By John Blake, Alex Stambaugh, CNN

(CNN) — The Rev. Jesse Louis Jackson, the towering civil rights leader whose moral vision and fiery oratory reshaped the Democratic Party and America, has died, a Rainbow Push Coalition spokesperson confirmed to CNN. He was 84.

Jackson, a protégé of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., had been hospitalized in recent months and was under observation for progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), the Rainbow PUSH Coalition has said.

Jackson was what one pundit called “an American original.” He was born to an unwed teenage mom in Greenville, South Carolina, during the Jim Crow era but rose to become a civil rights icon and a groundbreaking politician who mounted two electrifying runs for the presidency in the 1980s.

Jackson’s dual bids for the Democratic presidential nomination inspired Black America and stunned political observers who marveled at his ability to draw White voters. He was a Black crossover figure long before Barack Obama hit the national stage.

Jackson first rose to national prominence in the 1960s as a close aide to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. After King’s assassination in 1968, Jackson became one of the most transformative civil rights leaders in America — to the chagrin of some of King’s aides, who thought he was too brash.

But his Rainbow Coalition, a bold alliance of Blacks, Whites, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans and LGBTQ people, helped pave the way for a more progressive Democratic Party.

“Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow – red, yellow, brown, Black and White – and we’re all precious in God’s sight,” Jackson once said.

One of Jackson’s signature phrases was “Keep hope alive.” He repeated it so often that some began to parody it, but it never seemed to lose meaning for him. He was a force for social justice over three eras: the Jim Crow period, the civil rights era and the post-civil rights era that culminated with the election of Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Through his eloquence and singular drive, Jackson didn’t just keep hope alive for himself. His dream of a vibrant, multiracial America still inspires millions of Americans today.

Jackson’s vision remade the Democratic Party. He was the first presidential candidate to make support for gay rights a major part of his campaign platform, and he made a concerted effort to challenge the Democratic Party’s prioritization of White, moderate, middle-class voters, says David Masciotra, author of “I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters.”

“A Democratic party that now represents a multicultural America and has someone like Kamala Harris as the (former) Vice President and Obama as the former President began in many ways with those Jackson campaigns,” Masciotra says.

Obama may have never made it to the White House without Jackson’s pioneering presidential runs. Jackson successfully fought to change the awarding of delegates during the Democratic primaries from a winner-take-all system that benefitted frontrunners to a proportional system that helped other candidates even if they didn’t win a state.

Those Read more

* WHAT…Dangerous rip currents and breaking waves due to
elevated surf expected.

* WHERE…Santa Barbara County Southwestern Coast and Santa
Barbara County Southeastern Coast.

* WHEN…Through Wednesday morning.

* IMPACTS…There is an increased risk of ocean drowning. Rip
currents can pull swimmers and surfers out to sea. Waves can
wash people off beaches and rocks, and capsize small boats
nearshore.

* ADDITIONAL DETAILS…Minor coastal flooding possible around
mid- morning and late-evening times of high tide on Tuesday
and Wednesday.
Remain out of the water due to hazardous swimming conditions, or
stay near occupied lifeguard towers. Rock jetties can be deadly
in such conditions, stay off the rocks.

The post Beach Hazards Statement issued February 17 at 1:34AM PST until February 18 at 10:00AM PST by NWS Los Angeles/Oxnard CA appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

By Dana O’Neil, CNN

Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (CNN) — The gold medal that long eluded her finally hanging around her neck, Elana Meyers Taylor immediately laughed off any notion that she was in the middle of a life-changing moment.

“In six days, I’ve got school pick up and drop offs in the middle of Texas,” she said, while wearing her Team USA parka and snow pants. “Like none of this stuff, I can’t wear any of it when I go home.”

So much of these Olympic Games have felt like a lesson in perspective. Gained and lost. Appreciated over time and sometimes delivered with abruptness. Hard earned in some cases. Life earned in all.

The singular focus required to be an Olympic athlete has hardly been abandoned but its edges have been softened by medalists who have been through some stuff: failure, injury, disappointment and – in the case of two women standing in a makeshift media interview zone at the top of the Cortina Curling Center – motherhood.

Seconds after she watched German Laura Nolte cross the finish line a mere .04 behind her to secure that elusive gold, Meyers Taylor crumbled to the ground, the American flag draped around her.

