MILFORD, Utah — The San Francisco Mountains in southwestern Utah were once home to one of the richest silver mines in the world. When it comes to mining today, they stand mostly quiet — for now — with only a handful of rock mines operating in the area.

We know their names, and where they were. But no one has given a public explanation for what several former elite U.S. service-members were doing in Haiti — and why they were driving without license plates, carrying an assortment of automatic rifles, drones, and other gear.

The men face charges of being part of a criminal conspiracy, the Haitian Times reports, after being intercepted at a routine police road block.

For the fourth year in a row, The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that tracks hate groups, reports that hate and domestic extremism are rising in an unabated trend. The center found a 30 percent increase in U.S. hate groups over the past four years and a 7 percent increase in hate groups in 2018 alone, according to the center's annual Year in Hate and Extremism report. The group designated 1,020 organizations as hate groups in 2018, a high of at least 20 years.

Out of 16, just five remain.

The Aspen Words Literary Prize, now in its second year, has trimmed its longlist of 16 nominees to just five finalists. The books on the shortlist unveiled Wednesday, according to Aspen judges, all manage to "illuminate a vital contemporary issue and demonstrate the transformative power of literature on thought and culture."

With just days to go before his second summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, President Trump seems to have tried to lower public expectations for the meeting set for Feb. 27 to 28 in Hanoi, Vietnam.

"I'm in no rush for speed. We just don't want testing," Trump remarked on Friday, suggesting that he might not insist North Korea abandon its nuclear weapons, as long as it stops testing them.