He may be suing the governor of Texas, but Jessie Fuentes isn’t really a political guy. His disagreement with Greg Abbott is personal. Continental, in a sense. Spiritual even. On 7 July, Mr Fuentes, who owns a small kayaking business, sued the state for its decision to install a 1,000-foot buoy wall in the town of Eagle Pass, within a stretch of the Rio Grande river. In Texas, the river forms the legal border between the US and Mexico. More than just a legal argument that a state politician doesn’t have jurisdiction over an international borderline, Mr Fuentes, who grew up along the Rio Grande, feels Mr Abbott has crossed a moral line. The governor, he says, is violating a river that nourishes ecosystems, people, and a vibrant transborder culture that’s existed far longer and far more freely than the rolls of razor wire multiplying across the banks suggest. “I’m not a politician. I just say listen, I love that river. Nobody speaks up for it. I’m speaking up for the river. Man, I have the right to try to prosper from my love of the river, that allows me the opportunity to get out there, to bring people to the river,” he told The Independent. “They don’t live here. I do,” he added of Texas’s state leaders. “You’ve taken a beautiful waterway and you’ve converted it into a war zone.” Mr Fuentes is part of a group of local residents, human rights activists, and international officials who are pushing back on the floating barrier project. They face challenging waters ahead, though. Governor Abbott is a shrewd operator. He has combined media savvy and audacious use of government funds and powers to secure billions of dollars and heaps of political capital for his notion of a military-style crackdown at the border. He has charged ahead with little resistance, even though governors and presidents have spent decades taking this iron-fisted approach with little empirical success to show for it. In mid-July, state contractors were nearly complete installing the floating border barrier, a $1m, 1,000-foot pearl string of giant orange buoys with strong netting in between, anchored to the river floor. Discussing the plan in June, Mr Abbott described the floating wall as a key part of his larger buildup at the border, which has featured mass deployment of as many as 10,000 state troopers and national guardsmen at a time, as well as razor wire and sections of a new border wall on private lands. "When we’re dealing with 100 or 1,000 people, one of the goals is to slow down and deter as many of them as possible," Mr Abbott said on 8 June. "Some may eventually get to the border where they are going to face that multilayered razor wire and a full force of National Guard and DPS [Department of Public Safety] officers." An estimated 250 people died crossing the Rio Grande last year, but Texas officials have nonetheless claimed that installing what amounts to a giant net in the river will “prevent the loss of life due to drownings.” The barrier technology, like much of Mr Abbott’s border agenda, is a retrofitted version of what the Trump administration was pursuing. In 2020, the Border Patrol advertised on Twitter, then quickly deleted, a post showing a demo of a floating barrier system from the same company that built Mr Abbott’s wall, Cochrane USA, only the Trump version had large black spikes that wouldn’t look out of place in a dungeon. The Texas buoy plan dropped the spikes but kept the same controversy that Mr Trump’s attempts to seal off the border attracted. Last week, Mexico’s diplomat said the barrier plan may violate international treaties over the Rio Grande-based border, and said she will send an inspection team to investigate the buoy wall. Migrant advocates say the buoys, like generations of border installations before them, won’t actually slow down immigration, but rather will push migrants towards ever more remote places to cross the border, increasing the likelihood they will face a perilous and potentially lethal crossing. This strategy, known as “prevention through deterrence” has more or less been the explicit policy of the US government since the Clinton administration in the 1990s, a policy choice many on the ground say is causing unnecessary deaths. “It’s been proven time after time that these so-called prevention through deterrence strategies don’t work,” Fernando García of the Border Network for Human Rights told The Independent. “They have not stopped immigration flows, but what they have done is they have put immigrants at risk.” “It’s very likely that with [the floating buoy wall] they are looking for more remote and isolated places to come across so that whenever they are in danger by heat exhaustion, by drowning, they will not have anybody to help them,” he added, saying he worries it could be a record year for migrant deaths in the Rio Grande. “All of this is death by policy.” According to leaks from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees the state’s border scheme, this policy includes intentionally putting migrants into harm’s way. In a series of emails shared with news outlets including The Independent, a border medic described questioning orders from superiors to push exhausted migrants back into the river and to refrain from giving them water if captured. “We were given orders to push the people back into the water to go to Mexico. We decided that this was not the correct thing to do. With the very real potential of exhausted people drowning,” the trooper wrote. The DPS source also claimed in the span of one week in late June, a teen mother was trapped in razor wire at the border while having a miscarriage, a 15-year-old broke his leg as he tried to find a way around the deterrence buoys, and a man lacerated his leg while trying to rescue his child from razor wire placed on a buoy. Texas officials have defended the use of the razor wire while denying reports troopers were told to push people into the river. “The Texas National Guard mission is to work alongside our Texas law enforcement partners to prevent, deter and interdict transnational criminal activity between ports of entry,” the Texas Military Department told The Independent in response to news about the emails. “There is no order or directive instructing Service Members to push illegal immigrants back into the river or deny them drinking water.” “Texas is deploying every tool and strategy to deter and repel illegal crossings between ports of entry as President Biden’s dangerous open border policies entice migrants from over 150 countries to risk their lives entering the country illegally,” a spokesperson for the governor told The Independent earlier this week. The Texas Department of Public Safety did not respond to requests for comment on this story from The Independent. Beyond just putting migrants at risk, the border barriers are cutting into the deep cross-border cultural ties in the region, residents said. Mr Fuentes, the business owner suing the state, said the locked-down border is only a recent historical development. His grandfather used to be able to casually ride into Mexico on a donkey to get supplies. He says that Texas politicians fomenting fear about