List of All Articles with Tag 'rica'

Carlee Russell’s story about being abducted after stopping at the side of a road to help a distressed toddler was a lie, her lawyer has said in a statement. The 25-year-old from Alabama told police she was kidnapped after stopping to help a toddler in diapers who was walking alone on Interstate 459 on the evening of 13 July. She came back home two days after the alleged abduction. Her family had stuck by her story, even after police publicly expressed scepticism. However, Hoover Police Department Chief Nicholas Derzis on Monday said Ms Russell’s attorney, Emory Anthony, had now provided a statement on Monday saying there was no kidnapping The statement in part read: “There was no kidnapping on Thursday July 13. My client did not see a baby on the side on the road.” Earlier CrimeStoppers walked back a pledge to return almost $63,000 in donations to help find Carlee Russell after the 25-year-old’s kidnapping story fell under suspicion. More than $63,000 was raised during the two-day search for the Alabama woman. But the organisation that offers anonymous tips about criminal activity now said the money will not be returned after initially making the promise. Read More Carlee Russell sent several bizarre tweets before disappearing Alabama lawyer says police is using ‘every other synonym for lie except saying she lied’ in Carlee Russell case Boyfriend of Carlee Russell deletes social media posts after police cast doubt over her kidnapping story Police doubt Carlee Russell’s kidnapping claims. Could she face consequences?

Take one step back and look at this epic rivalry trophy that is being introduced for the Miami-Louisville to honor the late, great Howard Schnellenberger.Howard Schnellenberger was important to Miami's rise as a program as he was to Louisville's.Although he did well at FAU, and Okl...

The Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit against the state of Texas on Monday over Governor Greg Abbott’s decision to install a 1,000-foot floating border barrier in the Rio Grande River near the city of Eagle Pass. “We allege that Texas has flouted federal law by installing a barrier in the Rio Grande without obtaining the required federal authorization,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement. “This floating barrier poses threats to navigation and public safety and presents humanitarian concerns,” the official added. “Additionally, the presence of the floating barrier has prompted diplomatic protests by Mexico and risks damaging US foreign policy.” The DoJ accused Texas of violating the Rivers and Harbors Act. The Texas project is also facing a lawsuit in state court over the buoy barrier. Last week, the federal government warned Texas it was considering taking legal action. On Monday, the Texas governor wrote a letter to the White House saying he intends to fight the DoJ’s lawsuit. “Texas will see you in court, Mr President,” the Republican governor wrote, adding, “All of this is happening because you have violated your constitutional obligation to defend the States against invasion through faithful execution of federal laws.” White House spokesperson Abdullah Hasan told The Independent that the governor’s plan isn’t effectively combatting unauthorised immigration. “Governor Abbott’s dangerous and unlawful actions are undermining that effective plan, making it hard for the men and women of Border Patrol to do their jobs of securing the border, and putting migrants and border agents in danger,” he said in a statement. “If Governor Abbott truly wanted to drive toward real solutions, he’d be asking his Republican colleagues in Congress why they voted against President Biden’s request to increase funding for the Department of Homeland Security and why they’re blocking the comprehensive immigration reform and border security measures that would finally fix our broken immigration system.” In mid-July, Texas neared completion of a $1m, 1,000-foot wall of buoys and netting across the Rio Grande, claiming it would deter illegal immigration outside of ports of entry. The effort has proved extremely controversial. In addition to warnings from the federal government, Mexico said it is investigating whether the wall violates international treaties surrounding the border. The governor has also been sued by a local man named Jessie Fuentes, who argues the state has deprived him of his livelihood as a kayak guide and is acting outside of its authority over an international boundary line. “You’ve taken a beautiful waterway and you’ve converted it into a war zone,” Mr Fuentes recently told The Independent. Migrant advocates and even some Texas troopers working on the governor’s Operation Lone Star mission at the border warn that the barriers are increasing unnecessary danger to human life. “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.” 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 state has denied the orders took place. 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. This is a breaking news story and will be updated with new information. Read More Death, debt, and degradation: Trump’s border wall after four years Buoys, razor wire, and a Trump-y wall: How Greg Abbott turned the Rio Grande into an immigration ‘war zone’ Greg Abbott defies White House warning on floating Texas border wall: ‘See you in court, Mr President’ In a showdown Texas' floating border barrier, the governor tells Biden: `See you in court' Greg Abbott defies White House warning on floating floating barriers in Rio Grande Texas is using disaster declarations to install buoys and razor wire on the US-Mexico border

Northern Algeria has been experiencing a record heatwave with temperatures reaching 48C.

