House panel demands answers from gun makers on marketing of assault weapons
WASHINGTON — The House Oversight Committee is demanding information about the marketing of assault weapons from leading gun manufacturers, including those that made the weapons used in the recent massacres in Texas and New York.
Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, sent the inquiry in letters to Bushmaster Firearms Industries, Daniel Defense, Sig Sauer Inc., Smith & Wesson Brands, and Sturm, Ruger & Co.
“I am deeply concerned that gun manufacturers continue to profit from the sale of weapons of war, including the AR-15- style assault rifle,” Maloney wrote in the letters, which were released Friday. “Despite decades of rising gun deaths and mass murders using assault rifles, your company has continued to market assault weapons to civilians, reaping a profit from the deaths of innocent Americans.”
The letters note that the killer in this week’s elementary school massacre in Uvalde, Texas, used a Daniel Defense AR-15-style rifle and the gunman in the racist shootings at Buffalo, New York, grocery store earlier this month used a Bushmaster XM-15.
—Bloomberg News
Minneapolis to pay $600,000 to journalist blinded by police projectile in wake of George Floyd's death
MINNEAPOLIS — The Minneapolis City Council this week approved a $600,000 payout to a freelance journalist who lost her eye to a police projectile while covering protests in the wake of George Floyd's murder in spring 2020.
Photojournalist Linda Tirado filed a federal lawsuit nearly two years ago accusing the city and police officials of conspiring to deprive journalists of their constitutional rights during the unrest.
Tirado's matter is the second such settlement approved by council this month.
Earlier in May, City Council approved $1.5 million plus attorneys' fees to Jaleel Stallings. The 29-year-old St. Paul man sued the city and police saying they violated his constitutional rights by using force to intimidate and deter him from protesting police brutality and racism. Stallings filed the suit after a jury found him not guilty last year on charges related to shooting at police officers during the unrest that followed Floyd's killing.
And last month, City Council approved a total of $1.8 million to two women who say police shot them in the face with projectiles as they protested Floyd's murder.
—Star Tribune
President Biden rebukes Putin, hails McCain at 2022 Naval Academy graduation ceremony
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — President Joe Biden took aim at Russia and a changing world at the keynote address at the U.S. Naval Academy's graduation ceremony, where he also hailed late Naval officer Sen. John McCain.
Delivering the academy's keynote address at about 10:30 a.m. Friday, Biden told graduating midshipmen they would be commissioning into a changing global theater, noting the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
"We're seeing the world align not in terms of geography, east and west, Atlantic and Pacific, but in terms of values," Biden said during his address, noting countries which supported his sanctions against Russia in the wake of the country's assault on Ukraine.
"Things are changing so rapidly, that the next ten years will be the decisive decade of this century," he said. "They're going to shape what our world looks like, and the values that will guide it."
He jabbed at Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that the leader's "brutal war" on Ukraine was "literally trying to wipe out the culture and identity of the Ukrainian people."
—The Capital, Annapolis, Md.
1,500 have died in hard-fought eastern Ukrainian city, military officials say
KYIV, Ukraine — According to official Ukrainian figures, around 1,500 people have been killed in the particularly hard-fought eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk since the beginning of the war.
Among them were soldiers as well as civilians, the head of the local military administration, Oleksandr Stryuk, said on Friday.
Many people have also fled. Of the former 130,000 inhabitants, only about a tenth are still there. The governor of Luhansk, Serhii Haidai, also reported that four people had been killed by Russian shelling on the residential areas of Sievierodonetsk the day before.
More than three months after the start of the Russian war, the large city of Sievierodonetsk is one of the last parts of Luhansk still controlled by the Ukrainian army. Not far from the city limits, however, there is already fierce fighting.
Observers fear that Ukrainian brigades in Sievierodonetsk could be encircled by Russian and pro-Russian military forces.
—dpa
