Author: CNN

Editor’s Note: Dr. Peggy Drexler is a research psychologist, documentary film producer and author, including two books about gender and family and the forthcoming “Mean,” a book about women behaving badly, to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2024. Her latest film, “King Coal,” will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023. The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN
 — 

The soap opera that is Prince Harry versus the British monarchy continued this week with the buzz surrounding the upcoming release of his memoir, “Spare.” Contents leaked from the book and released excerpts from his forthcoming interviews with “60 Minutes” and ITV offered some eyebrow-raising anecdotes and heightened the already-sharp tension between the Duke of Sussex and his wife, Meghan Markle, and the royal family. Lurid details aside, the most notable disclosures included new details about Harry’s relationship with his brother, Prince William, whom Harry apparently refers to in the book as his “arch nemesis.”

Public interest in the royal family is at an all-time high — thanks to both real world events that include the loss of Queen Elizabeth II, the impending coronation of Harry’s father King Charles III and the resignation of former Prime Minister Liz Truss, and to the wild popularity of fictionalized series like “The Crown” — and Harry and Meghan are certainly capitalizing on that. Meanwhile, the royal family, including William, has remained silent.

Good for them. Where Harry may have once engendered some sympathy for having endured a lifetime of being the “spare” — the lesser of the two brothers, now fifth in line for the throne (coming in behind his 7-year-old niece, Princess Charlotte) — empathy is running short. Harry and Meghan quit the royal family amid complaints that they preferred a private life as “regular people,” no longer wanting the media attention that came with being royals, including being tabloid fodder. In an excerpt from an upcoming interview, Harry told ITV: “I want a family. Not an institution.”

And yet here they are, fully and willingly creating that fodder themselves.

And fodder it is. Among the gossipy allegations Harry lobs at his brother in “Spare” are details of a physical altercation between the two during which William knocked Harry to the floor and left him scratched and bruised, and claims that William and his wife, Kate Middleton, were the ones responsible for encouraging Harry’s controversial Nazi costume in 2005. Revelations in “Spare” also dish on Meghan’s relationship with Kate, including a claim that Kate demanded Meghan apologize for once suggesting she had “baby brain.” Buckingham Palace has repeatedly declined to comment on the book.

Through these disclosures, what we’re seeing is a little brother desperate to fight back against a lifetime of feeling inferior, but doing so in the dirtiest way possible. And, well, it seems pathetic.

Competition between children is common, and sibling rivalry between brothers even more so, especially when there are just two of them. Certainly, most aren’t born into families with set hierarchies that serve to remind them of their exact place. But brotherly discord has existed throughout time, inspiring countless works of art in all spheres (most of them tragedies). Harry is not special — his is one of the commonest dramas of human nature.

He’s also not a victim, nor blameless. While much has been made since their union began about Meghan’s influence on Harry’s defection from the family, by now it’s clear that he, wounded, went looking for what he needed: someone to help him separate from his family and, perhaps, someone who supported and understood his anger. He found it in her, a woman whose ambition drove her career as an actress and whose own family life included contentious relationships with her half-sister and her father; a woman who was not afraid to express herself, even to royalty.

It’s clear that Harry and Meghan are, at some level, trying to take control of the narrative about themselves after negative press coverage that brought misogyny and racism to bear on an already-toxic family dynamic. But Harry’s attempts now to heal those wounds by making public private family matters aren’t noble, and they won’t save him, either. In fact, through Harry’s revelations, one might now feel the most empathy for William, a man who was raised, from birth, with a set destiny, and, unlike Harry, few choices.

William will be king, and Harry will not. But whether that is something William desires, or something he’ll instead fulfill out of sheer patriotic and familial duty, is unknown. That’s because William is taking the high road of silence. Isn’t it ironic that we know so much more about Harry and Meghan, the couple who resigned from royal life because they wished to remain private, than the couple who opted to stay?

While we can, and should, have some disdain for how Harry has chosen to approach his life circumstances, it’s also possible to have some compassion for him — and understanding. He did not, after all, entirely create himself. And, sheltered and uber-privileged as he was for much of his upbringing, he is likely a fairly immature 38 year old.