An on-duty security guard was fatally shot at a hospital in Oregon by a suspect who was later killed by police. Forty-four-year-old Bobby Smallwood was working at the birthing centre of Legacy Good Samaritan Medical Center in Portland when the tragic events unfolded around 11am on Saturday. A suspect who has yet to be identified entered the building armed with a firearm and shot Smallwood and another hospital worker before fleeing the scene, according to the Portland Police Bureau. As terrified staff followed shelter-in-place protocols, Smallwood was transferred to a trauma facility, where he was pronounced dead. The second victim remains in stable condition, police said. Police said that officers responding to the scene set up a perimeter around the neighbourhood and attempted to locate the suspect. Officers also evacuated and searched a Fred Meyer after learning information that suggested the shooter may have been inside but he was not found. The suspect’s car was eventually traced to the city of Gresham, about 16 miles east of Portland. He was killed by law enforcement after his vehicle was stopped. The motive behind the shooting is still unclear. “During the incident, shots were fired by police. The suspect is deceased. No officers were injured,” a statement by the Portland Police Bureau read. On social media, coworkers remembered Smallwood as a devoted security guard. “I remember him fondly from his early days as a COVID screener in our building at Mt. Hood. What a sacrifice he made protecting others,” Elana Schaff, who worked with Smallwood at Legacy Mt Hood Medical Center, wrote in a Facebook post. “My heart is there with everyone who had to endure this insane situation.” Smallwood’s family has created a GoFundMe page to raise funds for funeral costs. Mr Smallwood’s father Walter Smallwood told The Oregonian that his son enjoyed being surrounded by children at the hospital and wasn’t fearful of his job, despite not being armed. “He loved children. Adults, he tolerated,” Mr Smallwood said. “He wasn’t [scared about the job]. I was.” Smallwood had initially done administrative and computer work at Legacy Health after graduating from Portland State University in 2020. His parents told Oregon Live that he had recently been promoted to a supervisory role. “This is a sad day for the staff at Legacy Health, and our hearts go out to the family, friends, and coworkers of the employees affected by today’s tragedy,” Chief Chuck Lovell, who responded to the scene, told The Associated Press. “By all accounts, hospital staff and law enforcement did great work responding to this incident, and I’m grateful for the coordinated efforts by all.” Kathryn Correia, Legacy Health president and CEO, also said in a statement: “Words cannot express the profound grief we are experiencing. “We offer our unwavering support to Bobby’s loved ones, to our patients in our care, to the staff at Legacy Good Samaritan and to all our employees and providers suffering today.” Read More Joe Biden is breaking his promise to end the federal death penalty Lauren Boebert blames her AirPods after she threw away photo of 10-year-old Uvalde victim Gunman who killed co-workers at New Zealand building site died from self-inflicted wound, police say

