World
Sri Lanka troops barricade Parliament against protesters
Military troops were moving Thursday to secure Sri Lanka’s parliament building against a takeover by protesters infuriated by the country’s economic collapse and the embattled president’s failure to resign a day after fleeing the country.
With the country sinking into political chaos, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his wife fled to the Maldives on Wednesday aboard an air force jet. He made the prime minister acting president in his absence — a move that further roiled passions among a public that blames Rajapaksa for an economic crisis that has caused severe shortages of food and fuel.
Rajapaksa had promised to resign by Wednesday night, and since Sri Lankan presidents are protected from arrest while in power it’s likely he planned his departure while he still had constitutional immunity and access to a military jet. It was unclear exactly where he was in the Maldives, an archipelago of hundreds of islands dotted with luxury tourist resorts, and where he planned to travel next.
Troops in green military uniforms and camouflage vests arrived by armored personnel carriers at the parliament building, anticipating more protests after a group attempted to storm the entrance the previous day, clashing with police who fended them off with tear gas and batons.
Some protesters posted videos on social media pleading with others not to storm the Parliament, fearing an escalation of violence.
On Wednesday, protesters who were undeterred by multiple rounds of tear gas scaled the walls to enter the office of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as the crowd outside cheered in support and tossed water bottles to them. Protesters took turns posing at the prime minister’s desk or stood on a rooftop terrace waving the Sri Lankan flag.
“We need both ... to go home,” said Supun Eranga, a 28-year-old civil servant in the crowd on Wednesday. “Ranil couldn’t deliver what he promised during his two months, so he should quit. All Ranil did was try to protect the Rajapaksas.”
Read:Thousands protest against Sri Lanka's new acting president
Demonstrators also have crowded inside the presidential palace they began occupying over the weekend and are vowing to stay in both buildings to press their demands for a new government. Some set fire to Wickremesinghe’s private residence, and his whereabouts were unknown.
Wickremesinghe’s office has imposed a state of emergency giving broader powers to the military and police. Defense leaders have called for calm and cooperation with security forces — comments that have rankled some lawmakers who insist civilian leaders would be the ones to find a solution.
The protesters blame Rajapaksa and his powerful, dynastic family for leading the country into an economic abyss, but they are also furious with Wickremesinghe, whom they accuse of protecting the president. Many believe that his appointment in May alleviated pressure on Rajapaksa to resign.
Both leaders said after the protests escalated over the weekend that they would resign, but Wickremesinghe said he will not leave until a new government is in place. He has urged the speaker of Parliament to find a new prime minister agreeable to both the ruling and opposition parties.
It’s unclear when that might happen since the opposition is deeply fractured. But assuming that Rajapaksa resigns as promised, Sri Lankan lawmakers have agreed to elect a new president on July 20 who will serve the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term, which ends in 2024. That person could potentially appoint a new prime minister, who would then have to be approved by Parliament.
The political impasse threatens to worsen the bankrupt nation’s economic collapse since the absence of an alternative government could delay a hoped-for bailout from the International Monetary Fund. In the meantime, the country is relying on aid from India and China.
Protesters accuse the president and his relatives of siphoning money from government coffers for years and Rajapaksa’s administration of hastening the country’s collapse by mismanaging the economy.
The family has denied the corruption allegations, but Rajapaksa acknowledged some of his policies contributed to the meltdown.
The shortages of basic necessities have sown despair among Sri Lanka’s 22 million people. The country’s rapid decline was all the more shocking because, before the recent crisis, the economy had been expanding, with a growing, comfortable middle class.
“Gotabaya resigning is one problem solved — but there are so many more,” said Bhasura Wickremesinghe, a 24-year-old student of maritime electrical engineering, who is not related to the prime minister.
He complained that Sri Lankan politics have been dominated for years by “old politicians” who all need to go. “Politics needs to be treated like a job — you need to have qualifications that get you hired, not because of what your last name is,” he said, referring to the Rajapaksa family.
After the president fled to the Maldives the whereabouts of other Rajapaksa family members who had served in the government were unclear.
Masks could return to Los Angeles as COVID surges nationwide
Nick Barragan is used to wearing a mask because his job in the Los Angeles film industry has long required it, so he won’t be fazed if the nation’s most populous county reinstates rules requiring face coverings because of another spike in coronavirus cases across the country.
“I feel fine about it because I’ve worn one pretty much constantly for the last few years. It’s become a habit,” said Barragan, masked up while out running errands Wednesday.
