AFP

Desperate pleas for a stop to the gun massacres plaguing the United States rang out Sunday during President Joe Biden’s visit to Uvalde, where he prayed for the 19 children and two teachers slain by a teen gunman in the small Texas town.

“Do something!” rang out shouts from a crowd in the street as Biden left Sacred Heart Church where he attended mass with mourning relatives.

“We will. We will,” Biden responded to the crowd, before heading to private meetings with relatives of the dead and with first responders.

Biden, accompanied by his wife, Jill Biden, was in Uvalde less than two weeks after making a similar trip to the site of another mass shooting — this time targeting African Americans in a racist attack — in Buffalo, New York.

The first couple began by visiting a makeshift shrine at Robb Elementary School, where last Tuesday the teen gunman walked in with an AR-15-type semi-automatic and began his slaughter.

Both wearing black, the Bidens held hands in front of the memorial, walking slowly along the thicket of wreaths, bouquets, white crosses and blown-up photos of the slain children.

Biden, whose adult son Beau died seven years ago this Monday from cancer, and whose first wife and infant daughter perished in a car accident, made the sign of the cross, appearing to wipe away a tear.

The arrival of the Bidens’ motorcade at the school was met with applause from a crowd. However, illustrating the tension in the town, there were boos at the appearance of Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who strongly opposes new restrictions on gun ownership.

“We need changes,” shouted one man.

“Our hearts are broken,” Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller said at the church. 

Biden was not scheduled to speak publicly in Texas, but on Saturday he renewed his so-far fruitless call for Congress to overcome years of paralysis to toughen firearms regulations — especially on weapons like the AR-15.

“We cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make America safer,” Biden said.

Ricardo Garcia, who works at Uvalde’s hospital, said he was “honored” Biden came to visit his town, but wanted to see more action on gun control. 

The 47-year-old was at work on Tuesday when first responders brought in children from Robb. 

“I just can’t get out of my mind that screaming in the halls from the moms when they got the bad news,” Garcia said. “It’s still there. I can’t sleep at night.”

– Justice Department probes police –

Harrowing accounts emerged of the ordeal faced by survivors of Tuesday’s attack, where the behavior of the police is under severe scrutiny.

Ten-year-old Samuel Salinas was sitting in his fourth-grade classroom when the shooter, later identified as Salvador Ramos, 18, barged in and announced: “You’re all going to die.”

Then “he just started shooting,” Salinas told ABC News.

Texas authorities admitted Friday that as many as 19 police officers were in the school hallway for nearly an hour before finally breaching the room and killing Ramos, saying the officers mistakenly thought that he had stopped killing and was now barricaded.

Parents have expressed fury and on Sunday the Justice Department announced an inquiry “to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare.”

Surviving children described making desperate, whispered pleas for help in 911 phone calls while police waited.

Some played dead to avoid drawing the shooter’s attention. Eleven-year-old Miah Cerrillo smeared the blood of a dead friend on herself to feign death. 

Salinas said he thinks Ramos fired at him, but the bullet struck a chair, sending shrapnel into the boy’s leg. “I played dead so he wouldn’t shoot me,” he said.

Another student, Daniel, whose mother would not provide his last name, said he saw Ramos fire through the glass in the classroom door, striking his teacher.

Though his teacher lay on the floor bleeding, she repeatedly told the students, “‘Stay calm. Stay where you are. Don’t move,'” Daniel told The Washington Post.

– ‘Have the courage’ –

Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday attended the funeral of a victim of the Buffalo mass shooting — Ruth Whitfield, who was among 10 people killed on May 14, allegedly by a self-described white supremacist.

“Congress must have the courage to stand up, once and for all, to the gun lobby and pass reasonable gun safety laws,” Harris tweeted.

The Uvalde shooting was the deadliest school attack since 20 children and six staff were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.

But Congress has repeatedly failed to agree on possible new gun regulations.

This time might be different, some lawmakers say.

Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said Sunday there were “serious negotiations” underway involving members of both parties.

After weeks of explosive testimony, the jury is finally deliberating in the defamation case between actors Johnny Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard.

Depp filed suit against Heard over an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post in December 2018 in which she described herself as a “public figure representing domestic abuse.”

Heard did not name Depp in the piece, but he sued her for implying he was a domestic abuser and is seeking $50 million in damages.

