By Meg Tirrell, Aaron Cooper, Deidre McPhillips, Diego Mendoza, CNN

(CNN) — US-bound flights carrying passengers who were recently in an Ebola-affected region of Africa must land at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, where they will undergo health screening.

“The Dulles requirement applies to all passengers, including U.S. citizens and [lawful permanent residents], who were present” in the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Uganda, the US Department of State said in a travel advisory.

At least 10 staffers with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are being sent to Dulles to help with screening of arriving passengers amid the Ebola outbreak, a person at CDC with knowledge of the plan told CNN.

The CDC has invoked Title 42 – a public health law that restricts entry into the US during outbreaks of communicable diseases – for at least 30 days starting Monday. The move includes entry restrictions on non-citizens who have been in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, or South Sudan, which borders both affected countries, in the previous 21 days, as well as screening and monitoring of people arriving from these countries.

The Department of Homeland Security said Customs and Border Protection “is continuing to coordinate with airlines, international partners, and port-of-entry officials to identify and manage travelers who may have been exposed to the Ebola virus.”

“The Airports Authority is working with federal partners to support efforts led by the Centers for Disease Control affecting various international flights arriving at Dulles Airport. This includes providing staff and public safety resources as needed. We are not expecting any significant impacts on airport customers,” a Dulles spokesperson said Wednesday.

An Air France flight bound for Detroit from Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport was briefly diverted to Montreal on Wednesday afternoon because a Congolese passenger was denied entry to the US, the airline said. “Under new regulations, passengers arriving from certain countries … may only enter U.S. territory via Washington (IAD) Airport.”

CPB said the passenger had boarded “in error” and the flight was prohibited from landing in Detroit. “CBP, in coordination with CDC, is taking the necessary measures to protect public health and reduce the risk of Ebola disease introduction into the United States.”

Mark Johnson, a spokesperson for Public Health Agency of Canada, said in a statement that an agency quarantine officer “assessed the traveller and determined they were asymptomatic. The traveller has departed back to Paris.” The flight and other passengers continued to Detroit.

Americans arrive in Europe for care, monitoring

There are nearly 600 suspected Ebola cases and nearly 150 deaths across the DRC and Uganda, according to the World Health Organization. The CDC emphasized Wednesday that the outbreak is of low risk to the general public, “but we will continue to evaluate the evolving situation and may adjust public health measures as additional information becomes available.”

One American, Dr. Peter Stafford, tested positive for Ebola while working in the DRC and has been hospitalized in Germany. His wife, Dr. Rebekah Stafford, is asymptomatic and being monitored in a separate portion of the hospital in Germany, as are the couple’s four children.

The Stafford family was stationed with the international charity Serge at a hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), when the UN’s World Health Organization declared Ebola a public health emergency.

Dr. Stafford’s symptoms included fever, dizziness, light headedness and nausea, according to Matt Allison, the executive director of Serge.

“He’s in a st

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Thursday let stand an appeals court decision that barred Alabama from executing a man that lower courts found is likely intellectually disabled.

The Supreme Court, in an unsigned opinion, took the unusual step of dismissing an appeal from Alabama after it heard arguments in the case.

Four justices dissented from the decision: Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.

Joseph Clifton Smith was convicted and sentenced to death for the brutal murder in 1997 of Durk Van Dam in Mobile County. But Smith’s attorneys argued he was ineligible for the death penalty under a 2002 Supreme Court precedent that determined the execution of intellectually disabled inmates violates the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

A series of tests put Smith’s IQ at just over 70, a threshold referenced in the Supreme Court’s 2002 decision. But the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals noted that the number isn’t a strict cutoff and that the error deviation in the testing could potentially put Smith’s actual IQ slightly below 70. The question for the Supreme Court was how lower courts are supposed to determine if an inmate is intellectually disabled in edge cases when there are multiple IQ tests.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a concurring opinion that lower courts correctly decided that Smith was intellectually disabled and barred from execution under previous Supreme Court precedent.

Sotomayor, who was joined by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, acknowledged that in the future, the high court may need to weigh in “with more specific guidance” about how lower courts should analyze death row cases involving multiple IQ scores that suggest a prisoner is on the cusp of a state’s definition of intellectually disabled.

Given that four justices publicly dissented, it was clear that conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett as well as the court’s liberals, had agreed to dismiss the case.