Now, he’s pushing back against the machine that made him in the only way he knows how — and possibly doing so because it’s the only way he knows how to make his own money and live independently. He felt exploited as a child and younger adult; he’s now in turn profiting off his family (and earning an enormous amount of money in the process).

Perhaps someday we’ll hear from Harry as Harry, a man truly independent of the royal family from which he has claimed, time and again, he desperately wants to separate. Until then, we can likely expect more of the same negativity, blame, immaturity and victimization — qualities, in fact, quite unbecoming of a royal. But, then, Harry no longer is one.

Buffalo Bills offensive tackle Dion Dawkins could barely contain his excitement when he was asked what it was like for the team to see Damar Hamlin again on a video call Friday morning.

“And then to hear him talk to us, it was everything, and that’s what we needed. Literally, that’s all we needed.”

Dawkins described the past week’s emotions as “a rollercoaster, but a rollercoaster that’s never been ridden.”

“You really go from the saddest you can really feel to the happiest you can feel in a short, drastic time,” Dawkins said. “The saddest is the saddest of the sad where you really don’t know what to do.”

“It’s far from over, but the good thing about it is it’s a positive energy for whatever rollercoaster you want to call it,” he continued. “We’re on a positive ride right now, where we got to see our guy, and we got to see #3 (Hamlin) smile and that’s literally all we wanted, you know? He’s here with us, and that’s all we can ask for is that he’s taking steps forward.”

“It’s still very emotional for a lot of guys, and we’re happy, we’re blessed and extremely thankful,” Dawkins added.

When asked about Hamlin’s toy drive foundation going over $7 million in donations, Dawkins responded with an emphatic: “It’s super lit!”

Editor’s note: This post has been updated with the correct byline.

CNN
 — 

A former athletics official at the University of Southern California was sentenced Friday to six months in prison after pleading guilty in an admissions scandal for allegedly helping students cheat their way into acceptances at the prestigious college.

Donna Heinel, who was USC’s senior associate athletic director, had pleaded guilty in November of 2021 to one count of honest services wire fraud as part of a plea agreement, prosecutors said in a news release Friday.

Heinel was also sentenced to two years of supervised release and will forfeit $160,000, Caroline Ferguson, spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Massachusetts, said. Prosecutors had previously recommended a sentence of two years in prison.

Heinel was part of the sprawling college admissions scam aptly known as Operation Varsity Blues. She was fired in March 2019 over her alleged role in the scheme.

At least 50 people – including Hollywood stars, top CEOs, college coaches and standardized test administrators – were accused of taking part in the scheme to cheat on tests and admit students to leading institutions as athletes, regardless of their abilities.

William “Rick” Singer, the plot’s accused mastermind, was sentenced Wednesday to 3.5 years in federal prison, the longest sentence in a case that has rattled America’s higher education system.

Singer oversaw the scam in which wealthy parents, desperate to get their children into elite universities, paid huge sums to cheat on standardized tests, bribe university coaches and administrators who had influence over admissions, and then lie about it to authorities.

Singer pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud the US and obstruction of justice in March 2019. He cooperated with the government’s investigation in the months prior to the public announcement of the case and in the years since.

In federal court in Boston on Wednesday, Singer apologized for his actions and said his morals took a backseat to “winning and keeping score.”

In Heinel’s case, the evidence included an audio recording in which Singer can be heard saying, “Donna Heinel at USC to help Audrey get in through crew.” Another recording points to Singer highlighting Heinel’s ability to help another student get into USC.

Heinel’s name was also mentioned several times in audio that was used as evidence in the trials of two separate parents, John Wilson and Gamal Abdelaziz, who paid Singer hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their children into prestigious universities including USC, Stanford and Harvard, court records show.

A federal jury last month found Abdelaziz and Wilson guilty of all accusations, which included various fraud and bribery charges.

New York
CNN
 — 

The NFL’s decision not to resume or replay Monday’s Bills-Bengals game, which was halted after Buffalo safety Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest, won’t be particularly costly the world’s richest sports league.

