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Assault firearms with ‘phenomenal lethality’ have flooded the US market, with firms making more than $1bn profit in the last decadeIn September 2021, the gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson announced that it was relocating from the Massachusetts town in which it was incorporated in 1852 to a new location – Maryville in Blount county, Tennessee.“We have been left with no other alternative,” the company complained, pointing to proposals in the Massachusetts legislature that would extend the state’s ban on AR-15 style rifles to the selling of all semi-automatic firearms. Some 750 jobs would be moved to Tennessee, the gun maker said, for a number of reasons, the first of which was that the state supported the second amendment right to bear arms. Continue reading...

Defense secretary Lloyd Austin asks Tommy Tuberville of Alabama to lift ‘hold’, while Democrat Chuck Schumer issues firm rebukeA Republican senator holding up more than 100 nominations over Pentagon policy on abortion claimed: “I’m not going to let our military be politicised.”Tommy Tuberville, from Alabama, was speaking on Tuesday at a hearing staged by the armed services committee. Continue reading...

Raashed Hall served nearly 20 years - now he’s getting a second chance through the school’s Pivot program for entrepreneurshipAfter spending nearly two decades in prison, a Washington DC man is striving to rebuild his life by marketing and selling a workout machine he invented while serving his sentence.Raashed Hall, 40, is getting his second chance through Georgetown University’s Pivot program, which is a nine-month course aimed at teaching entrepreneurship and building life skills for people who are returning from incarceration. Continue reading...

Former US president tells Sydney audience that media coverage has helped exacerbate divisions and that we no longer have a ‘shared story’The former US president Barack Obama has suggested that Rupert Murdoch’s media empire has led to greater polarisation in western societies through news coverage designed to “make people angry and resentful”.Speaking to a capacity crowd of about 9,000 people at Sydney’s Aware Super Theatre on Tuesday night, Obama mixed childhood memories of transiting through Australia as a child with pointed observations about the current political discourse and the rise of China. Continue reading...

School shooting that left three children and three adults dead brought condolences from conservatives who oppose gun controlJoe Biden has commented on his ability to get gun control passed following Monday’s massacre at a Nashville elementary school, noting that he can only “plead with Congress” for action.Biden spoke to reporters while on his way to Durham, North Carolina. Continue reading...

US president Joe Biden repeated his call for lawmakers to pass gun control measures after a shooting at a Nashville elementary school on Monday left three students and three adult staff members dead. 'I can’t do anything except plead with Congress to act,' said Biden, when asked by reporters about his ability to enact firearm restrictions. In the aftermath of the shooting on Monday, Biden had pressed Congress to reimpose a ban on assault weapons to counter gun violence

Maryland court orders conviction reinstated and new hearing held but ruling suggests Syed, 41, will not remain convicted for longA court in Maryland has reinstated the murder conviction of Adnan Syed, the Baltimore man whose alleged involvement in the 1999 murder of 17-year-old Hae Min Lee was the subject of the hit podcast Serial.Syed, 41, was convicted of murdering Lee in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison, though he always maintained his innocence. In September last year, state prosecutors revealed they had uncovered new evidence they said undermined Syed’s conviction and pointed to two alternative suspects. Continue reading...

A federal judge ruled the former vice-president must appear in the inquiry into Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 electionFormer US vice-president Mike Pence must testify in front of a grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s election subversion and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress, a federal judge reportedly ruled on Tuesday.Multiple news outlets reported the ruling, which remained under seal. Continue reading...

Tim Burchett says he doesn’t see a role for Congress in preventing tragedies ‘other than mess things up’ after Nashville shootingAfter the latest massacre of schoolchildren in the United States, the Republican congressman Tim Burchett answered the question Americans have all but given up asking of their elected officials by telling reporters: “We’re not going to fix it.”The three-term congressman from Tennessee, the state where an intruder fatally shot three nine-year-old students and three adults at a small Christian school on Monday, appeared to compare the expectation of safety for American schoolchildren with that of soldiers fighting Japanese suicide attackers during the second world war. Continue reading...