Los Angeles County, home to 10 million residents, is facing a return to a broad indoor mask mandate later this month if current trends in hospital admissions continue, county health Director Barbara Ferrer said this week.
Nationwide, the latest COVID-19 surge is driven by the highly transmissible BA.5 variant, which now accounts for 65% of cases with its cousin BA.4 contributing another 16%. The variants have shown a remarkable ability to get around the protection offered by vaccination.
With the new omicron variants again pushing hospitalizations and deaths higher in recent weeks, states and cities are rethinking their responses and the White House is stepping up efforts to alert the public.
Some experts said the warnings are too little, too late.
“It’s well past the time when the warning could have been put out there,” said Dr. Eric Topol, head of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, who has has called BA.5 “the worst variant yet.”
Global trends for the two mutants have been apparent for weeks, experts said — they quickly out-compete older variants and push cases higher wherever they appear. Yet Americans have tossed off their masks and jumped back into travel and social gatherings. And they have largely ignored booster shots, which protect against COVID-19′s worst outcomes. Courts have blocked federal mask and vaccine mandates, tying the hands of U.S. officials.
“We learn a lot from how the virus is acting elsewhere and we should apply the knowledge here,” said Ali Mokdad, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle.
White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha appeared on morning TV on Wednesday urging booster shots and renewed vigilance. Yet Mokdad said federal health officials need to be push harder on masks indoors, early detection and prompt antiviral treatment.
“They are not doing all that they can,” Mokdad said.
The administration’s challenge, in the view of the White House, is not their messaging, but people’s willingness to hear it — due to pandemic fatigue and the politicization of the virus response.
For months, the White House has encouraged Americans to make use of free or cheap at-home rapid tests to detect the virus, as well as the free and effective antiviral treatment Paxlovid that protects against serious illness and death. On Tuesday, the White House response team called on all adults 50 and older to urgently get a booster if they haven’t yet this year — and dissuaded people from waiting for the next generation of shots expected in the fall when they can roll up their sleeves and get some protection now.
Requiring masks again “helps us to reduce risk,” Ferrer told Los Angeles County supervisors. She is expected to discuss details of the potential new county mandate during a public health briefing Thursday afternoon.
“I do recognize that when we return to universal indoor masking to reduce high spread, for many this will feel like a step backwards,” Ferrer said Tuesday.
For most of the pandemic, Los Angeles County has required masks in some indoor spaces, including health care facilities, Metro trains and buses, airports, jails and homeless shelters. The new mandate would expand the requirement to all indoor public spaces, including shared offices, manufacturing facilities, warehouses, retail stores, restaurants and bars, theaters and schools.
It’s unclear what enforcement might look like. Under past mandates, officials favored educating people over issuing citations and fines.
Sharon Fayette ripped off her mask the moment she stepped out of a Lyft ride in Los Angeles Wednesday and groaned when informed another universal mask requirement might be coming. “Oh man, when will it end?” she wondered about the pandemic.
Fayette said she was exhausted by shifting regulations and dubious another mandate would be followed by most residents. “I just think people are over it, over all the rules,” she said.
Barragan said he learned a harsh lesson about the effectiveness of masks when he went without a face covering at a film industry mixer last month in Los Angeles. “I thought it would be fine because we were all outdoors,” said Barragan, 35. A few days later he started feeling sick and, sure enough, tested positive.
He’d avoided catching the virus for more than two years because he was religious about masking up. “The one time I took it off, I caught it!” he laughed.
The nation’s brief lull in COVID deaths has reversed. Last month, daily deaths were falling, though they never matched last year’s low, and deaths are now heading up again.
The seven-day average for daily deaths in the U.S. rose 26% over the past two weeks to 489 on July 12.
Also read: Ensure wearing masks, social distance, health guidelines amid Covid surge in world: NTAC
The coronavirus is not killing nearly as many as it was last fall and winter, and experts do not expect death to reach those levels again soon. But hundreds of daily deaths for a summertime respiratory illness would normally be jaw-dropping, said Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine. He noted that in Orange County, California, 46 people died of COVID-19 in June.
“That would be all hands on deck,” Noymer said. “People would be like, ‘There’s this crazy new flu that’s killing people in June.’”
Instead, simple, proven precautions are not being taken. Vaccinations, including booster shots for those eligible, lower the risk of hospitalization and death — even against the latest variants. But less than half of all eligible U.S. adults have gotten a single booster shot, and only about 1 in 4 Americans age 50 and older who are eligible for a second booster have received one.
