By Haley Britzky, CNN

(CNN) — When Said Noor, a US Army veteran, picked up a phone call on December 2, he immediately knew something was wrong.

His brother Lal was in Laredo, Texas, several hours west of their home in Austin, nervously explaining that the commercial truck he drove had been stopped at a Customs and Border Protection checkpoint.

When the agents asked if he was a US citizen, Lal, 28, answered honestly: He isn’t. He, his mother and five of his brothers and sisters had fled Afghanistan in the wake of the US’ military withdrawal, and he is currently awaiting a decision on an asylum claim he submitted years ago.

As Said stayed on the line with his younger brother, Said could hear someone aggressively demanding to know who Lal had called and why. Said told Lal to provide whatever the officials needed so he could go, but his brother sounded worried, so Said told him to pass the phone to the agent.

He tried to calm the agent down, he told CNN.

“I told him ‘sir, let’s just talk to each other as adults, right?’ I was like, ‘you’re an officer and you took an oath to defend the Constitution.’ I said, ‘I have done the same thing, I was in the Army, I’m a veteran right now,’” he said.

That seemed to defuse the situation somewhat, Said recalled, but the man kept repeating that Lal is “not allowed to be here” in the US. Said tried to explain that Lal, who is married to a US citizen, was brought to the US legally through the US military’s evacuation of Afghanistan, an effort largely aimed at protecting families like his who had worked with American troops and faced threats from the Taliban. He tried to explain Lal’s pending asylum case, the legal process through which Lal was trying to gain permanent status in the US along with 80,000 other Afghan nationals who fled the country and have similarly looked to create new homes in America.

But soon the phone was handed to a second agent. He was told that they were working to verify Lal’s status.

Afghan asylum cases had received bipartisan support until a sharp shift in tone after an Afghan refugee shot two members of the National Guard in Washington, DC in November days before Lal was stopped at the checkpoint.

Hours passed, with Said continuing to communicate with his brother while the agents waited for a response from the Department of Homeland Security. But then the communication stopped. Said could still see Lal’s location on the app Life360, but he couldn’t get in touch with him, and when he called a nearby border patrol station, no one seemed to be able to find him.

For two days, Said told CNN he couldn’t find his brother — he called several border checkpoints but found himself trapped in a cycle of transferred calls.

One officer even told Said to call the Afghan embassy; when he explained there was no Afghan embassy in the US because the Taliban was in control of the country, the officer said to call the Taliban, the same group that Said told CNN had detonated a bomb just outside of his family’s home in 2020, killing several people, in retaliation for his work with US troops.

Finally, Said found Lal – he was being held at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement-run Webb County Detention Facility.

“I came to America a legal way,” Lal told CNN from the detention facility in Laredo during a January interview, saying he and his family just want the chance to “live a good life.”

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed Lal was detained on December 1, after he’d been referred for secondary inspection at a border patrol point of entry. McLaughlin called Lal a “criminal illegal alien” whose “criminal history includes previous arrests for assault and damage to property.”

Court documents shared by Lal’s family, however, show that a charge of “criminal mischief” against Lal, brought in 2023, was di

By Jessie Yeung, Yoonjung Seo, CNN

Seoul, South Korea (CNN) — A young teenage girl shrouded in mystery and intrigue could very well be the next leader of the isolated hermit nation North Korea.

Some experts believe leader Kim Jong Un is grooming his daughter to be his successor as he brings her along on increasingly frequent and high-profile excursions, fueling speculation in recent years.

The exact age of the girl, believed to be named Kim Ju Ae, is unknown, but she is widely believed to be in her early teens.

The succession theory was boosted further on Thursday after South Korea’s spy agency said it believes the dictator has “entered the stage of nominating her as successor.”

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) delivered this updated assessment in a closed-door briefing with lawmakers, who later shared their findings with reporters.

Besides simply appearing at significant events, Ju Ae now appears to have “expressed opinions on some measures” in policy, the NIS said, according to lawmakers.

None of this has been officially confirmed and much remains unknown about the Kim family. Little information comes in or out of North Korea, one of the world’s most closed-off and repressive countries.

The pandemic deepened this isolation, with borders sealed shut, and most remaining diplomatic missions and international nonprofits leaving the country.

But intelligence agencies watch closely for any events that might offer a clue, especially on the future of the Kim dynasty which has ruled North Korea for generations.

One such event will be a major political gathering expected to take place later in February, the first in five years, with the country possibly setting new priorities and reshuffling officials.