After the league announced late Thursday that the game will not be completed, the home-team Cincinnati Bengals notified fans who were in attendance that they will receive a credit for the price of their tickets and parking to be applied to their future purchases – either upcoming playoff games or their 2023 season tickets. Refunds are available for fans who would prefer a credit.

The average ticket price for a non-premium seat to a Bengals game is about $88, the cheapest in the NFL, according to Team Marketing Reports, which tracks ticket prices. TMR estimates that the cost of all the tickets, both regular and premium seats, for the game came to about $6.7 million.

Although that’s not insignificant, it’s a drop in the bucket for the NFL, which had an estimated total league-wide revenue of $18 billion in the 2021-22 season, sources with knowledge of the league’s finances told CNN. The gate at the missing game comes to about 37 cents for every $1,000 of league-wide revenue last year – and the league’s sales are expected to grow this year.

If it opted to replay or continue the postponed game, the NFL almost certainly would have needed to push back the playoffs that are set to start next weekend. That game likely would have received enormous fan interest and ratings approximating those of a playoff game or Super Bowl. But it would have posed logistical challenges for the league and its broadcast partners, which had made plans for almost a year for the upcoming playoff games.

The league said it decided to skip the resumption of the game because its outcome would not have determined which teams qualified for the playoffs and which teams were eliminated, even if the outcome would have affected the seeding of the playoffs.

The fans who bought tickets to the game on the secondary market, likely for more than the face value of the tickets, will likely have those purchases canceled by the resale service. The statement from the Bengals to fans said that’s what Ticketmaster plans to do for tickets purchased on its Ticket Exchange service. Two other major resale services, StubHub and SeatGeek, confirmed they are also canceling sales of tickets for the game, and refunding the purchase price of the tickets and fees paid by buyers.

That means that ticketholders will lose the profit they might have received from selling the tickets, but those who bought the tickets won’t be hit with the difference between what they paid, and what they could get in a refund.

New York
CNN
 — 

Famed Manhattan hospital Mount Sinai is moving newborns in their intensive care unit to other hospitals ahead of a planned New York nursing union strike.

Around 10,000 nurses at five private New York City hospitals are set to strike Monday after not yet reaching agreements on contracts and working conditions, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) said Friday.

“We have NICU infants being transferred to area hospitals today because of the strike notice,” a Mount Sinai Health System spokesperson told CNN. “We are seeking a resolution. The impact is great.”

But the union says management from the main Mount Sinai hospital campus walked away from the negotiating table just after midnight Friday — and also canceled bargaining sessions scheduled for the day.

“Our main goal in these negotiations is to improve patient care, to save staffing and fair wages, to recruit and retain nurses,” NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said at a briefing with reporters Friday. The union said it doesn’t know if Mount Sinai management plans to negotiate over the weekend.

The five New York City hospitals set for the nursing strike Monday are Mount Sinai, Mount Sinai Morningside and West, Montefiore, BronxCare and Flushing Hospital Medical Center. Hagans said if the strike goes ahead, its timeline will be open-ended.

NYSNA has announced tentative agreements with three other New York City hospitals after giving the hospitals a 10-day warning of an impending strike.

Mount Sinai’s spokesperson said in a statement to reporters that it is “dismayed by NYSNA’s reckless actions, adding that “the union is jeopardizing patients’ care, and it’s forcing valued Mount Sinai nurses to choose between their dedication to patient care and their own livelihoods.”

Hagans, however, had strong words for Sinai at Friday’s reporter briefing.

“Nurses are frustrated. We are holding the line for better staffing and salaries,” Hagans said. “The bosses there have repeatedly broken their promises on staffing. Our safe staffing standards are routinely violated and management gaslight the nurses when we try to enforce our current contract.”

“There are still hundreds of nursing vacancies the administration needs to fill. Shame! And shame on Sinai for walking out on the bargaining last night,” she said.

The Mount Sinai spokesperson did not comment on Hagan’s statement about management walking away from talks.

But the hospital said the deal put forth at Thursday evening’s bargaining session was the same one that NYSNA has agreed to with union nurses at the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. Tentative agreements have also been reached with union nurses at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn and Richmond University Medical Center in Staten Island.

