Uvalde fires its school police chief in response to shooting
Facing intense pressure from parents, the school board in Uvalde, Texas, on Wednesday terminated its school police chief, Pete Arredondo, who directed the district’s police response to a mass shooting at an elementary school in which the gunman was allowed to remain in a pair of classrooms for more than 75 minutes. The unanimous vote, which Arredondo, through his lawyer, called “an unconstitutional public lynching,” represented the first direct accountability over what has been widely seen as a deeply flawed police response, one that left trapped and wounded students and teachers to wait for rescue as police officers delayed their entry into the two adjoining classrooms where the gunman was holed up.
Panel: Trump staffers pushed unproven COVID treatment at FDA
A special House panel looking into the government’s coronavirus response says the Trump White House tried to pressure U.S. health experts into reauthorizing the drug hydroxychloroquine that had been discredited as a COVID-19 treatment. The report by the Democratic-led subcommittee provides new evidence of the administration’s efforts to override Food and Drug Administration decisions early in the pandemic. And it sheds light on the role TV personalities such as Fox News’ Laura Ingraham and Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity heart surgeon now running for the Senate, played in first bringing hydroxychloroquine to the attention of White House officials. The report focuses on pressure at the FDA, the gatekeeper for the drugs, vaccines and other countermeasures against the virus.
Gender dysphoria covered by disability law, court rules
Advocates for transgender people say a federal ruling that gender dysphoria is covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act could hurt conservative political efforts to restrict access to gender-affirming care. A panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week became the first federal appellate court in the country to find that the anguish and other symptoms experienced by transgender people over the disparity between their assigned sex and their gender identity is covered under the landmark federal law. The ruling could give transgender people a powerful tool to challenge legislation restricting access to medical care that assists with gender transitions.
Memo details Barr’s justifications not to prosecute Trump
The Biden administration released a Trump-era memorandum on Wednesday that provided the most detailed look yet at the Justice Department’s legal reasoning for declining to charge President Donald Trump with obstruction of justice over his efforts to impede the Russia investigation. The March 2019 memo, delivered to the attorney general at the time, William Barr, concluded that none of Trump’s actions chronicled in the report by the special counsel Robert Mueller — from firing his FBI director to pressuring the White House counsel to recant his testimony to prosecutors — could be shown beyond a reasonable doubt to be criminal acts.
Biden names Kim Cheatle to lead Secret Service
President Joe Biden on Wednesday named Kim Cheatle, who was on his Secret Service detail when he was vice president, to lead the agency charged with protecting the president and other top officials. Cheatle will be the second woman to lead the Secret Service in its 157-year history. She replaces James Murray, who announced his retirement after three years in the agency’s top job. “When Kim served on my security detail when I was vice president, we came to trust her judgment and counsel,” Biden said in a statement. “She is a distinguished law enforcement professional with exceptional leadership skills.”
South Korea breaks record for world’s lowest fertility rate
South Korea broke its own record for the world’s lowest total fertility rate last year, census data showed Wednesday, and experts project it will drop even further this year, adding to concerns about the country’s shrinking and aging population. After declining steadily from 4.53 in 1970, the first year the government started compiling such data, the total fertility rate began to sink more quickly in the 2000s during the financial crises, dropping below 1.0 in 2018. By comparison, the fertility rate was 1.66 in the United States and 1.37 in Japan.
22 reported killed in Independence Day attack in Ukraine
Ukraine’s president says Russian forces have launched a rocket attack on a train station in central Ukraine on the country’s Independence Day, killing 22 people. The lethal strike Wednesday came after warnings from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in recent days that the Russians might “try to do something particularly nasty, something particularly cruel” this week. Wednesday is a national holiday in Ukraine commemorating the country’s declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. It also marks the six-month point in the war against Russia.
By wire sources
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