Biden is set to address the nation at 7:30 p.m. ET from the White House, which said Biden will make a “call to action” in response to the shootings.
An 18-year-old man entered an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas with an AR-15-style assault rifle last Tuesday, killing 19 students and two teachers before he was killed by law enforcement.
“Where in God’s name is our backbone to have the courage to deal with it and stand up to the [gun] lobbies?” Biden had said right after the massacre.
“It’s time to turn this pain into action.”
On Wednesday, another gunman fatally shot his doctor and three other people in a Tulsa, Oklahoma, hospital – just three hours after purchasing an AR-15-style rifle. The gunman died from what police said appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
As many as 10 other people may have been wounded in the shootings there.
Stormy Daniels and her attorney Michael Avenatti leave federal court in New York, on April 16, 2018. Avenatti was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for cheating client Daniels of hundreds of thousands of dollars in book proceeds.
Seth Wenig/AP
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Stormy Daniels and her attorney Michael Avenatti leave federal court in New York, on April 16, 2018. Avenatti was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for cheating client Daniels of hundreds of thousands of dollars in book proceeds.
Seth Wenig/AP
NEW YORK — Michael Avenatti was sentenced Thursday to four years in prison for stealing book proceeds from Stormy Daniels, the porn actor who catapulted him to fame as he represented her in courtrooms and cable news programs during her legal battles with then-President Donald Trump.
The California lawyer, currently incarcerated, learned his fate in Manhattan federal court, where Judge Jesse M. Furman said the sentence will mean that Avenatti will spend another 2 1/2 years in prison on top of the 2 1/2 years he is already serving after another fraud conviction.
The judge said Avenatti’s crime against Daniels was made “out of desperation” when his law firm was struggling. He called Avenatti’s behavior “craven and egregious” and blamed it on “blind ambition.”
He said he believed the sentence “will send a message to lawyers” that, if they go astray, they will lose their profession and their liberty.
Avenatti, wearing a drab beige prison uniform, choked up several times as he delivered a lengthy statement before the sentence was announced, saying he had “disappointed scores of people and failed in a cataclysmic way.”
Avenatti, shackled at the feet, hugged his lawyers and then shuffled out of court.
At trial earlier this year, Avenatti represented himself, cross-examining his former client for hours about their experiences in early 2018, when she signed a book deal that provided an $800,000 payout. Prosecutors said he illegally pocketed about $300,000 of her advance on “Full Disclosure,” published in fall 2018.
The book’s publication came at a time when Avenatti’s law practice was failing financially even as he appeared regularly on cable television news channels, attacking Trump. Avenatti represented Daniels in lawsuits meant to free her from a $130,000 hush payment she received shortly before the 2016 presidential election to remain silent about a tryst she said she had with Trump a decade earlier. Trump denied it.
Daniels was not in court. Her current attorney, Clark Brewster, spoke on her behalf, saying it was “truly shocking” that Avenatti tried to portray himself as a champion of his clients during his statement.
His conviction for aggravated identity theft required a mandatory two-year prison sentence. He was also convicted of wire fraud. He’s already serving a 2 1/2-year sentence for trying to extort Nike. Avenatti was convicted in 2020 of threatening to ruin the shoemaker’s reputation if it did not pay him up to $25 million.
And he faces a retrial in California on charges that he cheated clients and others of millions of dollars there.
In a presentence submission, Avenatti’s lawyers cited an apology letter Avenatti recently wrote to Daniels in which he said: “I am truly sorry.”
But prosecutors in a sentencing submission last week urged that that he should face “substantial” additional time in prison for a wire fraud conviction and criticized his apology letter, saying the 51-year-old failed to apologize for his actual crime.
And they recalled that during “an extremely lengthy” cross-examination, he “berated his victim for lewd language and being a difficult client, questioned her invasively about marital and familial difficulties, and sought to cast her as crazy, much as he did during the course of his fraud to prevent her own agent and publisher from responding to her pleas for help.”
“The defendant certainly had every right to defend himself at trial. But he is not entitled to a benefit for showing remorse, having done so only when convenient and only after seeking to humiliate his victim at a public trial, and denigrating and insulting her for months to her agent and publisher while holding himself out as taking up her cause against the powerful who might have taken advantage of her,” prosecutors wrote.
The US announced yesterday it will send Ukraine four sophisticated, medium-range rocket systems and ammunition to help try to stall Russian progress in the Donbas region. The rocket systems are part of a new $700m tranche of security assistance that also includes helicopters, Javelin anti-tank weapon systems, radars, tactical vehicles, spare parts and more. It will take at least three weeks to get the precision weapons and trained troops onto the battlefield, the Pentagon said.
According to what European officials have said so far, the union will ban Russian tanker imports of crude oil and refined fuels like diesel, representing two-thirds of the continent’s purchases from Russia. The ban will be phased in over six months for crude and eight months for diesel and other refined fuels.
In addition, Germany and Poland have pledged to stop importing oil from Russia by pipeline, which means Europeans could reduce Russian imports by 3.3 million barrels a day by the end of the year.
