By GRAHAM LEE BREWER

Just days ahead of the 70th anniversary of his killing, the federal government made public thousands of pages of records Friday on the lynching of Emmett Till.

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The records in the National Archives, released by the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board, detail how the Justice Department, the FBI, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights responded to the 1955 killing of 14-year-old Till. The records were released in accordance with the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act of 2018.

“Our thoughts are with the Till family,” the National Archives and Records Administration said in a news release.

FILE – This undated photo shows Emmett Louis Till, who was kidnapped, tortured and killed in the Mississippi Delta in August 1955 after witnesses claimed he whistled at a white woman working in a store. (AP Photo, File)

The Chicago teenager was falsely accused of whistling at a white woman at a grocery store in rural Mississippi. Four days later, Till was abducted from a great-uncle’s home in the predawn hours by Roy Bryant and John William “J. W.” Milam. The white men tortured and killed Till in a barn in a neighboring county, and his body was later found in the Tallahatchie River.

Bryant and Milam were charged with murder in Till’s death but were acquitted by an all-white-male jury. Bryant and Milam later confessed to a reporter that they kidnapped and killed Till.

His killing galvanized the Civil Rights Movement after Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open casket so that the country could see the brutality. In 2022, President Joe Biden signed a bill named for Till that made lynching a federal hate crime. And in 2023, Biden signed a proclamation establishing a national monument honoring Till and his mother.

FILE – Mamie Till-Mobley weeps at her son’s funeral on Sept. 6, 1955, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Chicago Sun-Times, File)

Many of the records have never been seen by the public. They include reports, telegrams, case files and correspondences and documents from the NAACP, the White House, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, among others.

The records can be viewed in the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection on the National Archives and Records Administration website.

A member of the Till family did not immediately return a request for comment.

By DARANEE BALACHANDAR, LIZZY ALSPACH, CAT MURPHY and AIDAN HUGHES / Howard Center for Investigative Journalism

When a BNSF freight train carrying six cars of liquefied petroleum gas derailed near Manuelito, New Mexico, in 2024, the resulting fire shut down more than 100 miles of an interstate highway.

The train carried enough flammable material to send a column of fire and black smoke high into the thin, dry air — but not enough to qualify as a “high-hazard flammable train” under federal rules.

That meant the train was not obligated to follow federal safety rules that require high-hazard flammable trains, or HHFTs, to operate at slower speeds, and use safer braking systems and tank cars.

It also meant BNSF was not obligated to include the train in federally-mandated reports to New Mexico emergency management officials estimating the movement of HHFTs through the state.

Federal safety investigators and some lawmakers want to change that. For more than a decade, the National Transportation Safety Board, which investigates major train accidents, has tried and failed to convince federal regulators to make HHFT safety rules apply to a much larger number of trains. In an investigation report on the Manuelito disaster released in June, the NTSB again called for changes.

The current definition of an HHFT only covers trains carrying large quantities of flammable liquids, such as crude oil or alcohol. The safety board wants to expand the definition to include liquefied petroleum gas and other flammable gases.

The issue generated intense interest from lawmakers following the catastrophic derailment of a Norfolk Southern train that caught fire, resulting in the release of a toxic plume of vinyl chloride — a flammable gas — over East Palestine, Ohio, in 2023. The train wasn’t classified as an HHFT, even though it was carrying three loaded tank cars of flammable liquid. That’s because the federal definition requires a train to carry at least 35 loaded cars of flammable liquid — or at least 20 cars in a row – to qualify.

In the wake of that accident, some members of Congress filed legislation that overlaps with the NTSB recommendation and goes one step further. The DERAIL Act, introduced by Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., would define an HHFT as one carrying even a single car of a flammable gas or a flammable liquid.

“I think what we saw in the East Palestine derailment is a pretty blunt reality that even just a single train carrying something flammable and toxic — say, like vinyl chloride — can cause a lot of harm to people who live near the tracks,” said Deluzio, whose Pennsylvania district sits just across the border from East Palestine.

The bill stalled in the House after being introduced in 2023, but Deluzio reintroduced it in January. Supporters say the legislation, which has not moved in Congress, could provide U.S. communities with a more accurate picture of risk from train derailments.

That’s because there are many more trains carrying small amounts of flammable material than there are trains carrying large amounts, according to a Howard Center for Investigative Journalism analysis of data that details the precise movement of freight trains.