Twenty days after Emmett Till’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, Mamie Till-Mobley sat before a crowded courtroom in Sumner, Mississippi to testify in the trial of the two white men who were accused of killing him. Her 14-year-old son was tortured, lynched and tied to a cotton gin fan and bound in barbed wire before he was thrown into the river in August 1955. She identified the body and the ring he was wearing as her son’s, anticipating an argument from the defence that sought to cast doubt on the identity of the body, and hoping that the all-white jury would listen to the testimony of a grieving Black mother. Days earlier, before Till’s funeral in Chicago, she ordered that the casket remain open to “let the world see what they did to my boy”. On 23 September, the jury acquitted Roy Bryant and JW Milam for Till’s murder and kidnapping. Months later, the men confessed to the crimes in an interview with Look magazine. Carolyn Bryant Donhom, whose accusations against Till led to his killing, died earlier this year. No one was ever convicted for the Black teenager’s killing, which magnified Jim Crow-era violence that galvanised the Civil Rights movement, but his mother spent decades fighting injustice until she died in 2003. On 25 July 2023, on what would be Till’s 82nd birthday, President Joe Biden will sign a proclamation dedicating a national monument to honor both Till and his mother. “Our community has shown what reckoning and remembrance can look like,” according to a statement from the Emmett Till Interpretive Center. “This national monument designation affirms and shares this work on a national level. Racial reconciliation begins by telling the truth.” ‘The whole nation had to bear witness to this’ On 20 August 1955, Till-Mobley sent her teenage son on a southbound train from Chicago for a two-week stay in the small town of Money, Mississippi, where he would stay with relatives and spend late summer days with his cousins. “I told him when he was coming down here that he would have to adapt himself to a new way of life,” she said during the trial. “And I told him to be very careful about how he spoke and to whom he spoke, and to always remember to say ‘Yes, sir’ and ‘No, ma’am’ at all times.” Four days later, Till was milling around Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market after his relatives and friends left the store. It was then that Carolyn Bryant Donhom would later claim Till had grabbed her by the waist and then whistled at her as she walked to her car. Days later, at 2.20am, Roy Bryant and Milam pulled up to the home of Till’s great uncle Moses Wright. Milam was armed. They searched the home for Till, made him dress, and put him in their truck. Wright later recalled hearing a woman’s voice tell the men that they found the right boy. That was the last time Till’s family saw him alive. According to Bryant and Milam, the men shot Till in the head, tied a fan to his neck with barbed wire, and tossed him into the river. His body was found three days later beaten beyond recognition. Till-Mobley asserted that “the whole nation had to bear witness to this” when she ordered that her son’s coffin remain open for his funeral. “I wanted the world to see and I knew I could not tell anybody what I had seen. It was just too horrible,” she said in 1988. “When Emmett became the personification of race hatred … it was too hard to look at. People could not look at it and come away as if nothing had happened. It had to leave an indelible impression upon whoever viewed him,” she said in 2003. “Race hatred is something we’ve got to get rid of. We cannot afford to live in a world that is torn with race hatred.” ‘I will take that hurt to my grave’ More than 6,500 people, mostly African Americans, were killed in racist attacks between 1865 and 1950, in the aftermath of the US Civil War and emancipation, through white militia terror during Reconstruction and in the years surrounding the Civil Rights movement, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. An estimated 250,000 mourners attended public viewings for Till’s funeral over four days, according to The Chicago Defender. Photographs of Till’s body were published in Jet magazine and shared widely, fuelling widespread outrage and demands for justice. A grand jury in Tallahatchie County indicted Roy Bryant and JW Milam on 7 September. “They were going to turn the murder of my son into a case of self-defense, the self-defense of the Mississippi way of life,” she later wrote in her 2003 memoir Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America. Following her son’s killing, she embarked on a nationwide speaking tour and worked with Chicago public schools for more than two decades. She also created The Emmett Till Players youth theatre troupe in 1973 to perform speeches from civil rights leaders including Martin Luther King Jr to spread a message of “hope, unity, and determination to thousands”. “So far as the healing is concerned, I will never get over that. I will take that hurt to my grave. That influenced everything I’ve done,” she said in a 2002 interview included in the 2022 ABC documentary series Let the World See. Till’s name is among the first inscribed on the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. Till-Mobley placed her hand on the monument for its dedication in 1989. “It’s almost as if I were touching him,” she said at the time. “It’s almost as if I’m reliving the funeral, and yet my heart is full of joy that not only my son but all these other people who gave their lives for the cause are getting the recognition they are due.” Till-Mobley died in a Chicago hospital on 6 January 2003. She was 81. “She was a teacher, and she thought methodically and scientifically,” the Rev Jesse Jackson said following her death. “She had a sharp mind and a compassionate heart. And she really sensed the place of her son in American history and her responsibility to keep that legacy alive.” In 2008, eight signs outlining Till’s story were placed across north Mississippi. One year later, a sign alongside the Tallahatchie River where Till’s body was discovered was stolen and thrown into the water. A replacement sign was later shot up with bullet holes. That sign’s replacement also was riddled with bullet holes. A bulletproof sign was installed in 2019. Last year, President Biden signed a bill to make lynching a federal hate crime more than a century after such legislation was first introduced. Despite more than 200 legislative attempts to codify antilynching rules – beginning with a bill introduced in 1900 by US Rep George Henry White, then the only Black member of Congress – no measure prevailed. A federal hate crime statute was eventually signed into law in the 1990s. In a White House ceremony to sign the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, the president condemned the “pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone belongs in America, not everyone is created equal.” “From the bullets in the back of Ahmaud Arbery, to countless acts of violence, countless victims both known and unknown … racial hate is not an old problem, it’s a persistent problem,” he said. “Hate never goes away. It only hides, it hides under the rocks. Given just a little bit of oxygen it comes roaring back out, screaming. What stops it is all of us, not a few.” The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument will include three federally protected sites spanning Illinois and Mississippi central to the family’s story. One site includes Roberts Temple Church of God in Chicago’s South Side, where Till’s funeral was held. Another is Graball Landing along the Tallahatchie River, where Till’s body was discovered. A final site includes the county courthouse where an all-white jury acquitted his killers. By recognising those sites, “we will have an opportunity to acknowledge and reckon with our past – and an opportunity to tell the full American story,” according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Read More Emmett Till’s accuser Carolyn Bryant dies, leaving Till family searching for justice and answers

Texas governor Greg Abbott says he will continue deploying floating border barriers in the Rio Grande River, despite a warning from the Justice Department last week it might sue the state for overstepping its jurisdiction. “Texas will see you in court, Mr President,” the Republican governor wrote in a letter Monday to President Biden, claiming the Democrat’s border policies left him “no other choice” but for Texas to build military-style defences along the US-Mexico border. “All of this is happening because you have violated your constitutional obligation to defend the States against invasion through faithful execution of federal laws,” Mr Abbott added. This is a breaking news story and will be updated with new information.