And the union has said European companies will no longer be allowed to insure tankers carrying Russian oil anywhere. That ban will also be phased in over several months. Because many of the world’s largest insurers are based in Europe, that move could significantly raise the cost of shipping Russian energy, though insurers in China, India and Russia itself might now pick up some of that business.
Before the invasion of Ukraine, roughly half of Russia’s oil exports went to Europe, representing $10 billion in transactions a month. Sales of Russian oil to E.U. members have declined somewhat in the last few months, and those to the United States and Britain have been eliminated.
Some energy analysts said the new European effort could help untangle Europe from Russian energy and limit Mr. Putin’s political leverage over Western countries.
“There are many geopolitical repercussions,” said Meghan L. O’Sullivan, director of the geopolitics of energy project at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “The ban will draw the United States more deeply into the global energy economy, and it will strengthen energy ties between Russia and China.”
Another hope of Western leaders is that their moves will reduce Russia’s position in the global energy industry. The idea is that despite its efforts to find new buyers in China, India and elsewhere, Russia will export less oil overall. As a result, Russian producers will need to shut wells, which they will not be able to easily restart because of the difficulties of drilling and producing oil in inhospitable Arctic fields.
“No, sir, we were aware of the general impact that this would have,” said Robert Cleveland, a senior vice president at Reckitt. “From the moment that that recall was announced, we reached out immediately to retail partners like Target and Walmart to tell them this is what we think will happen.”
Hundreds of thousands of students who attended the for-profit Corinthian Colleges chain will automatically get their federal student loans canceled, the Biden administration announced Wednesday, a move that aims to bring closure to one of the most notorious cases of fraud in American higher education.
Under the new action, anyone who attended the now-defunct chain from its founding in 1995 to its collapse in 2015 will get their federal student debt wiped clean. It will erase $5.8 billion in debt for more than 560,000 borrowers, the largest single loan discharge in Education Department history, according to the agency.
“As of today, every student deceived, defrauded and driven into debt by Corinthian Colleges can rest assured that the Biden-Harris Administration has their back and will discharge their federal student loans,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said. “For far too long, Corinthian engaged in the wholesale financial exploitation of students, misleading them into taking on more and more debt to pay for promises they would never keep.”
Tens of thousands of former Corinthian students were already eligible for debt cancellation, but they had to file paperwork and navigate an application process that advocates say is confusing and not widely known about. Now, the relief will be made automatic and extended to additional borrowers.
Those who have a remaining balance on their Corinthian debt will also get refunds on payments they have already made, Education Department officials said. But the action does not apply to loans that have already been paid off in full.
LONDON (AP) — Four days of celebrations honoring Queen Elizabeth II’s 70 years on the throne kicked off Thursday with a display of British military traditions stretching from the days of horse and cannon to the jet age.
Formal celebrations for the Platinum Jubilee began with Trooping the Color, an annual military review that has marked the sovereign’s official birthday since 1760. The queen took a salute on the balcony of Buckingham Palace and joined the working members of her family for a military flypast.
Thousands of people, some of whom camped overnight, lined the parade route — many of them sporting Union Jack flags, party hats or plastic tiaras. Carly Martin, who caught a late-night bus from south London with her daughter, said she had come “to make memories.”
“You’re never going to see this again in your lifetime,” she said. “At least not in mine, maybe not in my daughter’s. … 70 years — it is all I have ever known.”
The 96-year-old queen is Britain’s longest-reigning monarch and the first to reach the milestone of seven decades on the throne. Elizabeth smiled broadly Thursday as she spoke with her great-grandchildren and looked up as the British military aircraft roared over the palace. The six-minute display included Typhoon jets flying in a formation spelling out the number “70.″
The jubilee is being commemorated with a four-day holiday weekend. The celebration of Elizabeth’s reign includes a service of thanksgiving on Friday at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, a concert at Buckingham Palace on Saturday and a pageant staged by thousands of performers drawn from schools and community groups around the country on Sunday. Thousands of street parties are planned around the country, repeating a tradition that began with the queen’s coronation in 1953.
Several protesters were arrested Thursday after getting past barriers and onto the parade route. The group Animal Rebellion claimed responsibility, saying the protesters were “demanding that royal land is reclaimed.”
The jubilee is giving many people — even those often indifferent to the monarchy — a chance to reflect on the state of the nation and the huge changes that have taken place during her reign. Former Prime Minister John Major — one of the 14 prime ministers of the queen’s reign — said the monarch’s stoic presence had helped steer the country over the decades,
“The queen has represented our better selves for over 70 years,” he told the BBC.
In a written jubilee message, the queen thanked people in Britain and across the Commonwealth involved in organizing the celebrations. For many, the occasion is the first opportunity for a big bash since the start of the coronavirus pandemic more than two years ago.
“I know that many happy memories will be created at these festive occasions,” Elizabeth said. “I continue to be inspired by the goodwill shown to me, and hope that the coming days will provide an opportunity to reflect on all that has been achieved during the last 70 years, as we look to the future with confidence and enthusiasm,”
Congratulations arrived from world leaders. French President Emmanuel Macron called Elizabeth “the golden thread that binds our two countries” and one of “very few constants” on the international stage.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama recalled the queen’s “grace and generosity” during his first visit to the palace. He said he had “learned so much from seeing the example she set for all of us who had the privilege to serve.”
