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The Biden administration announced on Tuesday that it will send Ukraine a small number of high-tech, medium-range rocket systems, a critical weapon that Ukrainian leaders have been begging for as they struggle to stall Russian progress in the Donbas region. The rocket systems are part of a new $700 million tranche of security assistance for Ukraine from the U.S. that will include helicopters, Javelin anti-tank weapon systems, tactical vehicles, spare parts and more, according to two senior administration officials. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the weapons package that will be formally unveiled on Wednesday. The U.S. decision to provide the advance rocket systems tries to strike a balance between the desire to help Ukraine battle ferocious Russian artillery barrages while not providing arms that could allow Ukraine to hit targets deep inside Russia and trigger an escalation in the war. In a guest essay published Tuesday evening in The New York Times, President Joe Biden confirmed that he’s decided to “provide the Ukrainians with more advanced rocket systems and munitions that will enable them to more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield in Ukraine.” Biden had said Monday that the U.S. would not send Ukraine “rocket systems that can strike into Russia.” Any weapons system can shoot into Russia if it’s close enough to the border. The aid package expected to be unveiled Wednesday would send what the U.S. considers medium-range rockets — they generally can travel about 45 miles (70 kilometers), the officials said. The Ukrainians have assured U.S. officials that they will not fire rockets into Russian territory, according to the senior administration officials. One official noted that the advanced rocket systems will give Ukrainian forces greater precision in targeting Russian assets inside Ukraine. The expectation is that Ukraine could use the rockets in the eastern Donbas region, where they could both intercept Russian artillery and take out Russian positions in towns where fighting is intense, such as Sievierodonetsk. Read: High prices, Asian markets could blunt EU ban on Russian oil Sievierodonetsk is important to Russian efforts to capture the Donbas before more Western arms arrive to bolster Ukraine’s defense. The city, which is 90 miles (145 kilometers) south of the Russian border, is in an area that is the last pocket under Ukrainian government control in the Luhansk region of the Donbas. Biden in his New York Times’ essay added: “We are not encouraging or enabling Ukraine to strike beyond its borders. We do not want to prolong the war just to inflict pain on Russia.” It’s the 11th package approved so far, and will be the first to tap the $40 billion in security and economic assistance recently passed by Congress. The rocket systems would be part of Pentagon drawdown authority, so would involve taking weapons from U.S. inventory and getting them into Ukraine quickly. Ukrainian troops would also need training on the new systems, which could take at least a week or two. Officials said the plan is to send Ukraine the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, which is mounted on a truck and can carry a container with six rockets. The system can launch a medium-range rocket, which is the current plan, but is also capable of firing a longer-range missile, the Army Tactical Missile System, which has a range of about 190 miles (300 kilometers) and is not part of the plan. Since the war began in February, the U.S. and its allies have tried to walk a narrow line: send Ukraine weapons needed to fight off Russia, but stop short of providing aid that will inflame Russian President Vladimir Putin and trigger a broader conflict that could spill over into other parts of Europe. Over time, however, the U.S. and allies have amped up the weaponry going into Ukraine, as the fight has shifted from Russia’s broader campaign to take the capital, Kyiv, and other areas, to more close-contact skirmishes for small pieces of land in the east and south. To that end, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been pleading with the West to send multiple launch rocket systems to Ukraine as soon as possible to help stop Russia’s destruction of towns in the Donbas. The rockets have a longer range than the howitzer artillery systems that the U.S. has provided Ukraine. They would allow Ukrainian forces to strike Russian troops from a distance outside the range of Russia’s artillery systems. “We are fighting for Ukraine to be provided with all the weapons needed to change the nature of the fighting and start moving faster and more confidently toward the expulsion of the occupiers,” Zelenskyy said in a recent address. Ukraine needs multiple launch rocket systems, said Philip Breedlove, a retired U.S. Air Force general who was NATO’s top commander from 2013 to 2016. “These are very