United News of Bangladesh

The water pressure at James Brown’s home in Jackson was so low the faucets barely dripped. He couldn’t cook. He couldn’t bathe. But he still had to work. The 73-year-old tree-cutter hauled bags of ice into his truck at a gas station on his way to a job Wednesday after several days without water. “What can I do? I’m just a pawn in a chess game,” he said during one of multiple trips to and from the store. “All I’ve got to do is just try and live.” People waited in lines for water to drink, bathe, cook and flush toilets Wednesday in Mississippi’s capital. The city water system partially failed early this week after Pearl River flooding exacerbated longstanding problems in one of two water-treatment plants. President Joe Biden late Tuesday approved an emergency declaration for the state of Mississippi. On Wednesday, he called Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba to discuss response efforts, including support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers. The mayor also said he had a separate telephone conversation with Vice President Kamala Harris. Beyond addressing the immediate crisis, Biden said he wants to provide federal support for the long-term effort to rebuild Jackson’s aging water infrastructure, which has been unreliable for years. Lumumba said Jackson’s water system is troubled by short staffing and “decades of deferred maintenance.” He said the influx of water from torrential rain changed the chemical composition needed for treatment, which slowed the process of pushing water out to customers. A city news release said the main water-treatment plant had “challenges with water chemistry” Wednesday, which led to a drop in output of water. That caused depletion of water tanks and a sharp decrease in water pressure. Even before the service disruption, Jackson’s 150,000 residents had been boiling their drinking water for the past month because officials said it could cause digestive problems. Brown said Wednesday that he’d stopped at the grocery store to buy four cases of water before picking up the ice. A lifelong Jackson resident, he said people there have been living without access to consistent water for years — even when there is pressure, residents often have to boil it to drink and cook. A cold snap in 2021 left tens of thousands of people without running water after pipes froze. Similar problems happened again early this year, on a smaller scale. “It will get right one day,” Brown said. “When, I have no idea.” Like many cities, Jackson faces water system problems it can’t afford to fix. Its tax base has eroded the past few decades as the population decreased — the result of mostly white flight to suburbs that began after public schools integrated in 1970. The city’s population is now more than 80% Black, with about 25% of its residents living in poverty. Lumumba said Tuesday that fixing Jackson’s water system could run to “quite possibly the billions of dollars.” Mississippi is receiving $75 million to address water problems as part of a bipartisan infrastructure bill. Jackson is receiving about $31 million through the EPA’s revolving loan funds for treatment and distribution system improvements. During a Wednesday news conference, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the EPA is deploying personnel to Jackson for an emergency assessment of the treatment plants and to streamline the delivery of repair equipment. FEMA has personnel at the state emergency operations center and is coordinating with the state emergency management team to identify needs, she said. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared a state of emergency for Jackson’s water system Tuesday. The state will try to help resolve problems by hiring contractors to work at the O.B. Curtis water treatment plant — the facility at the root of Jackson’s water woes. The plant was operating at diminished capacity with backup pumps after the main pumps failed “some time ago,” Reeves said. In a video posted to Twitter, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency said an emergency rental pump had been installed Wednesday at the O.B. Curtis. Broken pumps at the plant resulted in decreased water pressure and some outages. In a news conference Wednesday, Lumumba said city officials expected water pressure to start increasing later in the evening. Bobbie Fairley, who has lived in Jackson her entire life, owns Magic Hands Hair design in south Jackson. The 59-year-old said she had to cancel five appointments Wednesday because she needs high water pressure to wash chemicals out of hair during treatments. She has had to purchase water to shampoo hair to try fit in whatever appointments she can. When clients aren’t coming in, she’s losing money. “That’s a big burden,” she said. “I can’t afford that. I can’t afford that at all.” Jackson State University had to bring in temporary restrooms for students and was waiting on the delivery of portable showers Wednesday, President Thomas Hudson said. Hudson said the city’s water issues have been an ongoing challenge for the historically Black university as it has worked to attract students. “It does make it difficult in terms of what we’re trying to do, our core mission, which is education,” Hudson said. He said the university is starting work on a plan for a standalone water supply system using some of the federal funding made available to historically Black colleges and universities. Shannon Wilson, whose daughter just started her sophomore year at Jackson State, said her daughter’s dorm regained some pressure, but the water coming out is brown. Her daughter left to stay with a friend off campus. But Wilson, who lives in St. Louis, can’t help but worry about her. “We are feeling helpless,” Wilson said. “Being over 500 miles away from Jackson, there is nothing I can do but worry.” Also read: Its largest lake is so dry, China digs deep to water crops