The dismissed case “is a bit surprising given that six of the justices wrote or joined lengthy opinions setting forth their views on the merits,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center. “It certainly appears that Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett were willing to side with the death-row prisoner here, but preferred to do so by issuing this summary, procedural disposition, rather than joining Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence. It’s not unusual to see such punts without 63 pages of opinions on both sides; it’s more than a little unusual with it.”

The court’s decision will influence where other states draw the eligibility line for death sentences. The Trump administration, which is pushing to restart federal executions, sided with Alabama.

Smith confessed to murdering Van Dam, but offered conflicting versions of the crime, according to court records. The state told the Supreme Court that Smith “brutally beat” Van Dam with a hammer and saw “in order to steal $140, the man’s boots, and some tools.”

Lower courts reviewed several factors, in addition to the IQ tests, and concluded that Smith is intellectually disabled. Smith had struggled in school since as early as the first grade, the 11th Circuit found, which led to his teacher labeling him as an “underachiever.” When he was in fourth grade, Smith was placed in a learning-disability class.

Smith then failed the seventh and eighth grades before dropping out of school, according to court records, and spent “much of the next fifteen years in prison” for burglary and receiving st

By Eric Levenson, CNN

(CNN) — A Virginia circuit court judge on Thursday dismissed criminal charges against Ebony Parker, the former assistant principal accused of ignoring warnings that a 6-year-old child had a gun, after the defense argued the prosecution had not made its case.

“The court is of the legal opinion that this is not a crime,” Circuit Court Judge Rebecca Robinson said.

Parker put her head down on the defendant’s table and appeared to be sobbing.

The case was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be brought to trial again, an official familiar with the ruling said.

The charges stem from the January 2023 shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Virginia in which the child shot and wounded his first-grade teacher, Abby Zwerner. She survived.

Parker had pleaded not guilty to eight counts of felony child abuse and disregard for life – one for each bullet in the child’s gun. She faced up to five years in prison on each charge.

The charges alleged she committed “a willful act or omission in the care of such students, in a manner so gross, wanton and culpable as to show a reckless disregard for human life,” according to court documents.

Parker’s criminal trial is one of a number of cases in recent years that have tested the limits of who is responsible when a juvenile carries out a school shooting. Parents in Michigan and Georgia have been convicted of serious charges, while law enforcement officers accused of inaction in Parkland and Uvalde have been acquitted by juries.

Parker appears to be the first school educator to face trial in such circumstances.

Trial lasted just a few days

The precedent-setting trial began with opening statements Tuesday, and the prosecution called 16 witnesses in all, including school educators, law enforcement officers and parents.

Several educators testified they told Parker about suspicions the child, who had a history of behavioral issues, had a firearm at school. Parker directed an educator to search the boy’s backpack and recommended against searching the child’s pockets until his mother came to the school, according to testimony.

“There was only one person in the school that day that had both the authority to act and the knowledge of the ongoing crisis, and that person you will see was Dr. Parker,” Assistant Commonwealth Attorney Josh Jenkins said in opening statements.

In contrast, Parker’s defense flipped the case on its head and accused the teachers, including Zwerner, of being the ones who failed to take proper action to protect students.

“If the commonwealth wants to accuse Dr. Parker, what about these other people that had direct contact with this child?” defense attorney Curtis Rogers said.

Last November, a civil jury awarded Zwerner $10 million in a lawsuit alleging Parker failed to act on concerns that the student had brought a gun to school. Parker has filed an appeal in that case.

The boy had taken the unsecured gun from his

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court subjected the world’s largest cruise ship companies to a stiff headwind on Thursday, reviving a claim that alleged they trafficked in property confiscated by the Cuban government when they docked their ships in Havana.

The court’s decision is a loss for Royal Caribbean Cruises, Carnival Corporation and other companies and lands at a moment when the Trump administration is ramping up economic and political pressure on Cuba.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion for an 8-1 court. Liberal Justice Elena Kagan was the sole dissenter.

The decision comes a day after the Department of Justice indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro on charges that stem from his alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of two civilian aircraft that killed four people, including three Americans. While announcing the charges, Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche said President Donald Trump would soon make an announcement on the Cuban embargo.

Trump has also flirted with military action in Cuba, telling reporters on March 17 he might have the “honor of taking Cuba.”

The case was tied to property confiscated in 1960 shortly after Castro came to power in the island nation’s revolution and involved a law Congress passed in 1996 allowing US nationals to sue over that seized property in US courts.

Havana Docks Corporation built Havana’s piers in 1905 for the Cuban government on the condition that it would operate the port for 99 years. Castro’s government seized the docks shortly after coming to power.