This image provided by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism shows a Class 2.1 hazardous material placard, warning of flammable gases, on a tank car carrying liquified petroleum gas sits on the railway tracks in Blaine, Wash. on March 3, 2025. (Daranee Balachandar/Howard Center for Investigative Journalism via AP)

Federal transportation officials have recognized rail as the “safest land-based method of moving large quantities of chemicals over long distances” when compared with movement on trucks.

The Association of American Railroads — an industry lobbyist and trade group with significant sway over rail safety practices — “has concerns with a number of the provisions in (the DERAIL Act) and similar bills,” spokesperson Jessica Kahanek said. The industry follows its own protocol that limits the speed of trains carrying more than 20 cars of hazardous material, she noted.

The association is open to discussing the HHFT definition, but changes “must be driven by an assessment of actual risk,” Kahanek said, and must allow railroads “to continue safely delivering the goods Americans depend on each day.”

Railroads closely protect real-time and location-specific information about the movement of freight trains carrying hazardous materials, saying public disclosure presents a public safety risk.

To analyze the potential impact of the proposed change to the definition of HHFTs, the Howard Center relied on data from RailState LLC, a company that independently captures detailed information on train movements.

The company has placed optical sensors on private land at key locations across the North American rail network. The sensors take pictures of each passing train. They use artificial intelligence to extract information about the cargo, identifying hazardous materials by reading warning placards displayed on rail cars.

The firm sells its information to government agencies in the U.S. and Canada, as well as to shippers and other clients.

Only the railroads — and not the U.S. government — know the precise number and real-time location of HHFTs. It’s not possible, even with RailState’s data, to precisely compare the number of trains that meet the current definition to the number of HHFTs that would meet the proposed definition.

One major reason: both definitions only consider loaded tank cars, and RailState’s data cannot automatically determine whether a tank car is loaded — or only contains chemical residue.

What is clear from the RailState data, however, is that there are many more trains with a smaller number of cars with hazmat placards indicating the presence of a flammable gas or a flammable/combustible liquid than there are trains carrying a large number of cars with placards for a flammable/combustible liquid.

The Howard Center counted trains that passed RailState sensors over the last six months with at least one car with a hazmat placard indicating it carried a flammable gas or a flammable/combustible liquid. Then the Howard Center counted the number of trains with at least 35 cars bearing a placard for a flammable/combustible liquid, and compared the two numbers.

At RailState sensors located near the East Palestine accident site, the data captured six times as many trains with at least one car of flammable gases or flammable/combustible liquids.

At the sensor closest to the Manuelito crash site, there were five times as many trains.

At the company’s U.S.-Canadian border sensor in Blaine, Washington, there was a 16-fold difference.

Across the RailState sensor network, the smallest difference observed by the Howard Center was a three-fold difference — at a sensor near the U.S.-Mexico border in Laredo, Texas.

While RailState does not monitor the entire U.S. rail system, the analysis showed a tenfold difference, on average, across its sensors in the United States. The company has nearly 100 U.S. sensors located in 18 states, along with more than 150 across Canada.

HHFT Derailments

In Custer, Washington, along a stretch of rail just south of RailState’s Canadian-border sensor in Blaine, Jennifer Reich was cleaning the kitchen floor of her art studio in December 2020 when she saw a black smoke plume emerge from the railroad tracks across the street from her shop.

A BNSF train carrying 106 cars of petroleum crude oil derailed near the end of its trip from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to a refinery in nearby Cherry Point, Washington. Nearly 30,000 gallons of oil caught fire and burned uncontrolled for two hours, according to the NTSB, prompting Reich and her neighbors to evacuate.

The derailment caused at least $1.5 million in damages, according to the NTSB, but no one was injured.

“That was very lucky because it could have been a whole lot worse,” said Reich, the owner of Whimsy Glass Art Studio.

Over the last decade, at least six trains that met the HHFT classification derailed — including the incident in Custer, a Howard Center review of federal accident data found.

— A BNSF train on Sept. 19, 2015, spilled nearly 50,000 gallons (190,000 liters) of ethanol near Lesterville, South Dakota, after it derailed on a small bridge. The train carried 96 loaded cars of ethanol, according to investigation reports.

— A Union Pacific train with 96 loaded tank cars derailed in Fort Worth, Texas, on April 24, 2019, and leaked around 65,000 gallons (246,000 liters) of denatured ethanol, which ignited and formed pool fires. Some of the denatured ethanol entered a tributary of the Trinity River, according to investigation reports.

— On Feb. 13, 2020, a mudslide led to a CSX Transportation train derailment near Draffin, Kentucky, and released more than 38,000 gallons (144,000 liters) of denatured ethanol, which combined with diesel fuel from the derailed locomotives and ignited. The train carried 96 loaded tank cars, according to the investigation report.

— On January 8, 2022, 37 tank cars of a BNSF train derailed and 28 of them released around 601,000 gallons (2.27 million liters) of denatured ethanol in Oklaunion, Texas. The leaked ethanol resulted in a pool fire that burned for around four hours, according to investigation reports.

— On March 10, 2017, a Union Pacific train derailed carrying 98 loaded tank cars, releasing 322,000 gallons (1.25 million liters) of ethanol that caught fire near Graettinger, Iowa.

The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration proposed a federal regulation classifying HHFTs in 2014, a year after one of the worst rail disasters in modern North American history.

In 2013, a train carrying more than 70 cars of flammable Bakken crude oil derailed in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, Canada, killing 47 people and leveling dozens of buildings.

The accident helped popularize the nickname safety and environmental activists use to describe the movement of large quantities of flammable liquid by rail: “bomb trains.”

Alaysia Ezzard, Ijeoma Opara, Molecule Jongwilai, Tiasia Saunders, Natalie Weger and Marijke Friedman of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism contributed to this story.

The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland is funded by a grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation in honor of newspaper pioneer Roy W. Howard.

By GIOVANNA DELL’ORTO

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — The oldest surviving place of worship for Muslims in the United States is a white clapboard building on a grassy corner plot, as unassumingly Midwestern as its neighboring houses in Cedar Rapids – except for a dome.

The descendants of the Lebanese immigrants who constructed “the Mother Mosque” almost a century ago — along with newcomers from Afghanistan, East Africa and beyond — are defining what it can mean to be both Muslim and American in the nation’s heartland just as heightened conflicts in the Middle East fuel tensions over immigration and Islam in the United States.

Standing by the door in a gold-embroidered black robe, Fatima Igram Smejkal greeted the faithful with a cheerful “salaam” as they hurried into the Islamic Center of Cedar Rapids for Friday prayers. In 1934, her family helped open what the National Register of Historic Places calls “the first building designed and constructed specifically as a house of worship for Muslims in the United States.”

“They all came from nothing … so they wanted to give back,” Smejkal said of families like hers, who arrived at the turn of the 20th century. “That’s why I’m so kind to the ones that come in from Somalia and the Congo and Sudan and Afghanistan. I have no idea what they left, what they’re thinking when they walk in that mosque.”

The community now gathers in the Islamic Center. It was built in the 1970s when they became too many for the Mother Mosque’s living-room-sized prayer hall, and now they’re have outgrown its prayer hall, as well. Hundreds of fifth-generation Muslim Iowans, recent refugees and migrants pray on industrial carpets rolled onto the gym’s basketball court — the elderly on walkers, babies in car seats, women in headscarves and men sporting headgear from African kufi and Afghan pakol caps to baseball hats.

This physical space where diverse groups gather helps sustain community as immigrants try to preserve their heritage while assimilating into U.S. culture and society.

“The Mother Mosque of America,” completed in 1934, was the first mosque built from the ground up in the United States, seen on Friday, Aug. 8, 2025, in Cedar Rapid, Iowa. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

“You can be a Muslim that’s practicing your religion and still coexist with everybody else around you,” said Hassan Igram, who chairs the center’s board of trustees. He shares the same first and last names as his grandfather and Smejkal’s grandfather – two cousins who came to Iowa as boys in the 1910s.

Lebanese migrants ‘Mother Mosque’

Tens of thousands of young men, both Christians and Muslims, settled in booming Midwestern towns after fleeing the Ottoman Empire, many with little more than a Bible or a Quran in their bags. They often worked selling housewares off their backs to widely scattered farms, earning enough to buy horses and buggies, and then opened grocery stores.

Through bake sales and community dinners, a group of Muslim women raised money in the 1920s to build what was called the “Moslem Temple.” Like the Igrams, Anace Aossey remembers attending prayer there with his parents – though as children they were more focused on the Dixie Cream donuts that would follow.

“We weren’t raised real strict religiously,” said Aossey, whose father sold goods along the tracks from a 175-pound sack. “They were here to integrate themselves into the American society.”

Growing up Muslim in America

Muslims sometimes faced institutional discrimination. After serving in World War II, Smejkal’s father, Abdallah Igram, successfully campaigned for soldiers’ dog tags to include Muslim as an option, along with Catholic, Protestant and Jewish.