A man evicted from a Houston apartment building shot five other tenants — killing three of them — Sunday morning after setting fire to the house to lure them out, police said. Officers fatally shot the gunman. The incident happened at about 1 a.m. Sunday in a mixed industrial-residential neighborhood in southwest Houston. Police and fire crews responded to the apartment house after reports of the fire, police Chief Troy Finner said. The gunman opened fire, possibly with a shotgun, on the other tenants as they emerged from the house, Finner said. Two were dead at the scene, and one died at a hospital. Fire teams rescued two other wounded men, who were hospitalized with non-life-threatening wounds, he said. The man then opened fire as the firefighters battled the fire, forcing them to take cover until police officers spotted the prone gunman and shot him dead, Finner said. Read:Deadly clashes shake Libya's capital, killing 23 people No identities have been released, and Finner said no firefighters or officers were wounded. “I’ve seen things I have not seen before in 32 years, and it has happened time and time again,” Finner said. “We just ask that the community come together.” A neighbor, Robin Ahrens, told the Houston Chronicle that he heard what he initially thought were fireworks as he prepared for work. “I’m just fortunate that I didn’t go outside because he probably would have shot me too,” he told the newspaper. He said the shooter, who had colon cancer, was behind on his rent, jobless and was recently notified that he was being evicted. “Something must have just hit him in the last couple of days really hard to where he just didn’t care,” he said.

A federal judge in Florida told the Justice Department on Saturday to provide her with more specific information about the classified records removed from former President Donald Trump's Florida estate and said it was her “preliminary intent” to appoint a special master in the case. The two-page order from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon signals that she’s inclined to grant a request from Trump’s lawyers, who this week asked for the appointment of an independent special master to oversee the review the records taken from Mar-a-Lago and identify any that may be protected by executive privilege, and to ensure the return of any documents outside the scope of the search warrant. Read: FBI: Trump mixed top secret docs with magazines, other items The judge scheduled a Thursday hearing to discuss the matter further, suggesting the Justice Department will have a chance to raise objections to the judge's intentions. In other recent high-profile cases in which a special master has been appointed, the person has been a former judge. Cannon also directed the Justice Department to file under seal with her more detailed descriptions of the material taken from Trump’s estate “specifying all property seized.” The former president’s lawyers have complained that investigators did not disclose enough information to them about what specific documents were removed when agents executed a search warrant on Aug. 8 to look for classified documents. The special master appointment, if it happens, is unlikely to significantly affect the direction of the Justice Department investigation, though it’s possible an outside review of the documents could slow the probe down.

It was the kind of story that media reporter Brian Stelter would normally sink his teeth into — if only it didn’t involve him. CNN said last week it was cancelling “Reliable Sources,” its 30-year-old program on the media, and letting Stelter go, part of a nascent effort by new management to reclaim a brand identity that it feels was damaged during the Trump era. The news network, now under the Warner Discovery corporate banner and led since spring by CNN Worldwide Chairman Chris Licht, is trying to inject more balance into its programming and become less radioactive to Republicans. How and whether that can be accomplished remains a mystery. “CNN has to figure out what it wants to be,” said Carol Costello, a former anchor there and now a journalism instructor at Loyola Marymount University. Former President Donald Trump portrayed CNN as an enemy, and a Pew Research Center study illustrated the impact that had with his followers. In 2014, Pew found that one-third of people who identify or lean Republican said they distrusted CNN as a source for political news. By 2019, that number had shot up to 58 percent — higher distrust than The New York Times, The Washington Post or MSNBC. And that was before the overheated 2020 election campaign and the anger over its outcome. Last year’s firing of CNN anchor Chris Cuomo after he helped his