Thick, toxic smoke hovered over Richmond, Indiana, on Thursday as a relentless industrial fire smouldered at a plastics recycling warehouse in the Midwestern US town where hundreds of people have been forced to evacuate.

RICHMOND, Va. - The former capital of the Confederacy removed a second Confederate monument on Thursday morning, taking just over an hour to dismantle and lower the statue of Navy officer and oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury.