Pentagon: Suspected Somali pirates behind cargo ship attack in the Middle East

The five armed individuals who attacked a commercial vessel in the Gulf of Aden over the weekend were from Somalia, a Pentagon spokesperson said Monday, citing initial assessments.

The incident was “clearly … piracy-related,” Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters. The Defense Department is still assessing whether the attackers have any ties to the Houthi rebels in Yemen, he added.

The destroyer USS Mason and a number of allied ships from the nearby counter-piracy task force initially responded to the cargo ship Central Park’s distress calls that it was being attacked on Sunday, DOD said. Three Chinese navy vessels were also in the vicinity on a counter-piracy mission, but did not respond to the distress call, Ryder said.

Once the coalition ships arrived, the task force demanded the release of the civilian vessel, according to DOD. The Central Park is a small, Liberian-flagged tanker managed by London-based company Zodiac Maritime. The five individuals then left the ship and fled aboard a small boat.

The Mason pursued, firing gunshots at the boat, but did not cause any injury, Ryder said. The U.S. Navy crew apprehended the attackers, who are onboard the Mason.

About an hour and a half later, two ballistic missiles were fired from Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen “toward the general location” of the Mason, according to DOD. The ship tracked the missiles, which landed harmlessly in the Gulf about 10 nautical miles away, but did not attempt to shoot them down, Ryder said.

DOD is still assessing whether the Mason was the intended target of the attack, Ryder said. If it was, the move would mark the first time Houthi rebels have deliberately targeted U.S. maritime forces with missiles in the Gulf since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.

Meanwhile, the tally of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria has risen to 73 since Oct. 17, Ryder told reporters. However, the last attacks occurred on Thursday.

Ryder declined to link the lack of attacks to the pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas, which began Friday and was initially slated to end at midnight on Monday Eastern time. The two parties have agreed to extend the truce for two days, Qatari negotiators announced Monday.

The developments come as the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group entered the Persian Gulf on Sunday, the military announced.

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China says surge in respiratory illnesses caused by flu and other known pathogens

BEIJING — A surge in respiratory illnesses across China that has drawn the attention of the World Health Organization is caused by the flu and other known pathogens and not by a novel virus, the country’s health ministry said Sunday.

Recent clusters of respiratory infections are caused by an overlap of common viruses such as the influenza virus, rhinoviruses, the respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, the adenovirus as well as bacteria such as mycoplasma pneumoniae, which is a common culprit for respiratory tract infections, a National Health Commission spokesperson said.

The ministry called on local authorities to open more fever clinics and promote vaccinations among children and the elderly as the country grapples with a wave of respiratory illnesses in its first full winter since the removal of Covid-19 restrictions.

“Efforts should be made to increase the opening of relevant clinics and treatment areas, extend service hours and increase the supply of medicines,” said ministry spokesman Mi Feng.

He advised people to wear masks and called on local authorities to focus on preventing the spread of illnesses in crowded places such as schools and nursing homes.

The WHO earlier this week formally requested that China provide information about a potentially worrying spike in respiratory illnesses and clusters of pneumonia in children, as mentioned by several media reports and a global infectious disease monitoring service.

The emergence of new flu strains or other viruses capable of triggering pandemics typically starts with undiagnosed clusters of respiratory illness. Both SARS and Covid-19 were first reported as unusual types of pneumonia.

Chinese authorities earlier this month blamed the increase in respiratory diseases on the lifting of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. Other countries also saw a jump in respiratory diseases such as RSV when pandemic restrictions ended.

The WHO said Chinese health officials on Thursday provided the data it requested during a teleconference. Those showed an increase in hospital admissions of children due to diseases including bacterial infection, RSV, influenza and common cold viruses since October.

Chinese officials maintained the spike in patients had not overloaded the country’s hospitals, according to the WHO.

It is rare for the U.N. health agency to publicly ask for more detailed information from countries, as such requests are typically made internally. WHO said it requested further data from China via an international legal mechanism.