Mount Sinai also said it has offered a 19.1% compounded pay raise over three years, which is the same offer other hospital systems in the city have made.

“Still, NYSNA refuses to back off its plan to strike on Monday, even though it has called off planned strikes at other New York City hospitals,” the Mount Sinai spokesperson said. “It’s not reasonable for NYSNA to ask for a significant wage increase above and beyond these other sites.”

Hagans said the tentative agreements increase salaries and conditions for nurses, which will help recruit and retain enough staff to deal with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and other patient care needs.

The union president added that “we are hoping” to come to a deal for the remaining hospitals ahead of Monday to avoid strike action, which would begin 6 am ET Monday if tentative deals are not reached by 11:59 pm Sunday.

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.

CNN
 — 

A snowy owl that looks like it should be flying about the wintry wizarding world of Harry Potter has been spotted among the palm trees of beachy Southern California.

Snowy owls are native to the Arctic tundra, where their largely white coats camouflage them in the snow, according to the National Audubon Society, which protects birds across the Americas.

“They’re most common in very, very North Canada,” said Jaret Davey, a wildlife technician and volunteer coordinator at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach, California. “The southern limit of their winter range is in the northern United States. So it’s not uncommon for them to be in Washington or Minnesota or Maine in the winter. But to be this far south is really exceptional.”

Residents in a neighborhood in Cypress, California — about 25 miles south of downtown Los Angeles — got a Christmas miracle when the owl first appeared in mid-December. It has been spotted every day since December 27.

“It’s astonishing to see a snowy owl in Southern California,” said Chris Spurgeon, program chair and member of the board of directors at the Pasadena Audubon Society, a local chapter of the National Audubon Society serving the Greater Pasadena area of California.

Spurgeon and Davey aren’t alone in their excitement. There have been hundreds of people admiring the owl some days, and some have traveled hundreds of miles, Davey said.

“In February … I flew to Manitoba (Canada), and then drove several hours north just to see a snowy owl,” Spurgeon said. “It was 25 degrees below zero in northern Canada. I never thought I’d see one standing in my shirtsleeves on a suburban street in 70-degree weather.”

Snowy owls are classified as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources’ 2021 Red List of Threatened Species. There are fewer than 500,000 snowy owls in the world, which isn’t a huge number “when it comes to birds,” Spurgeon said.

“We could be vastly wrong with that number because they do live so far away from most people,” he said. “And unfortunately, many birds are threatened by climate change. With the changing conditions in the Arctic, it’s affecting them as well as everyone else.”

No one knows exactly why and how the West Coast snowy owl got to a place so far from its natural habitat, but bird experts have a few theories.

“Birds that migrate do occasionally do crazy things: go in the wrong direction, go too far, migrate at the wrong time of year, stuff like that,” Spurgeon said.

This can also happen if a bird is young and hasn’t migrated many times before, Davey said. The brown spots on snowy owls’ feathers usually get wider as they age, so the size of the California owl’s spots suggest it could have been born within the last couple years, Spurgeon said.

The owl could have hitched a ride on a passing cargo ship while flying across the sea, went all the way to a seaport and found itself back on land, Spurgeon and Davey said. It also could have escaped from being illegally kept as a pet.

“Oftentimes with really beautiful animals like the snowy owl, people will get them on a black market and then illegally keep them as pets,” Davey said. However, he said the owl did not appear to have a leg band, clipped talons or clipped wings that would suggest they had been kept in captivity.

When Spurgeon saw the snowy owl, it didn’t look emaciated or unhealthy, he said. But some birdwatchers did think the owl might have been experiencing symptoms of heat stress during the first couple of days, Davey said.

“It looked like it was breathing really heavy. Its feathers were all fluffed up to try to shed heat,” Davey added. “Since then, it seems to have been doing just fine.”

Southern California is relatively cold now, but the owl could be at risk when the weather warms up in the spring, Davey said.

Snowy owls are carnivores and typically eat small rodents — especially lemmings — but can eat animals as big as geese, Davey said.

