2 missing after migrant boat capsizes off the Florida Keys
MIAMI — U.S. Coast Guard crews launched a search for two missing people the agency says were among a group of 21 whose migrant boat capsized Wednesday off the Florida Keys.
Civilian boaters rescued 19 people from the boat about 40 miles off the coast of the Middle Keys city of Marathon, the Coast Guard said in a statement on Twitter.
Four of the rescued were transferred to local fire-rescue crews to be checked for unspecified medical conditions. The Coast Guard on Wednesday declined to comment on the migrants’ nationalities.
Also on Wednesday, the Coast Guard announced it had suspended its search for nine missing people from Cuba whose boat capsized off Lake Worth Beach in Palm Beach County. A 10th member of that migrant group was rescued and told the Coast Guard they spent almost 10 days at sea.
The Coast Guard said it searched a total area of 2,485 miles before calling off the search.
“Our condolences go out to the loved ones of those lost at sea,” the agency said in a statement.
South Florida is in the midst of the largest surge of arriving migrants in nearly a decade, with the Keys being the most frequent landing spot.
—Miami Herald
Judges see flaw in Mo. death penalty, try to halt woman’s execution
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Seven retired Missouri judges have urged Gov. Mike Parson to stop the execution of Amber McLaughlin, arguing that the death penalty was handed down “via a flaw in Missouri’s capital sentencing scheme.”
McLaughlin, a 49-year-old transgender woman, was convicted of killing her ex-girlfriend in St. Louis County in 2003.
In her 2006 murder trial, the jury could not reach a decision on sentencing and rejected three of the aggravating circumstances prosecutors presented in arguing for the death penalty.
The judge handed down the death sentence. Missouri and Indiana are the only two states that allow a judge to impose capital punishment when a jury cannot make a decision.
In a letter sent to Parson last week, the seven judges, who served across the state including in Jackson and Clay counties, said the trial judge relied on those aggravating circumstances rejected by the jury.
The group urged Parson to commute McLaughlin’s death sentence to life without the possibility of parole “to reflect the conscience of the community that refused to recommend” the death penalty.
—The Kansas City Star
NYC subway shooting suspect to plead guilty in terrorism case
NEW YORK — Frank James, who’s accused of wounding 10 people last spring during a rush hour mass shooting on a Brooklyn subway, is expected to plead guilty in his federal terrorism case, according to a new court filing.
James, 63, who was hit with upgraded charges last week, advised his lawyers “that he wishes to schedule a guilty plea to the superseding indictment,” according to a letter filed Wednesday by his lawyers.
He’s accused of boarding a packed N train on April 12, setting off a smoke bomb and firing a gun 33 times, as the train pulled into the 36th Street station in Sunset Park that morning. Ten people were struck by gunfire. All survived.
—New York Daily News
Taliban threaten women at gunpoint after education ban order
Afghanistan’s Taliban-led government barred women from attending universities across the country and enforced the order at gunpoint in some places, disregarding global condemnation and inflicting another blow to half its population’s rights.
“According to a cabinet decision, you are all instructed to immediately carry out the mentioned order of suspending girls’ education until further notice,” the Taliban’s minister of higher education, Neda Mohammad Nadeem, said in a statement on Tuesday.
The militants wasted little time ensuring the decree was obeyed.
“We came to the university at around 7 a.m. in the morning. The boys were allowed to enter and they pointed guns at us and told us to go home,” Tamana Aref, a female student at the private Kardan University in Kabul, said in a phone call. “The last remaining hope is lost and gone. The country’s been taken back to the 1990s that everybody had feared.”
Minister Nadeem — one of the Taliban’s most conservative members — recently said women’s education isn’t an Afghan tradition, but rather part of Western culture brought to the country during the presence of U.S. forces. Those remarks disregard the role women had during much of the 20th century in Afghanistan, helping draft the country’s constitution, winning the right to vote and running businesses.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized the decision and said it would further set back the Taliban’s efforts to win recognition and support.
—Bloomberg News