important capabilities that we have not gotten them yet. And they not only need them, but they have been very vociferous in explaining they want them,” said Breedlove. “We need to get serious about supplying this army so that it can do what the world is asking it to do: fight a world superpower alone on the battlefield.” U.S. and White House officials had no public comment on the specifics of the aid package. “We continue to consider a range of systems that have the potential to be effective on the battlefield for our Ukrainian partners. But the point the president made is that we won’t be sending long-range rockets for use beyond the battlefield in Ukraine,” State Department Ned Price said Tuesday. “As the battle has shifted its dynamics, we have also shifted the type of security assistance that we are providing to them, in large part because they have asked us for the various systems that are going to be more effective in places like the Donbas.” Read: Experts: Iran disrupts internet; tower collapse deaths at 34 Russia has been making incremental progress in the Donbas, as it tries to take the remaining sections of the region not already controlled by Russian-backed separatists. Putin has repeatedly warned the West against sending greater firepower to Ukraine. The Kremlin said Putin held an 80-minute telephone call Saturday with the leaders of France and Germany in which he warned against the continued transfers of Western weapons. Overall, the United States has committed approximately $5 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden administration, including approximately $4.5 billion since the Russia invaded on Feb. 24.

At least 37 people were killed and about 5,000 others displaced in northeastern Brazil due to heavy rains, authorities said Saturday. Recife City, the capital of northeastern Pernambuco State, is the most affected by the rains, where 35 people died and about 1,000 others fled their home, according to the local Civil Defense. In Alagoas State, two people were killed in the rains, with more than 4,000 residents evacuated. READ: At least 8 dead after heavy rains in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro Meanwhile, secondary disasters triggered by the heavy rainfall also caused casualties. On Saturday, 20 people were killed in a landslide in Recife, while six others died in another landslide in the nearby city of Camaragibe. According to the Pernambuco Water and Climate Agency, Recife recorded 150 mm of precipitation on Saturday, while Camaragibe registered 129 mm.

Airline travelers are not only facing sticker shock this Memorial Day weekend, the kickoff to the summer travel season. They're also dealing with a pileup of flight cancellations. More than 1,500 flights were canceled as of 9:50 p.m EDT Saturday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. That followed more than 2,300 cancellations on Friday. Delta Air Lines suffered the most among U.S. airlines, with more than 250 flights, or 9% of its operations, eliminated on Saturday. Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, where Delta is based and has its largest hub, experienced heavy travel delays. On Saturday, 5% of the flights there were canceled, while 16% were delayed. Delta noted in an email to The Associated Press that Saturday’s cancellations were due to bad weather and “air traffic control actions,” noting it's trying to cancel flights at least 24 hours in advance this Memorial Day weekend. READ: New year brings more canceled flights for air travelers Delta announced on its website on Thursday that from July 1 to Aug. 7, it would reduce service by about 100 daily departures, primarily in parts of the U.S. and Latin America that Delta frequently serves. “More than any time in our history, the various factors currently impacting our operation — weather and air traffic control, vendor staffing, increased COVID case rates contributing to higher-than-planned unscheduled absences in some work groups — are resulting in an operation that isn’t consistently up to the standards Delta has set for the industry in recent years,” said Delta's Chief Customer Experience Officer Allison Ausband in a post. Airlines and tourist destinations are anticipating monster crowds this summer as travel restrictions ease and pandemic fatigue overcomes lingering fear of contracting COVID-19 during travel. Many forecasters believe the number of travelers will match or even surpass levels in the good-old, pre-pandemic days. However, airlines have thousands fewer employees than they did in 2019, and that has at times contributed to widespread flight cancellations. People who are only now booking travel for the summer are experiencing the sticker shock. Domestic airline fares for summer are averaging more than $400 for a round trip, 24% higher than this time in 2019, before the pandemic, and a robust 45% higher than a year ago, according to travel-data firm Hopper.