“This has been a botched booster campaign,” Topol said, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention still uses the term “fully vaccinated” for people with two shots of Moderna or Pfizer. “They haven’t gotten across that two shots is totally inadequate,” he said.
Noymer said if he were in charge of the nation’s COVID response he would level with the American people in an effort to get their attention in this third year of the pandemic. He would tell Americans to take it seriously, mask indoors and “until we get better vaccines, there’s going to be a new normal of a disease that kills over 100,000 Americans a year and impacts life expectancy.”
That message probably wouldn’t fly for political reasons, Noymer acknowledged.
It also might not fly with people who are tired of taking precautions after more than two years of the pandemic. Valerie Walker of New Hope, Pennsylvania, is mindful of the latest surge but is hardly alarmed.
“I was definitely concerned back then,” she said of the pandemic’s early days, with images of body bags on nightly news broadcasts. “Now there’s fatigue, things were getting better and there was a vaccine. So I would say from a scale between one and 10, I’m probably at a four.”
Even with two friends now sick with the virus, and her husband recently recovered, Walker says she has bigger problems.
“Sometimes when I think about it I still put a mask on when I go into a store, but honestly, it is not a daily thought for me,” she said.
Sri Lanka waits in confusion, anger for president to resign
Sri Lankans woke up to confusion on Thursday, still waiting for their embattled president to resign after he fled the country, as the island nation fumes over an economic meltdown that has sparked political chaos.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his wife fled to the Maldives on Wednesday aboard an air force jet. He made the prime minister acting president in his absence — a move that further roiled passions among a public that blames Rajapaksa for an economic crisis that has caused severe shortages of food and fuel.
On Wednesday, protesters, undeterred by multiple rounds of tear gas, scaled the walls to enter the office of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as the crowd outside cheered in support and tossed water bottles to them.
Protesters took turns posing at the prime minister's desk or stood on a rooftop terrace waving the Sri Lankan flag after the latest in a series of takeovers of government buildings by the demonstrators — who see the political maneuvers as delaying their goal of a new government.
Late on Wednesday night, crowds also gathered outside the Parliament. Demonstrators clashed with security officers who fired tear gas into the air.
Wickremesinghe's office declared a nationwide curfew and imposed a state of emergency giving broader powers to the military and police. The curfew was lifted early Thursday.
Over the weekend, the two leaders both said they would resign after protesters stormed Rajapaksa's and Wickremesinghe's official residences in a dramatic escalation of months of protests. Some set fire to Wickremesinghe's private residence, and his whereabouts were unknown.
The protesters blame Rajapaksa and his powerful, dynastic family for leading the country into an economic abyss, but they are also furious with Wickremesinghe, whom they accuse of protecting the president. Many believe that his appointment in May alleviated pressure on Rajapaksa to resign.
“We need both ... to go home,” said Supun Eranga, a 28-year-old civil servant in the crowd on Wednesday. “Ranil couldn’t deliver what he promised during his two months, so he should quit. All Ranil did was try to protect the Rajapaksas.”
Read:Sri Lanka in crisis: President flees and ire turns to PM
But Wickremesinghe has said he will not leave until a new government is in place. He has urged the speak of Parliament to find a new prime minister agreeable to both the ruling and opposition parties.
It's unclear when that might happen since the opposition is deeply fractured. But assuming that Rajapaksa resigns as planned, Sri Lankan lawmakers have agreed to elect a new president on July 20 who will serve the remainder of Rajapaksa’s term, which ends in 2024. That person could potentially appoint a new prime minister, who would then have to be approved by Parliament.
The political impasse threatens to worsen the bankrupt nation’s economic collapse since the absence of an alternative government could delay a hoped-for bailout from the International Monetary Fund. In the meantime, the country is relying on aid from neighboring India and from China.
With the country in disarray, Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Shavendra Silva called for calm and for cooperation with security forces. Similar comments have rankled opposition lawmakers, who insisted that civilian leaders would be the ones to find a solution.
Protesters accuse the president and his relatives of siphoning money from government coffers for years and Rajapaksa’s administration of hastening the country’s collapse by mismanaging the economy.
The family has denied the corruption allegations, but Rajapaksa acknowledged some of his policies contributed to the meltdown, which has left the island nation laden with debt and unable to pay for imports of basic necessities.
The shortages have sown despair among Sri Lanka’s 22 million people. The country’s rapid decline was all the more shocking because, before the recent crisis, the economy had been expanding, with a growing, comfortable middle class.
