Arcangelo won the $1.25 million Travers by a length at Saratoga, giving trainer Jena Antonucci her second major Grade 1 victory after the colt won the Belmont Stakes

Willard Miller is one of the two teenagers who fatally beat Fairfield High School teacher Nohema Graber, 66, who used to teach Spanish in November 2021

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said talks on the debt ceiling resumed Friday, with negotiations stretching into the final

By Steve Holland and Humeyra Pamuk WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden said that in a call on Monday Turkish

The manifest of the plane that went down in Russia is essentially a who’s who for the Wagner mercenary group

A behind-closed-doors “farewell ceremony” has been held for the Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin – a funeral avoided by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Secrecy had surrounded the funeral arrangements for Prigozhin, killed in a plane crash on 23 August, two months to the day after staging a 24-hour mutiny that was the biggest challenge to Mr Putin’s authority since he rose to power in 1999. The low-key ceremony stands in stark contrast to Prigozhin’s aggressive self-promotion, with videos from Ukraine having become a regular fixture of his months-long feud with Moscow’s military command over the invasion Mr Putin started. That ended with his forces marching on Moscow, only stopping 125 miles from the capital when a deal was struck with the Kremlin. “The farewell to Yevgeny Viktorovich took place in a closed format. Those who wish to say goodbye may visit Porokhovskoye cemetery,” his press service said in a short post on Telegram, accompanied by a photo of Prigozhin. But the seemingly private ceremony suits the Kremlin and Mr Putin, with Prigozhin having gone from years-long ally of the Russian president to being branded a “traitor” over his armed uprising. It meant that the event could not be turned into a large-scale show of support for the Wagner chief, who as well as collecting enemies had gained admiration among some of Moscow’s elite for throwing his troops into some of the bloodiest battles of Mr Putin’s war. That included around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, control of which has gained symbolic significance for both Kyiv and Moscow. Wagner forces were at the vanguard of that fight and helped Russian forces take it – although fierce battles continue around the suburbs of the ruined city. Hence why Mr Putin and the Kremlin have to walk a fine line in not denigrating Prigozhin, despite few observers believing the Russian president would let the embarrassment of the Wagner mutiny stand without retribution. Comments from Mr Putin have reflected that stance. He noted last week that Wagner leaders “made a significant contribution” to the fighting in Ukraine and described Prigozhin as a “talented businessman” and “a man of difficult fate” who had “made serious mistakes in life”. Pictures published on social media showed Prigozhin’s dark granite tombstone surrounded by a sea of flowers, mostly red roses, in the cemetery on the northeast edge of his hometown. Other makeshift memorials have appeared in recent days in both Moscow and St Petersburg. Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, noted that Prigozhin has become a legendary figure for his supporters who are increasingly critical of the authorities. “Prigozhin’s funeral raises an issue of communication between the bureaucratic Russian government system that doesn’t have much political potential and the politically active patriotic segment of the Russian public,” Mr Markov said. Russia‘s top criminal investigation agency, the Investigative Committee, officially confirmed Prigozhin’s death on Sunday, but it has not given a cause for the crash. A number of leaders in the West, and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, have suggested that nothing of this magnitude could occur in Russia without Mr Putin’s knowledge. The Kremlin has claimed that such accusations are an “absolute lie”. The Kremlin had confirmed earlier on Tuesday that Mr Putin would not attend Prigozhin’s funeral. Also on Tuesday, prominent Russian nationalist Igor Girkin failed in an appeal against his pre-trial detention on charges of inciting extremism, a Moscow court said. Mr Girkin, also known as Strelkov, has fiercely criticised the way that Russia has conducted the war in Ukraine and his arrest was seen as an extension of a crackdown on dissent by Putin. The Embraer Legacy 600 private jet on which Prigozhin was travelling to St Petersburg from Moscow crashed north of Moscow with the loss of all 10 people on board, including top Wagner bosses Dmitry Utkin and Valery Chekalov, and a crew of three. Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Chekalov, the head of Wagner logistics, was buried at another St Petersburg cemetery. His family was joined by dozens of people, including Wagner mercenaries and employees from Prigozhin’s business empire. On the battlefield in Ukraine, a military spokesperson said Kyiv’s forces were advancing against Russian forces in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia after recapturing Robotyne, the latest of a cluster of villages it says it has taken back in recent weeks. Kyiv also said its troops had had some “success” in the direction of the village of Verbove in the Zaporizhzhia region, but gave no details. Ukrainian deputy defence minister Hanna Maliar said fighting was heavy in the country but that Ukrainian forces were making progress around Bakhmut, while Russian shelling killed a 45-year-old man and wounded at least one other person in the northeastern Ukrainian town of Kupiansk. Russia also said it had downed two drones over the Black Sea it said were launched by Ukraine. Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary White House says Kremlin has ‘long history’ of killing opponents The key to Ukraine punching through Russia’s defences | Askold Krushelnycky Russian hard-line nationalist ordered to stay in prison after accusing Putin of weakness

