AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

Sanders wins Nevada caucuses, takes national Democratic lead

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Bernie Sanders scored a commanding victory in Nevada’s presidential caucuses on Saturday, 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, 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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The Latest: Breaking a tie Vegas style – drawing cards

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Latest on the 2020 presidential campaign (all times local):

6:30 p.m.

Precinct captain Nadia Albulet says a deck of cards helped break a tie in very Las Vegas fashion.

The Las Vegas entertainer said Saturday that Sen. Bernie Sanders led the precinct at Lucille S. Rogers Elementary School. But, she says, her king of spades trumped a queen of diamonds to get the fourth delegate for former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

At Buttigieg’s after-caucus rally in a packed room at the Springs Preserve, she said she was motivated by climate change to do more than just vote this year.

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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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Charter bus rollover kills 3, injures 18 outside San Diego

PALA MESA, Calif. (AP) — A charter bus swerved on a rain-slicked Southern California highway and rolled down an embankment Saturday, killing three people and injuring 18 others, authorities said.

Several passengers were thrown from the bus, and one of the dead was trapped under the vehicle after it landed on its roof shortly after 10 a.m. off Interstate 15 in Pala Mesa, an unincorporated community about 45 miles (72 kilometres) north of San Diego, North County Fire Protection District spokesman John Choi said.

“There were no seat belts on this bus,” Choi said. Another person who died was trapped inside the bus, he added.

The wounded were taken to three hospitals with varying injuries, Choi said.

A California Highway Patrol officer told the San Diego Union-Tribune thatone of the patients was in critical condition and three others suffered major injuries.

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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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AP FACT CHECK: Donald Trump and the audacity of hype

WASHINGTON (AP) — In their boisterous presidential debate, several Democrats sold short the health care plans of rivals or glossed over aspects of their own record. In an audacious league of his own, President Donald Trump celebrated the elimination of a tax that still exists and went deep and wide in distorting what he’s done in office.

A sampling from the past week:

TAXES

TRUMP: “We got rid of it. No more death tax, no more inheritance tax.” — Colorado rally Thursday.

THE FACTS: False. The “death” tax is still alive.

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City: 2nd person in days struck, killed by Mardi Gras float

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A person was struck and killed by a Mardi Gras float during a raucous Saturday night street parade in New Orleans, the second person in days killed along a parade route in this year’s Carnival season, authorities said.

A city agency tasked with emergency preparedness tweeted that the person was fatally injured Saturday night as the popular Krewe of Endymion was rolling. The agency’s online platform, NOLA Ready, tweetetd it had no immediate details exactly how the death occurred or the person’s identity.

NOLA Ready said the remainder of Endymion’s parade was scrapped Saturday evening. Reports said 13 floats had already gone ahead when the accident occurred with the 14th float in the formation. Remaining floats that followed, along with marching groups, diverted elsewhere from the accident scene on Canal Street, a wide route in this Mississippi River port city popular with parade viewers.

New Orleans police said first responders swiftly converged on the site, tweeting out calls for crowds to avoid the area.

The float, with its gaudy lights still twinkling, was cordoned off by police on horseback and on foot. All around, streets were strewn with tossed bead necklaces and trinkets thrown from the floats, along with other party debris. TV stations reported a sombre mood had taken hold of members of the parade group upon learning of the fatality.

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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.