ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Francis on Sunday revealed that a secret peace “mission” in Russia’s war in Ukraine was under way, though he gave no details, and said the Vatican is willing to help facilitate the return of Ukrainian children taken to Russia during the war.
“I’m available to do anything,” Francis said during an airborne press conference en route home from Hungary. “There’s a mission that’s not public that’s underway; when it’s public I’ll talk about it.”
Francis gave no details when asked whether he spoke about peace initiatives during his talks in Budapest this weekend with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban or the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church in Hungary.
Deportations of Ukrainian children have been a concern since Russia invaded Ukraine last year. Francis said the Holy See had already helped mediate some prisoner exchanges and would do “all that is humanly possible” to reunite families.
“All human gestures help. Gestures of cruelty don’t help,” Francis said.
The International Criminal Court in March issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s children’s commissioner, accusing them of war crimes for abducting children from Ukraine. Russia has denied any wrongdoing, contending the children were moved for their safety.
Last week Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal met with Francis at the Vatican and asked him to help return Ukrainian children taken following the Russian invasion.
“I asked His Holiness to help us return home Ukrainians, Ukrainian children who are detained, arrested, and criminally deported to Russia,″ Shmyhal told the Foreign Press Association after the audience.
Francis recalled that the Holy See had facilitated some prisoner exchanges, working through embassies, and was open to Ukraine’s request to reunite Ukrainian children with their families.
The prisoner exchanges “went well. I think it could go well also for this. It’s important,” he said of the family reunifications. “The Holy See is available to do it because it’s the right thing,” he added. “We have to do all that is humanly possible.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Sunday urged Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to stop shipping busloads of migrants to Chicago, saying the city does not have the resources to absorb more.
“Your lack of confederation or coordination in an attempt to cause chaos and score political points has resulted in a critical tipping point in our ability to receive individuals and families in a safe, orderly, and dignified way," said Lightfoot, a Democrat who is set to leave office in May, in the letter to Abbott, a Republican.
Saying she had been informed that Texas meant to resume sending migrants on May 1, Lightfoot added: “We simply have no more shelters, spaces, or resources to accommodate an increase of individuals at this level, with little coordination or care, that does not pose a risk to them or others.”
The transporting of migrants from the Southwest to cities led by Democrats — some have been dropped off at Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence in Washington — has become a hot button issue, particularly when migrants show up in communities that have not had prior warnings about when they would arrive. New York Mayor Eric Adams has been particularly outspoken about the hardships his city is facing, though he has also been sharply critical of President Joe Biden for not dealing with the situation at the border.
Officials in border states have blamed the Biden administration for the influx of migrants and said they are trying to distribute the burden of having to accommodate all these people. In discussing sending migrants to Washington in 2022, Abbott said: “We are sending them to the United States capital, where the Biden administration will be able to more immediately address the needs of the people that they are allowing to come across our border.”
Abbott’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Lightfoot’s note.
In her letter, Lightfoot complained that some migrants have arrived “in dire need of food, water, and clothing” and echoed criticism that these migrants are being used as political pawns.
“I know by your actions that you either do not see or do not care about the trauma these migrants have already faced and continue to suffer under the humanitarian crisis you have created,” she wrote. “But I beseech you anyway: treat these individuals with the respect and dignity that they deserve.”
Lightfoot recently lost her bid for a second term, finishing third in the election Feb. 28 out of nine declared candidates. Cook County Board Commissioner Brandon Johnson, who subsequently defeated Paul Vallas in a runoff, is to be sworn in as mayor May 15.
CLEVELAND, Texas — Law enforcement officers said Sunday they’ve been unable to find a gunman who fled after killing five people in a rural Texas town, offering $80,000 in total reward money in hopes of motivating someone to come forward with information about the suspect’s whereabouts.
“We do not know where he is,” said James Smith, the FBI’s special agent in charge. Police were going door to door looking for the suspect.
