A Mississippi man has been arrested after a woman was found hanging from a tree behind an abandoned home in Jackson last month.

Police said Jarques Ratliff, 51, has been charged with murder in the death of 29-year-old Tasia Fortune, who was discovered dead on August 3.

Jackson Police Chief RaShall Brackney announced Ratliff’s arrest Friday, a significant break in the investigation into Fortune’s death.

Brackney said Ratliff had an ‘association’ with the mother of four, though authorities have not disclosed the nature of their connection.

Fortune’s death was formally ruled a homicide Thursday evening, Brackney said, enabling investigators to secure search and arrest warrants for Ratliff. Officers took him into custody after encountering him on the street.

‘The arrest today is an important development in this investigation, but it is not the conclusion,’ Brackney told reporters during a press conference.

‘This case remains active, and additional arrests will be pending as our investigators continue to follow the evidence where it leads… because Tasia and her children deserve nothing less.’

Fortune’s family had previously spoken out and said that they did not believe she had died by suicide, NBC News reported. 

Christy Spivey, Fortune’s mother, said on Friday that, after learning of Ratliff’s arrest, she ‘just started crying and told [police] “thank you, thank you, thank you.”‘

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Spivey said she wasn’t told of any motivation behind her daughter’s death and did not know Ratliff, but that their family is ‘in disbelief’ and ‘shock.’

‘We still don’t have a lot of answers,’ she told The Associated Press. 

Brackney said Fortune’s body was discovered in ‘the position of hanging’ and undergoing various stages of decomposition. 

The police chief acknowledged that Fortune’s case has ‘raised questions and the desire for answers given Mississippi’s history.’ 

‘We understand this case is being viewed through a broader lens, a global lens, and we do not dismiss those concerns. We are taking them seriously,’ she said. 

‘At the same time, we do have a responsibility to make sure that what we say publicly is supported by our evidence and facts.’

The Daily Mail reached out to the Jackson Police Department for comment. 

Papua New Guinea’s taxpayer-funded NRL expansion club may have to abandon the Chiefs name before it has played a game, after New Zealand Rugby flagged possible legal action in a move that has drawn support from some league fans.

The naming dispute has emerged only weeks before the PNG side is due to reveal its logo and playing strip in Port Moresby next month.

Supported by a $600million Australian government funding package, the new team is set to join the NRL premiership in 2028.

However, NZ Rugby — owner of Super Rugby’s Hamilton-based Chiefs franchise — has called on the NRL to reconsider the proposed identity.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that NZ Rugby contacted league officials this week, requesting talks ahead of the planned launch and indicating it was willing to protect its interests.

The issue is complicated by the clubs’ similar visual identities, with both using black, red and yellow — a combination that could heighten concerns over potential brand confusion among fans.

A number of commenters on Reddit’s NRL forum backed the rugby union body’s position in the growing dispute.

‘Same colours, same name, very similar sports,’ one wrote.

Another suggested the dispute offered a chance to start again.

‘Seems like an ideal opportunity to walk away from the extremely generic ‘Chiefs’ name and choose something better.’

Others proposed Pythons, Crocodiles, Vipers and Cassowaries, while one questioned why the new club had not adopted an existing PNG rugby league identity.

‘Don’t really understand why they didn’t use the Hunters branding.’

However, other commenters questioned the objection.

‘I don’t see the issue. It’s a different country and a different code. The Wests Tigers and the Richmond Tigers have existed in the same country for many years,’ one wrote.

The NRL has made a similar argument in its attempts to register the PNG Chiefs trademark.

Its lawyers pointed to sporting clubs around the world sharing names, including the Kansas City Chiefs and Exeter Chiefs.

But IP Australia found there remained a risk of confusion because the existing rugby Chiefs brand did not include a geographical identifier, the Herald reported.

The Australian Financial Review previously reported that NZ Rugby had held a trademark for its Chiefs logo since 1998.

The NRL applied to register ‘PNG Chiefs’ on October 14, 2025. NZ Rugby lodged a separate application for the word ‘Chiefs’ two days later.

Both organisations encountered objections involving existing trademarks, with the NRL facing problems covering clothing and entertainment.

Those registration obstacles are separate from the court action now being threatened.

NZ Rugby said its club had spent three decades establishing its identity.

‘The Chiefs have been a professional rugby club since 1996 and has an established identity and fan base, both in the Pacific region and globally. This 30-year identity includes the Chiefs name, logo and distinctive colours,’ it told the Herald.

‘NZR can confirm we have corresponded with the NRL, including this week, about the decision last year to similarly name and brand a new rugby league team. NZR’s focus is on protecting the Chiefs trademark and working with all parties towards a positive outcome.’

The NRL declined to comment to the newspaper.

Changing the name would also mean revisiting a decision endorsed by PNG Prime Minister James Marape following a public survey and discussions involving both governments, the NRL and the club’s board.

‘Our thousand tribes were governed by chiefs,’ Marape said when the name was announced last October.

‘The name truly reflects our history where chiefs, both male and female, held our nation together.’

The club has continued preparations for its launch, announcing a Bank South Pacific sponsorship this week that it described as the largest in NRL history.

Its logo and jersey unveiling remains scheduled for October.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has alleged that an internal review concluded Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar married her brother, claiming the matter could ultimately put her at risk of deportation.    

“We know that she married her brother to try to bring him into the United States,” Mullin said while discussing Omar. “We know he lives now in London.”

