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President again calls on Congress to pass assault weapons ban, after three children and three adults killed at a Christian elementary school. Plus, meatball from long-extinct mammoth created

More than 78,000 Afghan refugees relocated to the US as part of Operation Allies Welcome, but few have gained permanent statusOn the day he turned 24 earlier this month, Asmatullah checked the status of his asylum request online, hoping that an approval would be his birthday gift.When he realized that his case was still pending, he took a deep breath and looked up at the California sky, more than 7,000 miles away from the city he grew up in but that he fears returning to. Continue reading...

Disabled voters push for better protection voting absentee and with assistance after temporary ban that disenfranchised someAs Wisconsin’s 4 April supreme court election approaches, disabled voters in the state are pushing elections officials to prioritize protecting the right to vote absentee and with assistance.“I always, always vote absentee,” said Stacy Ellingen, a Wisconsin voter who has cerebral palsy and requires assistance in voting. “If absentee voting wasn’t an option, I honestly wouldn’t be able to vote in most elections.” Continue reading...

A woman who said she and her son survived a mass shooting gave an emotional plea after three children and three adults were killed in a shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville on Monday. After a news conference with Metro Nashville police, Ashbey Beasley turned to reporters and asked: 'Aren't you guys tired of covering this?'Beasley said she was in Tennessee with her son on a family vacation and that she had been lobbying for tougher gun legislation since the shooting on 4 July in Highland Park, Illinois. Police said they believed the 28-year-old shooter in Nashville was a former student at Covenant school

Trump has resorted to ‘incendiary rhetoric’ to deter investigations and to rile up his base, experts say, and shows no sign of letting upDonald Trump’s demagogic attacks on prosecutors investigating criminal charges against him are aimed at riling up his base and could spark violence, but show no signs of letting up as a potential indictment in at least one case looms, say legal experts.At campaign rallies, speeches and on social media Trump has lambasted state and federal prosecutors as “thugs” and claimed that two of them – who are Black – are “racist”, language designed to inflame racial tension. Continue reading...

Former Canada Soccer presidents Nick Bontis and Victor Montagliani will be asked about the organization’s response to sexual abuse within the sportConcacaf president Victor Montagliani has been summoned to appear at an investigation by Canadian elected government officials into business dealings by Canada Soccer and how the organization has responded to sexual abuse within the sport.A summons has also been issued to another former Canada Soccer president, Nick Bontis. He was elected to Concacaf’s Council in February as its representative for North America just days before resigning from his position at Canada Soccer amid a labor dispute with the women’s national team. Sean Heffernan, Canada Soccer’s chief financial officer, has also been issued with a summons. Continue reading...

Democracies should be maturely debating online safety and data, not making kneejerk responses that risk an idea we all cherishTikTok’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, discovered during his five-hour grilling by US Congress what Huawei could have told him all along: being owned by a Chinese company is bad for business.In fact, the panic over TikTok is a lot like like Huawei and 5G all over again. The security and privacy risks are plausible, but largely without evidence. What this is really about is trust, trade and geopolitics.Emily Taylor is an associate fellow in the International Security Programme, Chatham House, CEO of Oxford Information Labs and editor of the Journal of Cyber Policy Continue reading...

Steve Cozzi took a break and never returned – but blood and video pointed to Tomasz Kosowski, who was suing Cozzi’s clientsOne day last week, Steve Cozzi, a south Florida attorney, got up from his desk to use the bathroom. He never came back to work and has not been seen since.Police say he was apparently murdered during that bathroom break, by a plastic surgeon at the center of a lawsuit in which Cozzi represented the opposing side. Continue reading...

While the ex-president has increased his national lead, the Florida governor is putting up a closer fight in Iowa and New HampshireDonald Trump has increased his national lead in the Republican presidential primary but seems set to face a closer tussle with his chief rival, Ron DeSantis, in the crucial first two states to vote, new polls show.On Monday, a new survey from the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard and the Harris Poll gave Trump a 26-point national lead over DeSantis, by 50% to 24%, a four-point gain since February. Continue reading...