Republican presidential candidate and North Dakota Gov Doug Burgum is offering $20 gift cards to donors who give $1 to his campaign — but some supporters of Joe Biden say they have been funneling the gift card money to the president’s re-election campaign. Mr Burgum’s campaign site says: “Donate $1 and receive a $20 gift card!” The Republican candidate also took a direct hit at Mr Biden, “The burden on American families caused by the Democrats is unruly, and Joe Biden is doing nothing to fix it. We want to help, so we’re offering YOU a $20 gift card, and all YOU have to do is contribute $1 to claim it.” The gift cards are ironically called “Biden inflation relief gift cards.” However, some donors say they are taking advantage of the extra cash and sending it to the incumbent. One Twitter user wrote, “I gave @DougBurgum $1 so he would send me $20. Then I gave the $20 to @JoeBiden.” He attached photos of his donations. Another user tweeted that he “donated $1 to Doug Burgum and turned around and donated $20 to Joe Biden.” Yet another said, “Ok I gave him $1 and when my $20 gift card arrives I will give Biden-Harris a $19 contribution in honor of Doug Burgum.” “We passed the 40,000 mark today. We’ve got more gift cards to give out. We’re going to keep on going,” the North Dakota governor said, indicating he reached the unique donor threshold to qualify for the GOP presidential primary in August. Still, Fivethirtyeight shows Gov Burgum polling average at a mere 0.1 per cent. Former President Donald Trump is handily leading the Republican polls, with 51 per cent. Florida Gov Ron DeSantis is trailing him with only 18.9 per cent. Read More Joe Biden is breaking his promise to end the federal death penalty The presidential candidates who have so far met criteria to join first RNC debate Who is running for president in 2024?

More than a month after Nigeria’s central bank dropped the naira’s peg against the dollar, the country’s market

Thirty-three people are confirmed dead after a building collapsed onto another in the city of Douala.

Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi slammed her successor Kevin McCarthy for plans to expunge former president Donald Trump’s two impeachments, in an interview with CNN on Sunday. Ms Pelosi presided over both impeachments of Mr Trump, first in 2019 for when Mr Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden’s son Hunter in exchange for military aid to the country, and the second in 2021 for the January 6 riot. “The president was impeached because we had no choice,” she said on CNN’s State of the Union. “He had undermined our national security, jeopardised our wellbeing of our country.” Ms Pelosi said she was very cautious about bringing forward the two impeachments. “Kevin, you know, is playing politics. It is not even clear if he constitutionally can expunge those things,” she told host Dana Bash. “If he wants to put his members on the spot, his members in difficult races on the spot, that is a decision he has to make. But this is not responsible. This is not about the flag still being there.” The former House speaker, who stepped aside from congressional leadership earlier this year after Democrats lost the majority in the 2022 midterm election, said that Mr McCarthy proposed the idea because he does not want to face the wrath of Mr Trump. “This is about being afraid. As I’ve said before, Donald Trump is the puppeteer and what does he do all of the time but shine the light on the strings. These people look pathetic.” Politico reported last week that after Mr McCarthy had said on CNBC that he did not know whether Mr Trump would be the strongest nominee in the general election, he pledged privately to the former president would vote to expunge the two impeachments. But many moderate Republicans are opposed to voting for the expungement, particularly related to January 6, Politico reported. Read More Trump news – live: Trump lashes out at ‘deranged’ Jack Smith as potential indictment over Jan 6 looms Marjorie Taylor Greene addresses online conspiracy theory linking her to Jan 6 pipe bomber Trump, January 6 and a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election: The federal investigation, explained