With parks, open fields and grasslands nearby, experts think the owl shouldn’t have difficulty finding food during its stay. In fact, there has already been evidence that the owl has been eating well — in a pellet the owl regurgitated, staff at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center found a whole skeleton of what might have been a gopher.

“All owls do regurgitate small little pellets just of indigestible material because, unlike us, where (when) we eat a piece of meat we eat around the bone, birds of prey just eat the whole thing,” Davey said. “For the small little bones they can’t digest, they just cough it back up.”

Rep. Kevin McCarthy succeeded in winning over some opponents in the 12th and 13th ballots Friday as he continued his work to secure the House speakership.

The process has now lasted four days — the longest speaker contest in more than 160 years. Democrats, meanwhile, have remained unified around their leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.

The House has voted to adjourn until 10 p.m. ET, when McCarthy is confident he will finally have enough votes to win the job. McCarthy said that when the House reconvenes, “I believe we’ll have the votes to finish this once and for all.” 

Here’s how the latest votes played out:

12th ballot:

13th ballot:

Here’s what else you need to know to get you up to speed:

Surge of support: McCarthy started Friday saying he thought some of his fellow Republicans who have blocked his bid for speaker would vote for him. That is what happened — 14 GOP lawmakers who were holding out, did vote for McCarthy during the 12th vote. An additional Republican, Rep. Andy Harris, flipped his vote in the 13th ballot. McCarthy said he thinks some minds were changed after negotiations over the last few days. No other Republican was nominated to oppose McCarthy in the 13th vote, though the six remaining hardliners voted in the “others” category for Jordan.

These lawmakers flipped, across both votes:

Moving forward: McCarthy’s team sees Rep. Matt Gaetz as their biggest obstacle now, multiple sources said. They see him as trying to gin up opposition. McCarthy’s allies are seeing whether any absent members can return and whether they can flip two holdouts: Rep. Matt Rosendale and Rep.-elect Eli Crane, or convince them to vote “present,” according to sources familiar.

Remember: McCarthy does not technically need 218 votes to become speaker. A majority of those present and voting is required to get the speakership, which is usually 218 lawmakers. But if enough people skip the vote or vote “present,” the number of votes required for a majority can drop. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was elected with 216 votes in 2021.

Role of the House clerk: In his nomination of Jeffries during the 12th round of voting, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn started off by thanking Cheryl Johnson, the House clerk who has presided over voting for four days this week. Johnson is no stranger to turbulent times in the House. She has been present for two impeachment hearings as well as the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Read more about the clerk here.

Editor’s Note: Kara Alaimo, an associate professor in the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University, writes about issues affecting women and social media. Her book, “This Feed Is on Fire: Why Social Media Is Toxic for Women and Girls — And How We Can Reclaim It,” will be published by Alcove Press in 2024. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.

CNN
 — 

Like many parents, I can’t remember the last time my children made it through an entire week of school. With the country battling a “tripledemic” of Covid-19, RSV and the flu, my family was sick for much of the fall. The week before school closed for holiday break, one of my daughters was out for four of the five days. On the day it reopened, my kids made it to lunchtime before I got the call that one of them wasn’t feeling well.

Sound familiar? So many parents and caregivers these days are sick of our kids being sick. And what’s making things even worse is the common workplace expectation that we should simply work from home when we or our kids are ill.

Officially, as of March 2022, 86% of full-time employees in the US were offered sick leave benefits, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But what’s happening unofficially is another story. In our new world of remote work, my mom friends keep telling me their bosses and colleagues seem to assume they will keep working from home when their kids are sick, rather than taking the time off their employers officially offer. They say that even when they let their colleagues know they are caring for a sick child, co-workers continue to call and email, asking when certain tasks will be done or if they can hop on a Zoom call.

According to an online survey conducted in November 2021 for Beamery, a workforce management company, 65% of workers in the US and UK felt more pressure to work while sick as a result of remote work.

This is awful. First, when we’re sick, depriving ourselves of rest may prolong our illness. And when young kids are sick, we can’t give them the full attention they need if we’re distracted by work.

