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MATAMOROS, MEXCIO
MARINES, POLICE BLAMED FOR KILLINGS
Ted S. Warren / AP
Ana Martinez, a medical assistant at the Sea Mar Community Health Center, gives a patient a flu shot. This years U.S. flu season got off to an early start, and its been driven by a nasty type of flu that tends to put more people in the hospital and cause more deaths than other common flu bugs.
Flu season gets worse Health official says it has ‘lot more steam’ than expected this year Lisa Krantz / Lisa Krantz
By Mike Stobbe A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS
NEW YORK — The flu season in the U.S. is getting worse. Health officials last week said flu was blanketing the country but they thought there was a good chance the season was already peaking. But the newest numbers out Friday show it grew even more intense. “This is a season that has a lot more steam than we thought,” said Dr. Dan Jernigan of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One measure of the season is how many doctor or hospital visits are because of a high fever, cough and other flu symptoms. Thirty-two states reported high patient traffic last week, up from 26 the previous week. Overall, it was the busiest week for flu symptoms in nine years. Hawaii is the only state that doesn’t have widespread illnesses. This year’s flu season got off to an early start, and it’s been driven by a nasty type of flu that tends to put more people in the hospital and cause more deaths than other common flu bugs. In New York, state officials say a drastic rise in flu cases hospitalized more than 1,600 this past week. The flu became intense last month in the U.S. The last two weekly report show flu widespread Flu continues on A3
Esmeralda Alvarado grieves during the burial for her cousins, Erica Alvarado Rivera, 26, Alex Alvarado, 22, and Jose Angel Alvarado, 21, during their burial in El Control, Mexico in 2014. The siblings, U.S. Citizens from Progreso, were found shot to death after they went missing from a restaurant near El Control.
Investigators: officials lied to cover up 2014 murders By Christopher Sherman ASSOCIATED PRE SS
MEXICO CITY — A border mayor’s paramilitary security team and Mexican marines were behind the disappearance and murder of four people, including three American siblings, the government’s National Human Rights Commission said Thursday. Investigators determined that city officials in Matamoros, marines, and state and federal police lied in their statements in an effort to cover up the 2014 killings, a report re-
leased by the commission said. Erica, Alex and Jose Angel Alvarado Rivera of Progreso, Texas, disappeared on Oct. 13 of that year while visiting their father in Control, a small town in Mexico near Matamoros, which is across the border from Brownsville, Texas. An acquaintance, Mexican citizen Jose Guadalupe Castaneda Benitez, was also taken. Their bodies were all found shot in the head more than two weeks later. The commission said the four were last seen alive in the custody of marines and the Hercules unit, which provided security for thenMatamoros Mayor Leticia Salazar. The report said the nine members of the Hercules team were technically Tamaulipas state police officers, but they appeared to answer only to the mayor and her lieutenants. The city paid part of their salaries and gave them special uniforms with a logo otherwise un-
related to the state police, it said. Witnesses told investigators the three Americans and their Mexican friend were at a taco stand beneath a highway overpass around midday when marines and the Hercules team approached them. At one point a city motorcade also stopped, the witnesses said. The mayor had attended an event earlier in Control. All four were loaded into vehicles and taken away, the witnesses said. “Of the arrests made by public servants of the Navy and Hercules Group on Oct. 13, 2014, no record exists, nor were they presented to any authority,” the commission said. “There is not even an investigation involving (the victims), much less arrest orders or a complaint against them.” Human rights investigators said they had found some men in prison who reported also being arrested by marines the same day the four peoKillings continues on A3
STATE OF TEXAS
Judge orders sweeping changes for foster care system Ruling calls for improved record keeping and more caseworker visits
Todd Yates/Corpus Christi Caller-Times/AP
U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack ordered sweeping changes for the Texas' foster care system Friday. Jack wrote that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services “has demonstrated an unwillingness to take tangible steps to fix the broken system.”
DALLAS — A judge ordered Texas to make sweeping changes to its foster care system on Friday, two years after she found it unconstitutionally broken. In the scathing final order, U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack told the state the overhaul must include improvements in record keeping, caseworker visits and where children are placed. The changes were based on recommendations from experts the judge appointed to help craft a plan to improve the lives of children in long-term foster care. The judge appointed
the two experts after ruling in December 2015 that people labeled permanent wards of the state “almost uniformly leave state custody more damaged than when they entered.” The state has fought Jack’s oversight and objected to previous recommendations made by the experts. In her ruling Friday, Jack wrote that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services “has demonstrated an unwillingness to take tangible steps to fix the broken system.” The state quickly filed a notice of appeal following the ruling. Attorney General Ken Paxton said
the judge’s “unfunded and unrealistic mandates” were misguided, and he noted legislation last year that funds improvements to the system. But in her final order, Jack said there was no explanation about where the nearly $1 billion in additional funding that the Legislature provided last session would go. “Two years and one legislative session later, the foster care system of Texas remains broken,” she wrote. Among directives from Jack is that foster children have access to a phone to report abuse to Ruling continues on A3