immigration miss the fact that many who live along the US-Mexico border don’t feel the same way. The walls aren’t stopping some hypothetical invasion of immigrants. They’re dividing a community that’s older and bigger than boundaries on a map. “That’s the beautiful thing about America,” he said. “We’ve got our culture on the border. The way it’s being misinterpreted right now, them saying we’re a war zone, things are out of control. We’re not that. We’re a community on the river. We get along with our neighbours.” “I don’t think we’re under siege from an inflow of immigrants,” he added. “We’re under siege by law enforcement.” When Mr Fuentes encounters migrants on the river, he offers them a blessing and any spare water if it he has it. You wouldn’t know about these sorts of ties by watching the governor on TV. The Fox News regular frequently describes the situation in places like Eagle Pass as an “invasion” of drug-pushing cartel members, though drugs like fentanyl are overwhelmingly brought across the border by US citizens at official points of entry. It’s not an accidental choice of words calling the situation an “invasion.” In November, the governor invoked a clause in the US Constitution allowing states to take military actions if they are under “invasion” to defend his policies, a theory legal scholars and critics say is both nonapplicable to immigration and an echo of the white-supremacist rhetoric that fueled incidents like the 2019 El Paso shooting, where 23 mostly Latino people were killed. It may not be legally bulletproof, but it’s another savvy move from Mr Abbott, who has proved adept at using crises in recent years to further his border agenda. The governor declared a state disaster at the US-Mexico border in 2021, freeing him up to use additional emergency powers, and used creative accounting to funnel an estimated $1bn in federal Covid relief funds to Operation Lone Star, the umbrella plan Mr Abbott has used to send troopers to the border and bus thousands of migrants out of Texas to liberal states. Despite massive investments from the state and the federal government over decades from leaders of both parties, immigration levels at the US-Mexico border in late 2022 and 2023 are about the same as they were during their previous most recent peak around the year 2000. A spokesperson for the governor’s office declined to answer specific questions from The Independent about the floating border barrier, and criticisms that it’s illegal and dangerous for migrants. The governor’s office said Operation Lone Star had led to the apprehension of more than 393,000 unauthorised immigrants and the repelling of more than 49,000 illegal immigrants, as well as over 31,000 arrests, “all of which would have otherwise made their way into communities across Texas and our country thanks to President Biden’s open border policies,” according to spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris. The Department of Justice is investigating Operation Lone Star for alleged civil rights abuses. Immigration is a concern of federal law, but thousands of immigrants have been arrested by state personnel for trespassing on private property, allegedly being held in jail for weeks without facing charges. According to an investigation by the Texas Tribune, ProPublica, and The Marshall Project, state officials were arresting far more trespassers than cartel members, and allegedly inflated data on Operation Lone Star by citing arrests on crimes like cockfighting, sexual assault, and stalking in their success statistics, even though these offences had no clear link to immigration enforcement. “We’ve spent $12bn over the last decade, and we have nothing to show for it,” Jaime Puente, director of economic opportunity programmes at the advocacy group Every Texan, which monitors the state budget, told The Independent. “People are not being deterred from coming to the US to seek a better life and opportunities…no matter how deadly we make that journey.” Ironically, according to Mr Puente, the governor’s border crackdown has finally driven resources towards borderland communities that have historically suffered from under-investment. However, these resources are coming in the form of armed police officers and contracts to build military infrastructure, rather than investments in things like education or healthcare. “Texas has historically undervalued and underserved border communities over the last century or more, and now, because it’s politically viable, because it makes for a great 7pm Fox News clip, these communities are being inundated with billions and billions of dollars,” Mr Puente said. He points to the example of Uvalde, Texas, the site of a horrific 2022 school shooting, as a place that needs a different kind of investment from the state. “That community doesn’t have a hospital,” he said. “That community doesn’t have some basic services, but they have 350 DPS troopers and Border Patrol agents just roaming around. That didn’t help 19 kids and 2 teachers a year ago.” In fact, according to some local residents, the influx of state personnel to border communities has made the residents there feel less safe. Operation Lone Star has driven a spike in the racial profiling of Latinx drivers in South Texas, according to the ACLU. According to an analysis from NBC News of Latinx-majority border areas, traffic citations have shot up, in one county by a factor of six, since Operation Lone Star came online in 2021. Despite the governor’s ever-expanding footprint on the border, Jessie Fuentes still believes in the magic of the Rio Grande. He ends our interview by inviting me to come onto the river with him sometime, though he notes it’s getting harder and harder for him to access the water because of all the fences, walls, and razor wire deployed around Eagle Pass. He has a bitter chuckle at the difference between the US and Mexico sides of the river. On the Mexico side, it’s parkland, with families out for walks or fishing on the river. On the US side, it’s a practically medieval tableau of walls and spikes, overseen by a group of state officials, one of whose title is literally Border Czar. “I invite anyone to come if they’ll let me,” he said. That’s the thing about the US border: what happens there often has deep roots. Border walls, once built, are rarely taken down, and connections to the land, built over generations, don’t disappear from one administration to the next. Governor Abbott has vowed to fight Mr Fuentes all the way to the US Supreme Court. In the coming months, we will see whose vision of this complicated, beautiful region prevails. Read More Texas trooper's accounts of bloodied and fainting migrants on US-Mexico border unleashes criticism Border Patrol fails to assess medical needs for children with preexisting conditions, report says Mexico files border boundaries complaint over Texas' floating barrier plan on Rio Grande Texas trooper's accounts of bloodied and fainting migrants on US-Mexico border unleashes criticism Texas troopers allegedly told to push migrant children into the Rio Grande Trump wanted to put cattle on ladders over border wall, ex aide reveals

