Gunfire, shootings and panic mar American weekend

A man firing a rifle killed shoppers at an Indiana mall’s food court. A gunfight at a Houston home killed four people.

A stand-up act by the comedian Craig Robinson in North Carolina didn't even begin before club-goers fled from a man with a gun.

In Las Vegas, the specter of gunfire at the MGM Grand sent the crowded casino into pandemonium over a panic that started with a shattered glass door.

As gamblers fled for the exits at the MGM and others ducked behind overturned card tables, professional poker player Daniel Negreanu was trampled in what he called a sad reflection of an anxious America gripped by gun violence.

“On the surface, other people would look at it and think it was an overreaction,” Negreanu said. “But it’s warranted ... because we live in a state of fear now.”

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Europe broils in heat wave that fuels fires in France, Spain

LA TESTE-DE-BUCH, France (AP) — A heat wave broiling Europe spilled northward Monday to Britain and fueled ferocious wildfires in Spain and France, which evacuated thousands of people and scrambled water-bombing planes and firefighters to battle flames in tinder-dry forests.

Two people were killed in the blazes in Spain that its prime minister linked to global warming, saying, “Climate change kills.”

That toll comes on top of the hundreds of heat-related deaths reported in the Iberian peninsula, as high temperatures have gripped the continent in recent days and triggered wildfires from Portugal to the Balkans. Some areas, including northern Italy, are also experiencing extended droughts. Climate change makes such life-threatening extremes less of a rarity — and heat waves have come even to places like Britain, which braced for possible record-breaking temperatures.

The hot weather in the U.K. was expected to be so severe this week that train operators warned it could warp the rails and some schools set up wading pools to help children cool off.

In France, heat records were broken and swirling hot winds complicated firefighting in the country's southwest.

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Amid Russia shelling, Ukraine aims to strengthen government

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — As Russia kept up its relentless shelling across the country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expanded the shakeup of his security services on Monday by suspending 28 more officials, a day after he dismissed two senior officials over allegations that their agencies harbored “collaborators and traitors.”

In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said a “personnel audit” of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) was underway, and the dismissal of the 28 officials was being decided.

“Different levels, different areas of focus. But the reasons are similar — unsatisfactory results of work,” Zelenskyy said.

On Sunday, he had fired SBU chief Ivan Bakanov and Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova. Zelenskyy, citing hundreds of criminal proceedings into treason and collaboration by people within their departments and other law enforcement agencies.

“Six months into the war, we continue to uncover loads of these people in each of these agencies," said Andriy Smirnov, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office.

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Former White House aides to testify at next Jan. 6 hearing

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two former White House aides are expected to testify at the House Jan. 6 committee's prime-time hearing Thursday as the panel examines what Donald Trump was doing as his supporters broke into the Capitol, according to a person familiar with the plans.

Matthew Pottinger, former deputy national security adviser, and Sarah Matthews, a former press aide, are expected to testify, according to the person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss the matter and requested anonymity. Both Pottinger and Matthews resigned immediately after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection that interrupted the congressional certification of President Joe Biden's victory.

The two witnesses will add to the committee's narrative in its eighth, and possibly final, hearing this summer. The prime-time hearing will detail what Trump did — or did not do — during several hours that day as his supporters beat police officers and broke into the Capitol.

Previous hearings have detailed chaos in the White House and aides and outsiders were begging the president to tell the rioters to leave. But he waited more than three hours to do so, and there are still many unanswered questions about what exactly he was doing and saying as the violence unfolded.

A spokesperson for the committee declined to comment. CNN was the first to report the identity of Thursday’s witnesses.

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Uvalde report takeaways: Massive response but little action

A massive but uncoordinated and chaotic law enforcement response. A “regrettable” culture of noncompliance on school security regarding the basics of locked doors. Online signals of coming violence from the shooter.

The long-awaited Texas House report into the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde that killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers spread the responsibility of the bungled response from law enforcement wider than previous accounts. It also questioned security protocols at the school and took a deeper dive into the shooter's background.

Here are major findings of the House investigation:

MASSIVE BUT INEPT RESPONSE

The report noted a massive but inept response from heavily armed local, state and federal law enforcement. That began moments after the shooter crashed his truck on school grounds and entered the building, then continued through the excruciating inaction that dragged out more than an hour, even as parents begged officers to do something and dispatchers took 911 calls from inside the classrooms.

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Sri Lanka's political turmoil sows worries for recovery

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — A day after Sri Lanka’s president fled, Mohamed Ishad waited outside an immigration office near the capital, clutching a file of documents that he hopes will get his passport renewed so he can leave, too.

With the nation in the throes of its worst economic crisis, Ishad has no job, relies on relatives for financial help and sells vegetables to feed his wife and three children. He wants to go to Japan and find work there so he can send money back home.

