Escaped prisoner fatally shot after killing family; Biden addresses nation about gun violence; Platinum Jubilee begins for Queen Elizabeth II | Top headlines for June 2 & 3, 2022Tropical storm watches were posted Thursday for Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas as the system that battered Mexico moves to the east. The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm once known as Agatha in the Pacific Ocean will be known as Alex in the Atlantic Ocean basin.
Texas prison officials say a convicted murderer on the run since escaping a prison bus after stabbing its driver last month has been fatally shot by law enforcement after he killed a family of five and took their truck.
State prison system spokesman Jason Clark says Gonzalo Lopez was killed about 35 south of San Antonio late Thursday. Lopez was thought to be hiding near Centerville, Texas, when they received a call from someone concerned after not hearing from an elderly relative.
Officers went to a weekend cabin near Centerville and found the bodies of one adult and four minors. Authorities say the family was from Houston. Officials say law enforcement officers and Lopez exchanged gunfire before he was fatally shot.
President Joe Biden has delivered an impassioned plea to Congress to act on gun control. In an address to the nation Thursday night, he called on lawmakers to restore limits on the sale of assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.
He says that if legislators fail to act, voters should use their “outrage” to turn gun violence into a central issue in November’s midterm elections. Biden is trying to drive up pressure on Congress to pass stricter laws, though such efforts have failed in the wake of past violence.
The speech follows recent mass shootings in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York.
One hundred days into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, numbers tell the tale of the death, destruction and economic havoc caused by Europe’s worst armed conflict in decades. The counts, while often just estimates, are staggering: Tens of thousands of civilians and soldiers likely killed. Millions more forced to flee the country or internally displaced. Factories, hospitals, bridges, schools and residences destroyed.
Dubai police say they have arrested and plan to extradite a British man wanted in Denmark over a $1.7 billion tax fraud case. Dubai police on Friday identified the man as Sanjay Shah and said his arrest came after Denmark signed an agreement in March allowing for extradition between the United Arab Emirates and Denmark.
U.N. experts say Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers are maintaining close ties with al-Qaida as they consolidate control over the country, and their main military threat is coming from the Islamic State extremist group and guerrilla-style attacks by former Afghan government security personnel.
The experts said in a new report to the U.N. Security Council that with the onset of better weather, fighting may escalate as both Islamic State and resistance forces undertake operations against Taliban forces. But the experts said neither the Islamic State nor al-Qaida “is believed to be capable of mounting international attacks before 2023 at the earliest."
After months of robust hiring, U.S. employers might have pulled back slightly in May, to levels that would still be consistent with a healthy job market, despite high inflation and rising borrowing costs.
Economists have estimated that the nation added a solid 325,000 jobs last month, down from 428,000 in both March and April. If so, that would snap a record-breaking streak of 12 straight months in which job growth had topped 400,000.
The unemployment rate is expected to slip to 3.5% — matching a half-century low — from 3.6%. The May jobs report the government will issue Friday coincides with inflation near a four-decade high.
A Texas state senator says the commander at the scene of a school shooting in Texas was not informed of panicked 911 calls from inside the school building. Sen. Roland Gutierrez said during a news conference Thursday that the pleas for help from people inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde did not make their way to school district police Chief Pete Arredondo.
The Democratic senator who represents the city called it a “system failure” that the calls were going to city police but not communicated to Arredondo. The head of the Texas Department of Public Safety has said police didn’t confront the gunman more quickly because Arredondo believed the situation had morphed from an active shooting to a hostage situation. Nineteen children and two teachers died.
The Celtics strike first in the NBA Finals, the Yankees take a pair from the Angels and the Avalanche go up 2-0 in the NHL's Western Conference finals.
The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing Thursday on a bill that would raise the age limit for purchasing a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21. The bill would also make it a federal offense to manufacture or possess large-capacity magazines, and would create a grant program to buy back such magazines.
With Republicans mostly opposed, the Senate is unlikely to take up the bill, but senators from both parties are working privately on separate legislation they hope can succeed.
Police say a man who blamed his surgeon for ongoing pain after a recent back surgery bought an AR-style rifle hours before opening fire at a Tulsa, Oklahoma, medical office, killing the surgeon and three other people before fatally shooting himself.
