Mr. Bubz the dog has seemingly come out of nowhere, blessing the internet with his snarls and nervous energy.

After a 14-second video of the pup snarling while a man offered some affection was uploaded to YouTube on Monday it quickly ramped up well over 10,000 views. 

And while Mr. Bubz currently only has a handful of post on his Instagram — the first of which was also posted on Monday — he already has over 10,000 followers. 

Regardless of what launched Mr. Bubz into an overnight sensation, all I know is that I too love Mr. Bubz, and so should you. He’s not perfect! But who is? 

There’s something indescribable about Mr. Bubz that just makes him a treat to watch. Maybe it’s his constant expression of dread and whiny snarls, or perhaps it’s his big bulging eyes and stout body. 

Who can say for sure? It is a mystery. Truly.

Making things even weirder, Mr. Bubz’s Instagram posts also have some, uh, interesting captions that I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around.

“Never not dreaming of motherwife’s ripe panties,” is one of the curiouser captions. 

And then there’s also this gem of a caption: “Mr. Bubz loves rubbing his dick on stuff and tending his garden.” 

Yikes.

All concerning comments aside, now that Mr. Bubz has entered into my life I am hooked, and I will be sitting patiently waiting for more Mr. Bubz-related content. 

We’ve reached out to Mr. Bubz’s humans for additional information and comments, and we’ll update this post if we hear back. 

Russia has deployed a dozen warships to the Mediterranean Sea in what a Russian newspaper on Tuesday called Moscow’s largest naval buildup since it entered the Syrian conflict in 2015.

The reinforcement comes as Russia’s ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is believed to be considering a major assault on the last rebel-held enclave in northern Idlib province.

Russia has accused the United States of building up its own forces in the Middle East in preparation for a possible strike on Syrian government forces.

On Saturday, the Admiral Grigorovich and Admiral Essen frigates sailed through Turkey’s Bosphorus towards the Mediterranean, Reuters news agency images showed.

The day before, the Pytlivy frigate and landing ship Nikolai Filchenkov were pictured sailing through the Turkish straits that connect the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. The Vishny Volochek missile corvette passed through earlier this month.

The Izvestia newspaper said Russia had gathered its largest naval presence in the Mediterranean since it intervened in Syria in 2015 and turned the war’s tide in Assad’s favour.

The force included 10 vessels, most of them armed with long-range Kalibr cruise missiles, Izvestia wrote, adding more ships were on the way. Two submarines had also been deployed.

The Syrian government is gearing up for an expected offensive in Idlib province, which is home to nearly three million people and has a large al-Qaeda presence in addition to several Syrian rebel groups.

It borders Turkey, which fears an offensive may trigger a humanitarian and security catastrophe.

Chemical attack?

The United States on Tuesday warned the Russian and Syrian governments against chemical weapon use in Syria.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the United States “will respond to any verified chemical weapons use in Idlib or elsewhere in Syria … in a swift and appropriate manner”.

The comments came as Russia again accused Syrian rebels of preparing a chemical attack that Moscow said will be used to justify a Western strike against Syrian troops.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Tuesday an al-Qaeda-linked group is preparing the attack in Idlib.

Western countries and independent analysts say Syrian government forces have conducted several chemical weapons attacks over the course of the seven-year civil war. Alleged chemical attacks in 2017 and earlier this year led the US to launch punitive strikes against Syrian forces.

The Syrian government denies ever using chemical weapons.

Damascus has been sending reinforcements towards Idlib for weeks ahead of an expected attack against the last major rebel stronghold in the country.

‘Russian propaganda’

Last week, Russian Major General Alexei Tsygankov, who heads the centre for reconciliation of warring parties in Syria, claimed British special services were involved in plans for the alleged provocation.

That brought a heated denial from Britain’s UN Ambassador Karen Pierce during a Security Council session on the humanitarian situation in Syria held on Tuesday.

“Even by the egregious standards of Russian propaganda, this is an extraordinary allegation,” she said. “It is wholly untrue.”