As he prepared to write a eulogy for his 14-year-old son Alex’s funeral, Max Schachter found strength in a crumpled-up piece of paper the teen had discarded in the trash. “Life is like a roller coaster/ It has some ups and downs/ Sometimes you can take it slow or very fast/ It may be hard to breathe at times/ But you have to push yourself and keep going,” Alex wrote in his poem Life is Like a Rollercoaster. The powerful words became a precious keepsake of Alex’s wisdom beyond his years after he was fatally shot during class at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on 14 February 2018. For years, the poem was a recurrent source of solace for the Schachter family; it was read by Mr Schachter as he addressed members of government early on in the tragedy, it helped the Schachters navigate never-ending waves of grief as time passed and it was also read last year by Alex’s older brother Ryan during his victim impact statement as a jury prepared to sentence Alex’s killer. Five years after the shooting that claimed 17 lives, staff hired by the school district found the final draft that Alex had turned in to his English teacher. They also found the lunchbox his parents packed for him every day and the binder with his schoolwork, but his backpack was placed inside a box labelled “biohazard” that Mr Schachter hasn’t opened yet. “[They] said, ‘I want to just tell you something ... there was a bullet that went through the poem, and I was just trying to process that this is just really painful,” Mr Schachter recounted to The Independent. “They had his belongings ... and then they gave it to me in a box with tape all around it and I asked, ‘What’s with all of this?’ They said it was because either it had a bullet shot through or there was blood on it. I took it home with every intention of opening it, but it’s hard.” “Looking at this journey that I’m on along with the other sixteen families – it’s just brutal. It never ends.” In the aftermath of the school shooting, the hard decisions have continued to pour in. Families of the Parkland shooting victims have been given the option to tour the preserved crime scene where Nicholas Cruz, a former student at the school, ambushed classrooms and indiscriminately shot at more than 34 people. The building was preserved as evidence for Cruz’s penalty trial last year. After the prosecution rested its case in August 2022, jurors retraced the path of violence. The state hoped that seeing the crime scene in person would convince them that Cruz deserved the death penalty, but jurors couldn’t unanimously agree. Cruz was ultimately sentenced to life in prison in November. “I wanted to walk through that building, [for it] to help me crystallise what had happened,” Mr Schachter said. “I wanted to understand what happened to Alex and I wanted to sit in that chair. I wanted to take that chair home with me, that was the chair that Alex took his last breath in.” Inside Alex’s classroom, Mr Schachter found what he described as a “war zone” – the harrowing evidence of the horrors that his son and his classmates endured. And with everything surrounding the carnage, the details continue to be as horrific all these years later as they were on that tragic day. “As I got there, I realised how he killed everyone and was so brutal and what he did to Alex,” Mr Schachter told The Independent. “There was blood all over Alex’s seat and all over the floor and his paperwork had blood on it.” There were also subtle hints of the sudden way in which hundreds of lives were changed that Valentine’s Day. The scattered textbooks, boards with lesson plans that were never taught, Valentine’s cards that were never delivered to their recipients and deflated balloons have become a painful reminder of the passage of time. Mr Schachter wasn’t trying to find closure when he walked inside the building where his son was murdered. But he was hoping to feel closer to Alex. However, the decision to open a box that may contain more fuel for nightmares is one he is not ready to make just yet. “I’m understanding that there might be more harm than good. There might be more negatives than positives from opening that box,” he said. “I haven’t made a decision on the box, but I am cognisant of the fact that it’s going to be very painful and I’m not sure if I’m ready for that.” Mr Schachter has turned his pain into purpose through his nonprofit Safe Schools for Alex, which assists parents, students and school districts with resources to make schools safer. It provides training in threat assessments and school safety best practices. The charity is currently fundraising money in honour of what would have been Alex’s 20th birthday on 9 July. Mr Schachter was also part of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, which investigated failures before and after the shooting and then presented recommendations. “I travel around the country and I speak with law enforcement organisations, with school districts about what happened in Parkland,” Mr Schachter said. “I talk about the failures. I talk about what Florida’s done post-Parkland.” Under the Trump administration, a bill named after Alex and his friend Luke Hoyer, who also died in the Parkland shooting, led to the creation of SchoolSafety.gov, a federal website that compiles tools and actionable recommendations to create safer environments in K-12 schools, including resources for bullying as well as active shooting drills. The website was incorporated into President Biden’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act last year. “The reason I do what I do is because there’s so much complacency. [No one] thinks it’s going to happen to them, so that’s why I go around the country and I tell Alex’s story and I show pictures and videos of him playing the trombone and the baritone because I never thought it would happen in Parkland,” Mr Schachter told The Independent. “I moved to Parkland because it was ranked the safest city in Florida right before the shooting, but it can happen everywhere.” The victims wounded in the Parkland shooting and their loved ones will also be able to visit the 1200 building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, now that it is no longer needed as evidence in the trials of the convicted killer and a deputy who was acquitted last month of failing to stop him. The school district plans to demolish the three-story building, likely replacing it with a memorial. Read More Seven murders by cyanide-laced Tylenol will never be solved. But the prime suspect’s death brings justice The Zodiac Killer claimed responsibility for 37 murders. But what if he never existed at all?