Retired optometrist Terry Sanderson, 76, who is suing Oscar-winning actor Gwyneth Paltrow over a 2016 ski collision in Utah, took the stand. He testified that he heard a 'blood-curdling scream' before the ski crash. Sanderson is suing Paltrow for more than $300,000 and Paltrow has countersued for $1 and attorney fees.

A US reporter covering the shooting in Tennessee has told viewers how she is a school shooting survivorA television reporter covering the school shooting in Nashville elementary school has described how she is herself a school shooting survivor and offered advice for the parents of children who “witness the unthinkable”.Joylyn Bukovac, a reporter for WSM4 in Nashville, Tennessee, disclosed the detail during her live cross from outside Covenant School, where three adults and three children were killed on Monday. Continue reading...

An attacker killed three children and three adults at a Christian school in the Tennessee state capital. Police shot and killed the attacker, whom authorities say was heavily armed, after arriving at the scene. President Joe Biden has called for more gun control reform in the wake of the shooting, calling the attack 'sick'. 'We have to do more to stop gun violence ripping our communities apart,' the president said at the White House. 'It’s ripping the soul from this nation.'

Anthony Broadwater, convicted in 1981 on junk science and unreliable witness identification, settles with state for $5.5mA man who spent 16 years in prison after he was wrongfully convicted of raping writer Alice Sebold when she was a Syracuse University student has settled a lawsuit against New York state for $5.5m, his lawyers said on Monday.The settlement comes after Anthony Broadwater’s conviction for raping Sebold in 1981 was overturned in 2021. It was signed last week by lawyers for Broadwater and the New York attorney general, Letitia James, David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys, said. Continue reading...

President again calls on Congress to pass assault weapons ban, saying we ‘need to do more to protect our schools’The White House led reactions in a shocked America with a call for tightening gun control in the US after a 28-year-old woman opened fire at a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, killing six, including three children.“While you’ve been in this room, I don’t know whether you’ve been on your phones, but we just learned about another shooting in Tennessee – a school shooting – and I am truly without words,” first lady Jill Biden said at an event in Washington as reports of the shooting at the Covenant School began circulating. Continue reading...

President repeats call for Congress to pass assault weapons ban after three children and three adults killed at elementary school

Twenty-one people confirmed dead after revised toll and at least 1,621 homes damaged or destroyedLong-term recovery from Friday’s deadly, devastating tornado in Mississippi will likely take years, US government officials have cautioned as communities throughout the deep south state destroyed by the storm sought reassurance they would not be forgotten.A powerful tornado ripped apart towns and municipalities in Mississippi’s delta region and other parts of the state, leaving a confirmed 21 dead and dozens wounded over the weekend, marking one of the deadliest in the state for decades. Continue reading...

Officials call on Biden to take steps to stop Arab states from normalising relations with Syrian leaderMoves to re-engage Bashar al-Assad without him taking steps to stabilise Syria or commit to reforms should be met by more robust US leadership that holds the Syrian leader to account and addresses a litany of US policy failings, a group of prominent former officials say.In an unprecedented letter to Joe Biden and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, the officials called for moves to stop a regional drift towards normalisation with Assad and impose a formalised ceasefire that facilitates a more impactful aid effort and helps ignite a political process. Continue reading...

Galleria dell’Accademia director issues invitation in wake of incident that forced principal to resign after parents’ complaintsThe Florence museum which houses Michelangelo’s David has invited the board of a Florida Christian charter school to visit, after the school’s principal was forced to resign following parent complaints that pupils were shown an image of the nude sculpture in a class.Hope Carrasquilla resigned as principal of the Tallahassee Classical school last week, after the school board told her to quit or be fired. Carrasquilla’s exit came after three parents complained about a lesson on David, with one parent claiming the 16th century Renaissance masterpiece was pornographic. Continue reading...

