Texas board faults leader for inaction during deadly flood

A Texas board has suspended the nursing license of Camp Mystic’s co-director in a scathing order that accused her of not helping children evacuate during last year’s catastrophic floods that killed 25 girls and two teenage counselors.

It’s one of the state’s first actions against a member of the family that owns and operates the all-girls Christian camp since the July 4 flood. Last month, Camp Mystic canceled plans to reopen this summer in the face of outrage from victims’ parents.

Mary Liz Eastland, a registered nurse, served as the camp’s medical officer. She previously acknowledged in court that she never tried to reach children and staff in the low-lying area of the camp as the predawn flooding along the Guadalupe River worsened. Her father-in-law, Camp Mystic owner Richard Eastland, died in the flood.

Eastland rejects the findings and will fight the suspension, said Camp Mystic attorney Joshua Fiveson. He said the board suspended her license with less than a day’s notice of a hearing and without taking testimony or conducting a full investigation.

Ukraine says its drones hit another refinery inside Russia

Ukrainian drones smashed into another Russian refinery overnight, starting a fire that produced huge clouds of black smoke, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday, in what appeared to be the latest long-range attack on Moscow’s vital oil industry.

The drones targeted the Syzran oil refinery more than 500 miles inside Russia, Zelenskyy said on social media, where he posted a video of the aftermath.

It was impossible to verify the video or independently confirm the attack. The governor of Russia’s Samara region, Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, said two people were killed by Ukrainian drones in Syzran, but he did not mention the refinery. Russia’s Astra news outlet said Ukrainian drones struck the Syzran refinery owned by oil and gas giant Rosneft.

Justices permit suits over U.S. assets seized by Cuba

The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with a U.S.-owned port business whose dock front property was seized in 1960 when Fidel Castro came to power and nationalized private property, possibly opening the door for similar claims from American companies and individuals.

The Trump administration had backed the U.S.-owned entity, which sued major cruise lines that had been using the confiscated docks. The administration told the justices that lawsuits to allow such compensation, first authorized by Congress in the 1990s, were an important foreign policy tool for discouraging investment in Cuba.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the 8-1 majority, said those who use property “tainted by a past confiscation” are liable to “any United States national who owns a claim to that property.”

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed Alabama’s bid to be allowed to execute a convicted murder who was found by lower courts to be intellectually disabled.

The court’s action leaves in place lower court rulings in favor of Joseph Clifton Smith, 55, who has been on death row roughly half his life after his conviction for beating a man to death in 1997.

The Supreme Court prohibited execution of intellectually disabled people in a landmark ruling in 2002. The justices, in cases in 2014 and 2017, held that states should consider other evidence of disability in borderline cases because of the margin of error in IQ tests.

The issue in Smith’s case is what happens when a person has multiple IQ scores that are slightly above 70, which has been widely accepted as a marker of intellectual disability. Smith’s five IQ tests produced scores ranging from 72 to 78.

Judge dismisses charges against former administrator

A Virginia judge on Thursday dismissed all charges against a former school administrator accused of ignoring repeated warnings that a 6-year-old had a gun hours before a teacher was shot.

Acting on a defense motion, Circuit Judge Rebecca Robinson issued the ruling on the fourth day of the trial of Ebony Parker, who was charged with eight felony counts of child neglect.

The former assistant principal was charged in the January 2023 shooting at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News that left teacher Abby Zwerner wounded. Prosecutors had said the charges issued in a grand jury indictment were for each of the bullets in the gun brought into Zwerner’s classroom. Each count could have carried a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Trump says he is sending 5,000 more troops to Poland

President Donald Trump on Thursday said the U.S. will send an additional 5,000 troops to Poland, stirring confusion following weeks of changing statements from Trump and his administration about reducing — not increasing — the American military footprint in Europe.

The Trump administration has said it was reducing levels in Europe by about 5,000 troops, and U.S. officials confirmed about 4,000 service members were no longer deploying to Poland. Trump’s social media announcement raises more uncertainty for European allies that have been blindsided by the changes as the administration has complained about NATO members not shouldering enough of the burden of their own defense.

Gunmen open fire in two separate attacks, at least 16 killed

Gunmen opened fire in two separate attacks Thursday on the Honduran coast, killing at least 16 people, including six police officers, police said.

The first incident took place at a plantation in the municipality of Trujillo in northern Honduras, where at least 10 workers were shot and killed, National Police spokesman Edgardo Barahona said.

In the second attack, assailants opened fire on police in the municipality of Omoa in the Cortes department near the Guatemalan border, killing six officers, including a senior officer, police said.

— Denver Post wire services