What’s more, the “tripledemic” we’re dealing with is requiring even more of our time because of our over-stressed health system. In recent weeks, my husband and I have spent hours waiting on hold to reach the pediatrician’s office and gone on multi-pharmacy hunts for prescription medicine and children’s Tylenol. We’ve even had to enlist family members in other states to help us find children’s painkillers due to low supply.

Adding to the challenge is the fact that some of the viruses going around these days tend to cause high fevers. When my children spike a fever above 105, our pediatrician’s protocol is for us to make an appointment, but not to wait for it and instead bring them immediately to the office. When this happens, it’s not just time-consuming — it’s terrifying. You can’t simultaneously contribute to a conference call in these circumstances.

Of course, companies can’t give parents months of leave to recover from all of these viruses. (Workers typically get a week or so of leave per year.) But employers should be flexible in allowing people to use sick days partially. You might take off for a few hours to take your kid to the pediatrician, and then put in a couple hours of work while they’re napping.

What’s critical is that colleagues respect that staffers can’t keep their normal workload or hours when their kids are sick. Employers should encourage workers to unplug when they need to.

With the wave of layoffs hitting many companies, parents shouldn’t have to worry they could be jeopardizing their careers when they have to care for sick kids. Managers should make clear they allow and — this is the crucial part — encourage workers to take the time they need when they or their children are sick.

In addition to communicating such norms and policies, supervisors should model them by not working when they are sick. And they should encourage staffers to pitch in and help one another when this happens. These are the kinds of companies where most of us would probably want to work, so these policies would likely pay dividends by leaving them with happier, more loyal employees.

It’s unreasonable to expect workers to be able to keep doing their jobs normally when they or their children are sick. As so many of us battle an epic onslaught of illnesses, changing these expectations would leave our workplaces a whole lot healthier.

CNN
 — 

Officials in Albuquerque, New Mexico, are investigating a fifth shooting that may be connected to a string of shootings involving the homes and offices of local Democratic elected leaders as targets.

The New Mexico Attorney General, two state senators, a current county commissioner, and a former commissioner have been affected by the five separate shootings, the Albuquerque Police Department said in a press release.

Nobody was injured, and detectives are working to determine if the shootings are related.

“Our elected officials have chosen to serve, they should never be made to feel in danger in the comfort of their own homes,” Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said. “I have personally spoken with each of the victims, and we are working with them, and other elected officials (to) help provide any information about these incidents and also help them feel safe and be safe.”

The latest shooting to be reported occurred in the early morning hours of December 10 at the former campaign office of Democrat Raul Torrez, who was elected as New Mexico Attorney General, APD said in a news release Thursday.

APD’s ShotSpotter system “detected multiple gunshots in the area of the building,” but Torrez had already moved out of the office and was not injured in the shooting, police said.

Evidence was collected at the scene and “is now being evaluated in connection with the shootings related to four other local, elected officials in Albuquerque,” police said.

The first shooting occurred on December 4 when eight rounds were shot at the home of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa in southeast Albuquerque, police said.

“In early December, I returned from Christmas shopping to my home being shot up,” Barboa said in a statement posted on social media. “It was terrifying. My house had four shots through the front door and windows, where just hours before my grandbaby and I were playing in the living room.”

Days later, on December 11, more than a dozen “gunshot impacts were identified on walls and the house” of then-Bernalillo County Commissioner Debbie O’Malley in the North Valley, according to police.

On January 3, at least eight shots were fired at the home of state Sen. Linda Lopez in southwest Albuquerque, police said.

“Myself and my children were awakened by some loud noises. Initially I thought they were fireworks,” Lopez told CNN affiliate KOAT. “It’s very scary. You know, as a mom, it’s something you never want to experience.”

Three of the gunshots made it into her daughter’s bedroom and two were fired into Lopez’s bedroom, KOAT reported.

A fourth shooting took place on January 5 when police received reports “of gunshots heard in the area of a downtown law office” where state Sen. Antonio Moe Maestas works.

“APD’s ShotSpotter system registered three shots fired at the same location at 11:41 a.m.,” police said. “Officers did not find any damage to the building.”

