Thursday, May 23, 2019
Blackface photo probe hits dead end
NORFOLK, Va.
The mystery of whether Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam was in the racist yearbook photo that nearly destroyed his career remains unsolved.
A monthslong investigation ordered up by Eastern Virginia Medical School failed to determine whether Northam is in the picture published in 1984 of a man in blackface next to someone in a Ku Klux Klan hood and robe.
Investigators with a law firm hired by the school said Wednesday they couldn’t conclusively establish the identities of either person in the 35-year-old photo that was on Northam’s yearbook page alongside pictures of him.
They also said they couldn’t determine how the photo ended up on Northam’s page but found no evidence it was put there by mistake or as a prank.
Flu sickens migrants at border center
SAN DIEGO
More than 30 migrants have tested positive for influenza at a major processing center where a flu-stricken teenage boy died, the latest evidence of growing public health threats posed by inadequate facilities to deal with a surge of families and children reaching the U.S. border.
It was unclear if anyone ill came in contact with a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy who was held at the facility in McAllen, Texas, and died Monday, a day after he was diagnosed and transferred to a smaller station.
The processing center is a converted warehouse that holds hundreds of parents and children in large, fenced-in pens.
The government closed the facility after the flu outbreak, sent in cleaning crews to disinfect the building and plans to reopen it soon.
Last slave ship from Africa identified on Alabama coast
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.
Researchers working in the murky waters of the northern Gulf Coast have located the wreck of the last ship known to bring enslaved people from Africa to the United States, historical officials said Wednesday.
Remains of the Gulf schooner Clotilda were identified and verified near Mobile after months of assessment, a statement by the Alabama Historical Commission said.
The wooden vessel was scuttled the year before the Civil War to hide evidence of its illegal trip and hasn’t been seen since.
In 1860, the ship illegally transported 110 people from what is now the west African nation of Benin to Mobile, Ala.
The Clotilda was then taken into delta waters and burned to avoid detection.
New Trailstar plant
ALLIANCE
There will be a ground- breaking event for a new Trailstar International manufacturing plant at 20700 Harrisburg Westville Road at 11 a.m. Wednesday. The 72,300-square-foot plant will manufacture aluminum trailers.
Staff/wire reports