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Suspect arrested in theft of Kristi Noem’s purse

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — A suspect has been arrested in connection with the theft of U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s purse at a Washington restaurant, the Secret Service said on Sunday, and Noem said the individual has been living in the United States illegally.

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The Secret Service did not identify the suspect by name but said the individual was a serial offender who was not a threat to Noem, the former South Dakota governor who was appointed to her post by President Donald Trump.

The Washington Metropolitan Police Department said a 49-year-old man named Mario Bustamante Leiva was arrested on Saturday night and charged with two counts of robbery involving two separate incidents on April 12 and April 17. The purse snatching involving Noem was on April 20, Easter Sunday.

The Washington police said the man faces “additional charges for an offense being investigated by the United States Secret Service,” an apparent reference to the theft involving Noem.

“This individual is a career criminal who has been in our country illegally for years,” Noem said in a statement that also credited the Washington police and the Secret Service for their work on the arrest.

A U.S. Department of Homeland Security representative did not immediately respond to questions about the man’s identity or his immigration status.

Noem, the top official charged with protecting the United States from terrorism and other types of threats, has been a proponent of the Republican president’s crackdown on illegal immigration. Shortly after she was confirmed to her post in January, Noem joined officers in an immigration enforcement operation in New York City.

Noem’s purse contained her Department of Homeland Security badge and $3,000 in cash, according to media reports.

Titanic survivor’s letter sells for nearly $400,000

(NYT) — Days before the Titanic struck an iceberg, a first-class passenger, Col. Archibald Gracie, described the vessel in a letter written while on board: “It is a fine ship but I shall await my journey’s end before I pass judgment on her.”

Gracie’s journey on the Titanic had a catastrophic end, but he fared better than most.

He was on the top deck of the ship, gripping a railing, as it plunged into the sea. He said he was “swirled” under water before he got to a raft, where he spent hours floating on icy waters before being rescued.

The letter he wrote was sold Saturday at an auction for 300,000 pounds (about $399,000), according to Henry Aldridge and Son, an auction house in Wiltshire, England.

The auction house said the letter, written in neat, cursive handwriting, was addressed to an unidentified European ambassador, the great-uncle of the seller. The letterhead shows a triangular red flag with a white star and is printed with the words “On board R.M.S. Titanic.”

The letter was dated April 10, 1912, the day the ship set sail from Southampton, England. On April 12, it was postmarked in London, where it was received at the Waldorf Hotel. The Titanic struck an iceberg just before midnight April 14 and sank the next day.

The buyer of the letter was based in the United States, according to Andrew Aldridge, the managing director of Henry Aldridge and Son. The auction house did not publicly identify the buyer or the seller.

Aldridge said in an email that the stories of the ship’s passengers “are told through the memorabilia” and that “their memories are kept alive through those items.”

The auction house had initially expected the letter to sell for up to 60,000 pounds (nearly $80,000).

Gracie, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, was a high-profile survivor of the Titanic disaster, in which about 1,500 people perished.

He died eight months later, in December 1912, of complications from diseases, but his doctors and his family said that the real cause was that he had never recovered from the shock of the Titanic disaster, according to The New York Times.

Israeli military strikes near Beirut, targeting Hezbollah

(NYT) — The Israeli military Sunday afternoon struck a residential neighborhood in the southern suburbs of Beirut in an area that is a stronghold of the militant group Hezbollah.

In a joint statement after the strike, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz said the military had targeted infrastructure in the Beirut suburb Dahiyeh, where Hezbollah holds sway. Israel said the Iranian-backed group was storing precision missiles there.

Videos on social media and on regional news media showed a large cloud of smoke billowing upward from the area after the strikes. Al-Manar, a Lebanese news site affiliated with Hezbollah, said that the attack caused “significant damage” to the surrounding area.

The Israeli military said that its air force had struck a weapons storage site and that “storage of missiles in this infrastructure site constitutes a blatant violation of the understandings between Israel and Lebanon.” The military said it took steps “to mitigate the risk of harming uninvolved civilians,” including issuing a warning to civilians and using “precise munitions.”

Lebanon’s Civil Defense said on social media that it was extinguishing fires set off by the Israeli strike. The group said ambulances and fire teams had been standing by “and were able to extinguish the fires at a record speed without recording any injuries.”