Heather Rae has identified as Native American throughout her career but public family records don’t show any evidence of itQuestions about the Native American ancestry of film producer Heather Rae, known for being an activist for Native and Indigenous creators and projects in Hollywood, are being raised after a group published public family records that do not show evidence of Native ancestry.The Tribal Alliance Against Frauds, an organization that examines claims of Native ancestry from individuals and businesses who publicly represent Native identity, told the New York Post that public family records do not show any ties to tribal heritage for Rae. Citing research published in a blogpost, the group said her family identified as white across multiple public records. Continue reading...

An encounter with an AI-generated image of his holiness has changed me: I now have sympathy for credulous baby boomersIt happened to me: I thought the image of the pope in a big coat was real. Here’s my first excuse: I don’t really know much about popes. His holiness can be out there doing his things, and I can be over here doing mine, and our ecosystems never really cross. I think I just idly assumed: this one is the cool pope, right? We had the really popey pope, and then the German pope who looked a bit like he might be in Star Wars, and now we have the cool pope. Right? He’s always doing tweets and saying something very slightly liberal. He’s cool! So I thought wearing a really big coat and looking like a Metal Gear Solid 2 boss battle might have been part of his ongoing cool guy shtick. Lord, forgive me.As it turns out, the image of the pope in a big coat, which was doing the rounds on social media this weekend, was generated by AI. The i reliably informs me that it was created using a program called Midjourney and was seemingly first shared on a Reddit page dedicated to AI art, before going viral on Twitter.Joel Golby is a writer for the Guardian and Vice, and the author of Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant Continue reading...

I’m proud to be part of Third Act, a climate activist organization for people over the age of 60The brutal truth is that last week’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report didn’t have the effect it should have had, or that its authors clearly intended. Produced by thousands of scientists who synthesized the work of tens of thousands of their peers over the last decade, and meticulously drafted by teams of careful communicators, it landed in the world with a gentle plop, not the resounding thud that’s required.In China, the world’s biggest emitter, official attention was focused instead on Moscow, where Xi Jinping was off to do a little male bonding with fellow autocrat Vladimir Putin, incidentally the world’s second largest producer of hydrocarbons. In America, the historical emissions champ, we were riveted by the possibility that would-be autocrat Donald Trump might be indicted. In the New York Times, our planet’s closest thing to a paper of record, the IPCC report was the fourth story on the website. Continue reading...

Low-income residents face rough recovery after tornado walloped two counties with poverty rates of 35% and 33%A giant tornado obliterated the modest one-story home that Kimberly Berry shared with her two daughters in the Mississippi Delta flatlands, leaving only a foundation and some random belongings: a toppled refrigerator, a dresser and matching nightstand, a bag of Christmas decorations, some clothing.During the storm Friday, Berry and her 12-year-old daughter huddled and prayed at a nearby church that was barely damaged, while her 25-year-old daughter survived in the hard-hit town of Rolling Fork, about 15 miles (24km) away. Continue reading...

My granddaughters got red blotches and their eyes burned. I’ve been having headaches and coughing fitsOn the evening of 3 February I was at home in East Palestine, Ohio, watching a movie with my granddaughters, when my daughter Adyson called and asked, “Dad, what’s going on downtown?” I looked out the window and there was an orange glow in the sky. I turned the movie down to talk to my daughter but she’d hung up. Ten minutes later she called back and said, “We’re coming to get you.”We went to try to figure out what had happened and it was like driving into a cloud – smoke was billowing overhead. A Norfolk Southern freight train had derailed. You could see the flames over the tops of nearby houses and feel the heat from several hundred feet away. Huge clouds of smoke were spreading from the crash site over our town.Greg Mascher is a grandfather and concerned resident of East Palestine, Ohio Continue reading...

California immigrant farm workers bore the brunt of this winter’s extreme weather – yet have scant resources to put their lives back togetherTheresa Barajas hadn’t been able to bring herself to the police barricade at the edge of Pajaro, or look at the devastation that lay beyond. Even if the flood waters had spared her apartment, the life she and her family had built there would be gone.“It will not be like before,” she said. Continue reading...