Argentina has confirmed its first case of monkeypox in a man who arrived from Spain, the Health Ministry said Friday. "The patient is in good condition, undergoing symptomatic treatment, and his close contacts are under clinical and epidemiological control, with no symptoms to date," the ministry said in a statement. The test result from "the sample taken from the first high-probability case is positive, which confirms infection with poxviruses belonging to the Eurasian-African group of the Orthopox genus," the ministry said. READ: United Arab Emirates detects first case of monkeypox Subsequently, genomic sequencing yielded a very high percentage of homology with the West African clade, like those found in new cases around the world, it added. The health ministry urged those with symptoms to wear a face mask, practise social distance, and consult the health system immediately. 

Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, made a visit to a memorial site for the victims involved in the deadly elementary school shooting in Texas. Meghan placed white flowers tied with a purple ribbon at a memorial outside the Uvalde County Courthouse on Thursday. She paid her respects after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers Tuesday at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. Also Read: Texas elementary school shooting: What do we know so far? The Duchess of Sussex lives in California with her husband Prince Harry and their two children. She took the trip to Texas in a personal capacity as a mother to offer her condolences and support in person to a “community experiencing unimaginable grief,” according to her spokesperson. Meghan left the flowers at the memorial and stood with her arms crossed while she looked at the memorials.    

A gunman stormed into an elementary school Tuesday in Uvalde, Texas, killing 19 children and two teachers in the United States’ deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade. Law enforcement officers killed the shooter, identified as a local 18-year-old who had shot and wounded his grandmother and spelled out his violent plans in online messages shortly before the massacre at Robb Elementary. Investigators say they don’t yet know a motive for the shootings. A look at what we know so far: WHAT HAPPENED IN UVALDE? The attacker, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, shot his 66-year-old grandmother in the face at their Uvalde home, then fled in her truck as she summoned help, according to Gov. Greg Abbott, Texas Public Safety Director Steve McCraw and other officials. A short distance away, Ramos crashed the truck outside the school, got out with a rifle and approached a back door, officials said. They said an officer assigned to the school “engaged” Ramos, but the gunman got into the building and down a hallway to a fourth-grade classroom. After locking the classroom door, he opened fire around 11:30 a.m. with an AR-15-style rifle, carrying multiple magazines. A team including local officers and Border Patrol agents ultimately forced the door open and shot Ramos to death after he fired at them, police said. Other officers and responders shattered some of the school’s windows so teachers and students could escape. Ramos was wearing a tactical vest, though not body armor, according to state senators who said they were briefed on the shooting. There was another AR-15-style rifle in his truck, and a backpack with several magazines full of ammunition was found near the school entrance. WHO WERE THE VICTIMS? Authorities haven’t yet released the victims’ names, but some information about them has emerged from their families. Eliahna Garcia was an outgoing 10-year-old who loved to sing, dance, play sports and be with her family, according to aunt Siria Arizmendi. Uziyah Garcia was only 8 and “the sweetest little boy that I’ve ever known,” said grandfather Manny Renfro, recalling how the youngster was already able to master football pass patterns. Xavier Javier Lopez, 10, had been looking forward to a summer of swimming. Ebullient and loving, he was “just enjoying life, not knowing that this tragedy was going to happen today,” cousin Lisa Garza said. Swift-footed Layla Salazar, 10, had won six races at the school’s field day. “She was just a whole lot of fun,” said her father, Vincent Salazar, remembering how she danced to TikTok videos and sang along with him to the Guns N’ Roses song “Sweet Child O’ Mine” every morning on the way to school. Jailah Nicole Silguero, 10, hadn’t wanted to go to school Tuesday, appearing