“Your life has been a gift, not just to the United Kingdom but to the world,” Obama said in a video message, adding: “May the light of your crown continue to reign supreme.”
The long weekend’s first event, Trooping the Color, refers to a regimental flag, or “color,” that is trooped through the ranks. Britain’s annual tradition for the queen’s birthday is a ceremonial reenactment of the way battle flags were once shown to soldiers to make sure they would recognize a crucial rallying point if they became disoriented in combat.
Each year a different unit in the army’s Household Division has the honor of trooping its color. The 1st Battalion of the Irish Guards will have the spotlight during the Platinum Jubilee.
Cheers and the clop of hooves rang out Thursday as horse-drawn carriages carried members of the royal family, including Prince William’s wife, Kate, and their children Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, from Buckingham Palace to Horse Guards Parade, a ceremonial parade ground about 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) away.
The queen is expected to appear twice on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on Thursday, but Prince Charles played a key role during the event. Mounted on horseback, he also took a salute, from ranks of scarlet-clad Guards, on his mother’s behalf, along with his sister, Princess Anne, and his son Prince William.
Elizabeth has had trouble getting around of late, and her courtiers have been careful to keep make things as simple for her as possible.
Senior royals including Prince Charles’ wife, Camilla, traveled in carriages to watch the ceremony from a building overlooking the parade ground.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex joined other royals to watch the spectacle. Harry and Meghan traveled to London from their home in California with their two young children to take part in the celebrations.
House expected to pass bill that would raise minimum age to own semi-automatic rifle
A gun control package that would include a proposal to raise the minimum age to own a semi-automatic rifle is expected to pass through the House Thursday. The bill also includes efforts to limit third-party sales of guns and to stop the distribution of untraceable firearms. The Democratic-led effort is unlikely to pass the Senate where Republicans can block gun legislation and have indicated they will not support major gun reform. Even though Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he wants Republican lawmakers to work with Democrats on gun measures “directly related” to the last week’s mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde Texas, that left 19 children and two adults dead, few expect the Kentucky Republican to back a raise in the minimum age.
Grand jury indicts Buffalo shooting suspect on charges of domestic terrorism, murder
The white 18-year-old accused of fatally shooting 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket last month is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday after being indicted Wednesday. The suspect was charged with domestic terrorism motivated by hateand 10 counts of first-degree murder. The 25-count indictment also contains charges of murder and attempted murder as a hate crime and weapons possession. He had previously been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting, which also injured three people. He has pleaded not guilty. Federal authorities also are investigating the possibility of hate crime charges against the shooter, who allegedly meticulously planned his attack and his racist motivation in hundreds of pages of writings he posted online shortly before the shooting.
Harris to announce loan erasure for students preyed upon by Corinthian
Anyone who borrowed money to attend a school owned by Corinthian Colleges – a for-profit institution with a history of defrauding students before its sudden closure – will have their federal student loans canceled. The mass discharge is the largest amount of debt the federal government has erased in one action and benefits more than a half million borrowers to the tune of $5.8 billion. Based in California, but with campuses nationally under the names Heald, Everest, and WyoTech, Corinthian Colleges opened in 1995, but closed in 2015 after the Education Department cut off the institution’s ability to access federal money. But borrowers who had attended the college sometimes struggled to get their loans discharged. Vice President Kamala Harris, who has a history with Corinthian, is expected to formally announce the debt cancellation Thursday at the Education Department. As California’s attorney general, Harris secured a judgment against Corinthian that resulted in $1.1 billion in relief for former students.
Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee is here and a good time is predicted for all during the four-day holiday – most especially, Brits hope, by the increasingly frail 96-year-old monarch herself. Four days of celebrations honoring the queen’s 70 years on the throne began Thursday with a display of British military traditions. First is the Trooping the Color, an annual military review that has marked the sovereign’s official birthday since 1760. The queen is expected to join the working members of her family on the Buckingham Palace balcony at the end of the event. But the backdrop for this jubilee is the uncertainty of the queen’s public appearances, which have waned since she tested positive for COVID-19 in February. Also, her knees aren’t what they used to be thanks to what Buckingham Palace vaguely called “episodic mobility problems.” Jubilees aren’t uncommon in British royal history but Elizabeth has celebrated more than any other monarch. The 2012 Diamond Jubilee celebrated her 60 years on the throne.
The NBA Finals between the Golden State Warriors and Boston Celtics tips off with Game 1 Thursday in San Francisco (9 p.m. ET, ABC). The Warriors are returning to the Finals for the sixth time in eight years, while the Boston Celtics are back for the first time since 2010. The Celtics are coming off of a grueling seven-game series against the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference finals. Meanwhile, the Warriors have gotten plenty of rest after eliminating the Dallas Mavericks in five games in the Western Conference finals. Much of the attention heading into the series will focus on the two biggest stars – and conference finals MVPs – Golden State’s Stephen Curry and Boston’s Jayson Tatum, with both averaging more than 25 points per game in the playoffs. Although both teams have a lot of offensive fire power, the series may be dictated by defense, as the two squads finished 1-2 in defensive rating in the regular season.