Prime minister is due to address the nation after mass protests overnight. Plus, meet the hairdressers trained to talk about climate actionGood morning.Israel’s embattled prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is expected to address the nation about his far-right government’s proposal to overhaul the judiciary, after a decision to sack his defence minister for opposing the plans sparked mass protests across the country overnight.Why are people against the changes? Critics say they will give politicians too much power over the judiciary by allowing a simple majority in the Knesset to overrule almost all of the court’s decisions, and give politicians a decisive say on appointments to the bench. It has also been pointed out the move could help Netanyahu evade prosecution in his corruption trial, in which he denies all charges.What has Israel’s president said? President Isaac Herzog, writing on Twitter in the early hours of Monday morning, said: “For the sake of the unity of the people of Israel, for the sake of responsibility, I call on [Netanyahu] to stop the legislative process immediately.”Do we know anything about the victims? Stories are beginning to emerge. In Carroll county, fatalities included three members of the same family living in a mobile home park near the community of Summerfield. Danny Munford, 51, his wife, Helen Munford, 54, and their son JaDarrion Murphy, 14, died after winds picked up their mobile home and tore it apart, the local paper reports. Continue reading...

Billionaire is thought to have remained outside country after state crackdown on tech sectorThe Alibaba founder, Jack Ma, has visited a school in mainland China after months during which he made no public appearances in the country because of a government crackdown on the powerful tech sector.He is thought to have remained outside China for more than a year from late 2021 after regulators in the country tightened oversight of his businesses due to outspoken criticism from the tech entrepreneur. Continue reading...

Paintings and sculptures are easier to transport and hide than yachts and private jets. Don’t let them slip through the netRené Magritte, one of Belgium’s most famous artists, was a leading member of the 1920s movement called surrealism, which sought revolution against the constraints of the rational mind. When describing his paintings, Magritte said they “evoke mystery” and strived to ask beholders: “What does that mean? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing, it is unknowable.” I sometimes feel as if I am looking at a Magritte painting when examining Russians’ ability to evade western sanctions policies.Arkady Rotenberg, worth a reported $3.5bn (£2.9bn), is a childhood friend of Vladimir Putin. He used to be the Russian president’s judo sparring partner, before progressing to become a rich businessman. Rotenberg has publicly claimed to own the $1bn so-called “Putin’s Palace”, a huge Italianate complex on the Black Sea coast said to be secretly owned by the Russian president. Continue reading...

The 1972-73 Philadelphia 76ers only won nine of their 82 games. Their best player that season says he wants their record to stay standingFifty years ago this month, the Philadelphia 76ers meekly lost by 19 points to the Detroit Pistons before a grand total of 1,937 fans at Pittsburgh Civic Arena to finish the 82-game 1972-73 season with 73 losses, an NBA record for futility that somehow still stands.“The best part of this game was the end,” Kevin Loughery, the guard who had replaced Roy Rubin as coach in the middle of the season, told the Philadelphia Daily News that day. Continue reading...

Collapse of tech sector lender will cost about $20bn in deposit insurance payouts, say US regulatorsThe failed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) will be mostly taken over by First Citizens, a North Carolina lender, and its collapse will cost $20bn (£16bn) in deposit insurance payouts, US regulators have said.First Citizens will take on all $119bn in deposits and loans from the entity set up after SVB’s collapse earlier this month. Continue reading...

The Republican extremist high-fived and shook defendants’ hands, calling them ‘political prisoners’A jail in Washington DC has become the latest focal point of the US culture wars after a congressional delegation led by the Republican extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene visited defendants charged in 2021’s deadly January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and championed them as “political prisoners”.Greene high-fived the detainees and shook their hands, according to the Associated Press. As the tour group was leaving, the defendants chanted “Let’s go Brandon!”, an offensive phrase denigrating Democratic president Joe Biden. Continue reading...

The recently elected senator has spent the past five weeks in the Walter Reed hospital receiving inpatient care for depressionJohn Fetterman is expected to return to office soon after spending the last five-plus weeks in a hospital receiving treatment for mental depression, a spokesperson has said, though the staffer stopped short of offering an exact timeline.“John will be out soon. Over a week but soon,” Joe Calvello, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania senator, told the Philadelphia Inquirer in an article published on Friday. Saying that the team caring for Fetterman at Washington DC’s Walter Reed hospital was “amazing”, Calvello added: “Recovery is going really well.” Continue reading...

