WASHINGTON/UVALDE, Texas, May 30 (Reuters) - A day after promising residents of Uvalde, Texas, action to address gun violence, U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday sought to appeal to "rational" Republicans to curb powerful weapons and take other federal action to prevent mass shootings.
"Things have gotten so bad that everybody is getting more rational about it," Biden said as he returned from a weekend trip to memorialize the 19 children and two teachers killed last Tuesday in the nation's worst mass school shooting in a decade.
BBC
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has visited troops in the Kharkiv region, on the country's battered eastern front line.
It was his first official trip outside the Kyiv region since the Russian invasion began on 24 February.
He was pictured in a bullet-proof vest surveying ruins in Kharkiv city.
Mr Zelensky told soldiers, "I want to thank each of you for your service." Later, he sacked the local security chief for "not defending" the city.
Russia has resumed shelling Kharkiv - Ukraine's second-largest city - in recent days after a fortnight of comparative quiet.
The city - Ukraine's second-largest - faced intense bombardment in the war's first months, with images showing tower blocks flattened to rubble.
C/NET (5/28/22)
If you're waiting for longer range, faster charging and lower sticker prices before buying an EV, you might already be missing the boat: An electric car's total cost of ownership is challenging that of combustion engine cars and may soon make an EV the only logical car to buy.
TCO isn't a concept unique to EVs: It applies to anything you buy that has long-term durability and costs along the way. Whether electric or gas, the TCO of a car is based primarily on these factors:
- Price paid for the car, including manufacturer rebates.
- Financing costs to buy or lease.
- Depreciation of the car over time.
- Registration and licensing fees.
- Government tax incentives or credits.
- Insurance premiums.
- Maintenance costs.
- Repair bills
NPR
European Union leaders reached a compromise Monday to impose a partial oil embargo on Russia at a summit focused on helping Ukraine with a long-delayed package of sanctions that was blocked by Hungary.
The watered-down embargo covers only Russian oil brought in by sea, allowing a temporary exemption for imports delivered by pipeline.
EU Council President Charles Michel said on Twitter the agreement covers more than two-thirds of oil imports from Russia, "cutting a huge source of financing for its war machine. Maximum pressure on Russia to end the war."
NPR
Astronomers say a meteor shower is possible Monday night into early Tuesday.
On Monday night, Earth will travel through the debris trails of a broken comet named 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann or SW3, for short, according to a NASA blog.
"Will a new #meteorshower, the tau Herculids, put on a spectacular show the night of May 30-31? Maybe, maybe not," NASA's planetary science division tweeted.
Reuters
LONDON/BERLIN, May 30 (Reuters) - The humble wire harness, a cheap component that bundles cables together, has become an unlikely scourge of the auto industry. Some predict it could hasten the downfall of combustion cars.
Supplies of the auto part were choked by the war in Ukraine, which is home to a significant chunk of the world's production, with wire harnesses made there fitted in hundreds of thousands of new vehicles every year.
The Guardian
With Republicans stonewalling for years on any significant federal gun safety legislation, some states are now rushing to take steps themselves following large-scale shootings in New York and Texas this month.
Democrats in some blue states are making fresh efforts to reinvigorate proposals toward what gun control advocates call “evidence-based policy interventions”.
In New Jersey, Democratic governor Phil Murphy singled out four Republican state lawmakers opposing gun safety and accused them of
taking “blood money” while urging them to pass a stalled gun control package that included raising the age to 21 for purchases of long guns,
such as assault rifles, and removing laws that shield gun makers from civil lawsuits.
The Guardian
An Israeli airstrike on an agrochemical warehouse during last year’s war in Gaza amounted to the “indirect deploying of chemical weapons”, according to a report analysing the attack and its impact.
