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AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EST

| February 23, 2020 3:30 AM

Sanders wins Nevada caucuses, takes national Democratic lead

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Bernie Sanders scored a commanding victory in Nevada’s presidential caucuses, cementing his status as the Democrats' national front-runner but escalating tensions over whether he’s too liberal to defeat President Donald Trump.

As Sanders celebrated Saturday night, Joe Biden was in second place with votes still being counted. Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren trailed further behind. They were all seeking any possible momentum heading into next-up South Carolina and then Super Tuesday on March 3.

Nevada's caucuses were the first chance for White House hopefuls to demonstrate appeal to a diverse group of voters in a state far more representative of the country as a whole than Iowa and New Hampshire. Sanders, a 78-year Vermont senator and self-described democratic socialist, won by rallying his fiercely loyal base and tapping into support from Nevada’s large Latino community.

In a show of confidence, Sanders left Nevada for Texas, which offers one of the biggest delegate troves in just 10 days on Super Tuesday.

“We are bringing our people together," he declared. “In Nevada we have just brought together a multigenerational, multiracial coalition which is not only going to win in Nevada, it’s going to sweep this country.”

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Analysis: Sanders' path has echoes of Trump's 2016 campaign

WASHINGTON (AP) — A burn-it-down candidate is topping a splintered field of more moderate contenders and setting the party’s establishment wing on edge.

It’s how Donald Trump began his unlikely march to the Republican nomination in 2016. And four years later, it’s how Sen. Bernie Sanders has cemented himself as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination.

The Vermont senator won his second straight contest on Saturday with a convincing victory in Nevada, the first racially diverse state on the primary calendar, after winning the New Hampshire primary the week before. He also effectively tied for first place in the opening contest in Iowa.

Sanders’ surge has energized his legion of liberal supporters, including young people drawn to his calls for a government-run health care system and eliminating student debt. But it’s sparked an outcry from rival campaigns and other moderate Democrats that mirrors the worries of Republicans who tried, but failed, to block Trump’s path in 2016.

They warn that Sanders, a self-declared democratic socialist, can’t win in the general election. They warn that he would badly damage Democratic congressional candidates facing tough competition in swing states. And they warn that his nomination is all but inevitable unless other candidates start dropping out and stop splitting up the anti-Sanders vote.

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S. Korea leader: 'Unprecedented' steps needed to fight virus

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s president has put his nation on its highest alert for infectious diseases, saying Sunday that officials should take “unprecedented, powerful” steps to fight the outbreak of the new virus in the country.

President Moon Jae-in made the comments at the start of a government meeting as South Korean authorities reported 123 more cases, raising the country's total to 556, with five deaths.

Iran raised its death toll from the virus to eight people — the highest toll outside of China. The health ministry said there were now 43 confirmed cases in Iran, which did not report its first case of the virus until Wednesday.

Meanwhile, a diplomatic row erupted after Israel turned back a South Korean airliner, underscoring fear and tensions over the fast-spreading outbreak.

Moon said his government had increased its anti-virus alert level by one notch to “Red,” the highest level. The step was last taken in 2009 to guard against a novel influenza outbreak that killed more than 260 people in South Korea. Under the highest alert level, authorities can order the temporary closure of schools and reduce the operation of public transportation and flights to and from South Korea.

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Security adviser: I've seen no intel of Moscow helping Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's national security adviser said he's seen no intelligence to show that Russia is interfering in the U.S. presidential campaign in hopes of reelecting President Donald Trump.

Robert O'Brien's comments come after conflicting accounts emerged from a recent closed-door briefing by intelligence officials, who spoke to lawmakers about Russian interference in the 2020 campaign. One intelligence official said that lawmakers were not told that Russia was working to directly aid Trump.

But other people familiar with the meeting said they were told the Kremlin was looking to help Trump's candidacy. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discussed the classified briefing.

“The national security adviser gets pretty good access to our intelligence," O'Brien said. “I haven't seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything to attempt to get President Trump re-elected.”

O'Brien's comments were released Saturday in a transcript of an interview with ABC's “This Week" set to air on Sunday.

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Report finds Catholic charity founder sexually abused women

PARIS (AP) — A respected Catholic figure who worked to improve conditions for the developmentally disabled for more than half a century sexually abused at least six women during most of that period, according to a report released Saturday by the France-based charity he founded.

The report produced for L'Arche International said the women's descriptions provided enough evidence to show that Jean Vanier engaged in “manipulative sexual relationships” from 1970 to 2005, usually with a “psychological hold” over the alleged victims.

Although he was a layman and not a priest, many Catholics hailed Vanier, who was Canadian, as a living saint for his work with the disabled. He died last year at age 90.

“The alleged victims felt deprived of their free will and so the sexual activity was coerced or took place under coercive conditions,” the report,commissioned by L'Arche last year and prepared by the U.K.-based GCPS Consulting group, said. It did not rule out potential other victims.

None of the women was disabled, a significant point given the Catholic hierarchy has long sought to portray any sexual relationship between religious leaders and other adults as consensual unless there was clear evidence of disability.

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Judge halts plan to move virus patients to California city

COSTA MESA, Calif. (AP) — A court temporarily blocked the U.S. government from sending up to 50 people infected with a new virus from China to a Southern California city for quarantine after local officials argued that the plan lacked details about how the community would be protected from the outbreak.

