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Good evening. Here’s the latest.
1. “This is one of New Zealand’s darkest days.”
That was Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, above, after 49 people were killed in shootings at two mosques during Friday Prayer in central Christchurch. The terrorist attack also left dozens wounded.
A suspect has been charged with murder and appeared in court Saturday morning local time. The 28-year-old Australian man was apparently motivated by white nationalism and a desire to drive cultural, political and racial wedges between people across the globe. Here’s what we know about him.
Ms. Ardern said a total of five firearms, including two semiautomatic weapons, were used in the attacks. We’ll continue to provide live updates here.
Muslims in New Zealand from across the Middle East and Asia formed a tightly bound community, reaching back to the mid-19th century. Mosques were not for Pakistanis or Somalis or Bangladeshis, but for anyone in town, residents said.
In response to the attack, security was tightened at mosques around the United States.
2. A live stream of the attack made this massacre different.
After a gunman streamed gruesome video of the shooting on Facebook, it quickly posted to YouTube and went viral, followed by a long manifesto attributed to the shooter. It was a mass murder of, and for, the internet, our columnist writes.
“In some ways, it felt like a first — an internet-native mass shooting, conceived and produced entirely within the irony-soaked discourse of modern extremism,” he says. Above, outside one of the attacked mosques.
3. President Trump issued his first veto, blocking a bill with bipartisan support that opposed his declaration of a national emergency on the border.
The veto, which was expected, will send the legislation back to Congress, and most likely does not have enough votes for an override. Even if Congress fails to override the veto, the emergency declaration is already being challenged in court.
In other administration news, North Korea threatened to suspend talks with the United States and said that its leader, Kim Jong-un, would soon decide whether to resume nuclear and missile tests.
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4. Investigators at the crash site of the doomed Ethiopian Airlines flight found new evidence pointing to another connection to an earlier disaster involving the same model of Boeing jet. Above, Max 8 jets grounded at Tulsa International Airport in Oklahoma on Thursday.
The plane’s stabilizers appeared to have been tilted upward, according to two people with knowledge of the recovery operations. This would have forced down the nose of the jet. The causes of both crashes are under investigation, but the new evidence potentially indicates that both planes had problems with a newly installed automated system intended to prevent a stall.
Separately, Boeing promised pilots a software fix for its 737 Max jets last year, but that hasn’t happened yet.
5. “Should we remain seated in class for three hours this afternoon while we have no future? Pointless.”
Thousands of children around the world, including in Erfurt, Germany, above, skipped school to demand action on climate change. It was a stark display of the alarm of a generation, and of anger toward previous generations for not taking the issue seriously enough. We’ve collected the best pictures.
Help us get a picture of how communities around the world are affected by — and adapting to — the manifestations of climate change. We want to hear from you.
6. Rarely does one national conversation touch all college campuses — but this week’s admissions scandal did.
We talked to students across the country. Some were left heartbroken and fuming. Others tried to find solace, like one Yale student who secluded himself in a French monastery for Spring Break. Above, Stanford University, one of the colleges cited in the indictment.
The conversation opened up new criticism around the standardized tests — like the SAT and ACT — that favor wealthy students who can afford test prep and other advantages.
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7. This week, we reported that the F.D.A. chief announced new regulations on e-cigarettes. Now, opponents of the crackdown are swooping in.
As Dr. Scott Gottlieb, above in 2017, is set to depart by the end of the month, lobbyists for Juul, Altria and the rest of the e-cigarette and tobacco business, along with conservative organizations, are pushing against Dr. Gottlieb’s plan to restrict sales of most flavored e-cigarettes to separate adult-only areas and to require age verification of customers.
His acting replacement is Dr. Norman Sharpless, director of the National Cancer Institute. The Trump administration backs closing off children’s access to e-cigarettes, while making them available to adult smokers trying to quit.
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8. The Polish government is threatening to jail a man for refusing to return a painting stolen from a museum by Nazis during World War II.
Alexander Khochinsky, a New York art dealer of Russian descent, wants to trade the painting for compensation for land he says Poland confiscated from his mother, a Jew who fled the Nazis. Above, “Girl With a Dove” by Antoine Pesne, the painting in question.
Separately, in Germany, cultural authorities have agreed on a set of guidelines for returning artifacts taken from its former colonies. Officials agreed to work with museums and ensure wrongfully obtained artifacts get back to their rightful owners.
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9. There is some excellent TV airing this weekend, our critics write.
“Shrill” stars Aidy Bryant, above left, as a woman trying to break out of the “mind prison” she’s starting to recognize and reject. Ms. Bryant’s unfussy performance is radiating, our critic writes. It’s available on Hulu on Friday.
In another critic’s pick, the “raunchy, glorious end” of the fourth and final season of “Catastrophe,” Amazon’s rawly honest marriage comedy, careens to a satisfying finish.
But there is some less good news for fans of “One Day at a Time.” After canceling one of TV’s best series, our chief critic writes, Netflix seemed to want to get credit for mourning its own business decision.
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10. Finally, have you ever found yourself wanting to huff a baby’s head? To smush a floppy dog?
There’s a term for that: It’s called cute aggression, writes Pagan Kennedy, a science writer and contributing Opinion writer. To explore this, researchers at Yale handed volunteers bubble wrap, then showed them several images. People popped more bubbles when looking at the cutest images, like kittens, suggesting that this prompted an urge to squeeze or crush.
Studying this cute-overload feeling may tell us more about the parts of our minds devoted to nurturing.
Have a delightful weekend.
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Source : Nytimes
