Mitchell G. Patton

With Iran's protests dragging on for a third month, the government's crackdown is intensifying in ethnically Kurdish areas in the country's northwest, according to government, local officials and human rights activists. At least 42 people have been killed over the past week while protesting in Kurdish cities as a result of "direct fire from Iranian government forces," the Kurdish human rights group Hengaw said on Tuesday. The group, which focuses on human rights in Iranian Kurdistan, said at least 1,500 people were injured.The authorities restrict media coverage of the demonstrations, making independent reporting on the protests difficult, if not impossible.…

Billionaire Elon Musk said Friday he would support Ron DeSantis in 2024 if the Florida governor, who recently reached a second term, ran for president.Earlier this month, DeSantis defeated Democratic opponent Charlie Crist by nearly 20 percentage points to be re-elected as Florida governor and cemented himself as the top rising star of the Republican Party.Political pundits have been giving high marks to DeSantis, who is seen as a potential challenger to former President Donald Trump in the field of 2024 Republican presidential candidates. Trump announced 10 days ago that he would run again in the 2024 election.“My preference for…

Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is fighting to secure the 218 votes he needs to be elected House speaker in January.With voters this month giving the GOP a slim majority, only a small bloc of conservative rebels could deny the California Republican the speaker's gavel at the start of the new Congress. Several McCarthy enemies have already declared that they will not vote for him under any circumstances.“He doesn't have the votes,” said Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., leader of the conservative Freedom Caucus. "Some of the stages of grief include denial, so there will be some denial, and then there's the…

On the Colombia-Panama border, where migrants wait to fight their way through the dense and sometimes deadly jungle of the Darien Gap, Americans from the Department of Homeland Security join forces with the Colombian National Police to take down drug traffickers. people before they can lead migrants north. Camping along the beaches of this verdant isthmus, where South America becomes Central America, migrants must choose between following people smugglers into the nearly trackless forest or paying a higher fee to cross the glittering blue waters of the Caribbean.Earlier this month, an NBC News crew flew over the jungle in a…