A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order late Friday to halt the transportation of anyone who has tested positive for the new coronavirus to Costa Mesa, a city of 110,000 in the heart of Orange County. U.S. District Judge Josephine L. Stanton scheduled a hearing on the issue Monday.

City officials quickly sought court intervention after learning from the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services that U.S. officials planned to start moving patients to a state-owned facility in Costa Mesa as early as Sunday.

They said in court documents that local officials were not included in the planning effort and wanted to know why the Fairview Developmental Center was considered a suitable quarantine site and what kind of safeguards were in place to prevent the possible transmission of the virus that has spread worldwide.

“The city has not been part of any of the process that led to the consideration of the site, and it would be unfair to not include us in this kind of significant decision that has great impact on our community," Mayor Katrina Foley told the Orange County Register.

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AP Exclusive: DEA agent accused of conspiring with cartel

MIAMI (AP) — A once-standout U.S. federal narcotics agent known for spending lavishly on luxury cars and Tiffany jewelry has been arrested on charges of conspiring to launder money with the same Colombian drug cartel he was supposed to be fighting.

Jose Irizarry and his wife were arrested Friday at their home near San Juan, Puerto Rico, as part of a 19-count federal indictment that accused the 46-year-old Irizarry of “secretly using his position and his special access to information” to divert millions in drug proceeds from control of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“It’s a black eye for the DEA to have one of its own engaged in such a high level of corruption," said Mike Vigil, the DEA's former Chief of International Operations. "He jeopardized investigations. He jeopardized other agents and he jeopardized informants."

Federal prosecutors in Tampa, Florida, allege the conspiracy not only enriched Irizarry but benefited two unindicted co-conspirators, neither of whom is named in the indictment. One was employed as a Colombian public official while the other was described as the head of a drug trafficking and money laundering organization who became the godfather to the Irizarry couple's children in 2015, when the DEA agent was posted to the Colombian resort city of Cartagena at the time.

When The Associated Press revealed the scale of Irizarry’s alleged wrongdoing last year, it sent shockwaves through the DEA, where his ostentatious habits and tales of raucous yacht parties with bikini-clad prostitutes were legendary among agents

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Sanders on top: Key takeaways from the Nevada caucuses

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Sen. Bernie Sanders cruised to victory in the Nevada caucuses, heartening his supporters and stoking alarm among moderates who fear he is too liberal and would lose to President Donald Trump.

Takeaways from the Nevada caucuses:

SANDERS' PRESIDENTIAL BID GETS ROCKET FUEL

Sanders' convincing win means there is no longer an asterisk next to his status as the front-runner in the race. He proved his strength with a broad coalition that included Latino voters, union members and African Americans.

Now Sanders claims three victories in a row heading into South Carolina next Saturday, and more important, Super Tuesday on March 3 when about one-third of the delegates needed for the nomination are at stake. The biggest prizes that day, California and Texas, look a lot like Nevada demographically.

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Yemen's Houthi rebels impeding UN aid flow, demand a cut

Yemen’s Houthi rebels have blocked half of the United Nations’ aid delivery programs in the war-torn country — a strong-arm tactic to force the agency to give them greater control over the massive humanitarian campaign, along with a cut of billions of dollars in foreign assistance, according to aid officials and internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The rebel group has made granting access to areas under their control contingent on a flurry of conditions that aid agencies reject, in part because it would give the Houthis greater sway over who receives aid, documents and interviews show.

The Houthis' obstruction has hindered several programs that feed the near-starving population and help those displaced by the nearly 6-year civil war, a senior U.N. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the situation.

“Over 2 million beneficiaries ... are directly affected,” the official said.

The Houthis have been pushing back against U.N. efforts to tighten monitoring of some $370 million a year that its agencies already give to government institutions controlled mostly by the rebel group, documents show. That money is supposed to pay salaries and other administration costs, but more than a third of the money spent last year wasn’t audited, according to an internal document leaked to the AP.

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Israel's Lieberman stills holds keys to future government

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel finds itself in a familiar place after a tumultuous election campaign — with maverick politician Avigdor Lieberman still seemingly in control of the country’s fate.

The run-up to Israel's third election in less than a year saw criminal charges filed against the prime minister, an American Mideast plan unveiled and various party mergers and machinations. Yet once again, opinion polls suggest that neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor his chief challenger Benny Gantz will be able to form a coalition without Lieberman.

Lieberman remains cagey about his intentions, raising the possibility his brinkmanship could end up forcing yet another election.

Lieberman’s nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party bolted from Netanyahu's right-wing camp last year to spark the unprecedented stalemate in Israeli politics. Though Lieberman has all but ruled out sitting in a government led by his one-time mentor Netanyahu, saying his “era is over,” he has also driven a hard bargain with Gantz and has taken out campaign ads against the former military chief.

Lieberman insists a future coalition cannot include Arab-led parties, whose lawmakers he considers terrorist sympathizers because several have sided with Israel's adversaries and refused to condemn attackers. He has also ruled out governing jointly with ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties that he says have long wielded disproportionate power that has harmed Israel’s secular majority and, in particular, his base of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Lieberman himself immigrated to Israel in the 1970s from the former Soviet republic of Moldova.