The suspect, Francisco Oropesa, 38, was considered armed and dangerous after fleeing the area Friday, likely on foot, San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said late Saturday. He said authorities had widened the search to 20 miles from the scene of the shooting, which occurred after the suspect’s neighbors asked him to stop firing off rounds in his yard
Investigators found clothes and a phone while combing a rural area that includes dense layers of forest, but tracking dogs lost the scent, Capers said. Authorities were able to identify Oropesa by an identity card issued by Mexican authorities to citizens who reside outside the country, as well as doorbell camera footage. He said police have also interviewed the suspect’s wife.
Police recovered the AR-15-style rifle that Oropesa allegedly used in the shootings but authorities were not sure if he was carrying another weapon, the sheriff said. There were other weapons in the suspect’s home, he said.
“He could be anywhere now,” Capers said on Saturday.
The attack happened near the town of Cleveland, north of Houston, on a street where some residents say neighbors often unwind by firing off guns.
It was a much quieter scene Sunday. Police crime scene tape had been removed from around the victims’ home. Some people stopped by to leave flowers.
An FBI agent, several Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and other officers could be seen walking around the neighborhood, going door-to-door and trying to speak with neighbors. The agent and officers declined to comment about what they were doing.
As the troopers were speaking to residents at one house, a red truck pulling a travel trailer drove through the neighborhood. One trooper stopped the truck and asked the driver, “Mind if I take a look inside the truck?” The driver agreed and allowed the trooper to go inside the vehicle. After inspecting the trailer, the trooper let the driver continue on his way.
Veronica Pineda, 34, who lives across the street from the suspect’s home, said authorities asked if they could search her property to see if he might be hiding there.
“That’s good for them to do that,” said the mother of five, adding that she remained fearful because the gunman hasn’t yet been captured.
“It is kind of scary. You never know where he can be. I don’t think he will be here anymore,” she said.
She said she didn’t know Oropesa well but occasionally saw him, his wife and son ride their horses on the street and believes the family have lived there five or six years. Pineda said neighbors have called authorities in the past to complain about the firing of weapons.
The victims of Friday’s shooting were between the ages of 8 and 31 years old and all were believed to be from Honduras, Capers said. All were shot “from the neck up,” he said. A GoFundMe page was set up to repatriate the bodies of two victims, a mother and son, to their native country.
Enrique Reina, Honduras’ secretary of foreign affairs and international cooperation, said on Twitter that the Honduran Consulate in Houston was contacting the families in connection with the repatriation of remains as well as U.S. authorities to keep apprised of the investigation.
The suspect’s last name was originally given as Oropeza by authorities, but the FBI in Houston said in a Tweet on Sunday that it was now referring to him as Oropesa to “better reflect his identity in law enforcement systems.” The FBI said the case “remains a fluid investigation.”
The attack was the latest act of gun violence in what has been a record pace of mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year, some of which have also involved semiautomatic rifles.
Capers said there were 10 people in the house — some of whom had just moved there earlier in the week — but no one else was injured. He said two of the victims were found in a bedroom laying over two children in an apparent attempt to shield them.
A total of three children found covered in blood in the home were taken to a hospital but found to be uninjured, Capers said.
FBI spokesperson Christina Garza said investigators do not believe those at the home were members of a single family. The victims were identified as Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 8.
The confrontation came after the neighbors walked up to a fence and asking the suspect to stop shooting rounds, Capers said. He said the suspect responded by telling them that it was his property. Doorbell video captured him walking up to the front door with a rifle.
The shooting took place on a rural pothole-riddled street where single-story homes sit on 1-acre lots and are surrounded by a thick canopy of trees. A horse could be seen behind the victims’ home, while in the front yard of Oropesa’s house a dog and chickens wandered about.
Rene Arevalo Sr., who lives a few houses down, said he heard gunshots around midnight but didn’t think anything of it.
“It’s a normal thing people do around here, especially on Fridays after work,” Arevalo said. “They get home and start drinking in their backyards and shooting out there.”
BOSTON — Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) is warning that President Joe Biden could jeopardize his prospects — and those of down-ballot Democrats — in a key swing state by messing with New Hampshire’s presidential primary.