“Gotabaya resigning is one problem solved — but there are so many more,” said Bhasura Wickremesinghe, a 24-year-old student of maritime electrical engineering, who is not related to the prime minister.
He complained that Sri Lankan politics have been dominated for years by “old politicians” who all need to go. “Politics needs to be treated like a job — you need to have qualifications that get you hired, not because of what your last name is,” he said, referring to the Rajapaksa family.
After the president fled to the Maldives the whereabouts of other Rajapaksa family members who had served in the government were unclear.
Local media in the Maldives reported Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s planned travel to another country was delayed, forcing him to remain in the Indian Ocean archipelago Wednesday night.
Sri Lankan presidents are protected from arrest while in power, and it is likely Rajapaksa planned his escape while he still had constitutional immunity. A corruption lawsuit against him in his former role as a defense official was withdrawn when he was elected president in 2019.
Heat wave, flooding leave multiple people dead in China
Flooding and extreme high temperatures have caused multiple deaths in eastern China as summer heat descends earlier than usual.
Record-high temperatures have been reported in Zhejiang province, just east of the global business hub of Shanghai, topping out above 42 degrees Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday.
The neighboring coastal provinces of Jiangsu and Fujian were also suffering under high heat, while Henan, Sichuan and Heilongjiang further inland saw many hospitalized for heat stroke, with an as-yet unreported number of deaths.
Read: China sees record rains, heat as weather turns volatile
Floods have also struck much of the country, with three people reported killed and five missing in Sichuan province’s Pingwu county as of midday Wednesday. One person was reported dead and eight missing in Heilongjiang in the northeast.
Experts say such extreme weather events are becoming more likely because of climate change. Warmer air can store more water, leading to bigger cloudbursts when it’s released.
Hundreds of thousands in south-central China have already been displaced by flooding. The flooding adds to economic woes brought on partly by stringent “zero-COVID” measures restricting travel and disrupting supply chains.
Israeli politics a chaotic backdrop for Biden's visit
President Joe Biden, facing his own set of challenges back in Washington, will spend Thursday navigating Israel’s chaotic politics as he meets with the country’s leaders to bolster cooperation with the United States and other nations.
Biden begins the day by sitting down with Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who became head of an interim government earlier this month after the previous coalition collapsed. The country is holding its fifth election in less than four years in November.
Although Biden will likely be cautious about showing any favoritism — after all, previous American presidents have tried to influence Israeli politics with little success — there's little question that he would like to see Lapid prevail. Their joint appearances could burnish Lapid's image in a country that prizes its relationship with the United States.
Biden and Lapid are expected to sign a joint declaration emphasizing military cooperation between the U.S. and Israel, as well as their commitment to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. They're also planning to launch a strategic initiative on high-tech collaboration.
In addition, the two leaders are scheduled to hold a joint news conference and host a virtual summit with India and the United Arab Emirates, a collection of countries known as the I2U2. A senior U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak publicly before the meeting, said the UAE will help finance a $2 billion project supporting agriculture in India.
Lapid, 58, is a former journalist and television anchor who entered politics only a decade ago. He served as finance minister under Benjamin Netanyahu, the country's longest-serving prime minister, before becoming leader of the opposition and cobbling together a diverse, eight-party coalition ending Netanyahu's government.
Naftali Bennett became prime minister, with Lapid as his foreign minister. But the coalition collapsed after months of infighting, and Bennett agreed to step aside for Lapid until the election.
Lapid worked hard to solidify his credentials as a statesman while foreign minister. His aides believe the private face time, public appearances and demonstrations of friendship with Biden — who, at 79, is making his 10th trip to Israel — will strengthen that image and get the electorate more comfortable with the idea of Lapid as their leader.
However, Netanyahu is running for prime minister again, and opinion polls have projected that his conservative Likud party will win the most seats in the next election, well ahead of Lapid’s centrist Yesh Atid party.
Neither party is poised to singlehandedly capture the majority of seats needed to form a government, and it is unclear whether either man could cobble together a ruling coalition with smaller parties.
Biden played down the political uncertainty in an interview with Israel's Channel 12 that aired Wednesday.
“We’re committed to the state, not an individual leader," he said.
Biden is expected to meet only briefly with Netanyahu, with whom who he's had a rocky relationship in the past. Most notably, when Netanyahu was prime minister, his government approved a massive settlement project in East Jerusalem while Biden was visiting the country in 2010. Biden, then vice president, was infuriated.