Mullin appeared to be referring to Omar’s second husband, identified in prior Daily Mail reporting as Ahmed Elmi. Omar and Elmi were both born in Somalia.

According to an account Omar allegedly shared with friends and later relayed to the Daily Mail, she remained legally married to her first husband, Ahmed Hirsi, when she entered into the second marriage.

Omar has repeatedly rejected accusations surrounding the marriage. She has since married for a third time and is now married to political consultant Tim Mynett.

In an interview with conservative commentator Benny Johnson, Mullin described the allegations involving Omar as “possible illegal activity” and said the DHS inquiry remained underway — an unusual public disclosure about an active investigation.

“We’re investigating,” Mullin said, adding that deportation could be considered if the investigation produced grounds for it.

“There’s no expiration to that,” he said when asked about potential charges. “If we can prove it that, maybe you shouldn’t have been here in the first place, we’ll deport you.”

Mullin appeared to be alluding to potential immigration documents being falsified, which would be a deportable offense. That plan could face difficulty given Omar became a naturalized US citizen in 2000, when she was 17.

Her office did not immediately respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment on Mullin’s latest claims. 

Abdihakim Osman, a past friend of Omar, told the Mail in 2020 that Omar said she wanted to get her brother papers so he could stay in the United States, at a time when she was married to her first husband Ahmed Hirsi.

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But hardly anyone realized that meant marrying him.

‘No one knew there had been a wedding until the media turned up the marriage certificate years later,’ Osman exclusively told Daily Mail at the time. 

Omar married her first husband, Hirsi, in 2002 in a Muslim ceremony that, like many in the immigrant community, was not registered with the state.

The first report that Omar and her husband were siblings appeared on the website Somalispot in 2016.

It said of Elmi: ‘As soon as Ilhan Omar married him he started university at her alma mater North Dakota State University where he graduated in 2012.’

Mullin said the investigation into Omar is apolitical despite the congresswoman being a longtime target of Trump. He’s posted about her in derogatory ways dozens of times on social media, and he’s pushed to have her investigated.  

‘When we move forward,’ Mullin said as if the case against Omar is imminent, ‘it’s not political.’

The Department of Homeland Security office did not deny Mullin’s claims that Omar did indeed marry her brother. 

‘As a matter of policy, DHS does not comment on specific investigative techniques, ongoing investigations, or potential future actions,’ a spokesperson said, seemingly coming at odds with Mullin’s disclosure. 

‘No one, including members of Congress, are above the law,’ the spokesperson added.

The Sussexes’ response to a letter from King Charles reaffirming their position as non-working royals was “utterly petty,” according to royal editor Rebecca English.

The Lord Chamberlain, the Royal Household’s most senior official, wrote and circulated the letter on the King’s behalf on Monday. It was sent to government departments, the military and lord lieutenants.

It made clear that, despite Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s return to Britain, they remain “akin to private citizens with commercial and charitable interests.” Their HRH styles, the letter added, “remain in abeyance.”

Speaking on the Daily Mail’s Palace Confidential, English told host Luke Blackall that the Royal Household had made a “pretty punchy” intervention. However, she said the Sussex office’s subsequent reaction was extraordinary and appeared entitled.

“Their reaction after the letter emerged was to say, ‘We are surprised this has been done,’” English said.

“Well, actually, they first tried to say they didn’t get any notice of it at all. That is not true. They did. Then they said they didn’t get enough notice to make any amendments or clarifications.”

“The only way I can describe the reaction of their office is pettifogging and utterly petty.”

‘They issued the exact timings of this letter, that they received notification of its contents at 1.59pm… The fact they were so needled that they wanted to set out this timing, really speaks to the heart of the situation.

‘People I have spoken to were like: “This is the directive of a head of state. Not the head of a family, the head of a state. Why should these two private individuals feel that they have any bearing on what he says?”

‘There’s a lot of eyebrow raising at the fact that the Sussexes believe they should have had a chance to change what the King had written.’

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The Sussexes’ office was sent the contents at 1.59pm and replied twenty minutes later asking whether it had already gone out. It was released to the media at 3.06pm. Harry himself was contactable only at 3.09pm, having spent the day at a studio in London.

English went further, saying people she has spoken to feel the Sussexes’ reaction is deeply hypocritical.

‘What about Oprah? What about Spare? What about the Netflix series, what about the many interviews in which they’ve taken some really nasty pop shots at the institution as well as individual family members?’ she asked.

‘Where was the notice that the palace got on those? None.

‘I don’t think this was the palace’s intention, but a lot of people will think, the Sussexes have got a taste of their own medicine.’

The royal editor also dismantled the suggestion, briefed out by the Sussex camp, that the letter had been timed to influence an upcoming meeting of RAVEC, the Home Office committee that rules on entitlement to taxpayer-funded security.

She said the Sussexes’ claim was ‘pretty inflammatory’, given it supposes the palace would seek to sway a government committee over which it has no control.

‘I have been told [the claim] is wrong on two counts,’ English said.

‘One, the Sussexes are actually wrong about the timings of the RAVEC meeting and two, the reason why it was put out on a Monday is because it’s effectively the start of a new term for royal engagements.

‘The Sussexes have made clear they’ve got a very busy programme of their own engagements, so that they feel they needed to get the record straight before this all kicked off.’

Watch English’s full assessment of the Sussexes’ response to the King’s letter by subscribing to Palace Confidential on YouTube.