Por Alicia Wallace, CNN

Aquí, en enero, los días son oscuros y cortos, el suelo es frío y duro y el aire bajo cero penetra y corta.

Aún así, la vida sigue adelante.

Los lagos congelados son el centro de atención de festivales populares, eventos deportivos y reuniones.

Una madre camina hasta el supermercado local con su hijo y un trineo a cuestas. Los amigos se reúnen frente a una taberna local para jugar al curling.

Desconocidos ayudan y prestan un poco de su fuerza para sacar los coches de los bancos de nieve. La limpieza diaria del sendero a casa permite charlar con los vecinos para tomar un respiro.

Pero la tranquilidad pueblerina que recorre esta ciudad de barrios se ha visto destrozada en las últimas semanas.

Miles de agentes federales armados y enmascarados han sido desplegados en Minnesota, y Minneapolis es el epicentro de la mayor operación de control de inmigración en la historia de Estados Unidos.

La vida cotidiana se ha visto trastocada en escuelas, hospitales, tiendas y restaurantes, y en barrios donde antes las aceras estaban repletas de corredores, gente paseando a sus perros, familias caminando y niños regresando a casa tras bajar del autobús.

Los días están plagados de altercados y enfrentamientos entre agentes federales y residentes.

Los canales de chat del vecindario documentan cómo amigos, compañeros de trabajo y escolares estaban aquí un día y se fueron al siguiente.

El momento decisivo ocurrió a principios de este mes, a las 9:37 am de un miércoles, cuando la residente Renee Nicole Good recibió un disparo mortal de un agente de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas.

Una vez más, los ojos del mundo estaban puestos en Minneapolis, una ciudad y área metropolitana que ha tenido más que su cuota justa de eventos trágicos y de alto perfil en los últimos años, entre ellos la muerte de George Floyd a causa de la rodilla de un policía de la ciudad, y los disturbios que siguieron.

La urbe también ha experimentado el homicidio de la representante estatal Melissa Hortman, quien fue asesinada junto a su esposo y su perro, y el tiroteo masivo en la Iglesia Católica y la escuela Annunciation que dejó dos estudiantes muertos y docenas de heridos.

Entretejidos por la ciudad se encuentran vestigios de ese trauma y conflicto de años pasados ​​y de días y semanas presentes.

Letreros de jardín, banderas, murales, monumentos, cintas y grafitis hab

By Elise Hammond, CNN

(CNN) — Since the mass shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, the law enforcement protocol for responding to active shootings is to stop the attacker as quickly as possible.

Yet twice in recent years — in Parkland, Florida, and in Uvalde, Texas — school police officers have allegedly failed to follow that protocol.

In both instances, prosecutors criminally charged the officer for their alleged inaction. And in both cases, a jury found them not guilty of all charges.

While the details differ, the acquittals of Scot Peterson in Parkland and Adrian Gonzales in Uvalde demonstrate how difficult it is to prosecute law enforcement officers and suggest many jurors do not regard hesitation during a school shooting as a crime, legal experts said. The acquittals also offer insights into the upcoming trial of former Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo on charges of child abandonment.

Before hearing from the officer’s perspective, it’s easy to blame them for not responding quickly, said Jeremy Eldridge, a criminal trial defense attorney and former prosecutor in Baltimore. But after hearing testimony, jurors tend to have more empathy.

“It becomes a lot more difficult once that officer is humanized to blame that officer for, frankly, the actions of another,” he said, referring to the shooter.

The acquittals of these officers also contrast with the successful prosecutions in Michigan and Illinois against the parents of mass shooters.

Together, the verdicts in these cases indicate prosecutors are focusing on a broader cast of defendants after a mass shooting — but juries so far seem more willing to grant deference to police than to the parents of shooters.

However, Eldridge said he doesn’t think the two acquittals will dissuade prosecutors from bringing charges in similar future cases. “The public is always looking for accountability,” he said, and that has increasingly extended to people other than the shooter.

Similarities of Parkland and Uvalde trials

Gonzales’ trial stemmed from the massacre of May 2022, when an 18-year-old gunman entered Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and killed 19 children and two teachers. It took 77 minutes for law enforcement to stop and kill the shooter — even though Gonzales was at the school more than a minute before the massacre began.