According to internal accounts in China, the outbreaks have swamped some hospitals in northern China, including in Beijing, and health authorities have asked the public to take children with less severe symptoms to clinics and other facilities.

WHO said that there was too little information at the moment to properly assess the risk of these reported cases of respiratory illness in children.

Both Chinese authorities and WHO have been accused of a lack of transparency in their initial reports on the Covid-19 pandemic, which started in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019.

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3 men of Palestinian descent are shot and wounded in Vermont

Three men of Palestinian descent were shot and wounded on Saturday evening in Burlington, Vermont, according to police, in an attack that authorities say may have been a hate crime.

The three men, all 20 years old, were shot near the University of Vermont campus around 6:25 p.m. Saturday evening, Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said on Sunday. Two of the victims were in stable condition as of Sunday afternoon, while another had “more serious injuries,” according to police.

The group was staying with the family of one of the victims for the Thanksgiving holiday, according to a news release from Murad on Sunday afternoon. Two of the victims were wearing keffiyehs, traditional Palestinian headdresses, and all three were walking down the street when a white male with a handgun confronted them and fired at least four rounds, without speaking.

“In this charged moment, no one can look at this incident and not suspect that it may have been a hate-motivated crime,” Murad said in his statement. The next step is finding and apprehending the suspect, said Murad, who cautioned people against jumping to conclusions.

“The fact is that we don’t yet know as much as we want to right now,” he said. “But I urge the public to avoid making conclusions based on statements from uninvolved parties who know even less.”

The shooting comes amid an uptick in anti-Muslim and antisemitic hate crimes as Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas remain locked in a brutal conflict. The current fighting began after Hamas launched an attack into Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 Israelis and taking more than 200 more people hostage. Israeli attacks have since leveled entire neighborhoods in Gaza, killing more than 13,300 Palestinians and displacing over 1.7 million others.

Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger said in a statement: “Violence of any kind against any person in our community is totally unacceptable and we will do everything in our power to find the perpetrator and hold them fully accountable. That there is an indication this shooting could have been motivated by hate is chilling, and this possibility is being prioritized in the BPD’s investigation.”

Police did not identify the victims on Sunday. In a post on Facebook, a Palestinian school lamented the shooting of three of its graduates — Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdel Hamid and Tahseen Ahmed — who, according to the post, were shot in Burlington on Saturday.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), once the mayor of the Vermont city where the shooting occurred, called the episode “shocking and deeply upsetting,” in a statement on Sunday afternoon.

“Hate has no place here, or anywhere. I look forward to a full investigation. My thoughts are with them and their families,” Sanders said.

Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) similarly condemned the shootings.

“I’m heartbroken by yesterday’s senseless shooting of three Palestinian-American students visiting Burlington,” Welch wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “We do not tolerate hate or Islamophobia in Vermont. I expect law enforcement to quickly identify the shooter and their motive, & will continue to monitor the situation.”

On Sunday morning, the Council on American-Islamic Relations announced that it would offer a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the shooter, and called on state and federal officials to investigate “a possible bias motive” for the shooting.

Before police sent a news release about the episode, the families of the victims issued a statement urging police to investigate the shootings as a hate crime.

“As parents, we are devastated by the horrific news that our children were targeted and shot in Burlington, VT,” they said in a statement issued by the Institute for Middle East Understanding. “At this time, our primary concern is their full recovery and that they receive the critical medical support they need to survive. We are extremely concerned about the safety and well-being of our children.”

As of Sunday afternoon, President Joe Biden has been briefed on the episode, according to the White House.

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Ken Buck blasts his party's hardliners for ‘lying to America’

Republican Rep. Ken Buck laid into his own party Sunday, blasting those who continue to propagate the lie that the 2020 election was stolen for “lying to America.”

“Everybody who thinks that the election was stolen or talks about the election being stolen is lying to America,” the Colorado Republican said during an interview in CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Buck didn’t stop there.