She said the claim was either aimed at increasing “the amount of fake news in the system [or] as a smoke screen for a possible impending attack by the Syrian regime, once again against its own people, in Idlib”.

Russia’s UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said “if the defence ministry says something, then it says that based on concrete facts”.

“The Syrian armed forces do not have chemical weapons and have no plans to use them. There is no military need for that. We have stated that more than once. People in their right minds will not use means that are useless from a military point of view in order to trigger reprisals by three major powers,” said Nebenzia.

The UN director of humanitarian operations warned a major offensive in Idlib “has the potential to create a humanitarian emergency at a scale not yet seen” in the seven-year civil war.

John Ging called on members of the UN Security Council on Tuesday “to do all they can to ensure that we avoid this”.

British number one Johanna Konta lost in the US Open first round for the second successive year as she was beaten 6-2 6-2 by Caroline Garcia.

Konta, 27, struggled on serve against the French sixth seed at Flushing Meadows in New York.

Her exit means there are no British women left in the singles draw after Heather Watson’s defeat on Monday.

It is the first time Konta was unseeded at a Grand Slam since the 2016 Australian Open.

Having fallen to 46th in the world rankings this year, she paid the price for a tough draw.

Konta outclassed by Murray’s tip

Konta’s slide down the rankings led to a meeting with a player who, as a teenager, was tipped as a future world number one by Britain’s Andy Murray.

Garcia has not managed to reach those heights yet but, having spent over a year inside the top 10, she was too good for Konta in her current form.

Konta, who led Garcia 3-2 in their head-to-head going into the match, was feeling positive after earning impressive wins over former Grand Slam winners Serena Williams, Jelena Ostapenko and Victoria Azarenka on the American hard courts leading up to the US Open.

However, she never looked like causing a problem for the dominant Garcia.

Perhaps Garcia was not the only obstacle for Konta, with a virus forcing her to pull out of the Connecticut Open last week and keeping her bed-ridden for three days.

Despite still sounding bunged up during her pre-tournament interviews on Saturday, she had already started to hit again in New York and insisted she was on the mend and ready to play.

Konta constantly put herself under pressure with a low first-serve percentage, enabling Garcia to dominate and win 48% of Konta’s service points.

Garcia broke twice in each set, although missed another six chances as Konta showed some signs of resistance.

She saved a match point with an accurate serve out wide to force deuce in the final game, but that was brief respite as two loose forehands long saw her lose in one hour 15 minutes.

Nearly 3,000 people died in Puerto Rico in the chaotic, grueling aftermath of Hurricane Maria, far exceeding original estimates, according to a new study.

From September 2017 to February 2018, 2,975 people died, according to the study by George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, which was commissioned by the Puerto Rican government.

That total is a dramatic increase from the longheld count of 64, which the administration of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló left unchanged in the 11 months since the storm.

On Tuesday, Rosselló said the study’s estimate, for now, would become the official death toll from Hurricane Maria — making the storm the second-deadliest in U.S. history, trailing only the 1900 Galveston, Texas, hurricane that killed more than 6,000 people. 

“It is painful,” Rosselló said at a press conference. “It’s a continuing realization that a lot of people lost their lives, a continuing realization that a lot of people are going through hardships.”

He said he’s ordered the creation of a commission to study how to implement the report’s recommendations. The GWU researchers will next be looking at specific cases to determine what causes of deaths were most prevalent in the storm’s aftermath, he said. 

The study found doctors on the island were ill-equipped to properly classify deaths after a natural disaster and the government failed to prepare them before the 2017 hurricane season. 

It also found that government emergency plans in place when Maria hit were not designed for hurricanes greater than a Category 1. Maria was a Category 4 with 154-mph winds. Damage was estimated at more than $100 billion.

“The inadequate preparedness and personnel training for crisis and emergency risk communication, combined with numerous barriers to accurate, timely information and factors that increased rumor generation, ultimately decreased the perceived transparency and credibility of the Government of Puerto Rico,” the report said.