Heard countersued for $100 million, claiming she suffered “rampant physical violence and abuse.”

Here are some of the high — and low — points of the blockbuster trial.

– The severed fingertip –

Hours of testimony during the six-week trial were devoted to a grisly incident in March 2015 in Australia, where Depp was filming the fifth installment of “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

The tip of Depp’s right hand middle finger was severed during a heated argument with Heard at their rented home.

Depp said it occurred when Heard threw a vodka bottle at him.

Heard said she did not know how it happened but it may have been when he smashed a wall-mounted phone.

Both agreed though that Depp used his bloody digit to scrawl cryptic messages on walls, lampshades and mirrors in the home.

– Poop on the bed –

Among many bizarre incidents cited during the trial was a story about feces deposited one day on Depp’s side of the couple’s bed.

Depp said he was shown a photograph of “human fecal matter” on the bed after he and Heard argued during her 30th birthday party.

Heard tried to blame it on their dogs, Depp said, but “they’re teacup Yorkies, they weigh about four pounds each.”

Heard said the dog had bowel problems after eating some of Depp’s marijuana as a puppy.

As for the dogs, Heard accused Depp of once holding one of them out of the window of a moving car while “howling like an animal.”

The dog was unhurt.

– The witnesses –

Both sides presented multiple witnesses although rumored testimony by billionaire Elon Musk, Heard’s ex-boyfriend, and her co-star James Franco ultimately did not materialize.

But there were celebrity appearances.

Kate Moss, Depp’s former girlfriend, shot down a longstanding rumor he had once thrown the British model down a flight of stairs.

Moss said by videolink that it never happened.

Actress Ellen Barkin, another ex-girlfriend, testified Depp was jealous, controlling, and drunk “a lot of the time,” and once threw a wine bottle in a hotel room.

Other witnesses included bodyguards, agents, business managers, psychiatrists, doctors, friends, relatives, even the former doorman of the luxury penthouse complex where the couple once lived in Los Angeles.

Doorman Alejandro Romero probably spoke for many involved in the case when he said: “I am so stressed out. I don’t want to deal with this anymore.”

– The evidence –

Audio and video recordings of heated, profanity-laced arguments between Depp and Heard also were entered into evidence.

In one video recorded by Heard in their kitchen, Depp is seen shouting, smashing glass cabinets and pouring himself an enormous glass of red wine.

Both Depp and Heard submitted photos of injuries they claimed were inflicted by the other.

Heard’s lawyers also presented photos purporting to show Depp passed out after drinking excessively or using drugs.

Text messages between Depp and various people were displayed in which he described in crude and violent language what he would like to see happen to Heard.

Depp’s lawyers downplayed the texts, saying he just had a colorful way of writing, similar to that of his late friend, the journalist Hunter S. Thompson.

– The Depp fans –

Fans of Depp queued up for hours daily to secure coveted seats in the public gallery for the trial held in Fairfax, Virginia.

While the spectators mostly behaved themselves, Judge Penney Azcarate threatened to expel them at one point during Heard’s testimony.

“If I hear one more sound, I will clear the gallery and we will continue this testimony without anybody in the courtroom,” Azcarate warned. “Understood?”

Depp fans also waged a massive campaign on social media in support of the actor with the hashtag “#JusticeForJohnnyDepp.”

Heard said she had received thousands of death threats. “People want to kill me and they tell me so every day,” she said.

– Damaged Hollywood careers –

Both Depp, a three-time Oscar nominee, and Heard claimed their careers have been damaged.

Heard, who starred in “Aquaman,” one of the top grossing films ever, said she had to fight to retain a role in “Aquaman 2” and Depp tried to get Warner Brothers to cut her from the sequel.

Heard’s legal team presented an entertainment industry expert who estimated she has suffered $45-50 million in lost film and TV roles and endorsements.

An industry expert hired by Depp’s side said he has lost millions because of the abuse accusations, including a $22.5 million payday for a sixth “Pirates” installment.

But Tracey Jacobs, Depp’s former agent, said there never was a formal agreement for another “Pirates” film.

Jacobs also said the actor’s star had begun to dim since 2010 because of “unprofessional behavior” which included drinking and drug use.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made his first trip Sunday to the war-torn east since Moscow’s invasion started, as Russian forces tightened their grip around key cities in the Donbas region.