Prosecutors alleged Gonzales failed to locate, engage or delay the gunman when he arrived at the school and while the shooter was still outside.

When he got there, a teacher’s aide told him what the shooter was wearing and the direction he was heading, before they both heard gunshots. Those gunshots from the parking lot were 59 seconds before the gunman walked into the school building, CNN’s analysis found.

His defense highlighted what he did do, such as calling for help, finding a map and helping evacuate students from other parts of the school. Gonzales said he never saw the gunman and did not fire a shot. After the shooting, he told investigators he heard the gunfire but didn’t know where it was coming from. The jury also heard Gonzales say in an interview with investigators that he got “tunnel vision” in the moment and made a “mistake.”

By Tami Luhby, CNN

(CNN) — Millions of Americans got a nasty reminder this month of just how costly health care coverage is.

Workers, Obamacare enrollees and Medicare beneficiaries are all contending with steeper-than-usual hikes in their health insurance premiums for 2026 – yet another stressor in the nation’s affordability crisis.

Employers’ health benefit costs are expected to rise 9%, the largest increase in several years, though they will try to soften the blow somewhat for workers, according to consultants. Premiums for the benchmark Affordable Care Act plan soared 26%, on average, one of the biggest jumps since the Obamacare plans debuted more than a decade ago. (Enrollees’ actual premium payments are expected to spike 114%, on average, due to the expiration of the enhanced federal subsides, according to KFF, a health policy research group.)

And Medicare Part B premiums, which cover doctors’ visits, outpatient hospital services and other care, shot up nearly 10% this year, the largest increase in four years and second-largest hike, in dollar terms, in the program’s history. The standard monthly premium is now $202.90, up $17.90 from last year, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The surge comes as insurers are in the hot seat in Washington, DC. President Donald Trump says he will soon meet with industry leaders to pressure them to lower premiums, while House lawmakers grilled the CEOs of several major insurers in daylong hearings on Thursday.

Representatives from both sides of the aisle challenged the executives, questioning why they are not able to better control costs, especially when they have grown into behemoths that own doctors’ practices, pharmaceutical benefit managers, pharmacies and other health care services businesses that rake in big bucks. Also, lawmakers repeatedly castigated the insurance executives for trying to pad their profits by denying or delaying approval of the care doctors say their patients need.

The insurers responded that they are better able to coordinate treatment and focus on providing value-focused care as multiservice providers, while noting they are required by law to spend at least 80% of premium dollars on health care claims. In addition, they said they are reforming their prior authorization practices to speed and simplify the approval process.

Insurers, however, don’t always feel pressured to reduce costs, said Vivian Ho, a health economist at Rice University. For instance, many larger employers hire an insurance company to administer their health benefits but pay their workers’ claims.

“There’s not as much incentive to drive the hardest bargain if you’re not on the hook for most of the increased prices yourself,” Ho said.

Getting more care

While the employer, Medicare and Affordable Care Act markets each have some specific reasons for the premium increases, there are many common factors driving up policyholders’ monthly tabs.

One top reason is that Americans have been going to the doctor more often in recent years and, in some cases, getting more intensive treatments. This increased utilizatio

By Brad Lendon, CNN

Manila, Philippines (CNN) — Two gravesites, less than 10 miles apart in a crowded, noisy, Asian metropolis of 14 million, stand testament to the horror, sacrifice and history of World War II.

Go to one and you can see the names and read the stories of those buried there, more than 17,000 troops, almost all of them lost in battle across the Pacific from 1941 to 1945.

Their headstones — 16,938 Latin crosses and 175 Stars of David — are arranged in neat rows in meticulously manicured grass across 152 acres in the Manila American Cemetery.

Go to the other and you’ll see just a single white cross, steps away from a hole in the ground leading to the dungeons of an old stone Spanish fort.

Its base bears an inscription: “This cross marks the final resting place of approximately 600 Filipinos and Americans who were victims of atrocities during the last days of February 1945.”

There are no individual stories here, but local lore says the spirits of those who perished in Fort Santiago’s dungeons remain and sometimes make themselves known to visitors.

Haunted and holy. These are the last vestiges of a global conflict in Manila.

Just steps from the gleaming skyscrapers of the Bonifacio Global City neighborhood in the Philippine capital, the Manila American Cemetery is an oasis of calm in one of the world’s most densely populated cities.