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President Joe Biden says he’s serious about pursuing a prisoner exchange for a Wall Street Journal reporter who has been detained in Russia for more than 100 days

Russia is deploying Ukrainian prisoners of war to fight on its behalf against their own country, according to state media reports. The move has attracted concern from experts, who have argued it could amount to a war crime. Russia’s state-run news agency RIA Novosti aired a video purporting to show captured Ukrainian soldiers being voluntarily inducted into the Russian army. They were seen swearing allegiance to Russia, holding rifles and dressed in military fatigues. The authenticity of the report or videos aired by RIA Novosti could not be immediately confirmed. Human Rights Watch said this could be a violation of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs). Captured soldiers are exempt from being exposed to combat or unhealthy and dangerous conditions regardless of coercion, according to the convention. It is “hard” to confirm if these Ukrainian soldiers have genuinely switched allegiance to Russia out of their own free will, said Yulia Gorbunova, a senior researcher on Ukraine at Human Rights Watch. “Russian authorities might claim they are recruiting them on a voluntary basis but it is hard to imagine a scenario where a prisoner of war’s decision could be taken truly voluntarily, given the situation of coercive custody,” she said. The soldiers were reportedly made a part of a battalion that went into service last month. The battalion is named “Bogdan Khmelnitsky”, after a 15th century medieval nobleman and Russian fighter who brought parts of Ukraine under Moscow’s control. The report said Russian officials have completed training of the battalion and the POWs would soon be deployed into battle. The group comprises about 70 imprisoned Ukrainian fighters from various penal colonies. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said the Ukrainian troops will operate under the larger “Kaskad” formation of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the name for the Russia-backed breakaway region of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. This suggests the POWs will be fighting on the frontlines in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions where Kaskad has been active, the ISW said. The entire scenario is “laced with the potential for coercion”, said Nick Reynolds, research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute in London. A POW does not have a “huge amount of agency” and is in a “very difficult situation,” he said. According to the US-based think-tank ISW, this is not the first time Ukrainian POWs have been asked to “volunteer” for the battalion. They were housed in the Olenivka prison, which was blown up in July 2022. Russia said Ukraine had destroyed the prison in the country’s east with a rocket, but Kyiv blamed the blast on Moscow to cover up what it alleged was abuse and killings of the POWs. Russia is also trying to bolster its forces with a “conscription campaign in occupied Ukraine,” said the ISW’s Karolina Hird. Read More Blinken arrives in Seoul for talks focused on North Korea and its military cooperation with Russia Russia-Ukraine war: Putin’s ‘third wave’ advance stalls as Zelensky shows confidence Azerbaijan's president addresses a military parade in Karabakh and says 'we showed the whole world' Ukraine moves step closer to EU membership as European Commission backs talks Ukraine takes credit for the car bomb killing of a Russia-backed official in Luhansk Russia seeks an 8-year prison term for an artist and musician who protested the war in Ukraine

By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Two key U.S. senators said on Thursday they want the Commerce Department to prioritize national