After visiting Kharkiv, Zelensky announced that he had fired the northeastern city’s security chief in a rare public rebuke.

Zelensky said the man was dismissed “for not working to defend the city from the first days of the full-scale war, but thinking only of himself,” and that while others had toiled “very effectively”, the former chief had not.

Although the president did not name the official, Ukrainian media reports identified him as Roman Dudin, the head of the Kharkiv region’s SBU security service.

Earlier, Zelensky’s office posted a video on Telegram of the president wearing a bullet-proof vest while viewing destroyed buildings in Kharkiv and its surroundings. 

With the war devastating much of his country, the Ukrainian president is set to speak by video link Monday to European Union leaders in Brussels as they seek to break a deadlock on a Russian oil embargo. 

– Pressure on the east –

Russia, since failing to capture the capital Kyiv in the early stages of the war and then retreating from the Kharkiv area, has shifted its focus to the eastern Donbas region.

Its forces said on Saturday they had captured the town of Lyman in the contested region and were upping the pressure on the twin cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.

Zelensky has been based in Kyiv since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale attack on Ukraine.  

“In this war, the occupiers are trying to squeeze out at least some result,” Zelensky said in a later Telegram post Sunday. 

“But they should have understood long ago that we will defend our land to the last man,” he added.

While one-third of the Kharkiv region remained under Russian control, “We will for sure liberate the entire area,” said Zelensky. “We are doing everything we can to contain this offensive.”

– ‘Constant shelling’ –

The situation in Lysychansk had become “significantly worse”, the regional governor of the Lugansk region, Sergiy Gaiday, said on Telegram. 

“A Russian shell fell on a residential building, a girl died and four people were hospitalised,” he said.

On the other bank of the Donets river, Russian forces “carried out assault operations in the area of the city of Severodonetsk,” according to the Ukrainian general staff.

Fighting in the city was advancing street by street, Gaiday said.

Zelensky, in his daily address, described a scene of devastation in Severodonetsk, saying, “All critical infrastructure has already been destroyed… More than two-thirds of the city’s housing stock has been completely destroyed.”

In the embattled city, where an estimated 15,000 civilians remain, a local official said “constant shelling” made it increasingly difficult to get in or out.

“Evacuation is very unsafe, it’s isolated cases when we manage to get people out. Now the priority is for the wounded and people who need serious medical assistance,” said Oleksandr Stryuk, head of the city’s military and civil administration.

The water supply is also increasingly unstable, and residents have gone more than two weeks without a mobile phone connection, he added.

On Sunday, the Russian defence ministry said it had destroyed a Ukrainian armed forces arsenal in the southeastern city of Kryvyi Rih with “long-range high-precision missiles”. 

Russian forces also targeted a Ukrainian anti-air defence system near Mykolaivka in the Donetsk region, as well as a radar station near Kharkiv and five munitions depots, one close to Severodonetsk.

– ‘New face’ –

On his trip to Kharkiv, Zelensky discussed reconstruction plans with local officials, saying there was a chance for areas devastated by Russian attacks to “have a new face”.

According to local officials, over 2,000 apartment blocks have been wholly or partially destroyed by Russian shelling in the region.

In Kharkiv itself, customers were returning to the well-known Crystal Cafe in the central public park after it reopened at the end of April.

Residents come by for a coffee, a bite to eat or to sample the “Biloshka” ice cream, a Crystal specialty the vendor has been serving since the 1960s. 

“We need to keep employment. The city is coming back little by little,” the cafe’s manager, Alyona Kostrova, 36, told AFP.

The menu has been trimmed due to supply problems and the locale is operating with a reduced staff, down to seven or eight from 30 or 40 before the war. 

Far from the city centre in the neighbourhood of Saltivska, where Russian shells continue to fall, the atmosphere is different.

“I would not say that people are buying a lot. People have no money,” said Vitaly Kozlov, 41, who peddles eggs, meat and vegetables locally.

Volodymyr Svidlo, 82, told AFP he “has no pension”, and comes “once a week” to the neighbourhood to sell items, such as onions, dill and flowers from his garden in order to make ends meet. 

– Emergency summit –

When Zelensky speaks to EU leaders at their emergency summit Monday, he will press them “to kill Russian exports” as he seeks to crank up international pressure on Moscow.

A new round of European sanctions has been held up by Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban has close relations with Russia’s Putin.