brother, former Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, behind the scenes, also hurt CNN’s reputation among Republicans, said Carlos Curbelo, a former GOP congressman from Florida. As Trump attacked the network, CNN returned fire. Under previous leader Jeff Zucker, CNN figures became more opinionated on the air than they ever had before. Anderson Cooper once likened Trump to “an obese turtle on its back, flailing in the hot sun, realizing his time is over,” a remark he later apologized for. “All mainstream media took a hit with the ascent of Donald Trump,” Costello said. “I really think he did a number on journalism in general, not just CNN. For a time we all played into it, and our reporting was kind of hysterical.” CNN’s tone had a lot to do with changes in the network’s reputation, said Mark Whitaker, a veteran newsman and former CNN executive. CNN had higher ratings and more buzz under Zucker, but, Whitaker asked, “Was it worth it in terms of the way it changed the brand perception?” Being seen as a liberal alternative to Fox News Channel isn’t an issue for a news outlet that plays up partisanship. But for a company that has sold itself as an unbiased news source for more than 40 years — to viewers, to advertisers, to cable or satellite operators — that presents a problem. Since Licht took over, morning anchor Brianna Keilar’s occasional takedowns of Fox coverage have disappeared. Although Licht hasn’t commented publicly on Stelter’s exit, the media reporter’s criticism of Fox was a regular feature of “Reliable Sources.” It received little notice at the time, but cable news executive John Malone, now a member of the Warner Discovery board of directors, said in a CNBC interview last November that “I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing.” Read: CNN’s streaming service shutting down a month after launch Similarly, Warner Discovery President and CEO David Zaslav said at a company town hall in April that CNN should set itself apart from a cable news industry that is dominated by “advocacy networks.” CNN needs to be about reporting, truth and facts, he said. “If we get that, we can have a civilized society,” said Zaslav, who appointed Licht. “And without it, if it all becomes advocacy, we don’t have a civilized society.” Licht has given few interviews to outside journalists since taking over, and a CNN spokesman turned down a request for this article. Licht has taken steps toward the goals his bosses have elucidated. He wants CNN anchors to be conscious of a perspective that they sometime talk down to people. He wants panel discussions to be informative, not dominated by extreme points of view. He wants to resist “outrage porn.” He ordered that the on-air “breaking news” banner be reserved for real breaking news. Licht also went to Washington to meet with Republican leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, his counterpart at the House. Licht would like to see more Republicans appear on CNN for meaningful interviews, not necessarily to be used by them to appear tough to supporters for standing up to hostility. There have already been small signs of success in recent weeks: appearances by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Texas U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw. “This is true of all three (cable news) networks: When you can get only members of one party to show up, it shows that your news division is lacking in credibility with essentially half the country,” said Curbelo, an NBC News contributor. It’s early, but Curbelo said he has liked what he’s seen with Licht so far. The outreach with Republicans has raised some eyebrows, with Democratic strategist Kurt Bardella suggesting in a Los Angeles Times column that CNN was “eager to pander” to politicians detached from reality. And Eric Deggans, NPR’s television critic, said he’s worried about the risk of normalizing lies like the last presidential election was stolen. “Sometimes journalists have been accused of being partisan when what they’ve really been doing is insisting upon the truth and refusing to go along with a political party that is redefining the truth to serve its own ends,” Deggans said. CNN points out that Licht made a similar pitch to aides at President Joe Biden’s White House, showing demographic information of viewers to illustrate it would be worthwhile to appear for interviews. The network resists suggestions that lies would not be challenged, but said wants all Americans to feel their opinions are listened to. “No matter what they do, they’ll be attacked,” Whitaker said. “Trump and others will continue to cry ‘fake news’ about anything they don’t like from the media.” But, he said, CNN has the best chance of any cable news network to reach an audience looking for a more balance in journalism. Other visible moves are likely to come soon. Licht has been eyeing a shakeup of CNN’s morning hours and recently hired Ryan Kadro, a former CBS News colleague who handled that network’s morning show. CNN still has a hole in prime time, too: Chris Cuomo hasn’t been replaced since he was fired last December.   But what’s next remains unclear, which Deggans advised against. He called on CNN’s leaders to be clear with viewers about what’s being done. “The attitude of the new management seems to be, ‘Trust us, we have a plan.’”

