The pope is using his visit to Mexico to address the pervasive violence in the country. 

Of the 20,000 people who will occupy seats in the first of four designated zones during Wednesday's papal Mass in Ciudad Juárez, the majority will be the families of victims of violence, mothers of missing girls, those who are impoverished, and members of Mexico's indigenous community. The open-air mass will be held at a fairgrounds with a capacity of 220,000 people.

Priest Alejandro Martinez Gallegos, the coordinator of ticketing for the event, said that the bishop of Juárez and others within the church there developed a criterion to determine the best distribution of tickets.

"Our first criteria was to serve people that were more vulnerable, extremely impoverished, and people that were suffering the most," Gallegos said, referring to the rash of violence that has occurred in Juárez in years past.

With contests in two states completed, the most recent NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll found that 56 percent of Republican voters now believe that Donald Trump will be the eventual nominee. That was up from 42 percent a week ago. 

This week's tracking poll found Marco Rubio dropping 3 percentage points and John Kasich rising 4 points to a two-month high of 7 percent support.

In the New Hampshire primary, which took place during the period the poll was being conducted, Kasich finished in second place behind Donald Trump, Ted Cruz came in third, and Rubio finished in fifth.

Although Trump maintains his lead nationally with 38 percent support, he will face a different test among a more evangelical and conservative electorate in South Carolina on Feb. 20.

The NBC News|SurveyMonkey Weekly Election Tracking poll is conducted online among 13,139 adults, including 11,417 who say they are registered voters. The results have an error estimate of plus or minus 1.1 percentage points.

A New York community college baseball player who vanished after leaving a party has been found dead, NBC News reported. 

Alex Hendry, a 19-year-old freshman at Onondaga Community College in Syracuse, was last seen leaving an off-campus party early Sunday, according to a statement from the Onondaga County Sheriff's Office.

His roommate reported him missing Sunday afternoon. Hendry's body was found near the college's baseball and softball diamonds, officials said on Monday.

"The thoughts and prayers of our entire campus community are with Hendry's family and friends," the college said in a statement, adding it was "deeply saddened" to confirm the student's death.
 

Researchers have found even more proof that you are what you eat.

A group at the University of Texas at Dallas School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences found a link between chronic high-fat diets and memory loss.

"Diet really does have a significant impact on your brain, and it degrades brain function," said Dr. Tres Thompson, an associate professor of Neuronal Mechanisms of Memory and Aging at UTD. "What it looks like we're doing with a high-fat diet is aging the brain prematurely."

Thompson, along with neuroscience doctoral student Erica Underwood, tested their theory on rats. The control groups were fed a diet consisting of 14 percent fat, 64.8 percent carbohydrate, and 21.2 percent rat chow, according to the study. High-fat diet groups were fed 58 percent fat, 25.5 percent carbohydrate, and 16.4 percent protein rat chow.

Researchers said the animals' cognitive decline started soon after they began consuming a high-fat diet.

"What we see after the high-fat diet is impairment of that spatial memory," Underwood explained.

They believe the same thing happens in humans and said the implications for children are huge.

"The concern is not only for their long-term health — increased risk of heart disease and all sorts of other complications — it's a risk to their long-term mental faculty," said Thompson. "If they're already having trouble in school, as a child, that has long-term consequences."

The research suggests memory loss can be reversed with an improved diet

The search for a missing Loudoun County, Virginia, man who was once convicted of scamming banks out of millions of dollars has turned into a Maryland murder investigation.

Osama El-Atari's body was found Saturday afternoon in a pickup truck in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. He had been shot.

The 37-year-old's family reported him missing last week.

A former restaurant owner, El-Atari was convicted in 2010 for scamming banks out of more than $53 million. He presented fake life insurance policies claiming cash values in the millions as collateral for loans from banks in Virginia, Ohio, Tennessee and Maryland, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Phony domain names, emails and Federal Express mailings supported his fraudulent claims.

El-Atari flaunted his millions, living a lavish lifestyle, the FBI said. He bought Lamborghinis and Ferraris and a multimillion-dollar home in Ashburn.

He served only four years of his sentence after working as an informant and testifying in two high-profile cases.

Democratic Candidate Hillary Clinton took to Twitter Monday to excoriate Republicans who are intending to block President Obama's  Supreme Court appointment. 

The newly available High Court seat was left vacant by the recent passing of Justice Antonin Scalia on Feb. 13.

Clinton said in an 11-point fusillade that Senate Republicans are putting politics over the Constitution by vowing to block the nomination, which she said is a "new low."

"I have news for Republicans who would put politics over the Constitution: Refusing to do your duty isn’t righteous, it's disgraceful," tweeted Clinton.

