‘Weeeee!’ Some national parks open to visitors post-shutdown
MINNEAPOLIS — Park rangers were once again greeting visitors at some national parks across the United States and flight operations at major airports were returning to normal on Saturday, one day after a partial government shutdown came to an end.
While there were signs that some government machinery was grinding back to life after a record 35 days without funding, many federal workers and their families approached the end of the shutdown cautiously, saying they were relieved they would receive paychecks again, but would continue to restrict their spending amid fears that another shutdown could happen in weeks.
“You can only be so happy because you just have to know that it could happen again,” said Rachel Malcom, whose husband serves in the Coast Guard in Rhode Island. “We’re going to be playing catch up, so I don’t want to overspend.”
President Donald Trump signed a short-term deal Friday to end the partial government shutdown, which caused 800,000 federal employees to miss two paychecks. The administration asked department heads to reopen offices in a “prompt and orderly manner.”
Search on for Louisiana man suspected in 5 deaths
NEW ORLEANS — Authorities in Louisiana said they are searching for an “armed and dangerous” 21-year-old accused of killing his parents and three others in two separate but related shootings Saturday.
Ascension Parish Sheriff Bobby Webre says Dakota Theriot is the “prime suspect” in the deaths of Keith, 50, and Elizabeth Theriot, 50, of Gonzales, his parents.
They were shot in their trailer on Saturday morning. Deputies arrived at the scene and were able to interview one of the victims before both died. Webre said that information led authorities to zero in on the couple’s son as a suspect.
Dakota Theriot was being sought on first-degree murder and other charges. He was believed to be driving a stolen 2004 Dodge Ram pickup, gray and silver in color.
The sheriff said three other shooting deaths occurred Saturday in neighboring Livingston Parish, about 70 miles west of New Orleans.
In Trump ally Stone’s case, Mueller finds crime in cover-up
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump confidant Roger Stone may be accused of lying and tampering with witnesses, but it’s equally notable what he’s not charged with: colluding with the Kremlin in a grand conspiracy to help Trump win the presidency in 2016.
The case is the latest in a series brought by special counsel Robert Mueller that focuses on cover-ups but lays out no underlying crime. It’s a familiar pattern in Washington, where scandals from Watergate to Iran-Contra and Whitewater have mushroomed into presidency-imperiling affairs due to efforts to conceal and mislead.
In the Russia investigation , one Trump aide after another has been accused of lying to investigators, or encouraging others to do so, about Russia-related contacts during the campaign and transition period.
Mueller may well have evidence of criminal coordination between Trump associates and Russia that he has yet to reveal, but so far, he’s focused repeatedly on those he believes have tried to throw federal or congressional investigators off the trail.
Stone’s indictment charges him with seven felonies, including witness tampering, obstruction and false statements, while leaving open the question of whether his or the Trump’s campaign’s interest in exploiting Russia-hacked emails about Democrat Hillary Clinton crossed a legal line.
12 immigrant workers at Trump golf course fired, lawyer says
NEW YORK — A dozen immigrant workers at one of President Donald Trump’s golf clubs in New York who are in the U.S. illegally were fired this month even though managers had known about their legal status for years, a lawyer for the workers said Saturday.
As the president railed during the partial government shutdown against immigrants coming into the country illegally, a manager at the Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County called a dozen immigrant workers into a room one by one Jan. 18 and fired them, said lawyer Anibal Romero.
Many of them had worked at the club for a dozen or more years, he said, and managers knew they had submitted phony documents but looked the other way.
From wire sources
“This is bogus. People have been there for 12, 13, 14 years,” said Romero. He added, referring to one of the president’s sons, “One had the keys to Eric Trump’s bedroom.”
The firings come after workers at another Trump club in New Jersey came forward last month to say managers there had hired them knowing they were in the country illegally, and had even helped one obtain phony documents.
___
40 dead, many feared buried in mud after Brazil dam collapse
BRUMADINHO, Brazil — The death toll from the collapse of a dam holding back mine waste in southeastern Brazil rose to 40 on Saturday as searchers flying in helicopters and rescuers laboring in deep mud uncovered more bodies. An estimated 300 people were still missing and authorities expected the death toll to increase during a search made more challenging by intermittent rains.
Scores of families in the city desperately awaited word on their loved ones, and Romeu Zema, governor of Minas Gerais state, promised that those responsible “would be punished.”
Employees of the mining complex owned and operated by Brazilian mining company Vale were eating lunch Friday afternoon when the dam gave way, unleashing a sea of reddish-brown mud that knocked over and buried several structures of the company and surrounding areas. The level of devastation quickly led President Jair Bolsonaro and other officials to describe it as a “tragedy.”
The flow of waste reached the nearby community of Vila Ferteco and an occupied Vale administrative office. On Saturday, rooftops poked above an extensive field of the mud, which also cut off roads. After the dam collapse, some were evacuated from Brumadinho. Other residents of the affected areas barely escaped with their lives.
“I saw all the mud coming down the hill, snapping the trees as it descended. It was a tremendous noise,” said a tearful Simone Pedrosa, from the neighborhood of Parque Cachoeira, about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from where the dam collapsed.
Economy likely to pick up, though pain may linger for some
BALTIMORE — The U.S. economy will likely resume its steady growth now that the government has reopened, though economists say some scars — for the nation and for federal workers — will take time to heal.
Most analysts estimate that the 35-day partial shutdown shaved a few tenths of a percentage point from annual economic growth in the first three month of 2019. They say growth should pick up in the coming months, though some of the money federal workers and contractors didn’t spend in the past five weeks — on such items as movie tickets, restaurants and travel — will never be made up. Having gone without two paychecks, many federal workers were forced to visit food banks or to borrow money. Federal workers will now receive backpay, though some contractors might not.
President Donald Trump agreed to reopen the government for three weeks after having forced the shutdown in hopes of compelling Democrats to approve billions for a wall on the Mexico border. Trump failed to secure any such money.
During the shutdown, a shortage of airport security and air traffic controllers disrupted travel at such major hubs as LaGuardia Airport in New York and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey. The pressure on Trump to reopen the government intensified Friday after a delay of about 3,000 flights by mid-afternoon because six of 13 air traffic controllers didn’t show up to work at a critical center in Virginia.
S&P Global Ratings estimates that the economy lost $6 billion because of the government closure — a sizable but relatively negligible sum in a $19 trillion-plus U.S. economy.