The U.S. Secret Service said Friday that it has recovered $286 million in fraudulently obtained pandemic loans and is returning the money to the Small Business Administration. The Secret Service said an investigation initiated by its Orlando office found that alleged conspirators submitted Economic Injury Disaster Loan applications by using fake or stolen employment and personal information and used an online bank, Green Dot, to conceal and move their criminal proceeds. The agency worked with Green Dot to identify roughly 15,000 accounts and seize $286 million connected to the accounts. “This forfeiture effort and those to come are a direct and necessary response to the unprecedented size and scope of pandemic relief fraud,” said Kevin Chambers, director for COVID-19 fraud enforcement at the Justice Department. Billions have been fraudulently claimed through various pandemic relief programs — including Paycheck Protection Program loans, unemployment insurance and others that were rolled out in the midst of the worldwide pandemic that shutdown global economies for months. Read: FBI seized top secret documents in Trump estate search In March, the Government Accountability Office reported that while agencies were able to distribute COVID-19 relief funds quickly, “the tradeoff was that they did not have systems in place to prevent and identify payment errors and fraud” due in part to “financial management weaknesses.” As a result, the GAO has recommended several measures for agencies to prevent pandemic program fraud in the future, including better reporting on their fraud risk management efforts. Since 2020, the Secret Service initiated more than 3,850 pandemic related fraud investigations, seized over $1.4 billion in fraudulently obtained funds and helped to return $2.3 billion to state unemployment insurance programs. The latest seizure included a collaboration of efforts between Secret Service, the SBA’s Inspector General, DOJ and other offices.   Hannibal “Mike” Ware, the Small Business Administration’s inspector general, said the joint investigations will continue “to ensure that taxpayer dollars obtained through fraudulent means will be returned to taxpayers and fraudsters involved face justice.”

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivered a stark warning Friday about the Fed’s determination to fight inflation with more sharp interest rate hikes: It will likely cause pain for Americans in the form of a weaker economy and job losses. The message landed with a thud on Wall Street, sending the Dow Jones Industrial Average down more than 1,000 points for the day. “These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation,” Powell said in a high-profile speech at the Fed’s annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole. “But a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain.” Investors had been hoping for a signal from Powell that the Fed might soon moderate its rate increases later this year if inflation were to show further signs of easing. But the Fed chair indicated that that time may not be near, and stocks tumbled in response. Runaway price increases have soured most Americans on the economy, even as the unemployment rate has fallen to a half-century low of 3.5%. It has also created political risks for President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats in this fall’s elections, with Republicans denouncing Biden’s $1.9 trillion financial support package, approved last year, as having fueled inflation. The Dow Jones average finished down 3% on Friday, its worst day in three months. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite shed nearly 4%. Shorter-term Treasury yields climbed as traders built up bets for the Fed to stay aggressive with rates. Some on Wall Street expect the economy to fall into recession later this year or early next year, after which they expect the Fed to reverse itself and reduce rates. A number of Fed officials, though, have pushed back against that notion. Powell’s remarks suggested that the Fed is aiming to raise its benchmark rate — to about 3.75% to 4% by next year — yet not so high as to tank the economy, in hopes of slowing growth long enough to conquer high inflation. “The idea they are trying to hammer into the market’s head is that their approach makes a rapid pivot to (rate cuts) unlikely,” said Eric Winograd, an economist at asset manager AllianceBernstein. “They are going to stay tight even when it hurts.” After raising its key short-term rate by a steep three-quarters of a point at each of its past two meetings — part of the Fed’s fastest series of hikes since the early 1980s — Powell said the Fed might ease up on that