Tulsa Police Chief Wendell Franklin identified the shooter as 45-year-old Michael Louis. He says the gunman had recently undergone back surgery and had called a clinic repeatedly complaining of pain. Franklin says the doctor who performed the surgery, Dr. Preston Phillips, was killed Wednesday, along with Dr. Stephanie Husen, receptionist Amanda Glenn and patient William Love.
The Biden administration says children under 5 may be able to get their first COVID-19 vaccination doses as soon as June 21, if federal regulators authorize shots for the age group as expected.
White House COVID-19 coordinator Ashish Jha outlined the administration’s planning Thursday for the last remaining ineligible age group to get shots. He says the Food and Drug Administration’s outside panel of advisers will meet on June 14-15 to evaluate the Pfizer and Moderna shots for younger kids.
Shipments to doctors’ offices and pediatric care facilities would begin soon after FDA authorization, with the first shots possible the following week.
A new study is drawing attention to a rise in poisonings in children involving the sleep aid melatonin. Last year, U.S. poison control centers received more than 52,000 calls of children consuming worrisome amounts of melatonin.
Buckingham Palace says Queen Elizabeth II will not attend a church service to mark her Platinum Jubilee after experiencing “discomfort” at events on Thursday. The palace says that with “great reluctance” the 96-year-old monarch has decided to skip Friday’s service at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
The palace says “the queen greatly enjoyed today’s Birthday Parade and Flypast but did experience some discomfort.” Britain is marking the monarch’s 70 years on the throne with four days of events over a long holiday weekend.
Elizabeth is Britain’s longest-reigning monarch and the first to serve for seven decades. Many royal followers camped out overnight in London in hopes of getting a glimpse of the queen.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says if Russia prevails in its war in Ukraine “then the dark times will come for everyone” in Europe. Addressing the parliament in Luxembourg via a video link on Thursday, Zelenskyy said: “If we win this war, all Europeans will be able to continue enjoying their freedom.”
“But if this one person who wants to destroy any freedom in Ukraine and Europe prevails, then dark times will come for everyone on the continent,” he added, referring to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.
He said Russia currently controls almost 20% of Ukraine’s territory, an area larger than Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg combined, and that “tens of thousands” of people have died in the first 99 days of the war.
The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed handing more power to states and tribes to block major energy projects based on water quality concerns. The proposal would undo a Trump-era rule that restricted local regulators’ authority to stand in the way of fossil fuel development.
The new proposal would allow states to conduct a broader, more flexible review before making a permitting decision. The public will have time to weigh in on the proposal. For now, the Trump-era rule will remain in place.
A stronger-than-expected economic recovery from the pandemic has pushed back the go-broke dates for Social Security and Medicare, but officials warn that the current economic turbulence is putting additional pressures on the bedrock retirement programs.
The annual Social Security and Medicare trustees report released Thursday states that Social Security’s trust fund will be unable to pay full benefits in 2035, instead of last year's estimation of 2034. The projected depletion date for Medicare’s trust fund for inpatient hospital care moved back two years to 2028 from last year’s forecast of 2026.
President Joe Biden says he wasn't briefed on the prospect of nationwide shortages of infant formula for about two months. And he's acknowledging the strain on families while his administration struggles to address the situation.
Yet company executives at a meeting Biden hosted from the White House on Wednesday told the president they knew the substantial impact that the shutdown of a major production plant in February would have on the U.S. supply almost immediately.
The OPEC oil cartel and allied producing countries including Russia will raise production by 648,000 barrels per day in July and August, offering modest relief for a global economy suffering from soaring energy prices and the resulting inflation.
The decision Thursday steps up the pace by the alliance, known as OPEC+, in restoring cuts made during the worst of the pandemic recession. The group had been adding a steady 432,000 barrels per day each month to gradually restore production cuts from 2020.
The move to increase production faster than planned comes as rising crude prices have pushed gasoline to a record high in the U.S.
Fewer Americans applied for jobless aid last week and the number of Americans collecting unemployment remain at historically low levels. Applications for unemployment benefits fell by 11,000 to 200,000 for the week ending May 28, the Labor Department reported Thursday.
First-time applications generally track the number of layoffs. The four-week average for claims, which evens out some of the weekly volatility, dipped by 500 from the previous week to 206,500.
The total number of Americans collecting jobless benefits for the week ending May 21 fell from the previous week, to 1,309,000, the fewest since Dec. 27, 1969.
—The Associated Press