Soon her two boys, Noah and Nico, found her – unsure about the commotion and clearly uninterested in the magnitude of the moment. Now with her sixth Olympic medal across five Games, their mom is officially tied with Bonnie Blair as the most decorated female American Winter Olympian in history. Noah and Nico just wanted to snuggle.

Meantime, her teammate Kaillie Armbrusrer Humphries, who took bronze, has now medaled in five consecutive Olympics. Her 15-month-old son, Aulden – who she’s pretty sure napped through the actual event – was more interested in running around in the snow than posing with mom for a picture on the podium.

“I grabbed him and his eyes were like this,” said Humphries, closing her own eyes half-mast. “And I was like, ‘Sorry, kid but I’m getting this moment with you.’ But he honestly couldn’t care less.”

Such is life for any mother, even those with brand new shiny necklaces.

Lest anyone be snookered, theirs is not some Hallmark version of motherhood. It’s real and it’s messy. Needing to prep for her race, Humphries spent her first night away from Aulden this week. It was necessary and awful all at once.

“Mom guilt is a thing,” she said.

“But I needed to do it in order to be my best.”

There is a beautiful serendipity in the fact that Meyers Taylor finally got the gold she’d been dreaming of since college at a time in her life when it mattered the least.

“It means everything and nothing” has been her mantra as these Games approached, a full pivot since her college years, when the one-time softball all-American at George Washington wanted only to play the sport for Team USA.

She maybe even wanted it too much; a tryout went about as bad as it could, Meyers Taylor’s want turning her into an error-prone pile of nerves. She pivoted to bobsled after her parents saw it on TV and, approaching it with the casualness of a newbie, found the Olympic quest she long sought. By 2010, she was winning silver in the two-woman, the start of a run of a five-for-five medal-to-Games ratio.

But the gold medal dangled just out of reach and, while it didn’t define her, she rightly wanted it. And then Nico arrived in 2020 and Noah in 2023.

Both boys are deaf and Noah also has Down’s syndrome. They require therapy and special care and Meyers Taylor delegates none of it. With the support of her husband Nic, a retired bobsled

Por Lex Harvey Sandi Sidhu y Nechirvan Mando, CNN

Australia no repatriará a sus ciudadanos con vínculos con miembros del Estado Islámico, declaró el primer ministro Anthony Albanese a la emisora ​​nacional ABC el martes, con un consejo directo a las familias varadas en Siria: “Si haces tu cama, te acuestas en ella”.

Sus comentarios siguieron a informes de que 34 mujeres y niños australianos fueron devueltos por las autoridades sirias al campo de detención de Al-Roj después de abandonar este centro que alberga a militantes de ISIS y sus familias, con el objetivo de regresar a Australia a través de la capital siria, Damasco.

Rashid Omar, funcionario del campamento, declaró a CNN que dos familiares varones de las familias detenidas habían llegado al campamento y solicitado la entrega de sus familiares.

Los hombres afirmaron haber coordinado con las autoridades sirias el traslado de sus familiares del campamento a Damasco y luego a Australia.

El funcionario del campamento indicaron que los hombres mostraron pasaportes australianos temporales que, según dijeron, habían sido emitidos para las familias.

“En base a esto, acordamos transportarlos en autobús. Sin embargo, poco después de partir, Damasco nos informó que no se había coordinado, por lo que tuvieron que regresar al campamento”, señaló Omar.

Añadió que los funcionarios del campamento “no entienden por qué los enviaron de vuelta a pesar de que ya contaban con pasaportes australianos temporales”.

Cuando ABC le preguntó si los detenidos tenían pasaportes australianos, Albanese manifestó que no podía confirmar “nada sobre los individuos”.

“Lo que puedo decir es que no estamos brindando ningún apoyo ni repatriando a la gente”, declaró Albanese a ABC Radio. “Francamente, no sentimos ninguna compasión por quienes viajaron al extranjero para participar en lo que fue un intento de establecer un califato para socavar y destruir nuestro modo de vida”.

No está claro por qué las familias fueron rechazadas desde Damasco y si podrán reintentar el viaje.