“Everyone who makes the argument that January 6 was, you know, an unguided tour of the Capitol is lying to America. Everyone who says that the prisoners who are being prosecuted right now for their involvement in January 6, that they are somehow political prisoners or that they didn't commit crimes, those folks are lying to America.”

It’s not the first time Buck, a member of the Trump-aligned House Freedom Caucus, has decried his party’s unwillingness to accept the results of Biden’s 2020 victory or condemn the violent attack on the Capitol. The Colorado Republican voiced a similar warning earlier this month in announcing that he would not seek reelection in 2024.

“Too many Republican leaders are lying to America,” he said in his announcement video in early November.

Buck didn’t name former President Donald Trump, who has brandished lies about the 2020 election and elevated Jan. 6 rioters (calling them "hostages" earlier this month) on his seemingly runaway road to the GOP presidential nomination. But he pleaded with his party to defeat President Joe Biden with “someone who’s not lying to the country.”

“I hope all of my Republican colleagues become more clear and recognize the fact that Joe Biden is an existential threat to this country. We need to defeat him and we do that with someone who's not lying to the country,” Buck told CBS’ Margaret Brennan.

When asked specifically about House Speaker Mike Johnson, who spearheaded an effort to undo the 2020 election results through a longshot legal scheme in Texas, Buck noted that he had signed onto the amicus brief Johnson was pushing.

“I signed on to that brief also and I believe that going through the courts to challenge an election is absolutely proper and it's been done dozens of times in American history. What’s wrong is to try to stop a legal function, a legislative function like counting the votes in an election, as happened on January 6,” he said.

Johnson took over as speaker after Rep. Kevin McCarthy was ousted in an effort led by a small faction of Republican hardliners, including Buck, who were unhappy the California Republican sought help from Democrats to pass a stopgap bill to keep the government open.

Though Johnson was forced to do much the same earlier this month, Buck said Sunday he doesn’t expect he’ll face the same blowback as McCarthy.

“I don't think that most Republicans blame Speaker Johnson for the problems that he is now facing, the challenges he's facing. Those were created during the McCarthy time period, and Speaker Johnson is doing a good job to work his way through those issues,” Buck said. “So no, I don't think he's going to face a rebellion.”

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Derek Chauvin’s family has received no updates after prison stabbing, attorney says

MINNEAPOLIS — An attorney for Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd, said Saturday that Chauvin’s family has been kept in the dark by federal prison officials after he was stabbed in prison.

The lawyer, Gregory M. Erickson, slammed the lack of transparency by the Federal Bureau of Prisons a day after his client was stabbed on Friday by another inmate at the Federal Correctional Institution in Tucson, Arizona, a prison that has been plagued by security lapses and staffing shortages.

A person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Friday that Chauvin was seriously injured in the stabbing. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the attack. On Saturday, Brian Evans, a spokesperson for the Minnesota attorney general’s office, said: “We have heard that he is expected to survive.”

Erickson said Chauvin’s family and his attorneys have hit a wall trying to obtain information about the attack from Bureau of Prisons officials. He said Chauvin’s family has been forced to assume he is in stable condition, based only on news accounts, and has been contacting the prison repeatedly seeking updates but have been provided with no information.

“As an outsider, I view this lack of communication with his attorneys and family members as completely outrageous,” Erickson said in a statement to the AP. “It appears to be indicative of a poorly run facility and indicates how Derek’s assault was allowed to happen.”

Erickson’s comments highlight concerns raised for years that federal prison officials provide little to no information to the loved ones of incarcerated people who are seriously injured or ill in federal custody. The AP has previously reported the Bureau of Prisons ignored its internal guidelines and failed to notify the families of inmates who were seriously ill with COVID-19 as the virus raged through federal prisons across the U.S.

