No apparent motive in Arkansas shooting, but the reaction is ‘so personal’
The gunman who opened fire Friday at a grocery store in Fordyce, Arkansas, killing four people and hurting 10 others, did not appear to target anyone, officials say, or have any known links to the victims. But officers in the town of 3,400 who rushed there and eventually subdued the assailant could not have felt more connected. “They knew everyone personally, from the suspect to the victims on scene,” said Col. Mike Hagar, director of the Arkansas State Police. And that has made this “so personal and so difficult.” The suspect is expected to be charged with four counts of capital murder, Hagar said.
East coast cities continue to bake, with new high temperature records
Heat continued Sunday to scorch the mid-Atlantic and the region from Washington, D.C., to New York, where the National Weather Service ranked the heat risk as “extreme” when accounting for the high temperatures and their unseasonably early arrival. Daily temperature records — some more than a century old — continued to fall. In Philadelphia, a reading of 98 degrees beat the record, 97, set in 1888. The high of 101 degrees in Reading, Pennsylvania, also beat the record, which had been set in 1908 at 96. The weather service predicts that the heat wave will begin to subside early this week.
District attorney dropped charges against most Columbia student protesters
Alvin Bragg, the district attorney in the Manhattan borough of New York City, last week dropped most of the 46 cases against pro-Palestinian demonstrators charged in the April 30 siege of Hamilton Hall at Columbia University because prosecutors had little proof that the cases would stand up at trial. There was limited video footage of what took place inside the campus building, Doug Cohen, a spokesperson for the district attorney, said in a statement. Protesters wore masks and covered security cameras during the 17-hour occupation. Bragg announced the decision to drop 31 of the 46 cases during a court hearing Thursday.
Biden campaign plans Georgia blitz before Thursday debate in Atlanta
President Joe Biden’s campaign will host more than 200 events across Georgia this week to engage voters in a key battleground state before the first presidential debate in Atlanta on Thursday. In addition to rolling out several new digital and television ads, the campaign has scheduled events including rallies and debate watch parties, beginning with a news conference in Atlanta on Monday to commemorate the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Biden’s and former President Donald Trump’s campaigns are focusing on the debate, which both have described in stark terms for the trajectory of what polls show is a close race.
Donald Trump said he roposed a ‘migrant league of fighters’
Former President Donald Trump said in an address to an evangelical group that he had suggested starting a sports league for migrants to fight one another. Appearing in Washington on Saturday, Trump described migrants with the dehumanizing terms he often uses to refer to them, saying they were “tough,” “come from prisons” and are “nasty, mean.” Trump then said that he had suggested to Dana White, an ally of the former president’s who is CEO of the UFC, “Why don’t you set up a migrant league of fighters?” White confirmed that Trump made the proposal, but said, “It was a joke, it was a joke. I saw everybody going crazy online. But yeah, he did say it.”
Woman tried to drown 3-year-old girl after making racist comments, police say
A woman in Texas was charged with attempted capital murder after she tried to drown a 3-year-old girl in an apartment complex pool after making racist comments, officials said. Mustafaa Carroll, executive director of the Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said at a news conference Saturday that the girl was attacked by a white woman who made the comments to the girl’s mother, who was wearing a headscarf. Witnesses told detectives that the woman, Elizabeth Wolf, 42, had tried to drown a child and had argued with the child’s mother, police in Euless, Texas, said. The attack took place on May 19 in Euless, a suburb of Dallas and Fort Worth.
Netanyahu doubles down on complaints about the supply of US munitions
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu aired new grievances Sunday over the Biden administration’s supply of munitions for the war in the Gaza Strip as his minister of defense arrived in Washington for meetings. Netanyahu’s government and the Biden administration have been increasingly at odds over Israel’s conduct in Gaza, and Netanyahu lashed out at the United States last week for withholding munitions. But Sunday morning, Netanyahu doubled down. In remarks broadcast in Hebrew before his weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said he appreciated the Biden administration’s support for Israel through eight months of war, “but starting four months ago, there was a dramatic decrease in the supply of armaments.”
Ukraine urges allies to allow their weapons to target Russian air power
As bombs dropped by Russian warplanes tore through residential districts in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv this weekend, killing at least four people and injuring dozens more, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday called on allies to further ease restrictions on the use of Western weapons so that his forces could use them against Russian air bases. The Biden administration’s recent decision to allow Ukraine to use certain weapons to hit forces inside Russia has had an immediate impact, helping Ukraine thwart Moscow’s offensive north of Kharkiv and slowing the bombardment of the city, Ukraine’s second largest, which is only about 25 miles from the border.
Gunmen kill at least 6 at synagogue and churches in Russian republic
At least six police officers and a priest were killed in attacks in two cities in Russia’s republic of Dagestan after assailants opened fire Sunday at a synagogue, at least two churches and a police post, the local interior ministry said. At least a dozen officers were wounded in two seemingly coordinated attacks, Russian state news agencies reported, citing local law enforcement officials. The shootings occurred in Dagestan’s capital, Makhachkala, and Derbent, a city on the border with Azerbaijan. As of Sunday evening, it was unclear how the casualty count split across the two cities, but Derbent police officials said attackers opened fire at a synagogue and a church.
The man softening the ground for an extremist Germany
To his critics, right-wing ideologue Björn Höcke, a leader of the Alternative for Germany party, personifies an invidious effort by the far right to destigmatize the country’s Nazi past. To his supporters, he is a linguistic freedom fighter, trying to reclaim unfairly maligned words, and more broadly, to preserve their conception of an ethnic German culture. For years, Höcke has chipped away at the prohibitions Germany has imposed on itself to prevent being taken over by extremists again. It takes a tougher stance on free speech than many Western democracies, a consequence of the lessons of the 1930s, when the Nazis used democratic elections to seize the levers of power.
The Taylor Swift economy has landed in Europe
Taylor Swift is touring Europe this summer, bringing in her wake hundreds of thousands of Swifties spending on airfare, hotels and restaurants. And analysts are debating the economic footprint it will leave. Central bankers are justified in scrutinizing the potential inflationary effects of the arrival of a global superstar: In May last year, when Beyoncé kicked off her Renaissance World Tour in Stockholm, an economist attributed a blip in the inflation data to the singer’s concert. The demand that Swift’s Eras Tour creates for hotel rooms and flights across Europe could push up prices that feed into each country’s inflation rate.
Southeast Asia is crying over runaway hit movie
The movie “How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies,” which was filmed in Bangkok mostly in the Thai language, has become a runaway hit across Southeast Asia. In the Philippines, tickets were sold out on its opening day, theaters had to add more screenings to meet demand and one chain started handing out tissues to viewers. In Singapore, it topped the box office from June 6-9. In Indonesia, it has drawn millions of viewers. In Thailand, it is the highest-grossing title of the year so far. The plot revolves around an aimless and unemployed young man, M, whose sole ambition is to livestream his online games.
By wire sources