Ishad is devastated to leave his family behind, but feels there is no choice — and no opportunity — in his country. “Living in Sri Lanka right now is not good — if you want a good life, you need to leave,” he said. Not only has the economy collapsed, but “there’s hardly a government functioning right now.”

Bankruptcy has forced the island nation's government to a near standstill. Its once-beloved and now reviled former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled to Singapore before resigning last week. The acting president and prime minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, is seen as his proxy and opposed by angry crowds.

Parliament is expected to elect a new leader Wednesday, paving the way for a fresh government, but it is unclear if that's enough to fix a shattered economy and placate a furious nation of 22 million that has grown disillusioned with politicians of all stripes.

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Rare in US for an active shooter to be stopped by bystander

A bystander's decision to shoot a man who opened fire at an Indiana mall was a rare occurrence of someone stepping in to try to prevent multiple casualties before police could arrive.

Police on Monday praised the quick actions of 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, an armed shopper who killed 20-year-old Jonathan Sapirman after Sapirman killed three people and wounded two others at a mall in the Indianapolis suburb of Greenwood.

“Many more people would have died last night if not for a responsible armed citizen,” police Chief Jim Ison said Monday, repeatedly calling Dicken a “good Samaritan” and his response “heroic.”

It isn't common for mass shootings to be stopped in such fashion. From 2000 to 2021, fewer than 3% of 433 active attacks in the U.S. ended with a civilian firing back, according to the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University. The researchers define the attacks as one or more people targeting multiple people.

It was far more common for police or bystanders to subdue the attacker or for police to kill the person, according to the center's national data, which were recently cited by The New York Times.

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Senate panel subpoenas federal prisons director to testify

WASHINGTON (AP) — The outgoing director of the Bureau of Prisons has been subpoenaed to testify before a Senate committee examining abuse and corruption in the beleaguered federal agency.

Michael Carvajal was served a subpoena to appear at a hearing later this month. The subpoena was announced Monday by Sen. Jon Ossoff, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

The committee’s subpoena follows an investigation by The Associated Press exposing systemic issues in the agency, including widespread criminal activity by staff and rampant sexual assault at a women’s prison in California.

The Justice Department announced last week it was replacing Carvajal with Colette Peters, the director of Oregon’s prison system. That announcement came about seven months after Carvajal submitted his resignation amid mounting pressure from Congress after the AP’s investigation.

Though Carvajal is a holdover from the Trump administration, the issuance of the subpoena to compel him to appear before the Senate panel is rare, in part because Democrats have control of both the Senate and the White House. The decision to issue a subpoena exemplifies the lengths members of Congress and congressional investigators are going to bring additional oversight to the embattled agency that has long skirted intense public attention.

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Jury selection for ex-Trump adviser Bannon heads for 2nd day

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s contempt-of-Congress trial will stretch into a second day after lawyers labored through a long Monday session trying to select a jury without preconceived opinions. Bannon is facing criminal charges after refusing for months to cooperate with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.

Bannon, an unofficial adviser to President Donald Trump at the time of the Capitol attack is charged in federal court with defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee that sought his records and testimony. He was indicted in November on two counts of criminal contempt of Congress, one month after the Justice Department received a congressional referral. Each count carries a minimum of 30 days of jail and as long as a year behind bars.

Monday's session before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols was entirely focused on jury selection in a slow-moving process known as voir dire. By the end of the day, 22 prospective jurors had been identified. The trial will resume Tuesday morning as lawyers for Bannon and the government whittle the list down to 14 — with 12 jurors and two alternates.

Much of Monday's questioning of potential jurors by Bannon’s lawyer, Evan Corcoran, centered on how much of the wide coverage of the Jan. 6 hearings they've watched and whether they have opinions about the committee and its work.

In one case, a prospective juror told Nichols that remaining impartial would be “a challenge” for him since “I do believe (Bannon) is guilty.”

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Hawaii waves swamp homes, weddings during 'historic' swell

HONOLULU (AP) — Towering waves on Hawaii's south shores crashed into homes and businesses, spilled across highways and upended weddings over the weekend.

The large waves — some more than 20 feet (6 meters) high — came from a combination of a strong south swell that peaked Saturday evening, particularly high tides and rising sea levels associated with climate change, the National Weather Service said Monday.

A wedding Saturday evening in Kailua-Kona was interrupted when a set of large waves swamped the event, sending tables and chairs crashing toward guests.

Sara Ackerman, an author who grew up in Hawaii and attended the wedding, filmed the waves as they barreled ashore.

“It just was huge,” she said. ”I was filming it and then it just came over the wall and just completely annihilated all the tables and chairs.”

News from © The Associated Press, 2022