On the banks of the Rio Grande, Maverick County Sheriff Tom Schmerber pointed at the spot where just a day earlier a 3-year-old boy had drowned.  "Medical attention (was) provided," Schmerber said. "He died anyway." The boy's white t-shirt had a murky tinge in a post-mortem photo. Schmerber pointed down river and said "three or four" adult migrants recently drowned there. He pulled out his phone and showed CNN some of the most recent post-mortem and scene photos of migrant deaths in his county. "I feel sad for the families," said Schmerber. The sight of migrant bodies floating onshore or turning up in the surrounding ranchlands has become an almost everyday occurrence recently, Schmerber says. The number of migrants attempting the crossing has continued to rise, and the increase in arrivals is leading to more deaths, according to Schmerber. Some of the deaths are also due to migrants taking more and more risks to evade detection by federal au...

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg speaks at a news conference during a NATO summit in Madrid, Spain on June 29, 2022 [Yves Herman/ Reuters] NATO has listed China as one of its strategic priorities for the first time, saying Beijing’s ambitions and its “coercive policies” challenge the Western bloc’s “interests, security and values”. The alliance’s new blueprint, or Strategic Concept (PDF), that lays out its priorities for the next decade, was approved at a leader’s summit in Spain on Wednesday. The document directed its harshest language towards Russia, which it described as “the most significant and direct threat” to the alliance’s peace and security, but said Beijing’s military ambitions, its confrontational rhetoric towards Taiwan and its increasingly close ties with Moscow posed “systemic challenges”. “China is substantially building up its military forces, including nuclear weapons, bullying its neighbours, threatening Taiwan … monitoring and controlling its own citizens thr...