The official death toll from Maria has been a point of contention since the storm ripped through the middle of the island Sept. 20, destroying homes and island infrastructure, displacing thousands and plunging the island into a blackout for months.

Maria did not discriminate. People from all social and economic backgrounds perished in the storm, though the death count was proportionately higher for Puerto Ricans in poorer communities and elderly men, according to the report. 

“The latest study, commissioned by the Puerto Rican government, puts the tragedy of Hurricane Maria on the same scale as the September 11th attacks,” Rep. Bennie Thompson D-Miss., ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said in a statement. “Because FEMA and the Federal government were simply unprepared, thousands of our fellow American citizens have perished – and we now know that the poor and elderly were the most at risk.”

Besides those directly killed by the storm, scores of others died when they weren’t able to access hospitals over impassable roads, couldn’t plug in dialysis machines when the island went dark or couldn’t cope with the stress after the storm.

The low official death count sparked protests in San Juan and hindered the island’s recovery. This year, Puerto Ricans laid thousands of pairs of shoes outside the island’s Capitol building to represent the uncounted dead.

Some media and academic studies estimated the death toll at more than 1,000 and a recent government report to Congress conceded that there may have been 1,400 more deaths in Puerto Rico after the storm than the previous year.

The Center for Investigative Journalism, Puerto Rico, in a joint project with CNN, is analyzing thousands of post-Maria death certificates to try to determine an accurate death count.

The GWU study would put Maria as the second-deadliest hurricane in U.S. history. The hurricane of 1900 in Galveston, Texas, killed 6,000 to 12,000, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Hurricane Katrina killed about 1,800 along the Gulf Coast in 2005.

Researchers counted deaths from Maria over the span of six months — a much longer period than usual — because so many people were without power during that time, which probably led to more deaths.

“That caused a number of issues,” said Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken institute. “It’s fairly striking that you have so many households without electricity for so long. That’s unusual in the U.S. after a disaster.”

Contributing: Associated Press

Follow Jervis on Twitter: @MrRJervis.

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With friends like Donald Trump, who needs enemies?

That was the reaction from European Council Chief Donald Tusk when the US president withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions.

EU leaders want to save the nuclear deal – and with it multi-billion dollar business contracts. 

But European companies are bowing to US demands by pulling out of Iran – including British Airways and Air France, which are grounding flights to Tehran.

That’s despite revised EU legislation called “blocking statute,” which is aimed at nullifying US legal action against European firms that defy US sanctions on Iran. 

Germany’s foreign minister, meanwhile, has called for independent payment channels to be created that could avoid US sanctions.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron says Europe’s historical partner “seems to turn his back on this common history”.

So, how wide is the rift across the Atlantic?

Presenter: Elizabeth Puranam

Guests:

Thorsten Benner – director, Global Public Policy Institute

Cathryn Cluver Ashbrook – executive director, Future of Diplomacy Project, Harvard Kennedy School

Daniel Gros – director, Centre for European Policy Studies

Source: Al Jazeera News

Manchester United have been keen to push out the “nothing to see here” message, despite manager Jose Mourinho’s clear frustration with the club’s transfer policy and mounting evidence that this is a team currently not fit for its designated purpose of winning the Premier League.

United will fool only themselves and not very many others if they attempt to apply any gloss or positive spin to the grim spectacle that unfolded as they were dismantled by Tottenham at Old Trafford.

These are troubled times for Manchester United and Jose Mourinho. No amount of disguise or window dressing can cover this up.

Mourinho is correct to say he deserves respect as a manager who has won three Premier League titles – but his deeds at Chelsea will cut no ice with United’s fans, who live in the here and now and who received a very cold shower from a Spurs team they will regard as title rivals this season.

And here, as Old Trafford was reduced to a sea of empty red seats once Lucas Moura made it 3-0 with six minutes left, Mourinho’s current circumstances and United’s plight were brutally exposed.