The head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in ethnically split Cyprus says Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots have reached an “understanding” over a contentious road inside a U.N.-controlled buffer zone whose construction had stirred up tensions not seen in years

Aryna Sabalenka celebrated her ascent to the pinnacle of women's tennis by powering into the quarter-finals of the US Open on Monday with a straight...

Japan’s imports fell for the first time in more than two years as commodity prices softened, cushioning the

Michigan police arrested a male suspect on Thursday who allegedly carried out a shooting across multiple locations in the town of Saline, including an assisted living home. Saline police vehicles were seen at a United Auto Workers hall, as well as at the Linden Square Assisted Living Center, Fox 2 Detroit reports. Two victims were taken to local hospitals in critical condition, according to Huron Valley Ambulance, WXYZ reports. “Saline Police responded to an active shooter situation at Linden Square Assisted Living Center. Additional details are forthcoming,” police wrote on Facebook. “City and school facilities went on a temporary lock down in response. At this time, it is believed there is no further threat to the community.” A local resident told Detroit News the shooting appeared to be a domestic incident between residents who live across from the assisted living centre. All residents of the facility are safe and accounted for, CBS News reports. City and state buildings in Saline went on temporary lockdown during the shooting. This is a breaking news story and will be updated with new information.

As federal student loan payments make a comeback in October 2023, managing them on top of credit card debt may become increasingly difficult

Wall Street is dipping in early trading, weighed down by a sharp drop for Disney and flaring fears about U.S. banks

Barcelona has acquired Portugal players João Félix and João Cancelo on loan just before the summer transfer window closed

REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug 31, 2023--

The deadly attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians and the devastating Israeli airstrikes and blockade of Gaza have raised accusations among international legal experts that both sides were violating international law. A United Nations Commission of Inquiry said it has been “collecting and preserving evidence of war crimes committed by all sides” since the violence started last week. That evidence could be added to an investigation by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas in past conflicts. “Intentional targeting of civilians and civilian objects without a military necessary reason to do so is a war crime, period,” said David Crane, an American international law expert and the founding chief prosecutor of the United Nations’ Special Court for Sierra Leone. “And that’s a standard that both sides are held to under international law.” Even Israel’s staunchest ally has sounded a note of caution. U.S. President Joe Biden, at a meeting with Jewish leaders Wednesday, said he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “that it is really important that Israel, with all the anger and frustration and just — I don’t know how to explain it — that exists is that they operate by the rules of war — the rules of war. And there are rules of war.” DID HAMAS COMMIT WAR CRIMES? After breaking through Israel’s security barrier early Saturday morning, Hamas militants gunned down entire families, including women and young children, in border communities around the Gaza Strip. Israel’s health service said it extricated the bodies of over a hundred community members from Kibbutz Be’eri. Militants attacked the Tribe of Nova music festival, gunning down people as they desperately sought refuge. The attacks killed more than 1,300 people in Israel, including 247 soldiers — a toll unseen in Israel for decades. Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director of Human Rights Watch, pointed to Hamas “shooting civilians en masse, taking hostages, including women and children — undeniably grave abuses of international law, for which there’s no justification.” In an analysis published on the international law website Opinio Juris, Cornell Law School professor Jens David Ohlin wrote that the Hamas attacks amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity under the International Criminal Court’s founding Rome Statute. Rights group Amnesty International called for accountability. “Massacring civilians is a war crime and there can be no justification for these reprehensible attacks,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary-general. “These crimes must be investigated as part of the International Criminal Court’s ongoing investigation into crimes committed by all parties in the current conflict,” Callamard said. IS ISRAEL’S MILITARY RESPONSE LEGAL? The Israeli military has pulverized large parts of the Hamas -ruled Gaza Strip with airstrikes and blocked deliveries of food, water, fuel and electricity ahead of a possible ground invasion. The bombardment already has killed about 1,800 people in Gaza, including U.N. workers, paramedics and journalists. Experts say the blockade, which is hitting the territory's more than 2 million residents, violates international law. "Collective punishment is a war crime. Israel is doing that by cutting electricity, water, food, blocking aid from entering the Gaza Strip,” Shakir said. Early Friday, Israel’s military directed the evacuation of some 1 million civilians living in the northern Gaza Strip ahead of a feared Israel ground offensive. Hamas called on residents to remain in their homes. The International Committee of the Red Cross said the order to leave along with the siege "are not compatible with international humanitarian law.” Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, also called the order illegal. It is "not an evacuation opportunity, it’s an order to relocate. Under humanitarian law, it’s called forcible transfer of populations, and it’s a war crime,” he said. Israel has also faced criticism for its widespread airstrikes razing large areas of Gaza since the Hamas attacks. But Crane said that Hamas’ base in the densely populated area makes any Israeli military action extremely difficult. “They’re almost in an impossible situation. Every time they fire an artillery piece, an aircraft fires missiles and stuff at a legitimate target, they’re going to collaterally kill civilians,” he said. The Israeli military has “this challenge where you have one of the most densely populated places on Earth where you have a combatant hiding behind and firing from those positions, using the civilians as human shields,” Crane said. Many in Israel’s defense establishment have pledged to fight until every trace of militancy is gone from the territory — even if it means wreaking mass havoc on the besieged strip’s civilian population. But Israel's relentless airstrikes could come under scrutiny, both because of the heavy civilian death toll and heavy damage to civilian infrastructure. “We’re seeing reports of entire neighborhoods, blocks that are reduced to rubble. Certainly that would appear to be, you know, war crimes as well,” Shakir said. “We’ve seen attacks that have affected hospitals and other areas that are entitled to protection.” The Israeli army says it follows international legal norms and strikes only legitimate military targets. “The most pleasant way not to cause any harm to anyone is not to do anything,” said retired Israeli general Giora Eiland. “But Israel has to fight. And how do you fight? You have to bomb them. Or you do nothing. If civilians decide to stay on the streets of Gaza, there will be much more civilian casualties.” CAN THE ICC GET INVOLVED? While Israel is not one of the court’s 123 member states, ICC judges have ruled that the Palestinians are and that the court has jurisdiction over territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. The ICC prosecution office's ongoing investigation — spurred by the last major conflict in Gaza — can analyze war crimes allegations from the latest war. But Israel does not recognize the court's jurisdiction and the ICC does not have a police force to execute arrest warrants. ___ Frankel reported from Jerusalem. Read More A father worries for his missing child: 'My daughter didn't go to war. She just went to dance' US cities boost security as fears spread over Israel-Hamas war despite lack of credible threats BBC journalist ‘stopped and assaulted’ by Israeli police FACT FOCUS: Misinformation about the Israel-Hamas war is flooding social media. Here are the facts Israeli shelling along Lebanon border kills 1 journalist, wounds 6 In Israel's call for mass evacuation, Palestinians hear echoes of their original catastrophic exodus