to think that something bad would happen, her mom, Veronica Luevanos, told Univision. A cousin of Jailah’s also was killed. Eva Mireles, 44, had been teaching for 17 years, according to a welcome letter to students she wrote last fall. She and her husband, a school police officer, had a grown daughter. Mireles wrote that she loved running and hiking, and relative Amber Ybarra said she had an adventurous spirit. WHO WAS THE GUNMAN? Ramos lived in Uvalde itself, a predominantly Latino city of about 16,000 people in a farming area roughly 75 miles (120 kilometers) from the Mexican border and 85 miles (135 kilometers) from San Antonio. A high school dropout, Ramos had no known criminal record or history of mental health problems, Abbott said. Also Read: 'Horrifying' conspiracy theories swirl around Texas shooting In the half-hour before the school killings, Ramos used Facebook to say that he was going to shoot his grandmother, then that he had done so, and then that he was going to shoot up an unspecified elementary school, officials said. Facebook said Ramos’ posts were private messages that came to light after the killings. Investigators also have been scrutinizing an Instagram account that apparently belonged to Ramos. In the days before the shooting, posts featured a photo of a hand holding an ammunition magazine and another photo of two AR-15-style rifles. The account asked another Instagram user to share the latter photo with her 10,000 followers; she declined, saying it was “scary” and she barely knew him. On the morning of the massacre, the account linked to Ramos sent her an ominous message: “I’m about to.” WHERE DID THE GUN COME FROM? The gunman legally bought his weapons soon after his 18th birthday and days before the attack, law enforcement officials told state lawmakers. He purchased one rifle from a federally licensed gun dealer in the Uvalde area May 17, according to a state police briefing to state Sen. John Whitmire. On May 18, the gunman bought 375 rounds of ammunition. Then, two days later, he bought a second rifle.  WHAT DON’T WE KNOW? Authorities haven’t disclosed a full list of the victims. Nor have many important details about the attack been made public.   Among them: what transpired between Ramos and the school officer who first encountered him; who saw the online posts attributed to him; what, if any, history he had with Robb Elementary; and why he went on the rampage. “We don’t see a motive or catalyst right now,” McCraw said Wednesday afternoon. HOW MANY MASS SHOOTINGS HAVE THERE BEEN IN U.S. SCHOOLS? There have been 14 shootings that have claimed four or more victims’ lives at U.S. schools and colleges since 1999, when two students killed 12 of their peers and a teacher at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999. That’s according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University, and to other AP reporting. These mass attacks have killed 169 people in all. The massacre in Uvalde was the deadliest since December 2012, when 20 first graders and six educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut by a gunman who had just killed his mother. In 2007, a Virginia Tech student fatally shot 32 people.    

By now it's as predictable as the calls for thoughts and prayers: A mass shooting leaves many dead, and wild conspiracy theories and misinformation about the carnage soon follow. It happened after Sandy Hook, after Parkland, after the Orlando nightclub shooting and after the deadly rampage earlier this month at a Buffalo grocery store. Within hours of Tuesday's school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, another rash began as internet users spread baseless claims about the man named as the gunman and his possible motives. Also read: Onlookers urged police to charge into Texas school Unfounded claims that the gunman was an immigrant living in the U.S. illegally, or transgender, quickly emerged on Twitter, Reddit and other social media platforms. They were accompanied by familiar conspiracy theories suggesting the entire shooting was somehow staged. The claims reflect broader problems with racism and intolerance toward transgender people, and are an effort to blame the shooting on minority groups who already endure higher rates of online harassment and hate crimes, according to disinformation expert Jaime Longoria. “It's a tactic that serves two purposes: It avoids real conversations about the issue (of gun violence), and it gives people who don't want to face reality a patsy, it gives them someone to