Mississippi

The family of Nolan Wells is still searching for answers about what exactly led to the 18-year-old athlete's death during a July 4 boat trip with friends off Mississippi's Gulf Coast, near the border with Alabama. Though Wells traveled by boat with his friends to Horn Island, he didn't return with the group that afternoon as planned. His body was found two days later off the island's coast.

Tropical Storm Bertha made landfall in Louisiana and was southwest of New Orleans while moving west toward Texas early Thursday morning, after closing beaches on the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle to Mississippi.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami reported the development of a tropical depression. The system appeared just west of Florida’s Tampa Bay. The current forecast has the depression becoming a Tropical Storm by Monday and moving west across the Gulf of Mexico. The system may brush by Mobile Bay on Tuesday and Wednesday before making landfall on Texas by the end of the week. Even as a rainmaker, the system could complicate things for Uvalde, Texas where heavy rains have already prompted flooding near Camp Mystic where an Alabama girl drowned in 2025.

Attorneys for the family of a Black teenager who went missing during a July Fourth boat trip to an island off the Mississippi coast, near the Alabama, said they will work with a local prosecutor's office to inspect the contents of his cellphone as the investigation into his death continues.

A week ago, 18-year-old Nolan Xavier Wells took a boat trip with friends to celebrate the Fourth of July on an island off Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. He never came back. Two days later, he was found dead on Horn Island, near the border of Alabama and Mississippi. What happened, Wells' parents say, is a mystery riddled with conflicting stories, implausible explanations and missing details

Organizers of Saturday’s voting rights protests in Montgomery and Selma say that was just the beginning. Demonstrators started at the Edmund Pettus Bridge where marchers were attacked in 1965. The day ended at Alabama’s Capitol City to oppose the redrawing of voting maps.

2005’s Hurricane Katrina killed 238 people in Mississippi and left only concrete slabs in many areas. With beachfront rebuilding crawling along a decade later, Gulfport began offering property tax breaks to those who built near the water. When it comes to rebuilding with hurricane fortified codes, Alabama is credited with leading the nation.

Mississippians have until Tuesday to intervene in a proposal for a natural gas pipeline that would span nearly the full width of the state. The pipeline, called the “Mississippi Crossing Project,” would start in Greenville, cross through Humphreys, Holmes, Attala, Leake, Neshoba, Newton, Lauderdale and Clarke counties and end near Butler, Alabama, stretching nearly 208 miles.

A tropical weather system near the Florida Panhandle is showing a moderate chance of becoming a tropical depression. The National Hurricane Center said Wednesday that the system could impact southeastern Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. Heavy rain is expected, with New Orleans bracing for up to 10 inches in some areas through Saturday.

Rail passengers can soon buy tickets to ride Amtrak between Mobile and New Orleans. The service announced the resumption of travel between the two cities for the first time since Hurricane Katrina halted Amtrak’s route along the Alabama Gulf coast back in August of 2005.