ZINKE MEMO: CONSIDER HOME FOR MONUMENT

MISS.» The interior secretary JACKSON, says Mississippi civil rights sites, including the home of Medgar Evers, should be considered for national monument designation. Secretary Ryan Zinke makes the recommendation in a memo to President Donald Trump, which was leaked. Evers, the state’s first NAACP field secretary, organized protests and boycotts to fight segregation. He was assassinated by a white supremacist outside his Jackson home in 1963. In February, the National Park Service designated the home a national historic landmark.

Battle against Islamic State in Raqqa is in “final stages.”

The battle for the Islamic State’s defacto Syrian capital, Raqqa, has reached its “final stages,” the Syrian Democratic Forces said Wednesday, almost four months after the U.S.-backed force launched an assault on the selfproclaimed capital of the militant group.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said it captured Raqqa’s last grain silos from the militants in a surprise offensive on the city’s northern neighborhoods, mounted five days ago.

For second straight year, Coast Guard sets record for drug seizures at sea.

The Coast Guard has set a record for cocaine seizures at sea for the second consecutive year, an effort that admirals are linking to border security as they look to build new ships while President Trump presses for a border wall.

Overall, the Coast Guard has seized more than 455,000 pounds of cocaine through Sept. 11 in the fiscal year that will end Oct. 1, breaking the record of 443,790 pounds set last year. About 85 percent of that comes from the eastern Pacific, service officials said. The Coast Guard also has detained at least 681 suspected smugglers in those operations, up from 585 last year and 503 in 2015.

More charges, new defendant in human smuggling case.

SAN

The driver of a semitrailer found outside a Walmart in July packed with immigrants, including 10 who died, faces additional charges in the smuggling case and another defendant has now been charged, federal officials said Wednesday.

The U.S. attorney’s office in San Antonio said a grand jury returned the seven-count superseding indictment Wednesday afternoon. U.S. Attorney Richard Durbin Jr. said in a filing that he won’t seek the death penalty against the driver, James Bradley Jr., 60.

Prosecutors said the indictment also alleges Pedro Silva Segura, 47, of Laredo, who is in the U.S. illegally, transported immigrants and tried to shield them from detection. He could face up to life in prison or the death penalty.

Actor Hall pleads no contest to assault.

ANGELES» “Breakfast LOS

Club” actor Anthony Michael Hall has pleaded no contest to shoving a neighbor who fell and broke his wrist. Hall, 49, entered the plea in Superior Court on Wednesday to one misdemeanor count of assault likely to produce injury. He was sentenced to 40 hours of community service and three years of informal probation. Prosecutors say Hall and a next-door neighbor in Playa Del Rey got into an argument in 2016 that ended with Hall pushing the man to the ground.

Prospects for air traffic control privatization appear slim.

President Donald Trump has made airlines’ longtime goal of privatizing air traffic control a key part of his agenda to boost America’s infrastructure. But his prospects for closing the deal with Congress appear slim.

A bill that would put the aviation industry in charge of air traffic control has stalled repeatedly and prospects appear even worse in the Senate, where there has been no effort to take up the issue. While the White House and airline lobbyists have pushed for privatization, there has been fierce opposition from private pilots, corporate aircraft owners. —AP