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Carlee Russell, the Alabama woman who earlier this month went missing for 49 hours after making a 911 call about a child on an interstate, said she was not kidnapped and did not see a baby on the side of the road, according to a statement from her attorney.

By Eric Beech and Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON The U.S. Justice Department on Monday sued Texas over floating barriers

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

In the massive movie weekend of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” there were many winners

The Justice Department announced charges Monday against a third person who allegedly participated in a firebombing attack on a California Planned Parenthood last spring.

The Justice Department is suing Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott over a floating barrier that the state placed on the Rio Grande to stop migrants from entering the U.S. The lawsuit filed Monday asks a court to force Texas to remove a line of bright orange, wrecking ball-sized buoys that the Biden administration says raises humanitarian and environmental concerns

The hazing scandal at Northwestern University has widened to include a volleyball player who has become the first female athlete to sue the university over allegations she was retaliated against for reporting mistreatment and a new lawsuit by former Northwestern quarterback Lloyd Yates

Unidentified remains also found as police continue to search for three others missing in Nova Scotia.

Special counsel Jack Smith's office has asked former US officials about a February 2020 Oval Office meeting where then-President Donald Trump praised improvements to the security of US elections, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

Thousands of Wagner group mercenaries have arrived in Belarus since the group’s short-lived rebellion, a military monitoring group said. Between 3,450 and 3,650 soldiers have travelled to a camp close to Asipovichy, a town 230 kilometres (140 miles) north of the Ukrainian border, according to Belaruski Hajun, an activist group that tracks troop movements within the country. Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko welcomed Wagner forces into the country after brokering a deal between the Kremlin and mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin last month, ending the group’s failed revolt against Russian military leaders. Satellite images show that about 700 vehicles and construction equipment have also arrived in Wagner convoys to Belarus, Belaruski Hajun said. Mr Prigozhin registered a “real estate management company” in Belarus last week under the name Concord Management and Consulting in Belarus. Documents analysed by independent Belarusian media outlet reform.by showed that the company’s registered address was in the same village as the Wagner mercenary camp. Meanwhile, local officials said on Monday that the mercenaries were continuing to work with Belarusian troops, including at training grounds close to the Polish border. Read More Who is Yevgeny Prigozhin? The Wagner Group mercenary chief who rebelled against Putin Monitoring group says thousands of Wagner mercenaries have arrived in Belarus since failed uprising Wagner mercenaries training Belarus special forces just miles from border with Nato-member Poland

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

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