“This wasn’t an individual who just decided he wanted to go find a hospital full of random people,” he said. “He deliberately made a choice to come here and his actions were deliberate.” Captain Meulenberg declined to say any more about the gunman’s motive.
The police did not reveal the identity of the gunman, but at an earlier news conference, Deputy Chief Eric Dalgleish said that he was between 35 and 40 years old.
The police received a call about a shooting at 4:52 p.m., and they arrived at the scene four minutes later, Chief Dalgleish said. All of the gunfire is believed to have taken place in one section of the second floor of the Natalie Medical Building on the campus of Saint Francis Hospital, he said. The sound of gunfire drew officers to that area.
“There is an orthopedic center, an orthopedic office, there, but I’m unaware if that occupies the whole floor, or if there are other offices on the floor,” he said, adding that it was “at least part of the scene.”
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As police officers arrived at the second-floor entryway, the gunfire stopped, Captain Meulenberg said in a telephone interview. Officers entered and immediately found a victim, and as they continued their search, they found the body of the gunman, who had apparently shot himself with a pistol, he said.
Chief Dalgleish said that the victims could have been a combination of workers and patients. None of the wounded had life-threatening injuries, the police said, and no officers were injured in the attack, during which the gunman fired both his weapons.
Captain Meulenberg said that the number of people wounded from being shot seemed to be “very low” but that there were other injuries tied to hundreds of people fleeing the building at the time of the attack. “Imagine a scene of mass chaos,” he said. “You can hear gunfire echoing.”
The Muskogee Police Department said that it was alerted by the Tulsa Police Department that the gunman might have left a bomb at a residence in Muskogee, about 50 miles southeast of Tulsa. Muskogee police evacuated the home and notified those in the area to stay inside, the department said.
A bomb squad was on its way to the residence late Wednesday, and the Muskogee police were working to obtain a search warrant to search the home.
Mayor G.T. Bynum of Tulsa said at the news conference that some of the families of the victims had not yet been informed about what had happened.
“This has been the facility more than any other that has worked to save the lives of people in this city,” Mr. Bynum said. He praised “the broad range of first responders today who did not hesitate to respond to this act of violence.”
The White House said that President Biden had been briefed on the shooting, which came just eight days after 19 students and two teachers were killed in a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and 18 days after 10 people were killed by a gunman at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y.
When asked about his response to Tulsa’s joining the list of American cities that have experienced mass shootings over the past few weeks, Mr. Bynum said that his “thoughts are with the victims in here, many of whose families don’t even know about this yet.”
“If we want to have a policy discussion, that is something to be had in the future, but not tonight, not tonight,” Mr. Bynum said.
Cliff Robertson, the chief executive of Saint Francis Hospital, said, “There will be a very bumpy road, I think, ahead of us.”
“But there are over 10,000 people that are part of the Saint Francis health system that every day commit their lives to taking care of people in need, taking care of everyone in need, and this senseless, horrible, incomprehensible act is not going to change that,” Mr. Robertson said.
Gov. Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma said in a statement on Wednesday night that the shooting today in Tulsa was “a senseless act of violence and hatred.”
Before the news conference, Captain Meulenbergsaid that the gunfire had ceased and that the authorities were searching the building “floor by floor, room by room.”
“It’s a catastrophic scene in there right now,” Captain Meulenberg told reporters outside the hospital.
Chief Wendell Franklin of the Tulsa Police said on Twitter that the police had responded to an “active shooter incident” near East 61st Street and South Yale Avenue in Tulsa and next to Saint Francis Hospital.
“Please stay away from the area and yield to all emergency vehicles as we deal with this response,” Chief Franklin said.
The Tulsa Police Department said on Twitter that it had set up a reunification site for families at Memorial High School.
Jason Bailey contributed reporting, and Jack Begg and Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.
Millions of Angelenos awoke Wednesday to a new, more arid future as unprecedented water restrictions went into effect across Southern California.
For some, the sweeping limitations on outdoor watering felt like déjà vu from the last time the state was in a significant drought, when lawns turned brown and short showers became the norm. For others, the rules were a frustrating reminder of how little has changed.
“Here we go again,” said Rose Campos, who has lived in El Sereno for 18 years.
On Wednesday, Campos was helping a crew install drought tolerant landscaping in her daughter’s front yard. The house next door, where Campos and her husband live, still displays a large expanse of grass, already yellowing under the hot sun.
The grass used to be “the pride of the block,” she said, but it will soon be transitioned as well.
Campos is now one of more than 4 million residents in the city of L.A. who are subject to the new rules from the Department of Water and Power that limit outdoor watering to two days a week in a herculean effort to conserve water in a third year of drought.
More than 6 million Southern Californians will be placed under new drought rules today in an unprecedented effort to conserve water.
Earlier this year, California water officials said they could only allocate 5% of requested supplies from the State Water Project after the driest-ever January, February and March left meager snowpack and reservoirs near record lows.
Despite the deficits, the region’s residents responded by using about 27% more water in March compared to the same month in 2020, the year the current drought began.