pace “at some point,” suggesting that any such slowing isn’t near. Powell said the size of the Fed’s rate increase at its next meeting in late September — whether one-half or three-quarters of a percentage point — will depend on inflation and jobs data. An increase of either size, though, would exceed the Fed’s traditional quarter-point hike, a reflection of how severe inflation has become. Read: US inflation will likely stay high even as gas prices fall The Fed chair said that while lower inflation readings that have been reported for July have been “welcome,” he added that, “a single month’s improvement falls far short of what (Fed policymakers) will need to see before we are confident that inflation is moving down.” On Friday, an inflation gauge that is closely monitored by the Fed showed that prices actually declined 0.1% from June to July. Though prices did jump 6.3% in July from 12 months earlier, that was down from a 6.8% year-over-year jump in June, which had been the highest since 1982. The drop largely reflected lower gas prices. In his speech Friday, Powell noted that the history of high inflation in the 1970s, when the central bank sought to counter high prices with only intermittent rate hikes, shows that the Fed must stay focused. “The historical record cautions strongly against prematurely” lowering interest rates, he said. “We must keep at it until the job is done.” What particularly worries Powell and other Fed officials is the prospect that inflation would become entrenched, leading consumers and businesses to change their behavior in ways that would perpetuate higher prices. If, for example, workers began demanding higher pay to match higher inflation, many employers would then pass on those higher labor costs to consumers in the form of higher prices. Many analysts speculate that Fed officials want to see roughly six months or so of lower monthly inflation readings, similar to July’s, before stopping their rate hikes. Powell’s speech was the marquee event of the the Fed’s annual economic symposium at Jackson Hole, the first time the conference of central bankers is being held in person since 2019, after it went virtual for two years during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since March, the Fed has implemented its fastest pace of rate increases in decades to try to curb inflation, which has punished households with soaring costs for food, gas, rent and other necessities. The central bank has lifted its benchmark rate by 2 full percentage points in just four meetings, to a range of 2.25% to 2.5%. Those hikes have led to higher costs for mortgages, car loans and other consumer and business borrowing. Home sales have been plunging since the Fed first signaled it would raise borrowing costs. In June, the Fed’s policymakers signaled that they expected their key rate to end 2022 in a range of 3.25% to 3.5% and then to rise further next year to between 3.75% and 4%. If rates reached their projected level at the end of this year, they would be at the highest point since 2008. Powell is betting that he can engineer a high-risk outcome: Slow the economy enough to ease inflation pressures yet not so much as to trigger a recession. His task has been complicated by the economy’s cloudy picture: On Thursday, the government said the economy shrank at a 0.6% annual rate in the April-June period, the second straight quarter of contraction. Yet employers are still hiring rapidly, and the number of people seeking unemployment aid, a measure of layoffs, remains relatively low. At its meeting in July, Fed policymakers expressed two competing concerns that highlighted their delicate task. Read: US inflation jumped 7.5% in the past year, a 40-year high According to minutes from that meeting, the officials — who aren’t identified by name — have prioritized their inflation fight. Still, some officials said there was a risk that the Fed would raise borrowing costs more than necessary, risking a recession. If inflation were to fall closer to the Fed’s 2% target and the economy weakened further, those diverging views could become hard to reconcile. At last year’s Jackson Hole symposium, Powell listed five reasons why he thought inflation would be “transitory.” Yet instead it has persisted, and many economists have noted that those remarks haven’t aged well. Powell indirectly acknowledged that history at the outset of his remarks Friday, when he said that, “at past Jackson Hole conferences, I have discussed broad topics such as the ever-changing structure of the economy and the challenges of conducting monetary policy.”   “Today,” he said, “my remarks will be shorter, my focus narrower and my message more direct.”