Much like Lapid, Biden also faces a political threat from his predecessor. Donald Trump, an ally of Netanyahu who still enjoys strong support from Republican voters despite his attempt to overturn the last election, may run for another term.
Asked by Channel 12 if he expected a rematch, Biden replied, "I’m not predicting, but I would not be disappointed.”
Given the U.S.'s status as Israel’s closest and most important ally, Biden is at the center of the country’s attention during his visit.
Israel staged an elaborate welcoming ceremony for him at the Tel Aviv airport, including a red carpet and a band that played the national anthem of both countries. Major television channels set up special live coverage of Biden’s arrival, and even broadcast a nonstop loop of his motorcade traveling on the highway to Jerusalem.
Biden can also expect to meet numerous politicians eager to have their photo taken with him, or perhaps share an earful about his administration’s attempt to rejuvenate the Iran nuclear deal.
Israel was opposed to the original nuclear deal, which was reached under President Barack Obama in 2015, because its limitations on Iran’s nuclear enrichment would expire and the agreement didn’t address Iran's ballistic missile program or military activities in the region.
Instead of the U.S. reentering the deal, which Trump withdrew from in 2018, Israel would prefer strict sanctions in hopes of leading to a more sweeping accord.
Biden also will receive the nation’s top civilian honor, the presidential medal of honor, from Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Thursday.
He's also scheduled to meet with U.S. athletes who are participating in the Maccabiah Games. Also known as the “Jewish Olympics,” it’s the country’s largest sporting event that’s held every four years for Israeli and Jewish athletes from all over world.
Wildfires scorch parts of Europe amid extreme heat wave
A spate of wildfires is scorching parts of Europe, with firefighters battling blazes in Portugal, Spain, Croatia and southern France on Wednesday amid an unusual heat wave that authorities are linking to climate change.
In Portugal, Civil Protection commander André Fernandes said multiple fires have caused the evacuation of more than 600 people. About 120 people needed medical treatment, with two people — one civilian and one firefighter — suffering serious injuries, Fernandes said.
Water-dumping planes helped 1,300 firefighters combat the worst of the blazes in the nation’s central area, while another 1,000 worked to bring other fires under control.
The European heat wave is also sparking flames in Spain and France — and in Turkey at the other end of the Mediterranean.
More than 800 firefighters battled two wildfires in the region outside Bordeaux in southwest France, according to the regional emergency service. The fires began Tuesday near the towns of Landiras and La Teste-de-Buch, and firefighters hadn’t been able to contain them by Wednesday morning.
About 6,500 people have been evacuated from campgrounds and villages in the forested area. The number of injuries is unclear. The two fires have destroyed more than 1,800 hectares (4,400 acres) of terrain. Images from firefighters showed flames racing through thickets of trees and grassland, fanned by strong winds, and smoke blackening the horizon.
Read: Massive mangrove forestry planned to protect wildlife and expand forest coverage
The regional administration banned activity in forested areas at risk. Several regions in southern France are on fire alert because of hot, dry weather and high winds. Wildfires swept through the Gard region in southeast France last week.
Portugal has long experienced fatal forest fires. In 2017, wildfires killed more than 100 people. No one has died from a wildfire since then as Portugal improved its forest management and firefighting strategies.
Last year, Portugal recorded its lowest number of wildfires since 2011. But a mass of hot and dry air blown in by African winds are driving temperatures in the Iberian Peninsula beyond their usual highs.
The Atlantic country, which has been on alert of wildfires since last week, is sweltering under a spike in temperatures that is forecast to send thermometers in the central Alentejo region to 46 C (115 F) on Wednesday and Thursday. Authorities said that 96% of the country was classified at the end of June as being in either “extreme” or “severe” drought.
More than 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) had been consumed alone in the district of Leiria, just north of Lisbon, Mayor Goncalo Lopes told Portuguese state broadcaster RTP.
Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa, who canceled a trip abroad to deal with the emergency, said that better care of woodlands and abandoned farmland was key to protecting them.
“In 2017, the country realized that having enough firefighters is essential, but it is not enough,” Costa said. “We have to get to the root of the problem … The abandonment of property and its non-management is one of the biggest risk factors for forest fires.”
Neighboring Spain hit highs of 43 C (109.4 F) in several southern cities on Tuesday. Over 400 people were evacuated Tuesday because of a wildfire that has consumed 3,500 hectares (8,600 acres) in western Spain.
