North America

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will establish a national monument honoring Emmett Till, the Black teenager from Chicago who was abducted, tortured and killed in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi, and his mother, a White House official said Saturday.

JUNEAU (Alaskia), July 22 (NNN-XINHUA) — No survivors were found after a helicopter crashed in the US state of Alaska Thursday night, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) officials.

Four people were onboard a Bell 206L-4 craft operating out of Maritime Helicopters in Homer, a private charter company, said Alaska NTSB Chief Clint Johnson. The helicopter lost contact via an electronic tracking system around 7 or 8 p.m. Thursday local time (0300 or 0400 GMT Friday).

MEXICO CITY, July 22 (NNN-XINHUA) — At least six people were killed and 53 others injured in a collision between a bus and a cargo truck in the western Mexican state of Michoacan, the local Attorney General’s Office said Friday.

The accident occurred at about 1:00 a.m. local time on the La Piedad-Vista Hermosa highway, near the city of Yurecuaro, according to the office.

WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) - The FBI improperly conducted warrantless searches for information about a U.S. senator and two state officials, a U.S. intelligence agency revealed on Friday, as lawmakers are weighing whether to renew the surveillance power that makes such searches possible.

The names of the U.S. senator, the state senator and the state judge targeted were not disclosed.

WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Energy on Friday proposed energy efficiency standards on water heaters it said would save consumers $11.4 billion on energy and water bills annually.

The standards on residential water heater efficiency, which are required by Congress, have not been updated in 13 years. Water heating is responsible for roughly 13% of both annual residential energy use and consumer utility costs, the DOE said.

FARGO, N.D. (AP) — The Fargo police officer who was responding to a routine traffic crash when he was ambushed and fatally shot by a heavily armed man will be laid to rest Saturday.

Jake Wallin, 23, was killed July 14 when a man armed with 1,800 rounds of ammunition, multiple guns and explosives began firing. Two other officers and a civilian were wounded before a fourth officer returned fire, killing gunman Mohamad Barakat. Police said the actions of that fourth officer likely spared the city from a bigger, bloodier attack.

WASHINGTON CROSSING, Pa. (AP) — The body of a young girl was recovered Friday in the Delaware River and was believed to be a 2-year-old who was one of two children swept away from their family’s vehicle by a flash flood last weekend, authorities said.

The body was found in the early evening near a Philadelphia wastewater treatment plant about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from where Matilda Sheils was carried away, authorities said in a nighttime news conference.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama on Friday refused to create a second majority-Black congressional district, a move that could defy a recent order from the U.S. Supreme Court to give minority voters a greater voice and trigger a renewed battle over the state’s political map.

NEW YORK (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday downplayed the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol, saying it was not an insurrection but rather a “protest” that “ended up devolving, you know, in a way that was unfortunate, of course.”

DeSantis, speaking in an interview on the podcast of comedian Russell Brand, said the idea that Jan. 6 “was a plan to somehow overthrow the government of the United States is not true, and it’s something that the media had spun up.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump’s company and his former longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen have settled a lawsuit over Cohen’s claims that he was unfairly stuck with big legal bills after getting entangled in investigations into the former president.

Lawyers for the two sides disclosed the settlement during a video conference with the judge Friday, three days before Cohen’s 2019 lawsuit was slated to go to trial in a Manhattan state court. Details of the agreement were not made public.