Mourinho could justifiably point to Romelu Lukaku’s glaring first-half miss across an unguarded goal when United were on top as a defining moment – but of more concern and significance was the manner in which United were dismissed once Spurs found higher gears.

As expected, Mourinho was bristling with defiance as he put his past successes on the table. And to suggest a manager of his calibre and with his record is suddenly a busted flush is disrespectful.

What is beyond dispute, however, is that the pressure is mounting and not simply because of two defeats to Brighton and Spurs that have made this United’s worst start to a Premier League season since 1992-93.

The heat is growing on Mourinho because this United side lacks any sort of identity and its style pales when set alongside the attacking excitement being produced by Pep Guardiola at Manchester City, Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, Mauricio Pochettino at Spurs and now at Chelsea following the arrival of Maurizio Sarri.

In Mourinho’s defence, this was not a United side not playing for its manager. Indeed they were the better side in the first half, but Lukaku could not deliver the final flourish.

Mourinho’s defence, however, was the biggest problem. It was, quite simply, a shambles.

He won a deserved reputation as the master of defensive organisation amid the stellar successes at Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan, Real Madrid and then back at Stamford Bridge.

They were different days and different teams. Mourinho cannot have presided over a defence as close to a fiasco as this one he has at Manchester United.

United were all over the place once Spurs found their rhythm, the desperate measure of utilising midfield man Ander Herrera alongside Phil Jones and Chris Smalling swiftly ditched once they went behind.

Mourinho’s desire for a central defender has been well chronicled but it does not reflect well on his own buying policy that Victor Lindelof and Eric Bailly – bought at a cost in excess of £60m – were jettisoned following their embarrassment at Brighton.

Lindelof emerged as a substitute here but looked like a player living in fear and stripped of confidence, almost presenting Dele Alli with a goal and generally looking shot to pieces.

To add insult to injury, Toby Alderweireld – linked heavily with United this summer – performed with complete authority at the heart of the Spurs defence, with one perfectly-timed sliding tackle seeing some home fans turn to express their feelings in the direction of executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward as he watched from the directors’ box.

Mourinho’s mood was dark, but it would be delusion on an industrial scale if he put this loss down to the vagaries of the transfer market and United’s missed opportunities.

This was a defeat inflicted by a manager who did not make a single summer signing – but as Mourinho bemoaned his lot and effectively suggested this left him short of the squad he wanted, Pochettino hid any dissatisfaction he may or may not have been feeling at a lack of summer transfer activity to insist he was perfectly happy with what he had and exuded positivity and optimism about the challenge ahead.

And there are other worries for United.

It is hard to detect exactly where Mourinho is going with this United team. What sort of team are they? What is their style of play? What is their best team? Does Mourinho have a best team?

They currently look like a collection of faulty parts rather than a united force. And Mourinho is a man scratching around for answers.

In the closing minutes, with United outmanoeuvred and Old Trafford emptying at a rapid rate, this resembled one of those games from the miserable David Moyes months when superior sides such as Manchester City and Liverpool came to the Theatre of Dreams and made off with the points with plenty to spare.

United are not about to be panicked into dismissing a manager they have set so much store by and one who has spent so heavily since he arrived at Old Trafford.

And, for the record, Mourinho has won the EFL Cup and Europa League and reached an FA Cup Final in his two full seasons at Old Trafford, more than Klopp and Pochettino have won at Liverpool and Spurs.

Like his past record, though, this is neither here nor there as United consider their immediate and plentiful problems. Klopp and Pochettino are moving forward. Mourinho is currently a manager in reverse.

Mourinho faces a huge challenge, starting at Burnley this weekend.

He must prove he can piece together a recovery, and that this is not the start of an irreversible slide into decline that wrote the final chapters of his story in two spells at Chelsea.

Two defeats in three games may not represent a crisis yet – but a glance at the league table shows United already six points behind Liverpool, Spurs and Chelsea and four adrift of Manchester City.

Clearly not insurmountable at this stage, but with margins of error so fine at the top of the Premier League, Mourinho and United will not want their rivals moving any further ahead.