Two Florida residents have pleaded guilty in a scheme to peddle a diary and other items stolen from President Joe Biden’s daughter to the conservative group Project Veritas for $40,000, prosecutors said Thursday. Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander “sought to profit from their theft of another person’s personal property,” Manhattan U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. Harris, a 40-year-old from Palm Beach, and Kurlander, 58, of nearby Jupiter, face the possibility of up to five years in prison. They pleaded guilty to conspiracy to transport stolen property across state lines. Harris' lawyer, Sam Talkin, said she “has accepted responsibility for her conduct and looks forward to moving on with her life.” Kurlander’s lawyer, Florian Miedel, declined to comment. Also read: One year after Afghan war, Biden struggles to find footing While authorities didn’t identify anyone in the case except the defendants, the details of the investigation have been public for months. Ashley Biden, the president's daughter, was moving out of a friend's Delray Beach, Florida, home in spring 2020 when she stored the diary and other belongings there, prosecutors said in a court filing. They said Harris then moved into the same room, found the items and got in touch with Kurlander, who enthused in a text message that he would help her make a “ton of money” from selling it, adding an expletive before “ton.” The two initially aimed to sell some of the purloined property to then-President Donald Trump's campaign, but a representative turned them down and told them to take the material to the FBI, according to the court papers. The campaign “can't use this,” Kurlander explained to Harris in a September 2020 text message, adding: “It has to be done a different way.” Also read: Biden tests positive for COVID-19, returns to isolation Their next stop was Project Veritas, which paid for the two to bring some of the material — including the diary and a digital device with family photos — to a New York luxury hotel, prosecutors said. Project Veritas staffers met with Kurlander and Harris in New York and agreed to pay an initial $10,000, saying more money could come if they retrieved more of Ashley Biden’s items from the home, partly in order to authenticate the diary, according to the court filing. Back in Florida, Kurlander texted Harris a blunt assessment of what would come of the exchange, prosecutors said. “They are in a sketchy business and here they are taking what’s literally a stolen diary and info ... and trying to make a story that will ruin” Ashley Biden's life and possibly affect the impending presidential election, he wrote, according to the court papers. He added that the two needed “to tread even more carefully” and get “anything worthwhile” out of the Delray Beach house, according to the court papers. Prosecutors said Kurlander and Harris took Ashley Biden's stored tax documents, clothes and luggage as Kurlander pressed Project Veritas in a message to commit to a bigger payout: “We are taking huge risks. This isn't fair.” A Project Veritas staffer soon flew to Florida, the employee shipped the items to New York and the group paid Harris and Kurlander $20,000 apiece, prosecutors said. Project Veritas identifies itself as a news organization. It is best known for conducting hidden camera stings that have embarrassed news outlets, labor organizations and Democratic politicians. “Project Veritas’s news gathering was ethical and legal" in the diary affair, the group said in a statement Thursday. The organization said earlier that it turned the journal over to law enforcement after receiving it from “tipsters” who maintained that it had been abandoned in a room. "A journalist’s lawful receipt of material later alleged to be stolen is routine, commonplace and protected by the First Amendment,” Project Veritas added Thursday. Neither Project Veritas nor any staffers have been charged with a crime. The FBI searched the group's New York offices and the homes of some of its employees as part of the investigation. A court in New York appointed a former federal judge to review material that was seized in those searches, so as to ensure that investigators couldn’t look at material protected by journalistic or attorney-client privileges. Generally, media organizations aren’t culpable for receiving material that might have been stolen, if they weren’t involved in the theft. But there can be criminal liability for orchestrating theft and then knowingly paying for stolen material. “There is no First Amendment protection for the theft and interstate transport of stolen property,” the U.S. attorney’s office wrote in a court filing last year. O’Keefe has said that Project Veritas ultimately could not confirm that the diary belonged to Ashley Biden. The group did not publish information from it. He added that there was “no doubt Project Veritas acted appropriately at each and every step.” Ashley Biden, a 41-year-old social worker, is the daughter of the president and of first lady Jill Biden. His eldest daughter and his first wife were killed in a 1972 car accident.

