Police: 16 immigrants locked inside rig at Texas truck stop
Police: 16 immigrants locked inside rig at Texas truck stop
EDINBURG, Texas (AP) — Police in Texas acting on a tip found 16 immigrants locked inside a tractor-trailer parked at a gas station about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the border with Mexico, less than a month after 10 people died in the back of a hot truck in San Antonio.
Edinburg Assistant Police Chief Oscar Trevino says the immigrants may have been locked inside the 18-wheeler in Edinburg for at least eight hours before being freed by officers late Sunday morning. He had earlier said there were 17 immigrants locked in the tractor-trailer before correcting the number on Monday to 16.
Trevino said none of the people inside the tractor-trailer required medical attention. He said they were hungry and thirsty and were given food and water at the scene.
Those found locked in the tractor-trailer included eight people from El Salvador, six from Mexico and two from Romania, said Manuel Padilla, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Border Patrol sector chief for the Rio Grande Valley at Texas’ southernmost point.
A man and woman who Trevino said are Cuban nationals were in charge of the rig and have been detained.
Driver purposely steers into French pizzeria, killing girl
SEPT-SORTS, France (AP) — A man who may have been trying to kill himself rammed his car into a pizzeria east of Paris on Monday, killing a 13-year-old girl and injuring her younger brother and at least 11 others, authorities said.
The driver was immediately arrested. Police said the man’s actions in the town of Sept-Sorts were deliberate, but not thought to be terrorism-related.
The 13-year-old girl and her brother were among the restaurant patrons eating on the outdoor terrace of Pizzeria Cesena when a man in a BMW accelerated toward them, an official with the national gendarme service told The Associated Press.
The girl died immediately, while the boy’s injuries are considered life-threatening, the official said. At least three others were hospitalized in serious condition, and eight more sustained light injuries, said the official, who was not authorized to be publicly named.
The incident reignited fears in France after a string of attacks in which a vehicle was the weapon of choice. An Algerian man drove his car into a group of French soldiers last week, and an Islamic extremist truck attack in the French city of Nice left 86 people dead a little more than a year ago.
Social media harnessed to expose white nationalists at rally
NEW YORK (AP) — One of the social media posts resembled a wanted poster or a missing-persons flyer: Photographs of men were arranged in rows, seeking their names and employers.
But the Facebook post wasn’t circulated by law enforcement in the search for a suspect or by relatives looking for a missing loved one. It was an example of ordinary people trying to harness the power of social media to identify and shame the white nationalists who attended last weekend’s violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
A Twitter account dedicated to calling out racism identified people who attended the rally using photos culled from the news and social media and listed their places of employment and other information. The account with the handle YesYoureRacist was created by Logan Smith of Raleigh, North Carolina, who said his followers grew from around 64,000 on Saturday to more than 300,000 Monday afternoon.
“I’m a white Jewish man. So I strongly believe that white people in particular have a responsibility to stand up against bigotry because bigotry thrives on silence,” he told The Associated Press. “It requires good people standing by and doing nothing.”
A website created Sunday dedicated itself to collecting the names, social media profiles, colleges and employers of people photographed at the rally. At least one person has lost his job as a result.
Americans sentenced in Panama for 5 murders
PANAMA CITY (AP) — U.S. citizen William Dathan Holbert was sentenced to 47 years in prison by a court in Panama for robbing and killing five other Americans in a Caribbean tourist destination, authorities said Monday.
Holbert’s ex-wife Laura Reese was sentenced to 26 years for her role.
Authorities said Holbert admitted killing five people between 2007 and 2010 in Bocas del Toro province in order to steal their property.
Holbert’s lawyer, Claudia Alvarado, suggested an appeal was likely.
Holbert and Reese were arrested while trying to enter Nicaragua from Costa Rica in 2010.
Hate-watch groups agree rally was largest in decade or more
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Authorities have not provided a crowd estimate for the Saturday rally of white nationalists in Charlottesville that descended into chaos. But two organizations that track hate groups and were monitoring the event said it was the largest white supremacist gathering in a decade or more.
An Associated Press reporter and photographer who were on the scene all day estimated the white nationalist group at about 500 and the counterprotesters at double that, based on in-person observations and photos, including some taken from just above street level.
Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller said she did not have a crowd estimate. A city spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the crowd size.
Southern Poverty Law Center spokeswoman Heidi Beirich told The Associated Press the next-biggest white supremacist rally her group knew of took place in 2002 in the nation’s capital and drew around 300 people.
Saturday was “a pretty big deal in this world,” she said.
18 dead in suspected jihadist attack on Burkina Faso eatery
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso (AP) — Hours after suspected Islamic extremists opened fire as patrons dined at the popular restaurant where she worked as a waitress, Amy Sawadogo was still wandering around barefoot at a crisis center asking about her colleagues.
“I just want to go to the hospital and see who is still alive,” the distraught young woman, who was still dressed in her uniform, said early Monday. “I am calling them in vain, no response.”
The death toll rose to 18 and authorities said many of the victims were children dining with their families on a Sunday night at the Aziz Istanbul restaurant when horror struck once again in Burkina Faso’s capital of Ouagadougou. At least 22 people were wounded.
Less than two years ago, jihadists killed 30 people in a similar attack at the nearby Cappuccino cafe, which only recently reopened in a city where fear of another attack has been high.
Eight of the dead in Sunday’s attack were citizens of Burkina Faso, authorities said. Three Lebanese and two Canadians were also killed, according to the victims’ respective foreign ministries. Other victims came from Kuwait, Senegal, Nigeria, Turkey and France, state prosecutor Maizan Sereme said.