Mourinho’s task when he arrived at Manchester United was to restore what everyone at Old Trafford regarded as the old order, normal service.

It is early days, but the manner in which they ended up so badly beaten by Spurs at their own Old Trafford fortress made that restoration look a very long way away.

The firestorm surrounding Pope Francis over allegations of sexual abuse by priests grew more heated Tuesday when Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said he had evidence the Vatican was aware of efforts to cover up sexual abuse in his state.

Shapiro, who acknowledged he could not link the cover-up directly to the pope, last week issued a bombshell report accusing at least 300 Pennsylvania priests of sexually abusing more than 1,000 victims over seven decades. Shapiro accused church leaders of transferring accused priests to other parishes and pressuring victims not to report alleged crimes.

“We’re seeing institutions … putting their own institutional reputation above the welfare of children,” Shapiro told the ‘Today’ show Tuesday. “We will not tolerate that in Pennsylvania.”

Shapiro spoke two days after the pope was slammed in an open letter released by a former Vatican ambassador to the United States. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò called for the pope’s resignation, saying Francis knew about accusations of sex abuse against Washington Cardinal Theodore McCarrick for years before obtaining his resignation last month.

“In this extremely dramatic moment for the universal Church,” Viganò said. Francis “must acknowledge his mistakes and, in keeping with the proclaimed principle of zero tolerance, must be the first to set a good example for cardinals and bishops who covered up McCarrick’s abuses and resign along with all of them.”

More: Ex-Vatican diplomat calls on ‘sinful’ Pope Francis to resign

More: In Ireland, Pope Francis meets with Catholic Church abuse survivors

Viganò has been a frequent critic of the pope, and Francis and the Vatican declined to discuss the claims. The Washington archdiocese issued a statement Monday questioning the veracity of Virgano’s claims and denying that anyone, including Viganò, ever brought the accusations to McCarrick’s successor, Cardinal Donald Wuerl.

The pope has plenty of other problems. Francis, in a visit to Ireland over the weekend, apologized for an abuse scandal there. On Tuesday he said he would personally handle the appeal of Guam Archbishop Anthony Apuron, found guilty of unspecified claims after a Vatican panel investigated multiple allegations of sexual abuse against him.

In the U.S., Missouri is among states starting or considering a probe of the church. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has promised a probe similar to Pennsylvania’s mammoth, two-year grand jury effort.

“I encourage anyone in the state who has any information about any sexually inappropriate behavior involving a member of the clergy or church in Illinois to contact my office,” Madigan said Monday.

Shapiro says the church is paying a price for years of stonewalling.

“I think the broader issues here with the Vatican knowing about this, with church leaders knowing about it, and the reaction you’ve seen not just from Catholics, but from Americans and people all across the globe, is just a fundamental disappointment and anger,” Shapiro said.

 

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to begin a tour of three West African countries, Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria, with efforts to boost economic ties and limit irregular migration to Europe expected to dominate her agenda.

Analysts say the three-day visit beginning in Senegal on Wednesday marks Germany’s belated growing interest in parts of Africa and preoccupation with the flow of undocumented arrivals in the European Union.

“Africa has many conflicts and some people are fleeing very, very difficult conditions,” Merkel said in a video address published on the chancellery’s website on Sunday.

“But we also know, on the other hand, that African countries could be a good market down the line. Other countries are already very active here.”

Senegal, Ghana and Nigeria face some high hurdles and have an important role to play in finding solutions to conflict in the region, said Merkel.

Economic ties

Robert Kappel, a development economist from the University of Leipzig in Germany, told Al Jazeera that Nigeria was an important oil exporter to Germany, but Ghana and Senegal had limited economic ties with it.

“German industry only ranks 11 of all investors on the African continent,” he said. “Trade with Austria is three times higher than with the whole African continent.”

Germany’s foreign trade with sub-Saharan Africa amounted to about $30bn last year, according to Germany Trade and Invest (GTAI) – the country’s economic development agency.

