Trump administration denies reaching conclusion on Khashoggi

Trump administration denies reaching conclusion on Khashoggi

WASHINGTON

The Trump administration denied Saturday that it had reached a final determination in the death of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi.

After President Donald Trump called his CIA chief and top diplomat from Air Force One as he flew to survey wildfire damage in California, the State Department released a statement saying “recent reports indicating that the U.S. government has made a final conclusion are inaccurate.”

American intelligence agencies have concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing in the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, according to the U.S. official familiar with that assessment. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke only condition of anonymity Friday. The conclusion was first reported by The Washington Post.

The Saudi government has denied the claim.

Police: Mississippi woman kidnapped 2 girls from Texas home

DALLAS

A Mississippi woman was in custody Saturday a day after she traveled to Texas and abducted two girls from their home, authorities said.

Crystal Gaylene Edwards, 33, was being held in the Rankin County, Miss., jail on two counts of kidnapping and another count of sale of narcotics.

Edwards was acquainted with the girls’ family and appeared at their home northeast of Dallas early Friday morning, according to police. Authorities didn’t specify how the girls, age 8 and 11, are related.

Police in Josephine, about 30 miles northeast of Dallas, said in a statement that Edwards “lured” the girls from the home, but didn’t explain how she did so without alerting adults or others in the home.

Police in Texas, working with the U.S. Marshals Service and officers in Edwards’ hometown of Pearl, Miss., tracked Edwards and the girls to Jackson, Miss., where she was apprehended later Friday. The girls weren’t physically harmed and were placed in the custody of Mississippi Child Protective Services pending their return to Texas.

Authorities have not indicated a motive in the case but said “this was not a random kidnapping.”

FBI: Search on for kidnapped NC teen

LUMBERTON, N.C.

The FBI and other police agencies are continuing their search to find a 13-year-old girl kidnapped from a North Carolina mobile home park.

The FBI said Saturday that agents are conducting searches on foot and using drones as part of the search for Hania Noelia Aguilar.

Relatives say the eighth-grader went outside last week to start a relative’s SUV to prepare to leave for the bus stop. Police say a man then forced her into an SUV and drove off.

Authorities said the SUV was later found in Lumberton, several miles from the mobile-home park.

The FBI has increased its reward for information that leads to Aguilar to $25,000.

Fla. sues Walgreens, CVS over opioid sales

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.

Florida is suing the nation’s two largest drugstore chains, Walgreens and CVS, alleging they added to the state and national opioid crisis by overselling painkillers and not taking precautions to stop illegal sales.

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that she has added the companies to a state-court lawsuit filed last spring against Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and several opioid distributors.

Bondi said in a press release that CVS and Walgreens “played a role in creating the opioid crisis.” She said the companies failed to stop “suspicious orders of opioids” and “dispensed unreasonable quantities of opioids from their pharmacies.” On average, about 45 people die nationally each day because of opioid overdoses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis called the lawsuit “without merit” in a statement Saturday.

Thousands of homes still without gas service after blasts

LAWRENCE, Mass.

The company at the center of the natural-gas explosions in Massachusetts in September says it has restored gas service to about 60 percent of affected homes, but nearly 1,760 families remain in temporary housing.

The Sept. 13 blasts in Andover, Lawrence and North Andover destroyed or damaged more than 130 structures, injured dozens and left at least one person dead. Gas service isn’t expected to be fully restored until early December.

Columbia Gas on Saturday released new data showing service has been restored to about 4,450 of the nearly 7,500 gas meters that were shut off after the explosions. Service also has been restored to about 76 percent of business meters.

The company says it has paid nearly $58 million for customer claims so far.

Investigators have blamed overpressurization of gas lines for the explosions.

Migrants get a cool reception in Mexican border town

TIJUANA, Mexico

Many of the nearly 3,000 Central American migrants who have reached the Mexican border with California via caravan said Saturday they do not feel welcome in the city of Tijuana, where hundreds more migrants are headed after more than a month on the road.

The vast majority were camped at an outdoor sports complex, sleeping on a dirt baseball field and under bleachers with a view of the steel walls topped by barbed wire at the newly reinforced U.S.-Mexico border. The city opened the complex after other shelters were filled to capacity. Church groups provided portable showers, bathrooms and sinks. The federal government estimates the migrant crowd in Tijuana could soon swell to 10,000.

Tijuana Mayor Juan Manuel Gastelum has called the migrants’ arrival an “avalanche” that the city is ill-prepared to handle, calculating that they will be in Tijuana for at least six months as they wait to file asylum claims. U.S. border inspectors are processing only about 100 asylum claims a day at Tijuana’s main crossing to San Diego. Asylum seekers register their names in a tattered notebook managed by migrants themselves that had more than 3,000 names even before the caravan arrived.

While many in Tijuana are sympathetic to the migrants’ plight and trying to assist, some locals have shouted insults, hurled rocks and even thrown punches at the migrants.

One dead, scores injured in fuel tax protests around France

PARIS

One protester was killed and 227 other people were injured – eight seriously – at roadblocks set up around villages, towns and cities across France on Saturday as citizens angry with rising fuel taxes rose up in a grassroots movement, posing a new challenge to beleaguered President Emmanuel Macron.

Police officers lobbed tear gas canisters at demonstrators on the famed Champs-Elysees Avenue in Paris as groups of “yellow jackets,” as the protesters called themselves, tried to make their way to the presidential Elysee Palace. Later, hundreds of protesters entered the bottom of the street dotted with luxury shops where the palace is located – and where Macron lives – before being pushed back by security forces with shields.

In a similar scenario, police cleared out the huge traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe, paralyzed for hours by protesters.

French Interior Ministry officials counted nearly 283,000 protesters, mostly peaceful, throughout the day at more than 2,000 sites, some setting bonfires or flying balloons.

Associated Press