The Uvalde school district fired police chief Pete Arredondo on Wednesday under mounting pressure in the grieving Texas town to punish officers over letting a gunman at Robb Elementary School remain in a fourth-grade classroom for more than an hour with an AR-15 style rifle as 19 children and two teachers were killed. In a unanimous vote, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s board of trustees fired Arredondo in an auditorium of parents and survivors of the May 24 massacre. Arredondo, who did not attend the meeting, becomes the first officer to lose his job following one of the deadliest classroom shootings in U.S. history. His ouster came three months to the day after the tragedy, and less than two weeks before students return to school in Uvalde, where some children remain too scared or scarred to go back inside a classroom. Cheers from the crowd followed the vote, and some parents walked out of an auditorium in tears. Outside, several Uvalde residents called for other officers to be held accountable. “Coward!” some in the audience yelled as the meeting got underway. Arredondo, who has been on leave from the district since June 22, has come under the most intense scrutiny of the nearly 400 officers who rushed to school but waited more than 70 minutes to confront the 18-year-old gunman in a fourth-grade classroom. Most notably, Arredondo was criticized for not ordering officers to act sooner. Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, has said Arredondo was in charge of the law enforcement response to the attack. Minutes before the meeting of the Uvalde school board got underway, Arredondo’s attorney released a scathing 4,500-word letter that amounted to the police chief’s fullest defense to date of his actions. Over 17 defiant pages, Arredondo is not a fumbling school police chief who a damning state investigation blamed for not taking command and wasted time by looking for keys to a likely unlocked door, but a brave officer whose level-headed decisions saved the lives of other students. It alleges that Arredondo warned the district about a variety of security issues in the schools a year before the shooting and asserted he wasn’t in charge of the scene. The letter also accused Uvalde school officials of putting his safety at risk by not letting him carry a weapon to the school board meeting if he were to attend, citing “legitimate risks of harm to the public and to Chief Arredondo.” “Chief Arredondo is a leader and a courageous officer who with all of the other law enforcement officers who responded to the scene, should be celebrated for the lives saved, instead of vilified for those they couldn’t reach in time,” George Hyde wrote. Following the vote, Hyde’s office did not immediately return a request for comment. Uvalde school officials have been under mounting pressure from victims’ families and members of the community, many of whom have called for Arredondo’s termination. Superintendent Hal Harrell had first moved to fire Arredondo in July but postponed the decision at the request of the police chief’s attorney. Read: Uvalde school police chief on leave after mass shooting Among those at the meeting was Ruben Torres, father of Chloe Torres, who survived the shooting in room 112 of the school. He said that as a former Marine, he took an oath that he faithfully executed willingly, and did not understand why officers did not take action when leadership failed. “Right now, being young, she is having a hard time handling this horrific event,” Torres said. Shirley Zamora, the mother of a student at Robb Elementary, said accountability shouldn’t end with Arredondo’s dismissal. “This is just going to be the beginning. It’s a long process,” she said. Only one other officer — Uvalde Police Department Lt. Mariano Pargas, who was the city’s acting police chief on the day of massacre — is known to have been placed on leave for their actions during the shooting. The Texas Department of Public Safety, which had more than 90 state troopers at the scene, has also launched an internal investigation into the response by state police. State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde, said McCraw, the state police chief, also deserves scrutiny. “You fail at something so badly that people are getting hurt, then certainly we have to have some greater accountability,” he said. “And accountability means losing your job, so be it.” School officials have said the campus at Robb Elementary will no longer be used when students return Sept 6. Instead, campuses elsewhere in Uvalde will serve as temporary classrooms for elementary school students, not all of whom are willing to return to school in-person following the shooting. School officials say a virtual academy will be offered for students. The district has not said how many students will attend virtually, but a new state law passed last year in Texas following the pandemic limits the number of eligible students receiving remote instruction to “10% of all enrolled students within a given school system.” Schools can seek a waiver to exceed the limit but Uvalde has not done so, according to the Texas Education Agency.   New measures to improve school safety in Uvalde include “8-foot, non-scalable perimeter fencing” at elementary, middle and high school campuses, according to the school district. Officials say they have also installed additional security cameras, upgraded locks, enhanced training for district staff and improving communication.

U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, who twice led fights to impeach former President Donald Trump, defeated U.S. Rep. Carolyn Maloney in a Democratic primary Tuesday after a court forced the two veteran lawmakers into the same New York City congressional district. Nadler’s victory ends a 30-year run in Congress for Maloney, who battled to get government aid for people sickened by clouds of toxic soot after the Sept. 11 attacks. The unusual fight between incumbents who have spent decades working together was the result of a redistricting process that lumped Nadler’s home base on the west side of Manhattan together with Maloney’s on the east side, with neither willing to run in another part of the city. In his victory speech, Nadler said he and Maloney “have spent much of our adult lives working together to better both New York and our nation. I speak for everyone in this room tonight when I thank her for her decades of service to our city.” Nadler also defeated Suraj Patel, a 38-year-old lawyer and lecturer at New York University who has now failed to advance out of a Democratic congressional primary in three straight tries. Nadler, 75, was first elected to Congress in 1992. As chair of the House Judiciary Committee, he led both impeachments of Trump. Nadler was buoyed in