blame,” said Longoria, director of research at the Disinfo Defense League, a non-profit that works to fight racist misinformation. In the hours after the shooting, posts falsely claiming the gunman was living in the country illegally went viral, with some users adding embellishments, including that he was “on the run from Border Patrol.” “He was an illegal alien wanted for murder from El Salvador,” read one tweet liked and retweeted hundreds of times. “This is blood on Biden’s hands and should have never happened.” The man who authorities say carried out the shooting, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, is a U.S. citizen, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a news conference on Tuesday. Other social media users seized on images of innocent internet users to falsely identify them as the gunman and claim he was transgender. On the online message board 4Chan, users liberally shared the photos and discussed a plan to label the gunman as transgender, without any evidence to back it up. One post on Twitter, which has since been deleted, featured a photo of a trans woman holding a green bottle to her mouth, looking into the camera, headphones hanging from one ear. “BREAKING NEWS: THE IDENTITY OF THE SHOOTER HAS BEEN REVEALED,” claimed the user, saying the shooter was a “FEMBOY” with a channel on YouTube. None of that was true. The photo actually depicted a 22-year-old trans woman named Sabrina who lives in New York City. Sabrina, who requested her last name not be published due to privacy concerns, confirmed to The Associated Press that the photo was hers and also said she was not affiliated with the purported YouTube account. Sabrina said she received harassing responses on social media, particularly messages claiming that she was the shooter. She responded to a number of posts spreading the image with the misidentification, asking for the posts to be deleted. “This whole ordeal is just horrifying,” Sabrina told the AP. Another photo that circulated widely showed a transgender woman with a Coca-Cola sweatshirt and a black skirt. A second photo showed the same woman wearing a black NASA shirt with a red skirt. These photos didn’t show the gunman either — they were of a Reddit user named Sam, who confirmed her identity to the AP on Wednesday. The AP is not using Sam’s last name to protect her privacy. “It’s not me, I don’t even live in Texas,” Sam wrote in a Reddit post. Authorities have released no information on the gunman's sexuality or gender identification. Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar fit both unfounded claims about Ramos in a single now-deleted tweet that also misspelled his name. “It’s a transsexual leftist illegal alien named Salvatore Ramos,” Gosar tweeted Tuesday night. Gosar’s office did not return a message seeking comment. In some cases, misinformation about mass shootings or other events are spread by well-intentioned social media users trying to be helpful. In other cases, it can be the work of grifters looking to start fake fundraisers or draw attention to their website or organization. Then there are the trolls who seemingly do it for fun. Fringe online communities, including on 4chan, often use mass shootings and other tragedies as opportunities to sow chaos, troll the public and push harmful narratives, according to Ben Decker, founder and CEO of the digital investigations consultancy Memetica. Also read:School massacre continues Texas’ grim run of mass shootings “It is very intentional and deliberate for them in celebrating these types of incidents to also influence what the mainstream conversations actually are,” Decker said. “There’s a nihilistic desire to prove oneself in these types of communities by successfully trolling the public. So if you are able to spearhead a campaign that leads to an outcome like this, you’re gaining increased sort of in-group credibility.” For the communities bearing the brunt of such vicious online attacks, though, the false blame stirs fears of further discrimination and violence. Something as seemingly innocuous as a transphobic comment on social media can spark an act of violence against a transgender person, said Jaden Janak, a PhD candidate at the University of Texas and a junior fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies. “These children and adults who were murdered yesterday were just living their lives," Janak said Wednesday. “They didn’t know that yesterday was going to be their last day. And similarly, as trans people, that’s a fear that we have all the time.”