Independent American journalist Anna Therese Day and three members of her crew were released Tuesday "pending further investigation," two days after they were detained while covering the anniversary of Bahrain's 2011 uprising, NBC News reported.

Bahraini authorities initially said one American had joined "rioters" in attacking police and accused all four of falsely claiming to be tourists. They were charged with "unlawful obstruction of vehicles and attending unlawful gatherings," according to the state-run Bahrain News Agency.

A defense lawyer for the four told The Associated Press the journalists were not under travel restrictions and were heading to the airport to leave Bahrain.

The Committee to Protect Journalists was among those calling for their immediate release.  

Senate Republicans are pledging to block any Supreme Court nomination by President Obama until after November, hoping a Republican will replace him and fill the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia.

But even if the Senate refuses to confirm Obama's pick and a Republican wins the White House, there is one way Obama can still get his nominee confirmed, NBC News reported.

It could all come down to 17 crucial days in January.

If Democrats win back the Senate and lose the White House in November, they would control both branches of government for about two weeks before Obama leaves office. That overlap in the transition of power is set in stone. The Constitution mandates the new Congress begins work on January 3, while President Obama stays in power until January 20.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said "America's struggle with racism is far from behind us" as she outlined a $2 billion plan to combat racial inequity Tuesday in Harlem.

The candidate said the money would go toward education and health care for black children during a speech at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. She also called for reform to the nation's criminal justice system.

"Our country can only live up to its potential if every persons has a chance,” she said.

The speech Tuesday followed a meeting with black leaders at the National Urban League. Clinton talked with several civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network and Marc H. Morial of the National Urban League. 

She also has a fundraiser with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ahead of the address. The governor joined Mayor de Blasio to stand on stage with the former secretary of state in a rare shared appearance between the the two.

Sharpton is a talk show host on MSNBC, which is owned by NBCUniversal, the parent company of this site. 

Three Americans held in Iraq for nearly one month were en route to Germany after having been released with just the "bumps and bruises you'd expect," a U.S. military official told NBC News on Tuesday.

The State Department said the Iraqi government was responsible for securing the release of the trio, who were reported missing on Jan. 16.

A senior Iraqi security official told NBC News on condition of anonymity that the Iraqi intelligence service had "liberated" the Americans.

Iraqi authorities had said the three were kidnapped from a "suspicious apartment" in the mixed Shia-Sunni neighborhood of Dora, The Associated Press reported.

They were being taken to the U.S. facility in Landstuhl.

Nearly four months after the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video, attorneys representing a coalition of community activists and relatives of McDonald have called for a special prosecutor to handle the criminal case.

McDonald, 17, was shot 16 times while walking away from a Chicago police officer in October 2014. Dashcam footage showing the shooting was released to the public in November 2015, sparking protests and outrage nationwide.

A petition filed Tuesday in Cook County Circuit Court seeks to have Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez "disqualified from representing the people" in connection with the McDonald case. 

It was announced during a news conference Tuesday.

"We make this request because Anita Alvarez cannot discharge her duties to the people because she is so aligned with the Fraternal Order of Police," said Sheila Bedi, a law professor at Northwestern University Law School and an attorney at the MacArthur Justice Center. "The Cook County justice system regularly, every day, as we speak churns black and brown men through the system, many for minor non-violent offenses. Yet this very system ground to a halt when it came to holding accountable the police officers who were responsible for the death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald."

The group of attorneys — featuring Locke Bowman, the director for the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center, Bedi, and G. Flint Taylor, a founding partner of the People’s Law Office —claimed Alvarez should not be allowed to prosecute Officer Jason Van Dyke or any other Chicago police officers who "participated in the falsification of reports, the destruction of evidence, the manipulation and coercion of witnesses and other possible misconduct in the aftermath of the fatal shooting."

The attorneys were joined at Tuesday's press conference by political leaders including Congressman Danny Davis, former mayoral candidate Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, and a representative for Congressman Bobby Rush, among others. 

Van Dyke, has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with McDonald's death and has pleaded not guilty. 

"State’s Attorney Alvarez has lost the confidence of the public," Garcia said. "She lost the confidence of the public when she delayed the charging of Officer Jason Van Dyke for 400 days. It is clear that any oversight of this case has been mishandled."

Some of those calling for a special prosecutor include supporters of former Cook County Assistant Sate's Attorney Kim Foxx, one of Alvarez's opponents in the upcoming March primary. Bowman denied Tuesday that politics played a role in the filing of the petition, however.

Alvarez has previously defended her actions and said she does not "believe any mistakes were made" during the handling of the case. 