Ha aumentado la presión sobre Australia, Estados Unidos, el Reino Unido y otros países para que repatrien a miles de ciudadanos, la mayoría de ellos mujeres y niños, que han estado atrapados en campos de detención en Siria desde la caída del Califato hace más de cinco años.

Amnistía Internacional y otras ONG han advertido de abusos generalizados y sistemáticos de los derechos humanos en los campos, donde, según afirman, los detenidos, muchos de los cuales fueron traficados a la fuerza por ISIS o nacieron en el Califato, son sometidos a tortura, violencia de género, desaparición forzada y otras atrocidades.

Algunos países han iniciado el proceso, jurídica y políticamente complicado, de repatriar a sus ciudadanos, pero el progreso ha sido lento porque muchos Gobiernos se han mostrado reacios a actuar debido a preocupaciones de seguridad nacional y a la oposición interna.

El campamento de Al-Roj, donde viven los 34 australianos, es el hogar de Shamima Begum, la colegiala londinense que huyó a los 15 años para unirse a ISIS en 2015 y posteriormente fue despojada de su ciudadanía británica.

Australia ya ha repatriado a grupos de mujeres y niños con vínculos con ISIS desde los campos de refugiados sirios en 2019 y 2022.

El año pasado, dos mujeres y cuatro niños australianos escaparon de Siria por sus propios medios y regresaron a casa a tra

By Elizabeth Wolfe, CNN

(CNN) — After losing four decades of his life serving time for a murder he maintains he did not commit, a gray-haired Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam prepared to step out of a Pennsylvania prison last October as a free man.

Instead, a day after his charges were dropped, Vedam was swept up by ICE on a decades-old deportation order, his attorney said. The 64-year-old, who came to the US from India when he was an infant, was suddenly thrown into another painstaking legal battle.

Now, a federal immigration judge on Tuesday will decide whether to release Vedam on bond while he fights his deportation.

The hearing follows a ruling last week by the US Board of Immigration Appeals – the highest administrative body for interpreting and applying immigration laws – which determined Vedam’s case is an “exceptional situation” that warrants re-opening his immigration case, according to his attorney, Ava Benach.

The original deportation order, which was thrown out by the Board of Immigration Appeals, was based on Vedam’s now-vacated murder conviction and a related drug charge, Benach said.

After decades of maintaining his innocence, Vedam’s conviction was thrown out by a judge in August after it was revealed that prosecutors had withheld potentially critical ballistics evidence during his two trials.

While Vedam’s family is “very hopeful” they will be reunited with him on Tuesday, they are aware of how challenging it is to navigate immigration cases during the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, Benach said.

The Department of Homeland Security is continuing to fight Vedam’s release, saying in a statement Monday that the vacation of his conviction will not deter its efforts. Though DHS called Vedam a “criminal illegal alien,” his attorney said he is a permanent legal resident.

“Having a single conviction vacated will not stop ICE’s enforcement of the federal immigration law,” a DHS spokesperson said. “Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, if you break the law, you will face the consequences.”

A long-awaited reversal

After two trials in the 1980s, Vedam was sentenced to life without parole for the murder of his friend and former roommate, 19-year-old college student Thomas Kinser.

Though Vedam fought the conviction for decades, almost 40 years passed before a team of attorneys discovered prosecutors may have withheld evidence that could have impacted the jury’s decision in his case.

On the day of Kinser’s disappearance in December 1980, Vedam had asked him for a ride to a nearby town to buy drugs, according to The Associated Press.

Nine months later, Kinser’s remains were found in a sinkhole with a bullet hole in his skull, according to court documents. Though no weapon was found, a .25 caliber bullet was found inside Kinser’s shirt.

Vedam’s supporters believe investigators fixated on him as the lone suspect at the expense of other legitimate leads, arguing that his ethnicity played a role in how authorities homed in on him in the early days of the case and at trial.

Vedam was initially detained on drug charges while police investigated and was eventually charged with Kinser’s murder. In the drug case, he pleaded no contest to four counts of selling LSD and a theft charge, the AP reported.

Prosecutors argued to jurors that Vedam shot his friend with a .25 caliber gun that he had purchased before Kinser’s disappearance.

Vedam’s defense attorneys repeatedly questioned ballistics evidence during the trial, casting doubt on the size of the hole in Kinser’s skull compared to a .25 caliber bullet and whether the bullet that killed Kins