Tears, then giggles: Honduran baby is back in parents’ arms
SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — For months, a Honduran couple watched their only son grow up in videos while he was kept in U.S. government custody. That’s where he took his first steps and spoke his first words.
The parents got to embrace the 15-month-old boy again Friday, five months after U.S. immigration officials forcibly separated the baby from his father at the Texas border.
Johan, who grabbed the world’s attention when he appeared in a U.S. courtroom in diapers, at first didn’t recognize his mom and dad after he was flown to San Pedro Sula.
“I kept saying Johan, Johan, and he started to cry,” said his mother, Adalicia Montecinos.
She broke down in tears as she talked about how her son had become a poster child for outrage over the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Liberal icon, new Democratic star wade into GOP-heavy Kansas
KANSAS CITY, Kansas — The new face of an emerging democratic socialist movement joined its patriarch in the most unlikely place Friday, calling on Kansans unhappy with the direction of the country to get off the sidelines in a pivotal Republican-held congressional district.
“We know that people in Kansas, just like everywhere else in this country, just like families in the Bronx, just want a fair shake,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the surprise winner in a New York House primary last month, told a frenetic crowd of more than 3,000 in a Kansas suburb of Kansas City.
Headlining a rally with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez sought to infuse the final weeks of Democrat Brent Welder’s congressional primary campaign with the enthusiasm that lifted her over 20-year Democratic incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley last month.
In an election year defined by energized Democratic voters seeking to send President Donald Trump a message, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez were betting they could stir up liberals in places where the left rarely competes.
The 28-year-old Latina from New York and the 76-year-old Jewish senator from Vermont struck a stark contrast in the hotel ballroom, though they reflected the range of people in the racially and ethnically mixed crowd, weighted toward millennials but including gray-haired activists and parents with children.
Judge: ‘Great progress’ reuniting families split at border
SAN DIEGO — A federal judge on Friday applauded Trump administration efforts to meet a deadline to reunite more than 2,500 children with their families after they were separated at the border.
Justice Department attorneys said in federal court in San Diego that 450 children 5 and older had been reunified, up from 364 a day earlier.
“I’m just very impressed with the effort that has been made,” U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw said. “It really does appear that great progress has been made.”
Hundreds of children are still awaiting reunions with their family.
In a court filing Thursday, the administration said about 1,600 parents were believed to be eligible for reunification and about 900 were not eligible or “not yet known to be eligible.”
Bayer to stop sales of birth control device tied to injuries
WASHINGTON — The maker of a permanent contraceptive implant subject to thousands of injury reports and repeated safety restrictions by regulators said Friday that it will stop selling the device in the U.S., the only country where it remains available.
Bayer said the safety of its Essure implant has not changed, but it will stop selling the device at the end of the year due to weak sales.
The German company had billed the device as the only non-surgery sterilization method for women. As complaints mounted and demand slipped, it stopped Essure sales in Canada, Europe, South America, South Africa and the United Kingdom.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has placed multiple restrictions on the device following patient reports of pain, bleeding, allergic reactions and cases where the implant punctured the uterus or shifted out of place.
In May, the FDA said doctors must show women a checklist of the device’s risks before implanting it.
Jamie Lee Curtis hugs an emotional ‘Halloween’ fan
SAN DIEGO — In Comic-Con’s Hall H, the massive room that holds the highest profile presentations and hosts the biggest movie and television stars, there is still a strict division between the actors on stage and those in the audience. But Jamie Lee Curtis changed that Friday, walking off-stage during the presentation for the new “Halloween” to embrace an emotional fan.
Wiping tears away, the man used his moment at the Q&A microphone to tell a story about a home invasion he experienced. He said that her character saved his life and inspired him to use knitting needles in defense. He said he was a victor not a victim because of her, and that she was the reason he attended the convention.
A stunned audience watched as Curtis, without warning, left her seat on the big stage and walked down to share a quiet moment with the man.
His comments echoed what Curtis had said just moments earlier about how this new iteration of “Halloween” is so important because it allows her character to reclaim her narrative 40 years after the traumatic events with Michael Myers in John Carpenter’s movie.
“This is a woman who has been waiting 40 years to face the person she knows is coming back,” Curtis said. “40 years later Laurie had no real support, had no real help. PTSD is real. Trauma is real.”