Fuelled by strong winds, fires raged along Croatia’s Adriatic Sea coast as well, with the most dramatic situation reported near the town of Sibenik, where water-dropping planes and dozens of firefighters struggled to contain the flames that briefly engulfed some cars and a church tower. Regional N1 television reported that some residents evacuated the area in rubber boats. Fires were also reported near the coastal town of Zadar.
Firefighter Boris Dukić told state HRT television that “it’s hell, we don’t know where to go first.”
European Union officials issued a warning last week that climate change is behind the extremely dry and hot summer so far on the continent, urging local authorities to brace for wildfires.
Cayetano Torres, spokesman for Spain’s national weather forecaster, said that the “unusual” heat wave and lack of rainfall in recent months has created ideal circumstances for fires.
“These are perfect conditions for the propagation of fires, which when you add to that some wind, you have have guaranteed propagation,” he said.
In southwestern Turkey, a blaze erupted close to the village of Mesudiye, near the Aegean Sea resort of Datca, and was moving toward homes in the area, according to the provincial governor’s office. It said at least nine water-dropping helicopters and five planes were deployed to battle the fire.
Last summer, blazes that were fed by strong winds and scorching temperatures tore through forests in Turkey’s Mediterranean and Aegean regions. The wildfires, which killed at least eight people and countless animals, were described as the worst in Turkey’s history.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government came under sharp criticism for its inadequate response and preparedness to fight large-scale wildfires, including a lack of modern firefighting planes.
Uvalde video raises more calls for police accountability
As video taken inside Robb Elementary School puts in full view the bewildering inaction by law enforcement during the May slaughter of 19 children and two teachers, some in Uvalde are shouting: Will police face consequences?
Only one officer from the scene of the deadliest school shooting in Texas history is known to be on leave. Authorities have still not released names of officers who for more than an hour milled in and out of a hallway near the adjoining fourth-grade classrooms where the gunman was firing. And nearly two months after the massacre, there’s still disagreement about who was in charge.
A nearly 80-minute hallway surveillance video published by the Austin American-Statesman publicly showed for the first time — with disturbing and painful clarity — a hesitant and haphazard tactical response by fully armed officers that the head of Texas’ state police has condemned as a failure and some Uvalde residents have blasted as cowardly.
But it is unclear whether the actions — or inaction — by officers in the school on May 24 will result in more than criticism, even as demands for accountability and anger mount. City and state leaders have urged people to let investigations play out.
There are signs impatience is growing: Hours after the video was published, residents shouted from their seats at a City Council meeting Tuesday, demanding to know whether officers who were at the shooting were still on the force or getting paid. Council members did not respond.
“What about the cops?” one person yelled.
Read: Texas elementary school shooting: What do we know so far?
Police are afforded formidable legal protections, set up with the idea that their jobs often require life-and-death judgment calls under great pressure. Even with the officers’ hesitation captured on video, policing experts say it’s difficult to predict how likely they are to face discipline or legal fallout.
“It’s going to come down to what would a reasonable police officer have perceived in that moment,” said Bowling Green State University criminologist Philip Stinson.
The footage from a hallway camera inside the school shows the gunman entering the building with an AR-15-style rifle and includes 911 tape of a teacher screaming, “Get down! Get in your rooms! Get in your rooms!”
Read: Texas police: School door shut but didn’t lock before attack
Two officers approach the classrooms minutes after the gunman enters, then run back amid the sounds of gunfire. From there, minutes tick by and more gunshots from the classrooms are heard as additional officers from multiple agencies arrive. More than an hour passes before a team finally advances down the hallway, breaches the classrooms and ends the massacre.
More than a dozen officers — some armed with rifles and bulletproof shields — are visible during some points of the video. During the long wait to confront the gunman, one man in body armor and and a vest that says “sheriff” squeezes a few pulls of hand sanitizer from a dispenser mounted on the wall.
It is a starkly different scene than the one described by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott the day after shooting, when he praised a swift response and officers who “showed amazing courage by running toward gunfire.” Abbott later said he was given wrong information but did not identify from whom.
That’s just one example of inaccurate and conflicting statements given by authorities in the seven weeks since the shooting. Asked Wednesday if any officers should face discipline for their inaction, Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze said the governor “believes it would be premature to decide any action” until investigations are complete.
After the 2018 shooting at Parkland High School in Florida that killed 17 people, a deputy who knew the gunman was loose but refused to go inside was arrested on criminal charges. Legal experts have called that an extremely rare case of someone essentially being charged for not going into harm’s way and have expressed skepticism about the case, which is set for trial in February.