Maestas’ “family is safe and sound,” he said on Twitter.

Police Chief Harold Medina said his department is working with state and federal partners on this case.

“Fortunately, nobody has been injured by these shootings,” Medina said. “But every time someone fires a gun into a home or business, there is a potential for tragedy. Our detectives are working overtime to track down the offender or offenders and hold them responsible.”

Barboa, who is currently raising her family in the same home that she grew up in, told CNN the experience is “terrifying and traumatizing.”

“It reminds me how deeply impactful gun violence is in our country, and particularly (in my) home state of New Mexico,” she said. “And really what I am experiencing, too many of my neighbors experience on a regular basis.”

CNN
 — 

A Mexico City federal judge halted the extradition of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán’s son, alleged drug cartel leader Ovidio Guzmán, to the United States on Friday, a day after he was arrested in an intense operation in northern Mexico that led to the deaths of 29 people.

The US is seeking Guzmán’s extradition for drug trafficking and has offered up to $5 million for information leading to the capture of the man they say is “a senior member of the Sinaloa Cartel.”

On Thursday, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard confirmed that there is an arrest warrant in the US dated September 19, 2019, but said that the possible extradition of Guzmán would not be immediate due to the formalities of the law. He also stated that Guzmán has ongoing legal proceedings in Mexico.

On Friday, the judge also suspended a measure that prevented Guzmán from communicating with his relatives and his legal team.

According to the legal resolution, Guzmán’s legal team has three days to decide whether to ratify the measures they have filed in favor of their client.

CNN has requested a response from Guzmán’s defense but has not yet heard back. He is being held in the Altiplano maximum security federal prison, officials said Friday.

Video of El Chapo’s son being arrested (October 2019)

01:31

– Source:
CNN

Guzmán’s father, “El Chapo,” had escaped from Altiplano prison on July 11, 2015 through a mile-long tunnel that featured a motorcycle on tracks. He was later captured and convicted in the US four years later of 10 counts, including engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, drug trafficking and firearms charges. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years and ordered to pay $12.6 billion in forfeiture.

Ovidio Guzmán was previously arrested by federal authorities in October 2019, but was released on the orders of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to avoid further bloodshed.

His latest arrest comes days before US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visit Mexico City to attend the North American Leaders Summit.

Capturing Guzmán could be a way for López Obrador to show the US that he is “in control of the armed forces and Mexico’s security situation,” Gladys McCormick, a associate professor at Syracuse University who focuses on Mexico-U.S. relations, told CNN in an email.

“It also defuses the power behind any ask from the Biden administration to stem the tide of fentanyl and other narcotics across the border,” she added.

After Guzmán’s arrest in Culiacán on Thursday, chaos erupted in the city. The authorities asked citizens to seek refuge due to clashes in several areas.

His arrest was the result of a lengthy operation which involved 200 special forces, Defense Minister Luis Cresencio Sandoval said Friday. Local officials urged citizens to shelter at home amid clashes with cartel members in various parts of the city.

At least 19 suspected gang members and 10 military personnel died during violent clashes in the northern Mexican state of Sinaloa, after authorities arrested Guzmán, along with 21 others. No civilian deaths or injuries were reported.

Security at Altiplano prison has been increased since Guzmán was detained, the minister added.

The state of Sinaloa, where Culiacán is located, is home to one of the world’s most powerful narcotics trafficking organizations, the Sinaloa Cartel, of which “El Chapo” was the leader.

The US State Department, which was offering a $5 million reward for information leading to Guzmán’s arrest, wrote that law enforcement investigations indicated that Guzmán and his brother, Joaquín Guzmán-López, “inherited a great deal of the narcotics proceeds” following the death of another brother, Edgar Guzmán-López.

They “began investing large amounts of the cash into the purchasing of marijuana in Mexico and cocaine in Colombia. They also began purchasing large amounts of ephedrine from Argentina and arranged for the smuggling of the product into Mexico as they began to experiment with methamphetamine production,” the State Department said.

The brothers are also alleged to oversee an estimated 11 “methamphetamine labs in the state of Sinaloa,” the State Department says.