“The president could have had more diversity — which is the reason he gave for wanting to change the current order — he could have moved another state earlier without doing what he did to New Hampshire,” Shaheen said during a pre-taped appearance on “On the Record,” a Sunday politics show on ABC’s local affiliate in Boston.
“It’s unfortunate, because I think it has an impact [on] the independent voters who are very important in New Hampshire, and who are going to be very important to any reelection of the next president,” Shaheen said. “And it also has an impact on Democrats up and down the ticket.”
In a December letter to the Democratic National Committee, Biden called on the DNC to consider changing the calendar to ensure the nominating process reflects “the diversity of America.”
“For decades, Black voters in particular have been the backbone of the Democratic Party but have been pushed to the back of the early primary process,” Biden wrote in the letter. “We rely on these voters in elections but have not recognized their importance in our nominating calendar. It is time to stop taking these voters for granted, and time to give them a louder and earlier voice in the process.”
In February, the DNC voted to move South Carolina into the first slot on Feb. 3, followed three days later by New Hampshire, which has long held the first primary, and Nevada. (Iowa, which holds its caucuses before New Hampshire holds it primary, also would move back.) Republicans would maintain their current schedule.
Removing New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary status could chase independent voters into the arms of the GOP, Shaheen cautioned Sunday. New Hampshire has open primaries, and undeclared voters are the largest share of registered voters in the state.
New Hampshire voters, particularly independents, are very engaged in elections, considering candidates on both sides of the aisle, Shaheen said.
“The fact that we would now discount their participation, I think, is unfortunate,” said Shaheen, who is not up for reelection until 2026. “And again, I think it has implications for Democrats in the state — hopefully not for the general election, but we don’t know that yet.”
Shaheen’s comments are the latest salvo in the bitter battle over changing the 2024 nominating calendar that’s pitted the state’s top Democrats against the president and the DNC.
New Hampshire Democrats have said they were blindsided and betrayed by Biden’s move to strip New Hampshire of its prized first primary and put South Carolina to the lead-off spot, and have publicly and privately fought both the president and the DNC on the matter.
Now the state is poised to go rogue and hold the first primary anyway. The DNC gave New Hampshire — and Georgia, which Biden wants to move up in the process — until early June to make the necessary adjustments to stay in the early state window. But Republicans who control the governor’s office and the legislature in New Hampshire are refusing to change the state law that requires its primary to be held a week before any others.
That puts Biden in a predicament of his own making. If he participates in an unsanctioned primary he risks violating party rules, which would likely impose sanctions on candidates or states in violation. (A Biden campaign aide said the president and his team would abide by any sanctions imposed by the DNC, if it gets to that point.)
But if Biden skips New Hampshire, he could cede the unofficial first contest to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and self-help guru Marianne Williamson, an outcome that’s unlikely to threaten his chances for renomination but that would still be an embarrassing start to the process.
Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.) told POLITICO last week that she’s twice urged Biden to compete in New Hampshire.
“He should be on the ballot in New Hampshire. He’ll win handily,” she said. But even if he doesn’t, Kuster and other top Democrats believe he could win on a write-in campaign.
WASHINGTON — Bound to Sudan by ailing parents and his devotion to treating the poor there, American doctor Bushra Ibnauf Sulieman kept working as long as he could after fighting engulfed Sudan’s capital.
For days after battles between two rival Sudanese commanders erupted in Khartoum on April 15, the 49-year-old Sulieman treated the city’s wounded. He and other doctors ventured out as explosions shook the walls of homes where Khartoum’s people cowered inside. Gunfire between the two factions battling for control resounded in the streets.
“Say, ‘Nothing will happen to us except what God has decreed for us,’” Sulieman, a U.S.-born gastroenterologist who divided his time and work between Iowa City, Iowa, and Khartoum, said in one of his last messages to worried friends on Facebook last week, as fighting persisted. ”And in God let the believers put their trust.”
The morning that Sulieman decided he had to risk the dangerous escape from Sudan’s capital with his parents, American wife and his two American children was the morning that the war found Sulieman, friends say.
In the wholesale looting that has accompanied fighting in the capital, Khartoum, a city of 5 million, a roving band of strangers surrounded him in his yard Tuesday, stabbing him to death in front of his family. Friends suspect robbery was the motive. He became one of two Americans confirmed killed in Sudan in the fighting, both dual nationals.
