Good morning.
A former student killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville on Monday, armed with two “assault-style” weapons and a handgun after elaborately planning the massacre by drawing a detailed map and conducting surveillance of the building, police said.
Nashville chief of police John Drake told NBC News the shooter had planned to attack several different places, saying a manifesto belonging to the suspect “indicates that there was going to be shootings at multiple locations, and the school was one of them”.
Officers shot and killed the attacker at the Covenant school, which is attached to the Covenant Presbyterian church in the Tennessee state capital. Drake said investigators believed the shooting stemmed from “some resentment” the suspect harbored “for having to go to that school” as a younger person.
The shooting at the Covenant school in Nashville was the latest in a series of mass shootings in a country that has grown increasingly unnerved by bloodshed in schools.
Who were the victims? Nashville police identified the victims as Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, all nine years old; Cynthia Peak, a substitute teacher, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and Mike Hill, a custodian, 61.
What has Joe Biden said about the shooting? Biden called the shooting “heartbreaking, a family’s worst nightmare”. He said more needs to be done to stop gun violence. “It’s ripping our communities apart,” he said, and called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban, saying we “need to do more to protect our schools”.
‘Hits very close to home’: Nashville shooting reporter recounts story of attack at her own school.
Trump’s verbal assaults pose risks to prosecutors and could fuel violence
Donald 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.
He has also used antisemitic tropes by referring to a conspiracy of “globalists” and the influence of the billionaire Jewish financier George Soros.
Trump’s drive to undercut four criminal inquiries that he faces is reaching a fever pitch as a Manhattan district attorney’s inquiry looks poised to bring charges against Trump over his key part in a $130,000 hush money payment in 2016 to adult film star Stormy Daniels with whom he allegedly had an affair.
How is Trump doing in the polls? 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, polls show. On Monday, a 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.
Norwegian company says TikTok datacentre is limiting energy for manufacturing Ukraine ammunition
One of Europe’s largest ammunition manufacturers has said efforts to meet surging demand from the war in Ukraine have been stymied by a new TikTok datacentre that is monopolising electricity in the region close to its biggest factory.
The chief executive of Nammo, which is co-owned by the Norwegian government, said a planned expansion of its largest factory in central Norway hit a roadblock due to a lack of surplus energy, with the construction of TikTok’s new datacentre using up electricity in the local area.
“We are concerned because we see our future growth is challenged by the storage of cat videos,” Morten Brandtzæg told the Financial Times.
Demand for artillery rounds is 15 times higher than normal and Europe’s munitions industry needs to invest €2bn in new factories to keep up with Ukraine’s needs, according to Brandtzæg. By some estimates, Ukraine is firing 6,000 to 7,000 artillery shells a day and is facing ammunition shortages after more than a year of war.
What’s happening with plans to ban TikTok? Authorities appear set on pushing ahead with restricting the platform. On Sunday, Kevin McCarthy, the US House of Representatives speaker, said lawmakers would move forward with legislation to address national security concerns about TikTok, alleging China’s government has had access to the app’s user data.
Are there protests against it? Yes. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has joined the protests by posting a video on TikTok, highlighting the unprecedented nature of such an action. Meanwhile, thousands of video edits flooded the app making fun of moments in the hearing. Young users have skewered politicians as out of touch for questions about TikTok’s technology. “This is the most boomer thing I have ever seen,” one caption reads.
In other news …
Israel’s embattled prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has announced a delay to his far-right government’s proposals to overhaul the judiciary after 12 weeks of escalating political crisis. Netanyahu said yesterday he would delay his flagship judicial changes to the next parliamentary session.
Sean Tarwater, a state representative in Kansas sparked a storm of protests from disability advocates and highlighted a system of state tax credits across the US that allows employers to pay people with disabilities significantly less than the federal minimum wage. Some employees are paid as low as $3 an hour.
Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to take part in street protests and strikes across France on Tuesday amid fears of violent clashes with police, as demonstrations continue over Emmanuel Macron’s use of constitutional executive powers to push through an unpopular raise of the pension age.
California lawmakers yesterday 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.
One 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.
Stat of the day: man falsely convicted of raping writer Alice Sebold settles lawsuit against New York for $5.5m
A 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 came 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. Broadwater, 62, said in a statement relayed by Hammond: “I appreciate what attorney general James has done, and I hope and pray that others in my situation can achieve the same measure of justice. We all suffer from destroyed lives.”
Don’t miss this: the healthspan revolution – how to live a long, strong and happy life
In the US, chronic disease is rampant, and recent figures have shown life expectancy is falling; in the UK, there is a similarly depressing picture. But Peter Attia, an expert on longevity and preventive medicine, believes it is possible to turn this around. His key vision is increasing people’s “healthspan”, so that they maximise their chances of avoiding disease, and cut down the share of their lives they spend being frail and infirm, perhaps to as little as six months. We can, Attia says in his new book Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, strike big blows against the “four horsemen” of diabetes, cancer, heart disease and dementia by improving our lives in five “tactical domains”: exercise; “nutritional biochemistry” (ie what and how much we eat); sleep; emotional health; and “exogenous molecules” – or, as they are otherwise known, drugs and supplements.
… or this: art, not pornography – Florence museum invites Florida parents to see the David
The 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. Over the weekend, Cecilie Hollberg, director of the Galleria dell’Accademia, where the David sculpture resides, invited the school board, parents and student body to view the “purity” of the statue.
Climate check: return of the Gedi – space mission that maps Earth’s forests saved from destruction
Nasa has extended the life of a key climate and biodiversity sensor for scanning the world’s forests which was set to be destroyed in Earth’s atmosphere. The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (Gedi) mission – pronounced like Jedi in Star Wars – was launched in December 2018, and has provided the first 3D map of the world’s forests. Data from the $100m (£81m) sensor, which uses lasers to measure the structure and health of Earth’s forests, has helped scientists better understand drivers of biodiversity loss and global heating. It was going to be incinerated in the atmosphere at the start of this year. Now, after an appeal from forest experts, Nasa has changed its mind and extended the life of the mission.
Last Thing: meatball from long-extinct mammoth created by food firm
A mammoth meatball has been created by a cultivated meat company, resurrecting the flesh of the long-extinct animals. The project aims to demonstrate the potential of meat grown from cells, without the slaughter of animals, and to highlight the link between large-scale livestock production and the destruction of wildlife and the climate crisis. The mammoth meatball was produced by Vow, an Australian company, which is taking a different approach to cultured meat. There are scores of companies working on replacements for conventional meat, such as chicken, pork and beef. But Vow is aiming to mix and match cells from unconventional species to create new kinds of meat. “We have a behaviour change problem when it comes to meat consumption,” said George Peppou, CEO of Vow.
Sign up
First Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you’re not already signed up, subscribe now.
Get in touch
If you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email newsletters@theguardian.com