However, imports from sub-Saharan Africa accounted for only 1.1 percent of total foreign trade in 2017, similar to the year before.

“Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to these three countries is a show that Germany is much more interested in the continent,” Kappel said.

Last year, during its G20 presidency, Germany launched two programmes for cooperation with the continent: compact with Africa, an initiative to promote private investment in infrastructure; and the Marshall Plan with Africa, a proposal to rewrite Germany’s aid relationship with Africa.

‘Questionable policy’

George Kibala Bauer, a Congolese-German contributing editor at Africa is a Country online publication, told Al Jazeera that Merkel’s recent interest in Africa was the result of a considerable political pressure against her, including from her own political allies, for her perceived open-migration policy.

“This is not only morally questionable but also practically misguided,” he said.

Merkel has found in Mahamadou Issoufou, Niger’s president who was re-elected in 2016 after winning a controversial runoff, a key partner in her efforts to curb irregular migration to Europe, pledging millions of dollars to his government.

She also supports the European Union’s proposal to build detention centres in North Africa, where migrants would be processed. The EU plan, details of which remain scant, has been condemned by international human rights groups and UN officials.

Bauer said the EU has increasingly empowered third countries, and effectively outsourced certain tasks to states in the Sahel region and the Horn of Africa.

“The Geneva Convention and German law grants every asylum seeker the right to a fair trial to determine his asylum status. As the outsourcing process becomes increasingly prevalent, this right will be put in jeopardy,” he said.

“From a human rights perspective, outsourcing has often meant that EU funds have effectively empowered state security services in countries such as Niger, Libya and Sudan, which have a track record of human rights violations.”

High on the agenda

On her tour, Merkel is expected to discuss migration prevention with the leaders of Ghana, Senegal and Nigeria, where a large portion of African migrants arriving in Germany originate from.

The chancellor hopes to find a way to prevent them from starting their journeys, including providing more development aid to their countries.

Bauer said: “It is surprising and disappointing to many that Europe spends such degree of energy and resources on deterring migration”.

“Many young people are also dismayed that many European leaders fail to recognise the contribution that migrants can make in their societies,” he added.

“Countries such as Senegal and Nigeria themselves host migrant communities from neighbouring countries. Many African countries host more migrants and asylum seekers as a proportion of their population than European countries currently do.”

Andreas Mehler, director of Germany’s Arnold Bergstraesser Institute in Freiburg, told Al Jazeera that Merkel’s trip is likely to be more successful in Ghana and Senegal, describing both as “progressive countries with reliable, democratically elected leadership” who already receive German aid.

By contrast, Mehler added, democratic but “difficult and self-confident” Nigeria would not accept “chequebook diplomacy”. German money would not be able to make a difference for Nigeria’s large population anyway, he said.

“Nigeria, a giant on feet of clay, does not need or get German development assistance,” Mehler said.

Kappel said Merkel might try to offer military assistance instead in the form of Germany providing training for the Nigerian army as the country battles the Boko Haram armed group in the north.

“If Nigeria is more stable, then it contributes to stabilising the whole Sahel region and that will reduce the refugee problem for the European Union,” he said.

“I think Chancellor Merkel will try to convince the Nigerian government [to cooperate on the migration issue] not with money but perhaps with the training of the military and police, and perhaps better weapons.”

Follow Al Jazeera’s Tamila Varshalomidze on Twitter: @tamila87v

Australian Open champion Caroline Wozniacki beat Australian Sam Stosur 6-3 6-2 in hot conditions to reach the second round of the US Open.

Second seed Wozniacki, 28, broke the 2011 champion’s serve five times on a day when temperatures in New York are expected to top 32C with high humidity.

The Dane plays Lesia Tsurenko next.

Organisers implemented the extreme heat policy at Flushing Meadows with a 10-minute break between the second and third sets in women’s singles matches.

There will be a 10-minute break between the third and fourth sets of men’s singles matches.

Two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova is also into the second round after beating Belgian Yanina Wickmayer 6-1 6-4.