Depositions from Apple, 18, and Moses, 16, would be read in court but they would not be called to give evidence in personJurors in the Gwyneth Paltrow ski crash trial were expected to hear statements from her two teenage children on Tuesday as the proceeding approaches expected summations on Thursday.Attorneys for Paltrow, 50, said depositions from 18-year-old Apple and 16-year-old Moses, would be read in court but they would not be called to give evidence in person as time began to run out on the eight-day trial’s clock. Continue reading...

After record gas prices in 2022, California will now have access to information from gas companies to determine if prices are fairCalifornia lawmakers on Monday approved the nation’s first penalty for price gouging at the pump, voting to give regulators the power to punish oil companies for profiting from the type of gas price spikes that plagued the nation’s most populous state last summer.The Democrats in charge of the state legislature worked quickly to pass the bill on Monday, just one week after it was introduced. It was an unusually fast process for a controversial issue, especially one opposed by the powerful oil industry that has spent millions of dollars to stop it. Continue reading...

Video released on Tuesday showed Nashville police officers confronting the suspected attacker in Monday's school shooting minutes after storming into the private Christian elementary school with rifles and conducting a room-by-room search. The footage showed police clearing one classroom after another on the first floor before venturing up the stairs to the second floor. Shots can be heard seconds before the suspect comes into view and drops to the floor after apparently being shot. The Metropolitan Nashville police department began receiving calls about a shooter at 10.13am, the police spokesperson Don Aaron told reporters. The suspect was pronounced dead by 10.27am

Audrey Hale, 28, said ‘something bad is about to happen’ as police accused of lack of urgency after being alerted by suspect’s friendA shooter who murdered three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Tennessee on Monday sent social media messages to a friend before the attack, warning: “Something bad is about to happen.”The messages from Audrey Hale, 28, who was shot dead by police responding to 911 calls from the Covenant school in Nashville, were “basically a suicide note”, the killer wrote, and “you’ll probably hear about me on the news after I die.” Continue reading...

According to all recorded data, the US epidemic of mass shootings are committed overwhelmingly by cis malesIn the immediate aftermath of Monday’s gun rampage at a private Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, which left three nine-year-old children and three adults dead, local police described the shooter as a young female teenager.Within hours that description had changed to that of a 28-year-old woman. And shortly after that, the authorities pivoted again, revealing that the shooter, Audrey Hale, had in recent times identified on social media, including a LinkedIn account, as a transgender male. Continue reading...

Lawmakers aim to determine how Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank failed, sparking fears of financial crisisLawmakers grilled federal banking regulators on Tuesday over their “massive failure in supervision” during the first congressional hearing on the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank.The Senate’s banking committee is the first to question officials on federal oversight of SVB, which was taken over by the federal government earlier this month after a severe bank run depleted its reserve. The collapse of the bank – the biggest bank failure since the 2008 financial crisis – has sparked wider fears about the soundness of the banking sector. Continue reading...

Three children at the Covenant School in the Tennessee capital were shot dead on Monday, the 129th US mass shooting this yearThree nine-year-old children and three adults arrived at the Covenant School, a small, private Christian academy in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday for what appeared to be a normal day of school.Before noon, all six had been killed – the victims of a shooter who terrorized the school with multiple firearms before being shot dead by police. Continue reading...

FTX founder accused of conspiring to bribe Chinese officials with $40m worth of payments in new indictmentUS prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled a new indictment against Sam Bankman-Fried, accusing the founder of now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange of conspiring to bribe Chinese government officials with $40m worth of payments.Federal prosecutors in Manhattan charged Bankman-Fried with directing the payment in order to unfreeze accounts belonging to his hedge fund, Alameda Research, that Chinese authorities had frozen. The accounts held more than $1bn of cryptocurrency, US prosecutors said. Continue reading...

Elementary school in Tampa area withdraws screenings of Disney film that tells story of black student in segregated 1960sDisney’s anti-racism film Ruby Bridges is the subject of a complaint brought by a Florida parent who claims the movie is not appropriate for second-graders, because it might teach them that “white people hate Black people”.The film, which tells the story of a six-year-old girl who integrated New Orleans schools in the 1960s, has been a staple of school curriculums during Black History Month in the state’s Tampa-area county of Pinellas. Continue reading...