“We must do more. Our situation is critical,” said Adel Hagekhalil, general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water to the DWP.
But as the sun rose on Wednesday, some residents were less than enthusiastic about the new restrictions.
“What horticulturist designed these rules?” said Alfred Gonzalez, 73, as he tended to his garden in Eagle Rock. “LADWP doesn’t know anything about drought irrigation, horticulture, soil.”
While Gonzalez said most of his plants are drought tolerant and can probably survive on eight minutes of water twice a week — the new per-station limit for typical residential systems with non-conserving sprinklers — he also thought the rules were short-sighted.
“If they really wanted to make a difference, they’d put a moratorium on pools, they’d put a moratorium on almonds, they’d put a moratorium on grapes and they’d put a moratorium on marijuana,” he said. “Then I’ll listen to what they have to say. Then I’ll listen to their bulls—.”
Despite official calls for conservation, California cities and towns increased water use by 19% in March.
Others were similarly defiant.
In Beverlywood, the sprinklers at one house on Hillsboro Avenue were running at full blast, sending water streaming down the sidewalks and into the street, even though Wednesdays are now, technically, non-watering days.
According to the DWP’s new rules, houses with odd-numbered addresses can water Mondays and Fridays, while houses with even-numbered addresses can water Thursdays and Sundays. No watering is allowed between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. regardless of the watering days.
“We all know what days we’re supposed to water on,” one neighbor said with a chuckle, shortly after shutting off his own sprinklers.
A similar story played out during the previous drought, when residents in some tonier neighborhoods from Calabasas to Beverly Hills were criticized for flouting the rules.
Officials have said that won’t happen this time around, with DWP General Manager Marty Adams telling the L.A. City Council last week that “enforcement will be everywhere, but it will focus on the highest water-using areas.”
Some weren’t convinced. Mirna Prado, a nanny in nearby Cheviot Hills, said she’s heard a lot about the watering restrictions from her husband, who is a gardener for houses in Beverly Hills and Bel Air.
While some clients are OK with the watering restrictions, others have told him to disregard them, she said, adding that since it’s his job, he has to follow what his clients tell him to do.
“Some say they are paying so much for landscaping so they don’t want to [follow the restrictions],” Prado said. “They prefer to pay the fine.”
In the land of multimillion-dollar homes, the question of water conservation plays out differently than in the neighborhoods where the rest of us live.
Yet even against the backdrop of the Westside’s picturesque lawns and flowering gardens, some residents Wednesday said they were aware of the restrictions and took no issue with them.
“I’m prepared to lose plants,” said Betty Ann Marshall, who removed her Cheviot Hills lawn a decade ago and switched to a drip irrigation system soon after.
Her neighbor, Kevin Goff, also killed his lawn three or four years ago, but said he wasn’t aware of the new twice-a-week watering restriction. He didn’t think he could cut his water usage by much more since he’s already been conserving, he said.
“I’ve been in my house for 30 years and I love my garden,” he said. “I’ve already been practicing proper handling of my water, unlike some people.”
Some Angelenos, however, were still finding new ways to save.
In Koreatown, Melvin Mouton said he replaced his lawn with bark chips years ago, but still knows which days he can water at his odd-numbered house.
“I’m very very conscious,” Mouton said. “I have stopped washing down the sidewalk and driveway.”
Back in Eagle Rock, longtime resident Dick Mullott said he has similarly accepted that drought — and its associated water restrictions — are a part of life in California. In preparation for the new rules, he gave away dozens of roses from his front garden over the last several weeks.
“They need too much water,” said Mullott, 83.
In addition to roses, Mullott’s front yard is home to tomato plants, sunflowers, grasses and a bushy purple Duranta tree, though he said much of that could soon change. He has already transitioned his backyard to drought-tolerant landscaping and plans to make the front yard more hardy as well.
He also emphasized the importance of conservation inside the house, and said he insists on short showers even for out-of-town guests.
But while Mullott was ready for the new restrictions, he said he was also concerned that DWP’s message wasn’t getting across: He got his first official notice about the change from the agency only yesterday, and he’s still unclear about some of the rules.
On top of that, the bimonthly billing cycle means “we only find out every two months how much water we actually use,” he added.
From Boyle Heights to Bel-Air, it’s going to be a summer of brown grass and hard choices.
Cheviot Hills resident Linda Adatto, 53, was also trying to parse the finer points of the plan.
Adatto said the new rules should be “enough to keep most landscaping alive,” but was concerned about her recently planted Italian stone pine.
During the previous drought, an estimated 14,000 trees died in L.A. city parks alone due to drought restrictions, and Adatto didn’t want the stone pine to become a casualty of the new restrictions.
Officials this time have emphasized that they don’t want trees to die, and there is an exception for hand watering, which can be done on any day of the week between 4 p.m. and 9 a.m. using hoses with self-closing shut-off nozzles.
Adatto paused as she moved to water the stone pine with a hose.
“Is it 8 a.m. or 9 a.m.?” She double-checked. “I don’t want to break the rules.”
The Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization, counted at least 232 such shootings, defined as one in which four or more people were killed or injured, through the end of May. Of those shootings, 11 involved four or more fatalities.
