María Elena Andrade Ramírez. Two others, a man and a woman, had also been detained in connection to the killings, Ramírez announced. Officials did not identify the pair.

A fourth body was also found in the well, but does not appear to be related to the tourists’ killings, the office wrote in a news release. Authorities said that victim had been there for a longer period of time.

White House knocks Noem for comments on Biden’s dog

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre hit back Monday at South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s implication that President Joe Biden’s dog should have been killed.

USA TODAY reported in February that Commander, a 2-year-old German shepherd, was involved in at least 25 biting incidents involving White House staff, Secret Service agents and Navy staff.

In her forthcoming memoir, Noem wrote that the first thing she’d do in the White House is make sure Commander was “nowhere on the grounds.”

“How many people is enough people to be attacked and dangerously hurt before you make a decision on a dog?” Noem said on “Face the Nation” Sunday.

“We find her comments from yesterday disturbing,” Jean-Pierre said in a briefing. “This is a country that loves dogs, and you have a leader talking about putting dogs down, killing them.”

Fewer Black Americans say they will vote in 2024, new poll finds

President Joe Biden may be facing a tougher landscape as a new poll shows that fewer Black Americans – a key Democratic voting bloc – plan to vote this November compared to 2020.

In the Washington Post/Ipsos poll, 62% of Black Americans said they were certain to vote in this year’s election. That’s down by 12 percentage points from June 2020.

The poll also found that only 41% of Black Americans ages 18-39 were certain they would vote, compared to 61% in June 2020.

Black Americans’ support for Biden has fallen to 74% from 92% four years ago, while 14% said they would definitely or probably vote for former President Donald Trump.

The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points. Other polls have found similar results.

Kidnapped 10-month-old baby in NM found safe after mom’s murder

Authorities have found 10-month-old Eleia Maria Torres three days after finding her dead mother at a New Mexico park.

The investigation began Friday afternoon when someone called the Clovis Police Department reporting the bodies of two women at a park about three hours east of Albuquerque.

Police identified the victims as Taryn Allen and Torres’ mother, Samantha Cisneros, both 23, from Texico, New Mexico. They also found a girl, Torres’ sister, on the ground; she was hospitalized with a head injury. And they found an infant car seat, stroller and baby bottle.

Clovis police said Friday they believed Torres had been abducted by the killer, and issued an Amber

Alert.

Police have now taken a suspect into custody in connection to the case. They brought Torres to the hospital “as a precautionary measure,” Clovis police said in a Monday statement on Facebook.

Man charged with murder for strangling wife in hospital bed

Police in Missouri arrested a man after they said he admitted to strangling his ailing wife in a hospital bed because he reportedly could not afford to pay for her medical care.

Ronnie Wiggs is charged with second-degree murder in connection to the death of his wife, who died Saturday in Independence, a Kansas City suburb, Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced. According to a probable cause affidavit, Wiggs told police he killed the victim while she was at Centerpoint Medical Center for a new port for dialysis.

Wiggs told detectives that he choked his wife in the hospital bed, covering her nose and mouth to keep her from screaming. He also said he was depressed and tried to strangle his wife on a previous occasion while she was at a rehab facility, but “could not follow through with it,” according to the affidavit.

Rescuers seek survivors after South Africa building collapses

GEORGE, South Africa – Rescuers were using cranes, drills and their bare hands to try to reach dozens of people trapped when a multistory building being built in the South African city of George collapsed, killing at least six people.

Of the 75 workers who had been on the construction site, 48 remained unaccounted for on Tuesday. Authorities have made no comment about what caused it to collapse on Monday.

While the rescue teams are able to communicate with 11 people buried in the wreckage, families gathered waiting for news of their loved ones were in tears, fearing the worst.

There have been moments of hope. People clapped and cheered as rescue workers pulled a person out alive from among broken concrete slabs and twisted steel reinforcements. They have made contact with other survivors as they scour the site with sniffer dogs.

So far 27 people have been retrieved from the site in the coastal city east of Cape Town, including at least six dead.