Former U.S. Attorney Joe Brown, who spent two decades as a Republican district attorney in North Texas, said there is “no criminal statute for dereliction of duty” and holding police criminally liable under such circumstances “carries a tremendous social cost.” But he said officers who fail to meet their “moral duty to intervene” could still face ridicule or firing.
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said it was too early to decide whether any officers should be taken off the force. “I don’t know they need to step down,” he said. “But everything needs to be reviewed.”
So far, officials have only publicly confirmed one officer on leave: Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief who also stepped down from his newly won City Council seat last month. He has disputed state police’s characterization that he was in charge of the scene.
A Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman said no troopers who were there have been suspended. Officials with the Uvalde police and sheriff’s office did not answer questions about whether any of their officers have been suspended or placed on leave.
Greg Shaffer, a Dallas-based security consultant and retired member of the FBI’s hostage rescue team, said at the very least, the officers in the video should switch to a different line of work.
“I think everyone in that hallway should reconsider their career choice,” he said. “If you don’t have the courage and the mindset to run toward gunfire, as a police officer, then you’re in the wrong profession.”
US inflation surges again in June, raising risks for economy
U.S. inflation surged to a new four-decade high in June because of rising prices for gas, food and rent, squeezing household budgets and pressuring the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates aggressively -- trends that raise the risk of a recession.
The government’s consumer price index soared 9.1% over the past year, the biggest yearly increase since 1981, with nearly half of the increase due to higher energy costs.
Lower-income and Black and Hispanic American have been hit especially hard, since a disproportionate share of their income goes toward essentials such as transportation, housing and food. But with the cost of many goods and services rising faster than average incomes, a vast majority of Americans are feeling the pinch in their daily routines.
For 72-year-old Marcia Freeman, who is retired and lives off of a pension, there is no escape from rising expenses.
“Everything goes up, including cheaper items like store brands,” said Freeman, who visited a food bank near Atlanta this week to try and gain control of her grocery costs. Grocery prices have jumped 12% in the past year, the steepest climb since 1979.
Also read: Sri Lanka's central bank raises key rates to curb inflation
Accelerating inflation is a vexing problem for the Federal Reserve, too. The Fed is already engaged in the fastest series of interest rate hikes in three decades, which it hopes will cool inflation by tamping down borrowing and spending by consumers and businesses.
The U.S. economy shrank in the first three months of the year, and many analysts believe the trend continued in the second quarter.
“The Fed’s rate hikes are doing what they are supposed to do, which is kill off demand,” said Megan Greene, global chief economist at the Kroll Institute. “The trick is if they kill off too much and we get a recession.”
The likelihood of larger rate hikes this year pushed stock indexes lower in afternoon trading. The central bank is expected to raise its key short-term rate later this month by a hefty three-quarters of a point, as it did last month.
As consumers’ confidence in the economy declines, so have President Joe Biden’s approval ratings, posing a major political threat to Democrats in the November congressional elections. Forty percent of adults said in a June AP-NORC poll that they thought tackling inflation should be a top government priority this year, up from just 14% who said so in December.
After years of low prices, a swift rebound from the 2020 pandemic recession — combined with supply-chain snags — ignited inflation.
Consumers unleashed a wave of pent-up spending, spurred by vast federal aid, ultra-low borrowing costs and savings they had built up while hunkering down. As home-bound Americans spent heavily on furniture, appliances and exercise equipment, factories and shipping companies struggled to keep up and prices for goods soared. Russia’s war against Ukraine further magnified energy and food prices.
In recent months, as COVID fears have receded, consumer spending has gradually shifted away from goods and toward services. Yet rather than pulling down inflation by reducing goods prices, the cost of furniture, cars, and other items has kept rising, while restaurant costs, rents and other services are also getting more expensive.
The year-over-year leap in consumer prices last month followed an 8.6% annual jump in May. From May to June, prices rose 1.3%, following a 1% increase from April to May.
Some economists believe inflation might be reaching a short-term peak. Gas prices, for example, have fallen from the eye-watering $5 a gallon reached in mid-June to an average of $4.63 nationwide Wednesday — still far higher than a year ago.
Shipping costs and commodity prices have also begun to fall, and pay increases have slowed. Surveys show that Americans’ expectations for inflation over the long run have eased — a trend that often points to more moderate price increases over time.
“While today’s headline inflation reading is unacceptably high, it is also out-of-date,” President Biden said Wednesday. “All major economies are battling this COVID-related challenge.”
