WASHINGTON — The Trump administration says families of Mexican teenagers who were shot to death by American border agents should not be allowed to sue for damages in U.S. courts.

The administration is telling the Supreme Court in a brief filed Thursday that the justices should take up and resolve the issue in favor of two agents who fired shots across the U.S-Mexican border that killed the teenagers.

In both cases, U.S. Border Patrol agents say they fired their guns because they were being attacked by people throwing rocks on the Mexican side of the border.

One incident occurred on the border between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez. In the other, an agent in Nogales, Arizona, shot a 16-year-old in Mexico 10 times.

The federal appeals court in San Francisco has allowed a lawsuit to proceed in the Arizona case against agent Lonnie Swartz.

An appellate panel in New Orleans said agent Jesus Mesa Jr. could not be sued by the family of the teenager he killed.

In both cases, the losing side appealed to the high court.

 

NASA twins study explores space, the final genetic frontier

WASHINGTON — From his eyes to his immune system, astronaut Scott Kelly’s body sometimes reacted strangely to nearly a year in orbit, at least compared to his Earth-bound identical twin — but newly published research shows nothing that would cancel even longer space treks, like to Mars.

The good news: Kelly largely bounced back after returning home, say scientists who released final results from NASA’s “twins study,” a never-before opportunity to track the biological consequences of spaceflight in genetic doubles.

It marks “the dawn of human genomics in space,” said Dr. Andrew Feinberg of Johns Hopkins University. He led one of 10 teams of researchers that scrutinized the twins’ health down to the molecular level before, during and after Kelly’s 340-day stay at the International Space Station.

More importantly, the study “represents more than one small step for mankind” by pointing out potential risks of longer-duration spaceflight that need study in more astronauts, said Markus Lobrich of Germany’s Darmstadt University and Penny Jeggo of the University of Sussex, who weren’t involved in the work.

 

Authorities say deputy’s son behind fires at black churches

OPELOUSAS, La. — The suspect in a string of fires that destroyed three black churches in rural Louisiana is the white son of a sheriff’s deputy whose father helped arrange for his arrest, authorities said Thursday.

Holden Matthews, 21, was jailed without bail on arson charges in connection with the blazes in and around Opelousas, a city of 16,000 where the flame-gutted remains of the buildings evoked memories of civil rights era violence.

Louisiana Fire Marshal Butch Browning offered no motive for the fires. He and other officials stopped short of calling them hate crimes. Eric Rommal, the agent in charge of the New Orleans FBI office, said investigators were still looking into whether the fires were “bias motivated.”

Browning said there were no indications that anyone else was involved and the danger to churches was over.

“This community is safe again,” he said at a news conference. “We are extremely, unequivocally confident that we have the person who is responsible for these tragic crimes.”