the last weeks of the campaign by endorsements from The New York Times and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. He pledged he would go back to Congress “with a mandate to fight for the causes so many of us know to be right,” including abortion access and climate change. Read: US airstrikes target militia-controlled areas in east Syria Maloney, 76, also first elected in 1992, is the first woman to chair the House Oversight and Reform Committee. She is known for her longtime advocacy for Sept. 11 first responders seeking compensation for diseases they attribute to contamination from the destruction of the World Trade Center. She wore a firefighter’s jacket on Capitol Hill and at the 2019 Met Gala. Few policy differences between Nadler, Maloney and Patel emerged during the primary campaign. All support abortion rights, the Green New Deal and tighter restrictions on gun ownership. Patel argued that Nadler’s and Maloney’s generation failed to achieve Democratic goals like codifying Roe v. Wade and should cede to new blood. Nadler and Maloney countered that their seniority in Congress brings clout that benefits New Yorkers. Friends for many years, the two Democrats lamented having to run against each other — something that only happened after a court redrew the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts after concluding the legislature botched the process. “I didn’t want to run against my good friend, Jerry Nadler,” Maloney said at a recent debate. “We have been friends and allies for years. Unfortunately, we were drawn into the same district.” Still, on the campaign trail Maloney said that as a woman, she would fight harder to protect abortion rights than Nadler. Asked at a debate how his record differed from that of Maloney, Nadler cited his votes against the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, and in favor of the Iran nuclear deal. Maloney, also elected to Congress in 1992, voted the other way on all three. Maloney also came under fire from her opponents for her past positions on vaccines, including in 2006 when she introduced legislation directing the federal government to study the debunked theory that vaccines can cause autism. Maloney insisted that she supports vaccines and regretted having ever questioned vaccine safety. The primary winner in the overwhelmingly Democratic district will face Republican Michael Zumbluskas in the November general election.

As Russia's war on Ukraine drags on, U.S. security assistance is shifting to a longer-term campaign that will likely keep more American military troops in Europe into the future, including imminent plans to announce an additional roughly $3 billion in aid to train and equip Ukrainian forces to fight for years to come, U.S. officials said. U.S. officials told The Associated Press that the package is expected to be announced Wednesday, the day the war hits the six-month mark and Ukraine celebrates its independence day. The money will fund contracts for drones, weapons and other equipment that may not see the battlefront for a year or two, they said. The total of the aid package — which is being provided under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative — could change overnight, but not likely by much. Several officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the aid before its public release. Unlike most previous packages, the new funding is largely aimed at helping Ukraine secure its medium- to long-term defense posture, according to officials familiar with the matter. Earlier shipments, most of them done under Presidential Drawdown Authority, have focused on Ukraine’s more immediate needs for weapons and ammunition and involved materiel that the Pentagon already has in stock that can be shipped in short order. In addition to providing longer-term assistance that Ukraine can use for potential future defense needs, the new package is intended to reassure Ukrainian officials that the United States intends to keep up its support, regardless of the day-to-day back and forth of the conflict, the officials said. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg noted the more extended focus Tuesday as he reaffirmed the alliance’s support for the conflict-torn country. Read: Russia may be in Ukraine to stay after 100 days of war “Winter is coming, and it will be hard, and what we see now is a grinding war of attrition. This is a battle of wills, and a battle of logistics. Therefore we must sustain our support for Ukraine for the long term, so that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation,” Stoltenberg said, speaking at a virtual conference about Crimea, organized by Ukraine. Six months after Russia invaded, the war has slowed to a grind, as both sides trade combat strikes and small advances in the east and south. Both sides have seen thousands of troops killed and injured, as Russia’s bombardment of cities has killed countless innocent civilians. There are fears that Russia will intensify attacks on civilian infrastructure and government facilities in Ukraine in the coming days because of the independence holiday and the six-month anniversary of the invasion. Late Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine and the State Department issued a new security alert for Ukraine that repeated a call for Americans in the country to leave due to the danger. “Given Russia’s track record in Ukraine, we are concerned about the continued threat that Russian strikes pose to civilians and civilian infrastructure,” it said. To date, the U.S. has provided about $10.6 billion in military aid to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including 19 packages of weapons taken directly from Defense Department stocks since August 2021. U.S. defense leaders are also eyeing plans that will expand training for Ukrainian troops outside their country, and for militaries on Europe’s eastern and southern flanks that feel most threatened by Russia’s aggression.