The latest disappointing data on inflation came out at the outset of Biden’s trip to the Middle East, where he will meet with officials from Saudi Arabia to discuss oil prices, among other subjects.
Republican members of Congress have blamed the higher prices on Biden’s economic policies, specifically his $1.9 trillion financial support package approved in March.
There have been signs that inflation was slowing before — last summer, and in April of this year — only for it to surge again in subsequent months.
“There may be some relief in the July numbers — commodity prices have come off the boil, at least — but we are a very, very long way from inflation normalizing, and there is no tangible sign of downward momentum,” said Eric Winograd, an economist at asset manager AllianceBernstein.
For now, the relentless pace of price increases is frustrating many Americans.
Delores Bledsoe, a truck driver hauling freight from Carlisle, Pennsylvania to Wisconsin on Wednesday, said her fuel costs have tripled. “It’s making me want to get out of the truck and go drive an Uber,” said Bledsoe, who lives in Houston. “It’s depressing.”
Some people are placing blame on companies for using inflation as a cover to raise prices beyond the amount they need to cover their own higher costs.
“I feel the inflation pain every day,” Susana Hazard said this week outside a grocery store in New York City. “Every day, everything is going up and up, more than inflation — they’re price-adjusting. Because even if inflation doesn’t happen, they’ve raised the prices.”
Most economists say corporate price gouging is, at most, one of many causes of runaway inflation and not the primary one.
Housing and rental costs are rising steadily as solid job gains encourage more Americans to move out on their own. Rents have risen 5.8% compared with a year ago, the most since 1986. And the cost of decorating homes is still increasing at a rapid pace — furniture prices are up 13% from a year ago — even as retailers such as Walmart and Target experience rising inventories, which should help lower prices.
The biggest shock has been energy prices, which soared 7.5% just from May to June. Gas prices have skyrocketed nearly 60% compared with a year ago.
Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, so-called core prices rose 0.7% from May to June, the biggest such spike in a year. Core prices jumped 5.9% from a year ago.
Inflation is surging well beyond the United States, with 71 million people pushed into poverty in the three months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the U.N. Development Program said last week.
The war’s economic damage has been especially severe in Europe, with its reliance on Russian oil and natural gas squeezing businesses and consumers with sharply higher bills for utilities, groceries, gasoline and more. Inflation reached decades-high levels of 8.6% last month in the 19 countries that use the euro currency and 9.1% in the United Kingdom in May.
Sri Lanka's acting president declares nationwide curfew
Sri Lanka's acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Wednesday declared a nationwide curfew effective until Thursday morning.
The order directs that no person shall be on any public road, railway, public park, public recreation ground or other public ground or the seashore in such areas till 5 a.m. on Thursday, except under the authority of a written permit granted by relevant authorities.
Meanwhile, Wickremesinghe on Wednesday informed Speaker of Parliament Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena to nominate a prime minister who is acceptable to both the government and opposition.
Protesters surrounded and entered the Prime Minister's Office in Colombo on Wednesday, calling for the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Wickremesinghe.
Read:Thousands protest against Sri Lanka's new acting president
Rajapaksa, who left for the Maldives earlier on Wednesday, was expected to hand in his resignation from the presidency later in the day amid a severe economic crisis.
Spain’s running of the bulls: 6 hurt, no gorings in Pamplona
Six people were treated for injuries but initial reports said there were no gorings in the seventh running of the bulls at Spain´s San Fermín festival on Wednesday.
There were many hairy moments in the 2-minute dash through the cobblestone streets of Pamplona. Shortly into the race, one bull twice head-butted a runner before tossing him to the ground where he was trampled by other beasts and frantic runners.
In the bull ring, at the end of the run, another runner who had fallen and tried to get to his feet was surprised by a charging bull who butted him into the air.
Four people in all have been gored, none seriously, during the festival’s seven runs bull-runs so far this year. The festival ends Thursday.
In the 8 a.m. runs, hundreds of runners, mostly men, test their mettle to run like mad ahead and alongside six fighting bulls and their guiding steer as they charge along an 875-meter (956-yard) route through Pamplona to the city’s bullring, where later in the day the bulls are killed by professional bullfighters.
Tens of thousands of visitors attend the Pamplona festival, which was immortalized in Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel “The Sun Also Rises.” The festival is also popular for its 24-hour partying, street events, and the city’s food.
Eight people were gored in 2019, the last festival before a two-year hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sixteen people have died in Pamplona’s bull runs since 1910, with the last death in 2009.