Incendiary artillery shells fired by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) hit the large Khudair Pharmaceutical and Agricultural Tools warehouse in the north of the Gaza Strip on 15 May last year, setting fire to hundreds of tonnes of pesticides, fertilisers, plastics and nylons. The strike created a toxic plume, which engulfed an area of 5.7 sq km and has left local residents struggling with health issues, including two reports of miscarriages, and indications of environmental damage.
The Guardian
People who drink coffee – whether with or without sugar – appear to have a lower risk of an early death, although experts caution the finding may not be down to the brew itself.
About 98m cups of coffee are drunk every day in the UK, according to the British Coffee Association, with the National Coffee Association revealing that in the US the figure is about 517m cups.
Previous studies have suggested the beverage may be beneficial to health, with coffee drinking associated with a lower risk of conditions ranging from
chronic liver disease to certain cancers and even
dementia.
Now researchers in China have found people who consumed a moderate amount of coffee every day, whether sweetened with sugar or not, had a lower risk of death over a seven-year period than those who did not.
The Guardian
A tuberculosis outbreak in the Canadian Arctic has prompted frustration in a remote Inuit community and highlighted the persistence of an illness that has largely been wiped out in the rest of the country.
The outbreak also lays bare the dismal living conditions and overcrowding in many Arctic communities, despite Canada’s status as one of the world’s wealthiest nations.
Officials in Nunavut say there are 31 cases of active tuberculosis in the hamlet of Pangnirtung, a community of 1,500 on Baffin Island. There are also an additional 108 cases of latent tuberculosis – a form of the illness that puts patients at risk of developing an active form of the respiratory illness in the future and can be resistant to vaccines.
Al Jazeera
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced new legislation that his government says will usher in “some of the strongest gun control measures” in decades, including a “freeze” on the buying and selling of handguns in the country.
In a news conference in Ottawa on Monday evening, Trudeau invoked a string of mass shootings in Canada over the past decades, as well as recent attacks in the United States, as part of his government’s impetus to introduce Bill C-21.
Al Jazeera
Following the massacre of 19 elementary school students and two teachers by an 18-year-old man with an AR-15-style rifle in Uvalde, Texas, Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat who is campaigning for governor, briefly seized the national political spotlight to implore voters that it is time to do more to protect Americans from gun violence.
O’Rourke, who wants to unseat Republican Greg Abbott, crashed a news conference last week, in a scene widely viewed online shouting at his opponent that the murders of the schoolchildren were “predictable” and “You are doing nothing!”
Deutsche Welle
French authorities have blamed fans and counterfeiters for trouble outside the Stade de France on Saturday evening ahead of the Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid.
Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told reporters on Monday that police officers had "prevented deaths" at the game, in the face of criticism from Liverpool fans and British politicians for indiscriminate use of pepper spray on large crowds of fans.
What did French authorities say about the Champions League final?
The media conference did not feature an apology, with the Interior and Sports ministers sticking to the line that fan behavior was the main issue.
Darmanin claimed that fake tickets were a huge problem at the match, blaming Liverpool's request for paper tickets over electronic ones for this. He said that this made it more difficult for officials to identify fake tickets. According to Darmanin, who did not explain how he had this data, "70% of the tickets presented at pre-screening" were counterfeit, and 15% of those at the second checks were still fake.
Deutsche Welle
Just days after a school shooting in Texas that shocked the world, outraged protesters confronted gun enthusiasts this weekend outside a massive National Rifle Association exhibition in Houston.
Demonstrators held banners calling for more thorough sales background checks, bans on weapons with a faster kill rate, and an end to private gun ownership altogether.
But protesters and gun advocates alike believe that the latest demands for reform will likely fade before they translate into US legislation. The NRA is banking on it.
While the Democratic Party is calling for tougher control measures, vehement opposition by Republicans has resulted in a stalemate. This political divide played out dramatically at the site of the three-day NRA event that ended on Sunday.
"Shame!," gun control advocates chanted outside the venue, to which supporters of the powerful gun lobby organization responded: "Arm the teachers."
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