The world’s largest cruise lines, the company said, “nonetheless moored their massive ships at the confiscated docks without Havana Docks’ authorization” from 2015 to 2019. In its appeal, the company described the case as the most important involving US foreign policy toward Cuba to reach the Supreme Court in decades.

“Havana Docks has shown that the cruise lines used confiscated property in which Havana Docks had a property interest and to which it owns a claim,” Thomas wrote for the majority.

The decision Thursday does not decide the case but rather allows the Havana Docks litigation to proceed.

Kagan argued that the court fundamentally misread the case.

“The docks belonged to the Cuban Government– not Havana Docks – all along,” she wrote in dissent. “What Havana Docks owned was only a property interest allowing it to use those docks for a specified time. And that time-limited interest expired in 2004 – more than a decade before the cruise lines ever used the docks.”

During the end of President Barack Obama’s tenure and much of the first Trump administration, the company said, “the cruise lines disembarked nearly one million tourists on those docks, and paid Cuba’s cash-strapped Communist regime at least $130 million in hard currency without paying a penny to either Havana Docks or any Cuban person or entity unaffiliated with the regime.”

In the cruise ship case, the question was whether the company could collect damages even though its lease on the docks would have expired in 2004 without the Castro takeover.

Por Mauricio Torres, CNN en Español

El Gobierno de Rusia dijo este jueves que mantiene contactos con Cuba en todos los temas que interesan a ambas naciones, una declaración que se da un día después de que Estados Unidos acusó formalmente al expresidente cubano Raúl Castro por la muerte de cuatro personas en un derribo de aviones ocurrido en 1996.

“Mantenemos contacto con Cuba en todos los asuntos de interés para nuestros dos países”, señaló la portavoz de la Cancillería de Rusia, María Zarájova, en una rueda de prensa donde, de acuerdo con la agencia Reuters, se le preguntó si Cuba había solicitado ayuda militar a su país.

CNN contactó al Departamento de Estado de Estados Unidos para pedir comentarios sobre estas declaraciones.

A lo largo del año, Rusia ha sido uno de los países que han mantenido su ayuda a Cuba en medio de las crecientes presiones de Estados Unidos hacia la isla. Además del embargo económico vigente desde la década de 1960, estas medidas incluyen sanciones y acciones para frenar el abasto de petróleo a Cuba.

En febrero, la Cancillería de Rusia dijo que el país estaba “en solidaridad” con Cuba y mantendría “la asistencia material”.

Un mes después, esa ayuda se materializó con la llegada a Cuba de un buque ruso con 100.000 toneladas de petróleo, equivalentes a unos 700.000 barriles de combustible.

Este envío de crudo sirvió para aminorar la crisis energética por la que atraviesa la isla —que en enero perdió al que era su principal proveedor de hidrocarburos, Venezuela, luego de la captura del derrocado presidente Nicolás Maduro en un operativo militar de Estados Unidos— y fue aplaudido por el Gobierno de Miguel Díaz-Canel.

“Gracias Rusia. Gracias Presidente Putin. Gracias tripulantes del tanquero Anatoly Kolodkin que al atracar en puerto cubano con su valiosa carga de combustible, nos traen la certeza de una amistad probada en los más duros momentos, como tantas veces a lo largo de la historia. Seguiremos defendiendo el derecho soberano de Cuba a importar combustibles, sin ningún tipo de injerencia ni presiones”, dijo entonces el presidente cubano en una publicación en X.

Ahora, Cuba enfrenta un aumento de las presiones por parte de Estados Unidos, con la presentación de cargos formales el miércoles contra el expresidente Raúl Castro por el derribo de aviones de la organización de exiliados cubano-estadounidenses Hermanos al Rescate.

El Departamento de Justicia de Estados Unidos acusa a Castro de conspiración para matar a ciudadanos estadounidenses, asesinato y destrucción de aeronaves. El exmandatario, que hoy tiene 94 años, era ministro de Defensa de Cuba cuando ocurrieron los hechos reclamados por Estados Unidos.

Cuba, por su parte, desde el mismo miércoles rechazó la acusación de Estados Unidos, descalificada tanto por Díaz-Canel como por el canciller Bruno Rodríguez. Para ambos funcionarios, el anuncio del Departamento de Justicia es una acción sin sustento jurídico, motivada políticamente para justificar una eventual “agresión militar” estadounidense contra territorio cubano.

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