The Czech fifth seed, 28, broke serve twice to take the first set and won five successive games from 4-1 down in the second. She will face China’s Yafan Wang next.

Two-time US Open runner-up Wozniacki said: “I’m just glad to have won this one. It’s definitely difficult. It’s very hot out here. I just tried to cool down between games.”

American 24th seed Coco Vandeweghe, a semi-finalist at Flushing Meadows last year, was knocked out in the first round by Belgian Kirsten Flipkens, 6-3 7-6 (7-3).

Latvian 10th seed Jelena Ostapenko, the 2017 French Open champion, beat Germany’s Andrea Petkovic 6-4 4-6 7-5 to set up a second-round meeting with American Taylor Townsend.

Japan’s Naomi Osaka, seeded 20th, defeated German Laura Siegemund 6-3 6-2 and will play Romani’s Monica Niculescu or Israel’s Julia Glushko next.

Wimbledon champion and fourth seed Angelique Kerber will face Russia’s Margarita Gasparyan on Louis Armstrong.

Top seed Simona Halep was knocked out in the first round on Monday.

CHICAGO — For more than six decades, a mystery has swirled around the Emmett Till case, a mystery involving the photograph of a white girl.

His Mississippi cousins saw the picture and apparently so did his killers.

Till’s murderers “killed him because he boasted of having a white girl and showed them the picture of a white girl in Chicago,” journalist William Bradford Huie told filmmakers for the 1987 “Eyes on the Prize” documentary.

The years have passed, and the long-lost photograph has remained an enigma.

Who was this girl? Did she even exist?

Now, 63 years later, evidence has emerged that the answer is yes.

She was the only white girl in his class

Joan Brody, who lives in a condo in the northern suburbs of Chicago, is making lunch for a film crew as she gets ready to give her first-ever interview.

Her 68-year-old friend, Carole Bass, who is here, too, is the main reason the Clarion Ledger learned of Brody’s existence. When she first heard Brody talk about sitting next to Till in class, she felt chills.

Brody wasn’t aware of the historical significance, Bass said. “She just thought, ‘I sat next to him.’”

In “Eyes on the Prize,” Till’s cousin Curtis Jones mentioned that Till had a “picture of some white kids that he had graduated from (elementary school with) … female and male.”

The documentary’s producer, Henry Hampton, told NPR that Till showed this photo of his classmates to his Mississippi peers, pointing to the white girl and saying she was “his girlfriend. In fact, it was his classmate.”

Upon hearing the audio interview of Hampton, Brody said, “That had to be me.”

She was the only white girl in his class.

She sat next to Emmett Till in class

On her kitchen table, she prepared lox, bagels, cream cheese, cherries, strawberries and Swedish pancakes — all gluten-free.

“I’m only 43,” the 76-year-old joked, “but don’t tell anybody.”

The thing that has puzzled historians was that Till attended the all-black McCosh Grammar School (which now bears his name).

So where did this white girl come from?

The answer lies in the fact Chicago Public Schools kept fewer schools open in summer. One of those was Lewis-Champlain Elementary School.

Normally, this school was all black, but during the summer, a handful of white students went there. Brody and her twin brother, Howie, attended because they needed extra credits to attend South Shore High School, where the family was moving.

In the classroom, she sat next to Till, who was 13. She was 12.

“He had beautiful eyes,” she recalled.

Their first teacher was a white lady, who lasted only a few days.

Their second teacher was a black man, who ran the classroom with a firm hand, whacking students with his ruler.

One day, she and Till were tugging on a belt, and they were both laughing.

She can’t remember what tickled them, but she suspects it was because of their strict teacher.

When the teacher saw them goofing around, he came over and smacked her on the hand with his ruler. She grabbed onto the ruler in defiance, she said.

She has no memory of getting into trouble for doing that — something that surprises her.

When July 25 came, Till celebrated his 14th birthday. She had to wait a month to celebrate her 13th birthday.

Graduation came for the eighth-graders in August. That meant her parents were able to get back the $5 or so they paid in advance for her to attend.