Despite the formation of various intervention programs, police continue to kill people in the throes of mental health episodesIt was just after 6.30 one evening last April when Las Cruces police officer Jared Cosper responded to a mental health call. The family of Amelia Baca, a 75-year-old grandmother with dementia, had called 911, saying she appeared to be off her medication and was threatening them. They needed help.Cosper, trained in crisis intervention, according to a subsequent lawsuit, arrived at the Bacas’ front door and instructed family members to step outside. Police body camera video shows Baca’s granddaughter thanking the officer and asking him to “be very careful with her”. Continue reading...

Covid accelerated a decline in vaccinations in England. We have to make a stronger case for them, and ensure everyone can get themIn 1959, at the age of 29, the promising England footballer Jeff Hall died of polio. His death sent shock waves across Britain, and caused an immediate change in attitudes towards vaccination, from complacency to a sudden rush to clinics. A polio vaccine had been available for three years, but takeup was low. After Hall’s death, the demand was so high that vaccines had to be flown in from the US. As the Daily Express put it: “In the past 10 years over 3,000 people have died of polio in England and Wales. But it took the death of one footballer to get [people] pouring into the clinics.” More than half a century later, we may be returning to complacency when it comes to getting children vaccinated.The past decade has seen a decline in the uptake of almost all routine vaccinations for children in England. Currently, no childhood vaccinations meet the 95% target set by the World Health Organization. The US has a similar shortfall, and the WHO warns that the long-term decline in childhood vaccination rates is a global phenomenon. Here, the consequences have been increased cases of vaccine-preventable diseases such as whooping cough in nurseries and schools, as well as a rising number of polio samples found in sewage in London. Continue reading...

Finland’s tourist board is running a competition to win a happiness masterclass. Sadly, the prize doesn’t involve drinking in your underwearI’m loth to share this, because I want to win myself, but Visit Finland is running a competition to take part in a “happiness masterclass”. It’s not as good as last year’s Icelandic tourist board initiative where you could get their shaggy little horses to write you an out-of-office email by walking on a giant keyboard, but having recently described myself as having “no talent for happiness”, I’m keen.Confirmed this month as the happiest place in the world for the sixth year running, Finland, the country with a word for getting drunk alone in your underwear (päntsdrunk, or kalsarikännit), is offering the rest of us a chance to learn the secrets of highly contented Finns. Continue reading...

More people injured in blast at West Reading plant known for manufacturing chocolate bunniesA powerful explosion at a Pennsylvania chocolate factory known for making chocolate Easter bunnies killed a total of seven people, authorities said, as emergency workers retrieved the last of the bodies.The deadly blast obliterated the facility 60 miles north-west of Philadelphia a little more than two weeks before Easter. The cause of the explosion remained under investigation on Saturday morning, but officials said they believed it may have resulted from a gas leak, WPVI reported. Continue reading...

Trump’s prediction last week was a bust, but Manhattan grand jury could reconvene on Monday with an arraignment by end of dayDonald Trump’s lawyer has admitted that the former president based his incendiary and unfounded remarks about his imminent arrest last week on mere speculation prompted by “rumours”.Trump ignited a week of political, media and law enforcement frenzy when he announced on his social media platform Truth Social that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday in the New York criminal investigation relating to hush money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels. Security was stepped up at the Manhattan courthouse and around the district attorney leading the case, Alvin Bragg, amid fears of renewed protests by Trump supporters, some of whom staged the deadly attack at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. Continue reading...

The Pine Mountain Animal Safari lost two of its big cats after it sustained weather damage, but found them a few hours laterTwo tigers briefly went missing from a Georgia zoo after a tornado struck the state on Saturday night and damaged the facility’s infrastructure.In a Facebook post on Sunday morning, the Troup county’s sheriff’s office announced that it received a report from the Pine Mountain Animal Safari that a “tiger … is unaccounted for inside the park”. Continue reading...