The issue around family notification has also prompted federal legislation introduced last year in the U.S. Senate that would require the Justice Department to establish guidelines for the Federal Bureau of Prisons and state correctional systems to notify the families of incarcerated people if their loved one has a serious illness, a life-threatening injury or if they die behind bars.

“How the family members who are in charge of Derek’s decisions regarding his personal medical care and his emergency contact were not informed after his stabbing further indicates the institution’s poor procedures and lack of institutional control,” Erickson said of the prison.

A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons did not immediately respond to a request for comment Saturday evening.

The Bureau of Prisons has only confirmed an assault at the Arizona facility and said employees performed “life-saving measures” before the inmate was taken to a hospital for further treatment and evaluation. The Bureau of Prisons did not name the victim or provide a medical status “for privacy and safety reasons.”

Prosecutors who successfully pursued a second-degree murder conviction against Chauvin at a jury trial in 2021 expressed dismay that he became the target of violence while in federal custody.

Terrence Floyd, George Floyd’s brother, told the AP on Saturday that he wouldn’t wish for anyone to be stabbed in prison and that he felt numb when he initially learned of the news.

“I’m not going to give my energy towards anything that happens within those four walls — because my energy went towards getting him in those four walls,” Terrence Floyd said. “Whatever happens in those four walls, I don’t really have any feelings about it.”

Chauvin’s stabbing is the second high-profile attack on a federal prisoner in the last five months. In July, disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar was stabbed by a fellow inmate at a federal penitentiary in Florida.

Chauvin, 47, was sent to FCI Tucson from a maximum-security Minnesota state prison in August 2022 to simultaneously serve a 21-year federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights and a 22½-year state sentence for second-degree murder.

Another of Chauvin’s lawyers, Eric Nelson, had advocated for keeping him out of the general population and away from other inmates, anticipating he’d be a target. In Minnesota, Chauvin was mainly kept in solitary confinement “largely for his own protection,” Nelson wrote in court papers last year.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Chauvin’s appeal of his murder conviction. Separately, Chauvin is making a longshot bid to overturn his federal guilty plea, claiming new evidence shows he didn’t cause Floyd’s death.

Floyd, who was Black, was killed May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, pressed a knee on his neck for 9½ minutes on the street outside a convenience store where Floyd was suspected of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill.

Bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries of “I can’t breathe.” His death touched off protests worldwide, some of which turned violent, and forced a national reckoning with police brutality and racism.

Three other former officers who were at the scene received lesser state and federal sentences for their roles in Floyd’s death.

Chauvin’s stabbing comes as the federal Bureau of Prisons has faced increased scrutiny in recent years following wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein’s jail suicide in 2019. It’s another example of the agency’s inability to keep even its highest profile prisoners safe after Nassar’s stabbing and “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski’s suicide at a federal medical center in June.

At the federal prison in Tucson in November 2022, an inmate at the facility’s low-security prison camp pulled out a gun and attempted to shoot a visitor in the head. The weapon, which the inmate shouldn’t have had, misfired and no one was hurt.

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Trump draws cheers in Haley's backyard at Clemson-South Carolina football game

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Donald Trump used college football rivalry weekend to bask among his supporters in a state and region that are key to his presidential fortunes, while trying to upstage his Republican opponent Nikki Haley on her home turf at the Clemson-South Carolina football game.

The former president and current front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination arrived at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia on Saturday night to chants of “We want Trump! We want Trump!” from fans gathered for the annual Palmetto Bowl, the state's biggest sporting event of the year.

Haley, a Clemson alumna and trustee who was twice elected South Carolina governor, did not attend.

Trump was a guest of Gov. Henry McMaster, Haley's successor. The entourage, which entered through a veritable tunnel of Trump supporters on its way to a private suite, also included South Carolina's senior U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, giving the former president a show of local political force at a game featuring Haley's alma mater, Clemson, where she is also a member of the board of trustees.

McMaster ascended to the governor's office in 2017 when Trump elevated Haley to United Nations ambassador. Graham and Haley have mostly been allies over the years. But both men now back Trump, and the former president enjoys a wide polling lead among Republican primary voters. That includes nationally and in early nominating states like South Carolina.

Hours before kickoff, Trump’s campaign announced that he had been endorsed by “more South Carolina legislators than all opposing candidates combined,” including new backing from six state lawmakers who had previously supported U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, before the South Carolinian ended his presidential bid earlier this month.

Columbia was primed for Trump's visit. Around the stadium Saturday afternoon, more than a half-dozen electronic billboards around the capital city of Columbia boasted a message noting Trump's 2020 election loss and his pending legal cases: “You lost. You're guilty. Welcome to Columbia, Donald.”

Some vendors around the venue, meanwhile, hawked Trump-related merchandise, including “Trump 2020” flags, from the previous election cycle. And some fans entering the stadium before Trump's arrival chanted “Let's Go Brandon!” — a derogatory reference to President Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in 2020.

“We do it big time in the South,” said Brandon Beach, a Georgia state senator and top Trump supporter, explaining why Trump would choose to come to the Palmetto Bowl. “President Trump knows he can connect with people, and they are going to connect with him.”

Asked about the coming primary matchup with Trump, Haley spokesperson Olivia Perez-Cubas called her “the only candidate with momentum” and referenced Haley's previous come-from-behind victories.

“South Carolinians know their governor has what it takes to win because they’ve seen her beat the odds before — not just once, but twice,” she said.

Trump has enjoyed tweaking Haley in her own state before. “In 2016, South Carolina gave us 44 out of 46 counties – that’s not so bad,” he said at a state GOP dinner in August. “I can’t wait to win all 46. We want to win all 46.”

South Carolina falls fourth in the GOP voting calendar after Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, with the state's first-in-the-South primary coming up on Feb. 24, 2024. Several Southern states follow on March 5 as part of the Super Tuesday slate that puts more delegates up for grabs than any other day in the primary campaign.

Trump’s South Carolina and Super Tuesday romps in 2016 gave him a delegate lead he would never relinquish.

Haley has answered Trump in recent weeks by emphasizing her roots as she campaigns in Iowa, which opens voting nationally with its Jan. 15 caucuses.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said recently in Ankeny, predicting a strong showing in the caucuses. “Then I go head-to-head with Trump in my home state of South Carolina. And we take it.”

Trump, who tried to buy an NFL team in the 1980s and ended up part of a failed alternative league, has enjoyed sports cameos over the years. But college football has afforded him his most generous welcomes. Earlier this fall, he attended the Iowa State-Iowa game in Ames, Iowa, including stopping at a fraternity house before kickoff. And while he was president, he attended the 2018 national championship game in Atlanta and the 2019 Alabama-LSU regular season game in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

That Alabama game came just days after Trump was booed by professional baseball fans when he attended a World Series home game of the Washington Nationals.

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Mediators: Gaza hostage releases to resume after Israel-Hamas dispute

A second group of Gaza hostages is set to be released later Saturday after a delay that followed a dispute between Israel and Hamas over the terms of a truce agreement, according to Qatari government officials.

Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson Dr. Majid bin Mohammed Al Ansari confirmed that the hostage transfer would resume.

“After a delay, obstacles to release of prisoners were overcome through Qatari-Egyptian contacts with both sides, and 39 Palestinian civilians will be released tonight, while 13 Israeli hostages will leave Gaza in addition to 7 foreigners,” Al Ansari wrote in a message posted to X, formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday afternoon.

The delay, first reported by Reuters, came as Hamas’ armed wing said it would not release the second round of hostages until Israel held up its side of the deal: allowing aid trucks to enter the besieged northern Gaza region.

Israel maintained that it had not violated the agreement. Thousands of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv to demand the release of the second group of hostages following the news of the delay.

The hostage transfer is part of a broader four-day truce agreement brokered by Qatar, Egypt and the U.S. that started Friday.

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