Authorities say the other, with ties to Denver, was caught in a crossfire. They have not released that American’s name.
Mohamed Eisa, a Sudanese doctor who practices in the Pittsburgh area, was a close colleague of Sulieman. Over the years, “sometimes I asked him, ’Bushra, what are you doing here? What are you doing in Sudan?″ Eisa recalled.
”He always says to me, ’Mohamed, listen — yes, I love living in the United States ... but the United States health care system is very strong,” and one doctor more or less won’t make a difference.
Eisa said Sulieman would tell him: “In Sudan, everything I do has so much impact on so many lives, so many students and so many medical professionals.”
The sudden illness and death of Eisa’s father in Khartoum meant Eisa was in Sudan when fighting broke out. Now trying to get back to his American wife and children in the U.S., Eisa spoke late last week from Port Sudan, a city on the Red Sea now crowded with Sudanese and foreigners who made the dangerous 500-mile (800-kilometer) drive from the capital in hopes of securing spots on ships leaving Sudan.
Eisa described a journey through checkpoints manned by armed men, past bodies lying in the streets, and past vehicles carrying other families killed attempting the escape route.
After evacuating all U.S. diplomats and other U.S. government personnel April 22, the U.S. conducted its first evacuation of private American citizens Saturday. It used armed drones to escort buses carrying between 200 and 300 U.S. citizens, permanent residents and others to Port Sudan.
Sudanese in their country and in the U.S. spoke of Sulieman’s killing as a special loss.
He was a well-respected colleague at the Gastroenterology Clinic and Mercy Hospital in Iowa City, hospital president Tom Clancy said. Sulieman’s older children live in Iowa.
He traveled back to Sudan several times a year with medical supplies he had collected for that country, colleagues said.
A nurse at the Iowa City clinic who declined to be identified because the nurse was not authorized to speak called him one of the best. “His love for his patients was over the top,” the nurse said. Colleagues considered him a powerhouse doctor and humanitarian, an upbeat man with an infectious laugh who populated his texts with smiley faces and cats wearing sunglasses.
In Sudan, Sulieman directed the medical faculty at the University of Khartoum and was a founder and director of a doctors’ humanitarian group, the Sudanese American Medical Association.
He would help organize and drive medicine and supplies to Sudan’s countryside, arrange rural training for midwives and help bring in cardiologists to perform surgeries for free.
His efforts continued after two Sudanese commanders who earlier had joined forces to derail Sudan’s moves toward democracy suddenly launched an all-out battle for power.
Two weeks of fighting have killed more than 500 people, according to the Sudanese Health Ministry. Doctors say fighters have abducted at least five physicians, taking them away to treat combatants.
Sulieman was one of many doctors who kept showing up at hospitals, regardless, said Dr. Yasir Elamin, a Sudanese-American doctor in Houston.
Sulieman and other doctors in Khartoum treated the wounded, delivered babies and provided other urgent care until it became too dangerous for him to leave his home.
Concern about taking his father away from needed dialysis had kept Sulieman from leaving Khartoum, colleagues said.
On Tuesday, he decided he would take his father for dialysis, then try to flee Khartoum with his family, he told friends.
The band of men surrounded him before he could leave. They plunged a knife into his chest. Fellow doctors at Khartoum’s Soba Hospital, where he had worked, were unable to save him.
In Washington, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby extended “deepest sympathies” to Sulieman’s family.
“For nothing. For nothing,” Eisa, his colleague in Sudan, said of Sulieman’s killing, before finally finding passage over the weekend on a ship out of Sudan.
“You know who you killed?” another Sudanese colleague, Hisham Omar, posted among Facebook tributes from the country’s medical workers, in a message aimed at the attackers who killed Sulieman.
“You killed thousands of patients,” that colleague wrote, speaking of the impact that Sulieman — one doctor — knew he had in Sudan, and all the Sudanese he would have aided in the years ahead. “You killed thousands of needy people. You killed thousands of his students.”