“That was my graduation present. I got to keep the $5,” she said. “My sister got a bike.”

A graduation ceremony took place, and she was forced to wear the dress of a cousin 5 inches taller than her, she said. “I had to tuck it in here and there.”

She joined other students on the stage where photos were apparently taken, she said. “I had no interest in it.”

She never saw Till again.

Emmett Till said he would talk to anybody

In his interview, Hampton explained that when Till showed the picture of the white girl, his peers scoffed.

Till explained that he would talk to anybody, Hampton said, and his peers then challenged him to talk to the white woman in the store in Money, Carolyn Bryant.

After Till bought something and began to leave, “he turned around and said, ‘Bye, baby,’” Hampton said. “He didn’t understand that was a killing offense in Mississippi in (1955), but indeed it was.”

In the 1955 trial, Bryant testified that Till grabbed her by the waist and told her he had had sex with white women before, uttering an obscenity.

Brody shook her head in disbelief.

“He wasn’t a smart-alecky kid,” she said. “He wasn’t a person to smart off to a white woman or any woman.”

Look article claimed Emmett Till talked of sex with white women

The January 1956 Look magazine article obsesses about the claim Till said he’d had sex with white women.

His mother, Mamie, called it preposterous, saying her son would “never brag about the women he had. How could he? He was only 14.”

William Bradford Huie, who wrote the article, claimed that one of Till’s killers, J.W. Milam, flew into a rage after Till told him “about this white girl that he had.”

He quoted Milam as telling Till, “Boy, you ain’t never going to see the sun come up again.”

Upon hearing these words, Brody said that wasn’t the Till she knew.

He never talked about sex, or she would have certainly blushed, she said. “He was a gentleman.”

His horrific photo has been published around the world. Many Americans have never seen it.

Inside the barn, Till’s killers pistol-whipped him so badly that parts of his skull fell out.

His face looked so monstrous when his body arrived in Chicago that his mother, Mamie, insisted his casket be opened so “the world could see what they did to my boy.”

The photograph ran in the Chicago Defender, Jet magazine, many other black publications and in publications around the world, yet many Americans have never seen it because publications have considered it too graphic to print.

Brody was one of them until she recently went online and looked at the picture of Till’s battered body. 

It was the first time she had ever seen it.

The photo was so horrific, she turned away, and tears streamed down her cheeks.

The men that killed him, she said, “were worse than animals.”

Some believed the photo of the white girl came with Emmett Till’s wallet.

For decades, the photo of the white girl has raised many questions for historians.

Some suggested Till’s cousins were lying about the photo.

Some suggested the picture was really one that Till received with his wallet, perhaps a photograph of a model or actress.

“We didn’t know anything about white girls back in Chicago who might have been Emmett Till’s friends or girlfriends,” said Davis Houck, co-author of “Emmett Till and the Mississippi Press.” “For me, as a historian of the case, this is a real revelation.”

Brody said the story is not about her, “but about him. I want people to know that he did go to an integrated school and that he was a nice kid. He was not the kid he was made out to be.”

‘He could have been president’

There is a photo of a white girl in Brody’s home.

She is wearing a pink jumper with a blue anchor on the front. Her head is covered with dark curly hair, and a smile fills her face.

Next to her is a photo of a blond-haired boy, wearing an almost identical jumper.

She said it is her twin brother. Or was.

“He died when he was only 53.”

He and his family had traveled from their home in Hendersonville, Tennessee, to Atlanta for his daughter’s soccer tournament. While out jogging, he had a massive heart attack and died.

“I’m sure if he had been home, he would have been recognized and would still be alive,” she said.

She wonders, too, what might have been if Till had lived.

“He had his whole life ahead of him — to be gone just like that,” she said. “And for what reason?”

She wiped away her tears.

“He could have been president,” she said. “He was just a nice kid with a nice smile.”

She choked up.

“He didn’t deserve it,” she said. “Nobody deserves what they did to him.”

 

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