Here is a partial list of mass shootings this year.
June 1: Tulsa, Okla.
Several people were shot and five were killed at a medical building next to Saint Francis Hospital in Tulsa, Okla., the Tulsa police said. The police said the gunman was believed to have killed himself.
Law enforcement officers fatally shot the gunman, identified as Salvador Ramos, 18, but not until well over an hour after he walked into the school, raising questions about whether lives could have been saved if they had acted sooner.
A gunman killed one person and critically wounded four other members of the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church in Laguna Woods, Calif. The congregation, which holds services at the Geneva Presbyterian Church, overpowered the gunman and hogtied him, preventing further bloodshed, the authorities said.
The suspect, David Chou, 68, is a Las Vegas man with a wife and child in Taiwan who had traveled to Orange County with a grievance against Taiwanese people, the authorities said. He was charged with murder and five counts of attempted murder in what the Orange County sheriff, Don Barnes, called a “politically motivated hate incident.”
May 14: Buffalo
A memorial to the victims of the mass shooting at a Tops grocery store in Buffalo.Credit…Kenny Holston for The New York Times
A gunman armed with an assault-style weapon killed 10 people and wounded three others at a Tops supermarket in a predominantly Black section of Buffalo, the authorities said.
The suspect, Payton S. Gendron, 18, is white, and the 10 people who died were all Black. Before the attack, Mr. Gendron had posted a nearly 200-page racist screed online. He has pleaded not guilty. He faces life in prison if convicted.
May 13: Milwaukee
At least 16 people were wounded by gunfire in a shooting in downtown Milwaukee, in a popular nightlife area blocks from the arena where an N.B.A. playoff game ended hours earlier, the authorities said.
April 27: Biloxi, Miss.
The owner and two employees of the Broadway Inn Express motel in Biloxi, Miss., were fatally shot, and another person was also shot dead during a carjacking. The suspect, Jeremy Alesunder Reynolds, 32, was later found dead, CBS News reported.
April 12: Brooklyn
A gunman opened fire inside a crowded subway car during the morning rush, wounding 10 people, the worst attack on New York City’s subway system in decades. More than a dozen other people were also injured, with some choking on smoke from the two devices the police said the gunman detonated before he started shooting. No one was killed.
A suspect, Frank R. James, was arrested the next day and charged with carrying out a terrorist attack on a mass transit system. If convicted, he could face life in prison.
April 3: Sacramento
Authorities search area of the scene of a mass shooting with multiple deaths in Sacramento, Calif.Credit…Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press
As revelers spilled out of nightclubs in a two-square-block area of downtown Sacramento, a barrage of gunfire killed six people and wounded 12, the authorities said. Days later, the Sacramento Police Department said “gang violence” was at the center of the shooting, which involved at least five gunmen.
March 19: Dumas, Ark.
Two people engaged in a gunfight and sprayed a crowd with gunfire, killing one bystander and injuring 27 other people, including six children, at a community event and car show in the small Arkansas farming community.
Jan. 23: Milwaukee
Law enforcement officers were called to a Milwaukee home for a welfare check, and found six people who had been fatally shot. The victims — five men and one woman — had been shot, the police said, and evidence early in the investigation suggested that the killings had been targeted.
“The information I was given turned out, in part, to be inaccurate, and I am absolutely livid about that,” he said, sitting next to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) and McLaughlin.
Mr. Zuckerberg named Javier Olivan, a longtime product executive, as Meta’s next chief operating officer. Mr. Olivan has overseen much of Facebook’s growth over the past decade, and has managed WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook.
Ms. Sandberg is ending her tenure at Meta far from the reputational pinnacle she had reached last decade. As a key lieutenant to Mr. Zuckerberg, Ms. Sandberg helped build up Facebook’s business in the company’s early years and was regarded as the adult in the room. Facebook’s advertising business flourished under her, and Ms. Sandberg used her corporate fame to speak up on other issues, such as what women could achieve in the workplace.
But after the 2016 presidential election, Facebook came under intense scrutiny for how it was misused to stoke division and to spread misinformation. Ms. Sandberg was responsible for the policy and security team at the company during that election. The social network also was dogged by privacy questions after a scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, a voter-profiling firm that improperly used Facebook data.
Ms. Sandberg, who was one of Facebook’s most visible executives, was unable to recover from those stumbles. In recent years, Mr. Zuckerberg took a higher public profile and a greater role in overseeing different parts of the company, many of which had been under Ms. Sandberg’s sole purview.
Her departure also comes as Facebook is moving in a new direction. Last year, Mr. Zuckerberg renamed the company Meta and announced it would become a key provider of the metaverse, an immersive online world. But as the company has been spending heavily on metaverse products, its advertising business has stumbled, partly because of privacy changes made by Apple that have hurt targeted advertising.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has asked state lawmakers in a new letter to find solutions to “prevent future school shootings” — but gun control isn’t among the items mentioned as areas of focus.
Why it matters: Abbott’s letter comes one week after a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 children and two teachers.