But in Cedar Rapids, immigrants found mutual acceptance, fostered through houses of worship and friendships between U.S.-born children and their non-Muslim neighbors. Smejkal’s best friend was Catholic, and her father kept beef hot dogs in the kitchen to respect the Muslim prohibition against pork. Smejkal’s father, in turn, made sure Friday meals included fish sticks.

“Arab-speaking Muslims were part and parcel of the same stories that inform our sense of what the Midwest is and its values are,” said Indiana University professor Edward E. Curtis, IV. “They participated in the making of the American heartland.”

Abdallah Igram is buried in the city’s hilltop Muslim cemetery, among the first in the United States when it was built in the 1940s. It’s next to the Czech cemetery – for the descendants of the migrants who helped establish Cedar Rapids in the 1850s — and the Jewish cemetery, whose operators donated trees to the Muslim one after damage from a derecho five years ago. Smejkal wishes the whole world’s faiths could collaborate this way.

Fatima Igram Smejkal, whose family immigrated from present-day Lebanon to the United States in the early 1900s, stands beside her husband’s grave in the Muslim National Cemetery, established in the 1940s, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Friday, Aug. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

“That’s when there’s no barriers anymore. I pray one day it’s really like that,” Smejkal said.

Being Muslim in the Heartland

The Muslim presence across the Midwest grew exponentially after a 1965 immigration law eliminated the quotas that had blocked arrivals from many parts of the world since the mid-1920s, Curtis said.

Mistrust flared again after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, especially in farming communities whose young people were fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, said Ako Abdul-Samad, an African-American who represented Des Moines for nearly two decades in the Iowa House of Representatives. He feared being Muslim would prevent his election when he first ran for office, but voters re-elected him again and again.

Immigration, including from Muslim countries, remains a contentious issue, even as Muslim communities flourish and increase their political influence in major cities like Minneapolis and Detroit.

But daily interactions between Muslims and their neighbors have provided some protection from prejudice, according to the Mother Mosque imam, a Palestinian who immigrated in the 1980s. “Stereotypes and things did not work” in Cedar Rapids, Taha Tawil said.

Bosnian Muslims say they’ve had similar experiences near Des Moines, where a new multimillion dollar mosque and cultural center is opening next month, an expansion of the first center established by war refugees 20 years ago.

“Our neighbors have been great to us, including the farmers we got the land from,” said its treasurer, Moren Blazevic. “We’re finally Iowans.”

Becoming Midwesterners

Faroz Waziri jokes that he and his wife Mena might have been the first Afghans in town when they came in the mid-2010s on a special visa for those who had worked for the U.S. armed forces overseas. After struggling with “culture shock” and language barriers, they’ve become naturalized U.S. citizens, and he’s the refugee resources manager at a non-profit founded by Catholic nuns.

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While grateful for the aid and the safety they feel, the Waziris miss their families and homeland. And they fear that cultural differences — especially the individualism Americans express, like when they sit around a table for meals, instead of together on a rug — remain too vast.

“Mentally and emotionally, I never think I’m American,” said Mena Waziri. She’s a college graduate now, and loves the independence and women’s rights that remain unattainable in Taliban-run Afghanistan. But the family is keen for their U.S.-born son, Rayan, to have Muslim friends and values.

These tensions are familiar for the descendants of the city’s first Muslim settlers, like Aossey, who keeps exhibit panels about Lebanese immigration and integration in the same garage where he stores ATVs on his recreational farm.

“My story is the American story,” Aossey said. “It’s not the Islamic story.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

BERLIN (AP) — Berlin’s newest panda twins have celebrated their first birthday with frozen vegetable treats and a candle made out of bamboo shoots.

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The two female cubs were born at the Berlin Zoo on Aug. 22 last year, and each was given both a Chinese and a German name. Meng Hao and Meng Tian are better known as Leni and Lotti, tributes to Berlin native Marlene Dietrich and the German capital’s Charlottenburg district.

On Friday, the cubs played around and with a large red wooden figure 1. They were given what the zoo called “ice marbles” made of beetroot and carrot juice.

The young pandas, who weighed under 7 ounces at birth, now weigh in at about 46 pounds each. Their keepers are already noticing character differences: the zoo says Lotti is the more daring of the duo, while Leni is often more laidback.

The cubs are the second pair of giant pandas born in Germany.

The first were their elder brothers Meng Xiang and Meng Yuan, who became far better known by the German names Pit and Paule. The cubs were born in August 2019 and were a star attraction in Berlin until they were flown to China in late 2023 — a trip that was contractually agreed from the start but delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

All are the offspring of mother Meng Meng and father Jiao Qing, who arrived in Berlin in 2017.