Once again, one of America’s deadliest mass shootings happened in Texas. Past shootings targeted worshippers during a Sunday sermon, shoppers at a Walmart, students on a high school campus and drivers on a highway. Among the latest victims were 19 children in the small town of Uvalde, west of San Antonio, where on Tuesday a gunman opened fire inside an elementary school in the nation’s deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade. Each of those tragedies in Texas — which resulted in more than 85 dead in all — occurred in the last five years. But as the horror in Uvalde plunges the U.S. into another debate over gun violence, Texas and the state’s Republican-controlled government have by now demonstrated what is likely to happen next: virtually nothing that would restrict gun access. Also read: Biden says ‘we have to act’ after Texas school shooting Lawmakers are unlikely to adopt any significant new limits on guns. Last year, gun laws were actually loosened after a gunman at a Walmart in El Paso killed 23 people in a racist 2019 attack that targeted Hispanics. “I can’t wrap my head around it,” said state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat whose district includes Uvalde. “It’s disturbing to me as a policymaker that we have been able to do little other than create greater access to these militarized weapons to just about anyone who would want them.” Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott identified the gunman as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos. Two other adults also died in the attack. The gunman was killed by authorities. The cycle in Texas — a mass shooting followed by few if any new restrictions on guns — mirrors GOP efforts to block stricter laws in Congress and the ensuring outrage from Democrats and supporters of tougher gun control. President Joe Biden angrily made a renewed push Tuesday evening after the tragedy in Uvalde. “When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” he asked in an address from the White House. The shooting in Texas happened days before the National Rifle Association is set to hold its annual meeting in Houston, where Abbott and other Republican leaders are scheduled to speak. Even as Biden’s party has slim control of Congress, gun violence bills have stalled in the face of Republican opposition in the Senate. Last year, the House passed two bills to expand background checks on firearms purchases, but both languished in the 50-50 Senate where Democrats need at least 10 Republican votes to overcome objections from a filibuster. “It sort of centers around the issue of mental health. It seems like there’s consensus in that area,” No. 2 Senate GOP leader John Thune said about how Congress should respond to the Uvalde shooting. He did not specify what that would be. In Texas, any changes to gun access would not come until lawmakers return to the Capitol in 2023. In the past, calls for action have faded. Abbott, who is up for reelection in November, said the shooting in Uvalde was carried out “horrifically, incomprehensibly” on children. He did not immediately say how or whether Texas would respond to this latest mass shooting on a policy level, but since he became governor in 2015, the state has only gotten more relaxed when it comes to gun laws. Also read: Gunman kills at least 18 children at Texas elementary school Exactly one year before the Uvalde shooting, the GOP-controlled Legislature voted to remove one of the last major gun restrictions in Texas: required licenses, background checks and training for the nearly 1.6 million registered handgun owners in the state at the time. Abbott signed the measure, which came at the end of what was the Texas Legislature’s first chance to act after the Walmart attack. A year later, a man went on a highway shooting rampage in the West Texas oil patch that left seven people dead, spraying bullets into passing cars and shopping plazas and killing a U.S. Postal Service employee while hijacking her mail truck. Following a shooting at Santa Fe High School in 2018 that killed 10 people near Houston, Abbott signaled support for so-called red flag laws, which restrict gun access for people deemed dangerous to themselves or others. But he later retreated amid pushback from gun-rights supporters. Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who won the GOP nomination for a third term Tuesday, told Fox News after the Uvalde shooting that the best response would be training teachers and “hardening” schools. Democrat state Rep. Joe Moody recalled the hope he felt that the Walmart shooting in his border city might finally lead to reforms. “And the only answer you get when we go to the Capitol is, ‘More guns, less restrictions,‘” Moody said. “That’s it.’”