The landlocked country is heavily dependent on Russian crude oil supplied via the Druzhba pipeline.

Hungary has asked for at least four years and 800 million euros ($860 million) in EU funds to adapt its refineries and increase pipeline capacity for alternative suppliers, like Croatia.

But under a new proposal put to national negotiators on Sunday, the Druzhba pipeline could be excluded from a sanctions package, which would only target oil shipped to the EU by tankers.

burs-sea/lc/bbk/bfm

A distraught US President Joe Biden laid flowers and prayed Sunday at the makeshift shrine erected in Uvalde to the 19 children and two teachers murdered by a teen gunman after he stormed their elementary school.

Biden, accompanied by his wife, Jill Biden, was in the small Texas town less than two weeks after making a similar trip to the site of another mass shooting — this time targeting African Americans in a racist attack — in Buffalo, New York.

Both wearing black, the first couple held hands in front of a memorial outside Robb Elementary School and walked slowly along the thicket of wreaths, bouquets, white crosses and blown-up photos of the slain children.

Biden, who buried his adult son Beau seven years ago after he died of cancer and also lost his first wife and infant daughter in a car accident, made the sign of the cross, appearing to wipe away a tear.

Reprising the increasingly familiar role of national mourner-in-chief, Biden, 79, then attended a Catholic Mass with local residents, ahead of meeting privately with first responders and grieving relatives of the dead.

“Our hearts are broken,” Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller said at Sacred Heart church, where the Bidens sat at the front and the first lady reached out to lightly touch the hands of several worshippers.

Earlier, the arrival of the Bidens’ motorcade at the school was met with applause from a crowd. However, illustrating the tension in the town, there were boos at the appearance of Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who strongly opposes new restrictions on gun ownership.

“We need changes,” shouted one man.

Biden was not scheduled to speak publicly in Texas, but on Saturday he renewed his call for Congress to overcome years of paralysis to toughen firearms regulations — especially on weapons like the semi-automatic AR-15 that the gunman used in Uvalde.

“We cannot outlaw tragedy, I know, but we can make America safer,” Biden said.

– Justice Department probes police –

Harrowing accounts emerged of the ordeal faced by survivors of Tuesday’s attack, where the behavior of the police is under severe scrutiny.

Ten-year-old Samuel Salinas was sitting in his fourth-grade classroom when the shooter, later identified as Salvador Ramos, 18, barged in and announced: “You’re all going to die.”

Then “he just started shooting,” Salinas told ABC News.

Texas authorities admitted Friday that as many as 19 police officers were in the school hallway for nearly an hour before finally breaching the room and killing Ramos, saying the officers mistakenly thought that he had stopped killing and was now barricaded.

Parents have expressed fury and on Sunday the Justice Department announced an inquiry “to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare.”

Survivors describe making desperate, whispered pleas for help in 911 phone calls while police waited.

Some played dead to avoid drawing the shooter’s attention. Eleven-year-old Miah Cerrillo smeared the blood of a dead friend on herself to feign death. 

Salinas said he thinks Ramos fired at him, but the bullet struck a chair, sending shrapnel into the boy’s leg. “I played dead so he wouldn’t shoot me,” he said.

Another student, Daniel, whose mother would not provide his last name, said he saw Ramos fire through the glass in the classroom door, striking his teacher.

The bullets were “hot,” he told The Washington Post, and when another bullet ricocheted and struck a fellow student in the nose, he said he could hear the sickening sound.

Though his teacher lay on the floor bleeding, she repeatedly told the students, “‘Stay calm. Stay where you are. Don’t move,'” Daniel recalled.

– ‘Have the courage’ –

Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday attended the funeral of a victim of the Buffalo mass shooting — Ruth Whitfield, who was among 10 people killed on May 14, allegedly by a self-described white supremacist.

“Congress must have the courage to stand up, once and for all, to the gun lobby and pass reasonable gun safety laws,” Harris tweeted.

The Uvalde shooting was the deadliest school attack since 20 children and six staff were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.

But despite the epidemic of mass shootings and ever growing flood of private gun purchases, Congress has repeatedly failed to agree on possible new regulations.

This time might be different, some lawmakers say.

Democratic Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy said Sunday there were “serious negotiations” underway involving members of both parties.