"The State's Attorney's Office has spent over a year working hand-in-hand with the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, using the full resources of the most professional and respected investigative agency in the nation to build a meticulous case against Jason Van Dyke," Alvarez said in a statement Tuesday. "Moreover, that case has already resulted in an indictment, and has been assigned to ASA Risa Lanier and ASA Lynn McCarthy, two highly skilled prosecutors with vast experience prosecuting violent offenders and complex cases."

Bowman, Taylor and the MacArthur Justice Center made headlines in 2011 when they called for a special prosecutor to determine if police covered up evidence in the case of 21-year-old David Koschman, who was killed in a fight in 2004.

Their request was later approved by a Cook County judge and the prosecutor’s report was unsealed in February 2014.
 

A father is dead and his wife and three children were stabbed and slashed after a violent domestic dispute that escalated to a police-involved shooting Tuesday morning in Fairfield, Connecticut, according to police.

Authorities said they were called to a home at 22 Mountain Laurel Road around 6 a.m. because of an assault.

The man, Christopher Andrews, came out of the house with a weapon and confronted police. 

Police said Andrews refused orders to drop the weapon. An officer opened fire, shooting and killing him. It's not clear what kind of weapon Andrews' had.

"During the response of officers, our officer did discharge his weapon," said Fairfield Police Chief Gary MacNamara. "There is one fatality involved in the incident as a result of the officer discharging his weapon and that's being investigated."

Police who rushed into the house found the Andrews' wife and three children — ages 12, 13 and 15 — suffering from cuts and blunt force injuries, some of which were described as serious, authorities said.

"With regards to weapons involved, there were some slice wounds, some stab wounds on the victims. At this point, we’re not aware of any firearms in the residence. We’re still investigating," MacNamara said.

LifeStar airlifted one of the children to Yale-New Haven Hospital. The other two were taken to Saint Vincent’s Medical Center in Fairfield

The adults were transported to Bridgeport Hospital, where Andrews was pronounced dead.

The police officer involved in the shooting was also brought to St. Vincent's to be evaluated.

The officer has been with the Fairfield Police Department for more than 20 years and is on administrative leave, which is standard procedure.

Mountain Laurel Road is closed and traffic is being diverted onto Brookside Drive.

Fairfield police said there is no threat to the public and the scene is secure. State police and the Stamford state's attorney have taken over the investigation.

Police have not released the names of anyone involved because they are notifying family.

A house fire was creating smoke in the sky above Imperial Beach early Tuesday.

Firefighters were called to 1147 14th Street just after 8:30 a.m. for a single-story house fire.

Crews arrived to smoke coming from the roof and immediately started looking for the source of the fire.

One person suffered smoke inhalation but refused medical treatement, officials said.

A firefighter suffered a bite from a small dog while responding to the fire.

Convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff has taken issue with his depiction in a recent mini-series about his life, telling NBC News in an email that there was "absurd mischaracterization in the ABC movie."

Madoff wrote that he never slapped his son Mark, who hanged himself in 2000.

He wrote that his wife Ruth was "never an officer" in his firm.

He also denied that he was having an affair with the chief financial officer of a charity he swindled.

Madoff is serving a 150-year sentence at a prison in North Carolina for swindling his clients out of $17.5 billion.

In his email to NBC News Madoff did not try to absolve himself of his crimes, which he described as a mistake that caused "unforgivable pain to my family, friends and clients."

Seeing a stranded baby sea lion in the middle of a busy Carlsbad, California road, a concerned volleyball coach put his beach towels to good use and guided the confused animal back to the sea.

Matt McDevitt said he was spending his holiday at the volleyball courts Monday at the Warm Waters Jetty, close to the Carlsbad Desalination Plant. When he looked toward the road, he spotted the animal in distress.

The young sea lion had wandered up to Carlsbad Boulevard and was waddling in the northbound lanes.

McDevitt and his friend stopped traffic to save the little marine mammal. They used beach towels to lead the sea lion back onto the beach. McDevitt sent NBC 7 cellphone video of the encounter through Twitter.

The animal was then able to run back into the sea.

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A 9-year-old from Oceanside is calling himself lucky after he impaled his arm on a fence Saturday.

Joseph Ricardo was standing on a wall watching his friends throw a football when his footing slipped and he forcing his arm down on a spear-like spindle.

He was rushed to Rady Children’s Hospital with a large chunk of fence still in his arm.

Joseph’s friend Mark Cerullo-Gullingsrud and his younger brother Zeke said the accident happened in a split second.

“I keep thinking about it,” Mark told NBC 7. “Keeps coming into my head how crazy it is.”