The noise of Manila’s notorious traffic goes silent just after I pass the gates of the burial ground. No hum of scooters, no roar of jeepney engines, no incessant honking of car horns. The soothing calm is broken only by the occasional jetliner taking off from Manila International Airport, three miles to the west, or a groundskeeper’s golf cart.

Rows upon rows of headstones — 17,111 in total — are laid out on the gentle slopes of a hilltop, the largest single burial ground for US World War II casualties.

The hilltop is capped with a circular memorial to those whose remains were never found after the war, 36,286 names chiseled into huge limestone tablets.

Some 3,000 of those headstones are of “unknown soldiers” — “A comrade in arms known but to God,” they read.

The rest identify those buried beneath them, some with histories of the fallen.

Private First Class Alfred Davenport is one of the first I see. Buried not far from the cemetery entrance, Davenport was a Black infantryman from Plymouth, North Carolina, who died from injuries sustained in Bougainville, Solomon Islands, in June 1944. He was 20 years old, his biography says.

Though Davenport served in a segregated unit for Black soldiers, “he and his comrades are buried side by side regardless of their rank, race, religion, gender and nationality,” the biography says.

Walking up the road up the hill from Davenport’s grave I come to the monument to the missing. In the US Navy section, I find five brothers from Iowa — George, Francis, Joseph, Madison and Albert Sullivan — who all died after the light cruiser on which they served, the USS Juneau, sank in a Japanese torpedo attack during the 1942 Battle of Guadalcanal, also in the Solomons.

Their deaths represent the largest loss to one family in US military history, according to the Naval Museum Development Foundation.

The Sullivans aren’t the only brothers memorialized at the cemetery. Buried beneath its grounds are the remains of 21 sets of brothers, all lying side by side.

Manila American Cemetery isn’t just a memorial ground. It can be an immersive history lesson, too.

On the walls of the circular memoria

By Elizabeth Wolfe, CNN

(CNN) — Waves of Minneapolis residents filled frigid city blocks and packed the Timberwolves NBA arena Friday to demand ICE leave their neighborhoods, even as the immigration official orchestrating the crackdown promised detentions would not let up.

Protests touched virtually every corner of the city Friday. Storm-weathered Minnesotans endured subzero temperatures at a downtown march, airport protest, arena rally and saw an “economic blackout” in which businesses closed their doors to boycott ICE’s presence.

But Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino doubled down on the unrelenting detention effort, which has at times swept up legal residents, US citizens and even a preschooler. He vowed earlier Friday to continue the government’s search for “criminal aliens.”

“We’re going to take them off the streets wholesale,” Bovino said at a news conference. “It’s on. We won’t quit.”

Children and families are among those caught up in the mass deportation campaign. A 5-year-old boy was detained alongside his father in their driveway earlier this week, adding to the mounting list of controversial encounters over which federal and state officials are clashing.

Fallout continues over the ICE shooting of Minneapolis mother Renee Nicole Good, as two sources tell CNN an FBI agent originally tasked with an investigation into the encounter has resigned.

As tensions reach a fever pitch in Minnesota, Maine has found itself to be the latest state in the crackdown crosshairs. The Trump administration, continuing its penchant for meme-ready monikers, has dubbed the effort “Operation Catch of the Day” and announced more than 100 arrests this week.

Here’s the latest:

• FBI agent investigating fatal ICE shooting resigns: The FBI agent who was assigned to work with state investigators to look into the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good has resigned from the bureau, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Soon after the agent opened a civil rights investigation into the officer, she was ordered to reclassify it as an investigation into an assault on the officer. It comes amid a much larger purge of seasoned FBI agents across several states, multiple sources familiar with the departures told CNN.
• 5-year-old remains in custody: There are dramatically conflicting accounts over what led up to the detention of preschooler Liam Conejo Ramos alongside his father. Amid concern for the boy’s welfare, Bovino, the Border Patrol official, said Friday his agents are “experts in dealing with children.” The child and his parent have been sent to a family detention facility in Texas. Liam is now the fourth child from his school district to be taken away by ICE in just the past two weeks, Columbia Heights Public Schools said.
• Feud over state detainees: DHS spokesper