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has said his administration will deploy an “inflatable border” composed of floating barriers along the Rio Grande as part of its bid to deter migrants from attempting illegal crossings into the state. The new policy was quickly slammed by some mocking the idea and others who said that Texas taxes could be better spent on other initiatives. The barriers, seen in concept art presented at the state Capitol in Austin on Thursday as the governor signed six new border security bills into law, are effectively a string of interconnected buoys that spin when someone attempts to scale them, making them difficult to pass. Below the waterline, a web of netting weighed down by anchors will prevent anyone from simply swimming underneath The barriers will be placed along known hotspots for attempted crossings, with the first 1,000 feet to be situated near Eagle Pass, where Texas National Guardsman Bishop E Evans, 22, tragically drowned last year while attempting to rescue migrants from the river. The governor’s office said in a statement that the strategy was intended to “proactively prevent illegal crossings between ports of entry by making it more difficult to cross the Rio Grande and reach the Texas side of the southern border”. Continuing to blame President Joe Biden for the perceived failure to secure the US-Mexico border, Governor Abbott said his latest package of bills is aimed at ensuring his state can “hold the line” against illegal immigrants, drugs and weapons entering the United States from the south. They grant the Texas military the authority to use unmanned aircraft in search and recovery missions, authorise trained US Border Patrol agents to carry out arrest, search and seizure operations at checkpoints and compensate rural landowners whose property is damaged by illegal immigration-related activities. They also designate Mexican drug cartels and criminal gangs as foreign terrorist organisations and increase the penalties for those caught destroying illegal drugs and those who operate stash houses. Speaking at Thursday’s signing, Governor Abbott said: “Thanks to the leadership and hard work of [Texas Department of Public Safety] Director [Steve] McCraw, General Thomas Suelzer and their teams, Texas has pushed back against the swell of migrants and held the line to keep people out of Texas – but there’s more that needs to be done. “The Texas Legislature has stepped up to make sure we continue to robustly respond to President Biden’s growing border crisis, including allocating $5.1bn for border security. “Today, I am signing six bills from this year’s regular session to ensure that Texas can continue to do even more to stop illegal immigration at our southern border and provide new tools to the brave men and women along the southern border to protect Texans and Americans from the chaos and crisis of the border.” Regarding the barriers specifically, the governor said: “What we’re doing right now, we’re securing the border at the border. “What these buoys will allow us to do is to prevent people from even getting to the border.” Director McCraw added: “We don’t want people to come across and continue to put their lives at risk when they come between the points of entry.” He explained that the barriers are currently being tested by specialists and will be moveable so that they can be quickly relocated to new areas as needed. Of their role as a deterrent, he said: “You could sit there for a couple of days and hold onto it, but eventually you’re going to get tired and want to go back. You’ll get hungry.” Rodolfo Rosales, director of the Texas chapter of the League of United Latin Americans Citizens has condemned Mr Abbott’s latest approach to the situation as inhumane. “We view it as a chilling reminder of the extreme measures used throughout history by elected leaders against those they do not regard as human beings, seeking only to exterminate them, regardless of the means employed,” he told CBS. “It is with profound horror and shame that we bear witness to the consideration of these measures, which are evidently intended as political theatre but will undoubtedly result in the loss of innocent lives among the refugees seeking asylum in the United States.” Social media users were quick to respond to Mr Abbott on Twitter. “Texas will deploy new marine floating barriers to deter illegal border crossings between ports of entry. We continue to hold the line in Biden’s absence,” the governor tweeted on Friday. “You know they can swim under it right?” one Twitter user said. The director of the Central America and Mexico Policy Initiative at the Strauss Center at The University of Texas at Austin, Stephanie Leutert, wrote: “Some places of the Rio Grande will be shallow enough that this won’t be effective. And smugglers moving people across in rafts will quickly figure out how to cut these apart or hoist people over them from raft to raft. But... they will 100 percent cause more drowning deaths.” “I bet they didn’t think about sharp objects that can penetrate said buoys or holding ones breath. Also this seems like a waste of money, time & labor,” one account holder added. Several Twitter users compared the barrier to objects used in the NBC show American Ninja Warrior and Wipeout on TBS. “Welcome to Wipeout: Illegal Immigration special!” one Twitter user said. Gustaf Kilander contributed to this report Read More Texas businessman tied to impeachment of attorney general Ken Paxton to appear in federal court Texas camp teens airlifted to hospital after elevated walkway collapses in Surfside Beach photo Mexico charges migrant in detention center fire that killed 40 Analysis: What makes a fair election? Recent redistricting the most politically balanced in years New voting districts could change again in some states before the 2024 elections Homeland Security names Border Patrol veteran Jason Owens to lead the agency