Next door neighbor Ricky Salgado heard the commotion and rushed over to see what was wrong.

“I’ve never seen anything like that like,” Salgado explained. “Unbelievable. You usually see those kind of things in the movies.”

“I was thinking it was a dream because it was so crazy,” Joseph’s friend Zeke said.

To make sure Joseph wouldn’t injure his arm more, Mark and Zeke’s dad held Joseph in place until medical help arrived.

“He stayed extremely calm and I think if he freaked out then Joseph would have freaked out and started crying but he kept his cool,” Mark said of his dad.

Joseph is out of the hospital and ready to show off his battle scars – his cast. Luckily he has no broken bones, ruptured arteries or permanent damage.

National Weather Service officials said two EF-1 tornadoes hit South Florida Tuesday morning, downing trees and causing damage to homes and vehicles in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

One tornado touched down in Pompano Beach, while the other landed in northeast Miami-Dade, officials said.

Residents of Miami-Dade said they woke up to the pounding storm on 191st Street, where trees were uprooted, power lines were downed and roof shingles were scattered on the ground.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue officials said a 37-unit apartment building at 1000 Northeast 191st Street sustained a partial roof collapse. All residents were evacuated and no injuries were reported.

On Northeast 16th Street, the tornado was powerful enough to pull up some concrete.

The storm likely caused a crash between at least three vehicles and a tractor-trailer on I-95 by Ives Dairy Road, officials said.

And in North Miami Beach, officials said the damage looked like the aftermath of a hurricane.

"I'm driving around with our public works manager and this looks like the aftermath of a Wilma or Katrina, except with no notice," city manager Anna Garcia said..

A second tornado touched down in Pompano Beach, where more trees were found uprooted and an auto parts store had its roof taken off.

"It took the roof off, rain, ceiling tiles, it's just a mess," said Ted Gerstenslager, manager of Murray's Speed and Custom.

The tornado also ripped up the roof of the warehouse next door. A block away, a woman said she had to stay in her car while it passed.

"I saw the things flying in circles, around, I started praying for my life," Carol Santana said.

In Miramar, residents reported heavy winds at the Tequesta Cove neighborhood. Palm trees were ripped out of the ground and debris was scattered throughout the neighborhood.

"I wasn't sure whether I should run back in or continue, I stopped and when I got to the corner I noticed all the falling trees by the gate," said Evelyn Ross.

"It just sounded like a big freight train coming through," resident Burt Albalat said. "It was just pounding, I heard things falling, things bouncing off things, things hitting my windows."

In Fort Lauderdale, heavy winds sent beach chairs into the ocean and were responsible for overturning two boats, sending one person to the hospital.

According to Florida Power & Light (FPL), 13,276 customers in Broward were without power, while 13,996 customers in Miami-Dade were without power, as of 10:50 a.m.

Check back and refresh this page for the latest update. As this story is developing, elements may change.

For some people, professing their political allegiance with a lawn sign just isn’t enough. A man in Castro Valley painted his roof with the Bernie Sanders campaign logo.

“It’s bold and it’s big. It gets people’s attention. It gets people to talk and think and go home and go, ‘Why did he do that?’” said Daren Wilkerson, a high school English teacher, as he touched up the baby blue and red paint on his roof on Monday.

Wilkerson said he got the idea after he saw photos of other Sanders supporters painting fences, roofs and walls online.

He and his wife, Sarah Wilkerson, a speech pathologist, had discussed it before he took paint to the roof. She’s also a strong Sanders supporter. But she was surprised all the same when she got home to find him on the roof with rollers and buckets last week.

“There’s never a dull moment with Daren, that’s for sure” she said. “I was like, ‘OK, we’ve got Bernie on the roof now. This is happening!’ I think I would’ve been a lot more upset if we weren’t getting a new roof in the near future.”

But the Wilkersons won’t break ground on the planned addition to their home until after the presidential election in the fall. So Bernie is there to stay.

The neighbors don’t seem to mind. In fact, Daren Wilkerson says many of his neighbors honk and wave, which he interprets as a sign of support, if not for his candidate, at least for his right to get involved in the campaign and express his political perspective.

“My friend who lives down the street who wants to vote for Trump thinks I’m crazy. I think he’s crazy,” he said with a shrug.

He warned his elderly neighbors across the street before he started the paint job. Jackie Powers, 82, supports Hillary Clinton and her husband Dick does too.

“If he’s enthused about Bernie, if that’s what he likes, that’s OK with me. I don’t care. ‘Cause I know it won’t be there by the end of the year,” she said. “I don’t know much about Bernie Sanders. I think Hillary’s on the ball.”

That was Wilkerson’s cue to begin his campaign pitch, with his 21-month-old daughter Marlo perched on his arm.

“You should find out more about Bernie,” he said. His rooftop campaign sign was working just as he had hoped, sparking a dialogue.

“Also, it’s a fun project. It’s not every day that you get to paint your roof – something wild, something bold,” he said. 

From the Marquis Reforma Hotel and Spa in Mexico City to the Hotel Frontenac in Paris, San Diego County mayors got around in 2015, collectively racking up about $37,000 in taxpayer-funded travel expenses last calendar year.

NBC 7 requested out-of-county travel expenses for mayors in all 18 cities for 2014, 2015 and 2016. The files can be found by clicking here. We closely examined the records for 2015.

According to its records, the city of Chula Vista provided $12,937.57 for Mayor Mary Salas to take a number of trips in 2015, including travel to Washington, D.C. and Paris for a climate conference. Expenses documented for Salas included a stay at the Hotel Frontenac in Paris. The expenses also included meals at Il Fornaio in Carmel, California, and Au Sabot Rouge in Paris.

Salas said $3,200 of the Paris trip expenses have been reimbursed by the nonprofit World Wildlife Fund. She said the invitation she accepted to a climate conference in Paris was an honor extended to only 14 other mayors in the nation, and her attendance at the conference had tangible benefits to Chula Vista residents.

“The benefit that was derived for the public, of course, was that notoriety. It will allow us to perhaps compete better in grants that are there, and make connections with large foundations that fund certain projects for sustainability,” Salas said in an on-camera interview Tuesday. “I think overall it was not only a privilege, but a benefit for our city.”

San Diego provided records for $8,907 in travel expenses for Mayor Kevin Faulconer in 2015, including receipts for two well-publicized trips to meet with NFL owners and NFL Commissioners in an effort to keep the Chargers in San Diego.

A spokesman said Faulconer declined an on-camera interview, but he pointed out the city only pays for Faulconer’s lodging and transportation when the mayor travels. Faulconer pays for meals and other trip-related expenses out of his own pocket. (City of San Diego gets bonus points for the prompt response to our records request. A spokesman for the mayor delivered the records to NBC 7 two days after the request was made.)

Imperial Beach provided receipts for $3,924 in travel. Mayor Serge Dedina attended two conferences in Mexico City, one in Las Vegas and the League of California Cities new mayor training in Sacramento. Dedina said some of those expenses are being reimbursed because of a canceled trip to Washington D.C. and incorrect luggage charges.

San Diego County Taxpayer’s Association President Haney Hong said the important parts of elected officials’ travel budgets are that expenses are disclosed to the public and guidelines followed.

“Mayors and elected officials are no different than employees of the city and county,” Hong said. “Everyone should follow specific rules that everyone agrees to, and these rules are determined through normal public processes. As long as folks are following those rules, they’re set up so folks can do the work of the public.”

Residents who spoke with NBC 7 Monday agreed.

“I think it’s really good to find out what they’re paying, and what they’re doing with our tax dollars,” said Jodie Rippon. “I think what everyone wants to know is: as a result of their travel, what came of it? Did they accomplish anything for their constituents by going on the trip?”

Resident Bob Steinberger agreed.

“Absolutely. You want to have an open government and you want to know what your politicians are doing and how the money is being spent,” Steinberger said, adding he thought politicians getting out there and exchanging ideas with people from other states and countries could be very beneficial to the city.

Eight cities in San Diego County reported no expenditures on out-of-county travel: Coronado, Del Mar, Escondido, La Mesa, Lemon Grove, Oceanside, San Marcos and Vista.

National City has not yet provided records for Mayor Ron Morrison’s out-of-county travel expenses in 2015. NBC7 requested the records on Jan. 19, 2016.
 

Get ready for more cheetah cubs than usual as San Diego Zoo Global releases new video of the largest cheetah litter delivered at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park’s off-exhibit breeding center.

Addison, an 8-year-old cheetah, gave birth to the six cubs in November. The litter is above average for cheetahs, according to zoo officials, and it was a surprise for Addison’s keepers.

Officials say they spotted three or maybe four cubs in the mother’s womb so after the cubs arrived, they were surprised to count six cubs in the birthing center.

Addison has had successful litters before. Her most recent one was four cubs.

These cubs will stay with her for a year. After that, zoo officials said they may go to other sites to help bolster the population of cheetahs.

Currently, it’s estimated that there are 10,000 cheetahs in the world today. That’s down from 100,000 in 1900, according to San Diego Zoo Global.