What happened
Voters in Alberta yesterday overwhelmingly rejected a separatist push to secede from Canada. CBC News called the result last night, when early unofficial figures showed 76.5% of Albertans voting to remain in Canada and 23.5% supporting the referendum to hold a binding vote for independence. 

Who said what
The rejection of the nonbinding referendum, while expected, was a “much-needed win” for Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as he “attempts to unify the country amid a trade war with the U.S,” said Reuters. Albertans made a “clear choice” for “unity, to build together and to take care of each other,” Carney said last night. “Above all, Albertans chose Canada.”

Unlike in Quebec, “secessionist sentiments have always been a minority viewpoint in Alberta,” The New York Times said. But the oil-rich province is “cowboy country and a conservative stronghold” where “resentment toward Canada’s federal government in Ottawa runs deep,” The Associated Press said. Despite last night’s “apparent failure, separatist leaders have said they turned a fringe cause into a movement that won’t disappear.”

What next?
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who called the referendum but opposed independence, said in a statement she was “very pleased” with the outcome. She said she will address Albertans tonight to discuss the results and “where our province goes ​from here.”

What happened
A police officer’s “use of force was justified” in the shooting death of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley in June, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said yesterday. The white Senatobia Police Department officer killed the Black toddler when he fired into a car as Wiley’s mother and her friend were trying to leave a Walmart parking lot. Police alleged that Vellesiya Wiley had shoplifted diapers, though she “denied she or her friend stole anything,” The Associated Press said. “Neither woman has been charged with a crime,” the Mississippi Free Press said, “and officials have not released any evidence of shoplifting.”

Who said what
The conclusion of Mississippi’s investigation “follows months of mourning and calls for justice,” the AP said. Wiley’s death was the “latest in a string of incidents that has eroded trust” between the Senatobia police and Black residents of the Memphis-area city. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation said hours after the shooting that the vehicle drove toward officers, “almost striking” one. But no body-camera or security video has been released, and Ben Crump, a lawyer representing the Wiley family, said an independent autopsy showed that Kohen was shot from the side of the car.

What next?
"Video surveillance footage of the shooting will be released to media organizations in short order," the Free Press said, citing Mississippi’s Department of Public Safety.

A team of U.S. researchers arrived at a remote crab-infested South Pacific island last week to inspect possible wreckage of the plane flown by famed aviator Amelia Earhart, who vanished in 1937 while trying to circumnavigate the globe. But all they found on Nikumaroro was a “collection of large trees deposited along the peninsula’s sandspit,” Purdue University, one of the expedition’s sponsors, said yesterday. 

The “mystery of what happened” to the pioneering Earhart has “captivated historians and conspiracy theorists for nearly 90 years,” said The Telegraph. She and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean while traveling toward Howland Island. Despite extensive searches, neither they nor their aircraft were ever found.

The official explanation is that the plane suffered communication problems and ran out of fuel before crashing into the ocean. But some think Earhart and Noonan “crash-landed on or near” a coral-ringed atoll and “perished as castaways there,” said Reuters.

The new expedition was searching for the “Taria Object,” captured by satellite imagery in 2000 and believed by some to be the wreckage of Earhart’s Lockheed Electra 10-E plane. But the reflective sheen thought to be metal turned out to be the remaining tree fragment’s “carbonate veneer,” the researchers said. 

“Unfortunately, we weren’t able to find ​that smoking gun,” Purdue general counsel and team member Steve Schultz said in a video message from Nikumaroro. But “you know, Amelia herself said, ‘Adventure is worthwhile in itself.’” And the “castaway hypothesis” is still “very strong,” said expedition leader Dr Rick Pettigrew of the Archaeological Legacy Institute. “The island has been holding on to its secrets and it continues to do so.”