In Uvalde, Robert Robles, 73, said he was glad Biden had visited to show concern but said the president needs to pass laws restricting powerful military style rifles, like the AR-15, and “protect these kids.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made his first trip Sunday to the war-torn east since Moscow’s invasion started, as Russian forces tightened their grip around key cities in the Donbas region.

Zelensky’s office posted a video on Telegram of him wearing a bullet-proof vest and being shown destroyed buildings in Kharkiv and its surroundings, from where Russian forces have retreated in recent weeks.

Since failing to capture the capital Kyiv in the early stages of the war, Russia has shifted its focus to the eastern Donbas region as it attempts to consolidate areas under its control.

Its forces said on Saturday they had captured Lyman in the contested region and were upping the pressure on the twin cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.

Zelensky has been based in Kyiv since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his full-scale attack on Ukraine on February 24.  

“In this war, the occupiers are trying to squeeze out at least some result,” Zelensky said in a later Telegram post Sunday. 

“But they should have understood long ago that we will defend our land to the last man,” he added.

The Ukrainian president was set to speak to European Union leaders at an emergency summit Monday to decide on a Russian oil embargo.

Member states were considering excluding Russian pipeline oil as they sought to break the deadlock on a sixth round of economic sanctions, EU sources told AFP.

– ‘Constant shelling’ –

The situation in Lysychansk had become “significantly worse”, the regional governor of the Lugansk region, Sergiy Gaiday, said on Telegram. 

“A Russian shell fell on a residential building, a girl died and four people were hospitalised,” he said.

On the other bank of the Donets river, Russian forces “carried out assault operations in the area of the city of Severodonetsk,” according to the Ukrainian general staff.

Fighting in the city was advancing street by street, Gaiday said.

In the embattled city, where an estimated 15,000 civilians remain, a local official said “constant shelling” made it increasingly difficult to get in or out.

“Evacuation is very unsafe, it’s isolated cases when we manage to get people out. Now the priority is for the wounded and people who need serious medical assistance,” said Oleksandr Stryuk, head of the city’s military and civil administration.

The water supply is also increasingly unstable, and residents have gone more than two weeks without a mobile phone connection, he added.

On Sunday, the Russian defence ministry said it had destroyed a Ukrainian armed forces arsenal in the southeastern city of Kryvyi Rih with “long-range high-precision missiles”. 

Russian forces also targeted a Ukrainian anti-air defence system near Mykolaivka in the Donetsk region, as well as a radar station near Kharkiv and five munitions depots, one close to Severodonetsk.

– ‘New face’ –

Zelensky discussed reconstruction plans with local officials on his trip to Kharkiv, saying there was a chance for areas devastated by Russian attacks to “have a new face”.

According to local officials over 2,000 apartment blocks have been wholly or partially destroyed by Russian shelling in the region.

In the city of Kharkiv itself, customers were returning to the  well-known Crystal cafe in the central public park after it reopened its doors at the end of April.

Residents come by for a coffee, a bite to eat or to sample the “Biloshka” ice cream, a Crystal speciality the vendor has been serving since the 1960s. 

“We need to keep employment. The city is coming back little by little,” the cafe’s manager, Alyona Kostrova, 36, told AFP.

The menu has been trimmed due to supply problems and the locale is operating with a reduced staff, down to seven or eight from 30 or 40 before the war. 

Far from the city centre in the neighbourhood of Saltivska, where Russian shells continue to fall, the atmosphere is different.

“I would not say that people are buying a lot. People have no money,” said Vitaly Kozlov, 41, who peddles eggs, meat and vegetables locally.

Volodymyr Svidlo, 82, told AFP he “has no pension”, and comes “once a week” to the neighbourhood to sell items, such as onions, dill and flowers, from his garden in order to make ends meet. 

– Emergency summit –

Zelensky will speak to EU leaders at their emergency, as he seeks to crank up international pressure on Moscow.

A new round of European sanctions has been held up by Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban has close relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The landlocked country is dependent for most of its oil needs on Russian crude supplied via the Druzhba pipeline.

Hungary has asked for at least four years and 800 million euros ($860 million) in EU funds to adapt its refineries and up pipeline capacity for alternative suppliers, like Croatia.

But under a new proposal put to national negotiators on Sunday the Druzhba pipeline could be excluded from a sanctions package, which would only target oil shipped to the EU by tankers.

burs-sea/lc