From now on, I’m delegating the task of remembering cupcake day to my children – who might actually care

Emergency services carried out rescue efforts at an immigration facility in Ciudad Juárez, near the US border following a devastating fire. Mexico's National Immigration Institute said at least 39 people have died, but gave no cause of the fire. The city across from El Paso in Texas is a popular crossing for migrants who have claimed asylum in the US or are waiting on an opportunity to cross the border. The INM said there were 68 adult men from Central and South America staying at the facility

Until Biden fulfills his promise to end arm sales to the Saudis, the US and its largest defense contractors are complicit in war crimesMy wedding should have been filled with the usual range of wonderful emotions – excitement, trepidation, joy, anxiety and love. Instead, it was marked by terror, devastation and loss.The night of 5 October 2015 began so beautifully as my two brothers and I each prepared to wed our brides from nearby villages. We, our families and our guests came together at my uncle’s house, which had been transformed for the festivities: large tents were set up, delicious smells wafting in the breeze. The brides arrived in a 30-car caravan with honking horns, blaring music and cheering heralding their arrival, before gathering with relatives inside one of the houses.Ayman Mohamed Saleh Al Sanabani is a Yemeni citizen and plaintiff in a lawsuit against Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the US state department, the US defense department, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics for human rights violations in Yemen Continue reading...

Suspect in custody after member of Republican’s staff attacked in apparently random incidentA member of Senator Rand Paul’s staff was stabbed and critically wounded in Washington on Saturday in an attack that is likely to raise fears about violence in the nation’s capital.“This past weekend a member of my staff was brutally attacked in broad daylight in Washington DC,” the Kentucky senator said in a statement to ABC News late Monday. “I ask you to join [wife] Kelley and me in praying for a speedy and complete recovery, and thanking the first responders, hospital staff, and police for their diligent actions” after the stabbing. Continue reading...

This weekend, 8,000 gallons of latex were accidentally dumped in the Delaware River – and tap water across the country is laced with disturbing chemicalsMy wife is wonderful in every way, but I realised over the weekend that she is simply not built for the apocalypse. On Sunday, I was scrolling through Twitter and having a nice cup of tea when I saw a tweet from a guy called Ya Fav Trashman about a chemical spill that might affect Philadelphia drinking water. “Equipment failure” at a Trinseo chemical facility had dumped more than 8,000 gallons (about 30,000 litres) of “latex emulsion product” into the Delaware river. You can’t just boil or filter these chemicals out of your water.I immediately spat out my Delaware River tea. (Perhaps the latex was why it was going down so smoothly?) “Yikes,” I said. “We’d better get some bottled water.” My wife volunteered to go to the nearest shop. She came back with … two bottles. Continue reading...

A starstruck lawyer, a neutrals-clad wellness guru – this has to be the lowest stakes court battle of all timeTo Park City, Utah, currently scene of one of the great pleasures of modern life: a court battle that you’d be relaxed for either side to lose. Yes, it’s the Gwyneth Paltrow ski massacre trial. Take your seats for a preposterously camp battle between a well-to-do retired optometrist who said the high priestess of fanny-steaming skied into him – and Her Vajesty herself, who says he skied into her. Why is this not happening at The Hague? Sorry, but NO sense of occasion.Before we go any further I want to make a deeply serious point. Something happened that day. Something happened on that mountain in that luxury ski resort, up there in God’s cathedral – and, like anyone who has watched either the plaintiff or the defendant on the stand at any length … I literally could not care less what it was. I mean, this is as low stakes as it gets. Asked about what had been taken from her by the events on the Deer Valley slopes, Paltrow delivered the sociopathically straight-to-meme line: “Well, I lost half a day of skiing.” (Bear in mind this is a woman who claims that water has feelings.) For his part, Terry Sanderson’s lawyer put things into perspective by declaring: “After the crash, he’s no longer charming.”Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnistDo you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. Continue reading...

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...