Details: On Wednesday,Abbott sent a joint letter to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Speaker Dade Phelan asking for Texas legislative leaders to gather for a special session and develop recommendations for school safety, mental health, social media, police training and firearm safety as a way to “prevent future school shootings.”
Congress has faced pressure to act on gun control following the Uvalde school shooting, Axios’ Alayna Treene reports.
What he said: “As Texans mourn the tragedy that occurred at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde last week, we as a state must reassess the twin issues of school safety and mass violence,” Abbott said in the letter.
“As leaders, we must come together at this time to provide solutions to protect all Texans.”
The big picture: Only a few Republican officials have said they are open to further restrictions on guns in the wake of Uvalde.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) said he is open to having a conversation on raising minimum age requirements for buying “AR-15-style weapons.”
Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) said he’s open to a federal ban on AR-15-style rifles and raising the age requirements.
Serhiy Haidai, the governor of the war-torn Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine, has told Newsweek that any troops withdrawing from the front line city of Severodonetsk in the face of the Russian advance have a fallback plan, and will continue the fight against invading troops.
Speaking with Newsweek by phone from Luhansk on Tuesday, Haidai—a Severodonetsk native who has been leading the evacuation of the region and working with Ukraine’s military command—said Russian troops had captured a “significant part” of the city, one of only two significant settlements in Luhansk Oblast not yet under Moscow’s control.
“The fighting has indeed intensified significantly in recent days because the Russian army threw a lot of forces and equipment in order to capture the entire Luhansk region,” Haidai explained.
“This task is a priority for them, because this is not a particularly large territory and could become low-hanging fruit for the Russian high command that wants to show some victories.”
Victory in Severodonetsk would hand Russia almost full control of the Luhansk Oblast; one of Ukraine’s two most easternmost provinces and a key war goal for the Kremlin.
A Ukrainian Army officer looks towards the sound of nearby Russian shelling while holding a British-made NLAW anti-tank missile on the frontline on May 20, 2022 in Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine. John Moore/Getty Images
Taking Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk Oblast would allow President Vladimir Putin to claim victory in the Donbas, which has been split between Ukrainian and Moscow-backed separatist forces since 2014. The region is central to the Kremlin’s narrative of its supposed “de-Nazification” of Ukraine and the “liberation” of the Russian-speaking population there.
The situation is fluid, and it remains unclear how close Russian troops are to seizing total control of Severodonetsk, or how many Ukrainian troops remain inside the city. But the momentum is with the invaders, and Ukrainian troops are preparing fall back positions.
Haidai said on Tuesday that Russian forces were in control of around 70 percent of the city, just hours after saying the invaders had taken around half of the area. The British Ministry of Defense said on Wednesday that “over half of the town is likely now occupied by Russian forces, including Chechen fighters.”
Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Russia’s Chechen Republic, claimed this weekend that Russian forces had already seized the city.
Newsweek has contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry to request comment.
Regardless, Russian troops appear poised to cement control over the city in the coming hours and days. It remains to be seen if Russian units will be able to cross the river and seize Lysychansk, too, thus completing the conquest of Luhansk.
Haidai said remaining defenders in Severodonetsk are prepared to retreat across the Siverskyi Donets river to the city Lysychansk, which—if the former falls—will be the last Ukrainian-controlled city in Luhansk Oblast.
“I’m constantly in touch with the military command, discussing what are the options for a strategic withdrawal,” the governor explained.
“The neighboring city, Lysychansk, where we could and might need to retreat if push comes to shove, is not far and is on higher ground [than Severodonetsk], so it is strategically much more important. But for Russia, Severodonetsk is a key target because it is a regional center.
“The fighting will continue, our military will not be surrounded, the supply of ammunition will continue, and they will be able to hold their positions and attack the Russian forces from above.
“In terms of positional advantage, their situation will be better than defending from Severodonetsk.”
Ukrainian defenders have maintained access to the city from the west despite the intense Russian assault, Haidai said.
“I do not think that there will be a repetition of Mariupol here,” Haidai said, referring to the port city to the south which was besieged and destroyed by Russian forces.
Mariupol has become synonymous with the death and devastation wrought by Russia’s invasion. Local officials say civilian casualties in the razed city could be as high as 22,000.
They have, however, noted this figure is impossible to confirm given the scale of the devastation and alleged Russian efforts to cover up atrocities including summary executions, torture, rape, and forced relocation—all of which Moscow denies.
“Firstly, Severodonetsk is not surrounded, the troops can strategically retreat,” Haidai said. “Secondly, since part of the city is already occupied by the Russians, it makes no sense for them to shell it with artillery.”
Shortly after Newsweek spoke with Haidai, the governor announced on Telegram that Russian shelling had detonated a nitric acid tank at a chemical plant, releasing dangerous chemicals into the surrounding area.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday that the Russian shelling of Severodonetsk was “madness,” given the number of chemical plants in the city. The attacks, he said, included “blind” aerial bombardment.
A photograph shows an explosion in the city of Severodonetsk during heavy fighting between Ukrainian and Russian troops at eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas on May 30, 2022, on the 96th day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images
Haidai said only 15,000 of the pre-invasion 120,000 residents of Severodonetsk are still in the city. “And these are mostly people who just want to stay, so it makes no sense for Russia to deport them,” he said.