Search and recovery efforts continue after twister hit hardest in some of the most economically deprived areas of US’s poorest stateJoe Biden declared a federal emergency for swathes of Mississippi hit by a devastating tornado, as rescue workers continued to search for survivors on Sunday morning with a death toll of at least 26 people caused by catastrophic storms in parts of the US’s deep south.Twenty-five people were killed and dozens injured in Mississippi, throughout the state’s low-lying Delta region and around its north-east portion, with another man dying in the neighboring state of Alabama. Continue reading...

Ex-president insisted he wasn’t afraid of the investigation into hush money payments even as he lashed out at the caseDonald Trump repeatedly insisted on Saturday night he was not upset by expected criminal charges that might arise from the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into his role in paying hush money to adult film star Stormy Daniels as he returned from a campaign rally in Waco, Texas.But the manner of Trump’s responses to questions suggested worries about potential damage to his image, and he came across as someone angry that his good vibrations with his “Make American great again” base in Texas could be interrupted by the reality of a possible indictment as soon as this week. Continue reading...

Platform has drawn close congressional scrutiny because the data of users could be available to the government of ChinaOne of the authors of a Senate bill that would enable the federal commerce department to ban technologies with links to foreign governments has said that the Joe Biden White House is “very in favor” of the measure, but he stopped short of saying whether the president’s administration has discussed possibly prohibiting the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok in particular.Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday morning, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia said that the proposed legislation has also picked up support in his congressional chamber from 11 Democrats – of which he is one – as well as 11 Republicans. Continue reading...

Footage shows the aftermath of a deadly tornado that left at least 25 people dead and dozens injured after it tore through the US state on 24 March.Four people are missing, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said on Saturday in its latest update on Twitter. 'Multiple state agencies and partners are working together to help in the response and recovery efforts,' it said.The agency warned of severe storms for counties across rural Mississippi on the evening of 26 March and expected damaging gusts of wind

A new study shows more than half of teens spend their free time in their bedroom. But we are offering them nothing away from their screensOn the rack of magazines by the supermarket tills, I’m always brought up short by Teen Breathe magazine. Don’t get me wrong, it looks great – well-designed and full of positive, interesting features. But I’m always momentarily incredulous: teenagers need to be reminded to breathe, spend time in nature, journal or mindfully colour mandalas? How did we get here – shouldn’t they be getting their heads stuck in swings or setting fire to bins?It’s stupid, because of course teenagers need all the help they can get. We are, as a data-heavy transatlantic dossier in the Financial Times explored recently, in a teen mental health crisis. The report highlighted a marked rise in depressive symptoms, worry, negative feelings about life and poor self-image. Meanwhile, a UK report last week showed a 22% increase in self-harm hospital admissions in 8- to 17-year-olds. Continue reading...

Donald Trump used his first election rally in Waco, Texas, to rail against the prosecutors investigating him, employing conspiratorial language to fire up his base ahead of next year's Republican primary elections.The former president told supporters gathered at Waco's airport on 25 March that the investigations swirling around him were 'something straight out of the Stalinist Russia horror show'.The choice of location for the rally was striking: Waco, a city in Texas, was the scene 30 years ago of a 51-day standoff and deadly siege between law enforcement and the Branch Davidians that resulted in the deaths of more than 80 members of the religious cult and four federal agents. Trump described the 2024 election campaign as the 'final battle'

New approach is needed to get UK through looming credit crunch after failure of recovery from crashCrashing financial markets, depositors rushing to withdraw their money, and fears over the next domino to fall. Not since the 2008 financial crisis has the global banking system appeared so fragile, as the rapid increase in interest rates used to tackle soaring inflation sends shock waves through the City.In the turmoil of the past fortnight, the Swiss government-brokered rescue of Credit Suisse by UBS and the failure of Silicon Valley Bank has led investors on both sides of the Atlantic to ask the same question: is this 2008 all over again? How bad can it get? Continue reading...