Eddie Hearn claimed Tyson Fury’s performance against former UFC champion Francis Ngannou showed that Anthony Joshua would “knock Fury out inside six rounds” if the British heavyweight rivals were to ever meet in the ring. Fury survived a knockdown and avoided the first loss of his professional career when he was named a split-decision winner against Ngannou in Saudi Arabia. Ngannou, was making his boxing debut yet outfought Fury for much of the bout, as a stunned audience looked on. The 37-year-old former UFC champion was a massive underdog but produced a superb performance with immense discipline and aggression, and many figures in the world of boxing declared that the “Predator” had been denied a rightful win. After the fight, Oleksandr Usyk entered the ring to face off with Fury, whom he is contracted to fight next. Ukrainian Usyk, unbeaten like Fury, holds the unified heavyweight boxing titles. The pair have been rumoured to clash in Riyadh on 23 December, though Fury and his promoter Frank Warren played coy after the fight with Ngannou. But Hearn, who promotes Joshua, believes that is not the fight the boxing world wants to see after Fury’s performance against Ngannou. “I’m absolutely lost for words,” the Matchroom boss said. “I mean Francis Ngannou has never boxed before. Fair play to him, he didn’t look overly impressive, but Tyson Fury looked like he’s never laced up a pair of gloves before. “Got dropped in the third round, never threw a punch. Ngannou never threw a punch after. I thought Ngannou won by two rounds. The boxing world has gone mad. “Forget Fury vs Usyk - no one is interested. Just give us Fury vs AH. AJ will knock Tyson Fury out inside six rounds. Make the fight or we will never get it. “Or, rematch Ngannou, because the guy deserves it. I still don’t know what Tyson Fury was doing.” Fury said afterwards that he was rusty on what was his first fight in 10 months but declared it to be a “perfect” night ahead of his heavyweight showdown with Usyk. “That definitely wasn’t in the script,” said Fury. “[Ngannou] is a lot better of a boxer than we thought he’d be. He’s a very awkward man, and he’s a good puncher, and I respect him a lot. He was very awkward, he wasn’t coming forward; he was waiting for me to throw my punches then looking to counter. “[The knockdown] is a part of boxing. I got caught behind the head. I got up and it was alright; I got back to my boxing. “I don’t know how close [the fight] was, but I got the win and that’s what it is. I’ve been out of the ring a long time again. You can see it in here – ring rust, everything. No excuses, though. He’s cut me across the eye there. It was a good, rough fight. Perfect.” Read More Jack Catterall likely to face Josh Taylor rematch in Glasgow or Manchester Hearn predicts Fury vs Joshua prize money Fury vs Ngannou LIVE: Boxing fight result and reaction Fury vs Ngannou LIVE: Boxing fight result and reaction Tyson Fury embarrassed by Francis Ngannou and the punch that changed boxing Tyson Fury hints at next steps after Francis Ngannou victory

The boss of one of the biggest artificial intelligence firms in the world has estimated the chance that his technology could end human civilisation is up to 25 per cent. Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic AI, said in an interview that a catastrophic end result of advanced AI technology could come from the tech going wrong itself, or humans misusing it. He said: “My chance that something goes really quite catastrophically wrong on the scale of human civilisation might be somewhere between 10 per cent and 25 per cent. “Put together the risk of something going wrong with the model itself with something going wrong with people or organisations or nation states misusing the model or it inducing conflict among them.” Amodei is a co-founder of Anthropic AI and previously worked for OpenAI, the company which developed ChatGPT. It comes as concerns ramp up across the world about the power of AI, and whether it could eventually lead to catastrophe for humanity. The release of the most recent version of ChatGPT, which illustrated writing skills which, in some capacities such as legal and technical writing, are comparable to that of a human, but at much higher speeds. Amodei added: “That means there is a 75 per cent to 90 per cent chance that this technology is developed and everything goes fine. “In fact if everything goes fine it’ll go not just fine, it’ll go really really great. “If we can avoid the downsides then this stuff about curing cancer, extending human lifespan, solving problems like mental illness… This all sounds utopian but I don’t think it’s outside the scope of what this technology can do.” Amodei did not elaborate on his speculation of how AI could “cure” cancer or “solve” mental illness. A handful of early-stage AI projects have shown promise in early diagnosis of hard-to-detect tumours like some types of lung cancer. But doctors have cautioned against over-optimism of AI’s ability to curer or detect diseases, pointing out that it could also lead to over-diagnosis, potentially making the process even less efficient, rather than more streamlined. Meanwhile, earlier this year, hundreds of AI industry leaders signed an open letter calling for more robust regulations of the technology to lessen the risk that it ultimately leads to the extinction of humanity. The letter, signed by OpenAI founder Sam Altmann and others, said: “Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.