Lawmakers said the NIS will closely monitor if Ju Ae attends the meeting, the level of protocol given to her, as well as any symbolic titles and other clues.

The dictator’s daughter

Western experts believe Kim has three children and that Ju Ae is the middle child, though there’s no way to verify this.

The world first learned about Ju Ae’s existence in 2013 when American basketball star Dennis Rodman made a controversial visit to the capital Pyongyang. He later told The Guardian: “I held their baby Ju Ae and spoke with (Kim’s wife) as well.”

Ju Ae remained hidden in the shadows until her first public appearance in 2022 when accompanying her father as he oversaw the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Remarkable photos showed the leader holding the hand of a young girl, chubby-cheeked with bangs and a long ponytail, against the backdrop of a towering missile.

More public appearances came in the following years, including at military events, such as a parade in the capital where she gazed out at rows of ICBMs.

Her first public trip abroad came last September when she accompanied her father to Beijing to attend Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s military parade.

In a show of force during the parade, Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin flanked Xi, walking ahead of other world leaders, forming a trio of authoritarians aligned in their mission to create a new world order, countering the West.

As they projected that stark message to the world in a spectacle watched by millions, somewhere in Beijing – hidden f

By Jackie Wattles, CNN

(CNN) — A SpaceX capsule will soon ferry four astronauts to the International Space Station, bring the orbiting laboratory back to full staff after a month of operating with a skeleton crew.

The mission, called Crew-12, will lift off no earlier than 5:15 a.m. ET Friday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

NASA, which contracts SpaceX for the astronauts’ transport to and from the space station, had sought to expedite the Crew-12 launch due to the staffing situation. But the agency had to forgo two possible launch windows on Wednesday and Thursday because of unfavorable weather along the rocket’s flight path.

The International Space Station has been operating with three people on board — well below the seven-person staff the space agency desires — since mid-January.

The new launch comes after a previous SpaceX staffing mission, Crew-11, was forced to make an early return to Earth because of an undisclosed medical issue by an unidentified member.

“NASA was ready. The team responded quickly and professionally, as did the teams across the agency, working closely with our commercial partners and executed a very safe return,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said during a news conference in January, adding that the astronaut was in stable condition. “This is exactly why we train, and this is NASA at its finest.”

Upon Crew-11’s splashdown return off the coast of California, all four astronauts went to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla. The crew — which included NASA’s Zena Cardman and Mike Fincke, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Kimiya Yui and Roscosmos cosmonaut Oleg Platonov of Russia — later appeared at a news conference.

“How we handled everything all the way through, from nominal operations to this unforeseen operation, really bodes well for future exploration,” Fincke said.

An understaffed space station

On board the Crew-12 mission will be NASA’s Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot and Russian cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev.

NASA typically likes to have a direct handover between incoming and outgoing crews on the space station, a process that can bring staffing levels up to 11 as the arriving astronauts orient themselves on the laboratory with the help of the departing crew.

Given Crew-11’s emergency medical departure, the Crew-12 astronauts will get no such handover period. But Meir said she and her crewmates were able to exchange information with the Crew-11 astronauts on the ground.

“We ran into them several times and had a little bit of a debrief so they could pass along some pertinent things,” she said during a February 8 news conference.

The Crew-11 astronauts’ premature departure left the football field-size space station with three remaining staff members: two Russian cosmonauts, Sergey Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, as well as NASA astronaut Chris Williams, who traveled to the orbiting laboratory as part of a rideshare agreement with Roscosmos, NASA’s Russian counterpart.

The situation is less than ideal. NASA has routinely indicated that a robust crew presence on the space station is crucial for maximizing value and productivity on board the orbiting laboratory — which costs about $3 billion per year to operate and maintain.

However, as Meir noted, before SpaceX began offering NASA routine trips to orbit for the space agency’s astronauts, it was common for only three astronauts to helm the space station.

“The time of my last flight — around six, seven years ago — we did these indirect handovers,” Meir said, referring to the process of conducting a handoff with new crewmates on

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (KEYT) – San Luis Obispo Police received notification of a death near a homeless encampment near Los Osos Valley Road and Calle Joaquin this afternoon.

SLOPD detectives and the County Sheriff's Coroner's Office are investigating the death and more information will be provided once avaialble.

The post One dead at homeless encampment near Los Osos and Calle Joaquin appeared first on News Channel 3-12.

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