Evacuation efforts have, however, been paused indefinitely due to Russian shelling. “Yesterday, I stopped the evacuation after our armored car, which was sent to pick up civilians, was shelled by heavy Russian artillery,” Haidai explained.
“Inside there were patrol officers who dealt with the logistics of civilian evacuation; this car was never used for military purposes.
“There was also a group of journalists from France inside, and unfortunately one fragment broke through the windshield and hit the journalist in the neck. Sadly, he died. Therefore, I paused the evacuation indefinitely, but thankfully we have already evacuated most of the civilian population.”
“I feel sorry for every village and every settlement in the Luhansk region that falls under the control of the invaders, and would be distraught if Severodonetsk, the city where I was born, fell in their hands,” Haidai said.
“But from a basic military perspective, the city is not of great strategic importance, since neighboring Lysychansk, as I said, is on a hill, unlike Severodonetsk, so that location will give the military a massive advantage.”
Update, 6/1/22 9:45 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to include more information about the battle for Severodonetsk.
June 1 (Reuters) – A federal judge on Wednesday granted John Hinckley, the man who shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan and three others in a 1981 assassination attempt, unconditional release from the remaining restrictions he faced, U.S. media reported.
During a hearing in Washington, U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman lifted travel and internet usage restrictions against Hinckley, who has been living on his own in Williamsburg, Virginia, Fox News reported. Friedman’s order will take effect on June 15, it reported.
During a hearing in September, Friedman said he would grant Hinckley unconditional release, but gave prosecutors more time to monitor Hinckley as he transitioned to living on his own following the death of his mother.
Friedman at the time said Hinckley’s mental health problems were “in remission” and he no longer posed a danger.
In 2016, Hinckley was released from a psychiatric hospital where he was treated for depression and psychosis and allowed to move into a gated community in Williamsburg to care for his elderly mother, who died in August 2021.
Since leaving the hospital, Hinckley has been compliant with court-ordered conditions and has remained mentally stable and asymptomatic, according to court documents.
“Hinckley has made no verbal threats, and he has exhibited no behaviors indicative of harm to himself, others, or the property of others. He has exhibited no disruptive or problematic behaviors,” federal prosecutors wrote to the court in support of his release.
In September, Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post that she opposed Hinckley’s release, saying that she did not believe he feels remorse.
On March 30, 1981, Hinckley shot Reagan in an assassination attempt outside the Washington Hilton Hotel. Reagan suffered a punctured lung but recovered.
Others wounded included White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and Washington police officer Thomas Delahanty.
Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity at a 1982 jury trial.
A teacher did not, as previously stated, leave a door propped open with a rock during the massacre at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last week, but closed it before the attacks began – only for the door to not automatically lock, Texas state investigators said.
The gunman used the door to get inside, where he killed 19 students and two teachers.
The finding, released by Texas department of public safety on Tuesday, contradicts an earlier account in which they said a teacher had propped the door open shortly before Salvador Ramos, 18, entered the building. Law enforcement did not intervene in the attack for approximately one hour and 20 minutes.
Travis Considine, chief communications officer for the department, said investigators had determined that the teacher, who has not been identified, propped the door open with a rock but removed it, closing the door, when she ran back inside to get her phone and call 911 after the gunman crashed his truck on campus on the elementary school campus.
The door, he said, was designed to lock when shut, but did not. “We did verify she closed the door. The door did not lock. We know that much and now investigators are looking into why it did not lock,” Considine said.
“She came back out while on her phone, she heard someone yell, ‘He has a gun!’, she saw him jump the fence and that he had a gun, so she ran back inside,” removing the rock when she did, Considine added.
San Antonio attorney Don Flanary told the San Antonio Express-News that the teacher “kicked the rock away when she went back in. She remembers pulling the door closed while telling 911 that he was shooting.”
The account comes as official accounts of the timeline of the mass shooting shifted in the days following the shooting on 24 May. Investigators are still trying to interview the Uvalde Consolidated Independent school district police chief, Pete Arredondo, who took charge of the law enforcement response. He was sworn into an elected Uvalde city council post on Tuesday.
Steven McCraw, director of the safety department, said Arredondo treated the scene as a hostage situation and not an active shooter situation. McCraw called it the “wrong decision”.
The response to the mass shooting, the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade in the US, is now being investigated by the justice department. The Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas (Cleat), which advocates for law enforcement in the state, has urged officers to cooperate with “all government investigations”.
“There has been a great deal of false and misleading information in the aftermath of this tragedy. Some of the information came from the very highest levels of government and law enforcement,” Cleat said. “Sources that Texans once saw as iron-clad and completely reliable have now been proven false.”
A timeline compiled by CNN shows that 19 law enforcement officers were in the hallway outside the classroom where Ramos was holed up at 12.03pm. By 12.15pm, US marshals and the border patrol’s tactical unit, Bortac, were also outside the classroom.
Several students called 911 pleading for help as gunshots were heard. It was not until 12.50pm that border patrol forced their way in and killed Ramos. Investigators have said they found 142 spent cartridges in the classroom.
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