Distraught families gathered at a local civic center and turned to social media to mourn and to make desperate pleas for help finding missing children as the death toll in a gruesome school shooting at a Texas elementary school rose to at least 19 students. Authorities said the gunman also killed two adults. By nightfall, names of those killed during Tuesday’s attack at Robb Elementary School in the town of Uvalde began to emerge. One man at the civic center walked away sobbing into his phone “she is gone.” On the backside of the building, a woman stood by herself, alternately crying and yelling into her phone, shaking her fist and stamping her feet. Also read: Biden says ‘we have to act’ after Texas school shooting Manny Renfro said he got word Tuesday that his grandson, 8-year-old Uziyah Garcia, was among those killed. “The sweetest little boy that I’ve ever known,” Renfro said. “I’m not just saying that because he was my grandkid.” Renfro said Uziyah last visited him in San Angelo during spring break. “We started throwing the football together and I was teaching him pass patterns. Such a fast little boy and he could catch a ball so good,” Renfro said. “There were certain plays that I would call that he would remember and he would do it exactly like we practiced.” Fourth-grade teacher Eva Mireles, 44, was remembered as a loving mother and wife. “She was adventurous. I would definitely say those wonderful things about her. She is definitely going to be very missed,” said 34-year-old relative Amber Ybarra, of San Antonio. Ybarra prepared to give blood for the wounded and pondered how no one noticed trouble with the shooter in time to stop him. “To me, it’s more about raising mental health awareness,” said Ybarra, a wellness coach who attended the elementary school where the shooting happened. “Someone could possibly have seen a dramatic change before something like this happened.” Lisa Garza, 54, of Arlington, Texas, mourned the death of her cousin, Xavier Javier Lopez, who had been eagerly awaiting a summer of swimming. “He was just a loving 10-year-old little boy, just enjoying life, not knowing that this tragedy was going to happen today,” she said. “He was very bubbly, loved to dance with his brothers, his mom. This has just taken a toll on all of us.” She also lamented what she described as lax gun laws. Also read: Gunman kills at least 18 children at Texas elementary school “We should have more restrictions, especially if these kids are not in their right state of mind and all they want to do is just hurt people, especially innocent children going to the schools,” Garza said. On social media, pictures of smiling children were posted, their families begging for information. Classes had been winding down for the year and each school day had a theme. Tuesday’s was Footloose and Fancy. Students were supposed to wear a nice outfit with fun or fancy shoes. Adolfo Cruz, a 69-year-old air conditioning repairman, remained outside the school Tuesday night, waiting for word about his 10-year-old great-granddaughter, Eliajha Cruz Torres, whose whereabouts remained unknown to family. Cruz drove to the scene after receiving a tearful and terrifying call from his daughter shortly after the first reports that an 18-year-old gunman had opened fire at the school. While he waited outside the school Tuesday night, his family was at the hospital and civic center waiting for any potential word on her condition. Çruz called the waiting the heaviest moment of his life. “I hope she is alive,” Cruz said. “They are waiting for an update.” Federico Torres waited for news about his 10-year-old son Rogelio. He told KHOU-TV that he was at work when he learned about the shooting and rushed to the school. “They sent us to the hospital, to the civic center, to the hospital and here again, nothing, not even in San Antonio,” Torres said. “They don’t tell us anything, only a photo, wait, hope that everything is well.” Torres said he was praying that “my son is found safe ... Please if you know anything, let us know.” Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home, which is located across the street from Robb Elementary School, said in a Facebook post on Tuesday evening that it would be assisting families of the shooting victims with no cost for funerals.

Lamenting a uniquely American tragedy, an anguished and angry President Joe Biden delivered an urgent call for new restrictions on firearms after a gunman shot and killed at least 19 children at a Texas elementary school. Biden spoke Tuesday night from the White House barely an hour after returning from a five-day trip to Asia that was bracketed by mass shootings in the U.S. He pleaded for action to address gun violence after years of failure — and bitterly blamed firearm manufacturers and their supporters for blocking legislation in Washington. Also read: Gunman kills at least 18 children at Texas elementary school ’“When in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” Biden said with emotion. “Why are we willing to live with this carnage? Why do we keep letting this happen?” With first lady Jill Biden standing by his side in the Roosevelt Room, the president, who has suffered the loss of two of his own children — though not to gun violence — spoke in visceral terms about the grief of the loved ones of the victims and the pain that will endure for the students who survived. “To lose a child is like having a piece of your soul ripped away,” Biden said. “There’s a hollowness in your chest. You feel like you’re being sucked into it and never going to be able to get out.” He called on the nation to hold the victims and families in prayer — but also to work harder to prevent the next tragedy, “It’s time we turned this pain into action,” he said. At least 19 students were killed at Robb Elementary School in the heavily Latino town of Uvalde, Texas, according to local officials. The death toll also included two adults. The gunman died after being shot by responding officers, local police said. It was just a week earlier that Biden, on the eve of his overseas trip, traveled to Buffalo to meet with victims’ families after a racist, hate-filled shooter killed 10 Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. The back-to-back tragedies served as sobering reminders of the frequency and brutality of an American epidemic of mass gun violence. “These kinds of mass shootings rarely happen anywhere else in the world,” Biden said, reflecting that other nations have people filled with hate or with mental health issues but no other industrialized nation experiences gun violence at the level of the U.S. “Why?” he asked. It was much too early to tell if the latest violent outbreak could break the political logjam around tightening the nation’s gun laws, after so many others — including the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut that killed 26, including 20 children — have failed. “The idea that an 18-year-old kid can walk into a gun store and buy two assault weapons is just wrong,” Biden said. He has previously called for a ban on assault-style weapons, as well as tougher federal background check requirements and “red flag” laws that are meant to keep guns out of the hands of those with mental health problems. Late Tuesday, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer set in motion possible action on two House-passed bills to expand federally required background checks for gun purchases, but no votes have been scheduled. Biden was somber when he returned to the White House, having been briefed on the shooting on Air Force One. Shortly before landing in Washington, he spoke with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and offered “any and all assistance” needed, the White House said. He directed that American flags be flown at half-staff through sunset Saturday in honor of the victims in Texas. Also read: 3 teens killed, 1 injured in gas station shooting in U.S. Texas His aides, some of whom had just returned from Asia with the president, gathered to watch Biden’s speech on televisions in the West Wing. “I’d hoped when I became president I would not have to do this, again,” he said. “Another massacre.” In a stark reminder of the issue’s divisiveness, Biden’s call for gun measures was booed at a campaign event in Georgia hosted by Herschel Walker, who won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Speaking at an Asian Pacific American event that was intended to celebrate Biden’s Asia trip, Vice President Kamala Harris said earlier that people normally declare in moments like this, “our hearts break — but our hearts keep getting broken ... and our broken hearts are nothing compared to the broken hearts of those families.” “We have to have the courage to take action ... to ensure something like this never happens again,” she said. Echoing Biden’s call, former President Barack Obama, who has called the day of the Sandy Hook shooting the darkest of his administration, said, “It’s long past time for action, any kind of action.” “Michelle and I grieve with the families in Uvalde, who are experiencing pain no one should have to bear,” he said in a statement. “We’re also angry for them. Nearly ten years after Sandy Hook—and ten days after Buffalo—our country is paralyzed, not by fear, but by a gun lobby and a political party that have shown no willingness to act in any way that might help prevent these tragedies.” Congress has been unable to pass substantial gun violence legislation ever since the bipartisan effort to strengthen background checks on firearm purchases collapsed in the aftermath of the 2012 shooting. Despite months of work, a bill that was backed by a majority of senators, fell to a filibuster — unable to to overcome the 60-vote threshold needed to advance. In impassioned remarks on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who represented Newton, Connecticut, in the House at the time of the Sandy Hook massacre, asked his colleagues why they even bother running for office if they’re going to stand by and do nothing. “I’m here on this floor to beg — to literally get down on my hands and knees — to beg my colleagues,” he said. Murphy said he was planning to reach out to Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn after the two had teamed on an earlier background check bill that never became law. He said he would also reach out to Texas’ other Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. “I just don’t understand why people here think we’re powerless,” Murphy said. “We aren’t.” Cornyn told reporters he was on his way to Texas and would talk with them later. Cruz issued a statement calling it “a dark day. We’re all completely sickened and heartbroken.” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who sponsored gun legislation that failed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate after Sandy Hook, said, “We’re just pushing on people who just won’t budge on anything.” “It makes no sense at all why we can’t do commonsense things and try to prevent some of this from happening,” he said.