AFP

Daniel Defense, the manufacturer of the assault rifle used in the Uvalde school shooting in Texas, said Thursday it will not attend a convention this week in the state of the powerful National Rifle Association gun lobby.

“Daniel Defense is not attending the National Rifle Association (“NRA”) meeting due to the horrifying tragedy in Uvalde, Texas where one of our products was criminally misused,” the company told AFP.

“We believe this week is not the appropriate time to be promoting our products in Texas at the NRA meeting,” it said.

The convention will be held in Houston, Texas from May 27-29. The NRA has been instrumental in preventing the passage of stricter firearms regulations in the United States.

Daniel Defense previously promised its full cooperation with the investigation into the Tuesday massacre, in which 19 young children and two teachers were killed.

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and community devastated by this evil act,” it said.

A week before the shooting, the company tweeted an image of a young boy sitting on the floor with an assault rifle across his legs, as an adult points a finger toward the weapon.

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it,” text accompanying the picture said.

The Daniel Defense account has since been set so its tweets can only be viewed by approved followers.

Russia on Thursday made an all-out effort to capture the rest of the industrial region of Lugansk in eastern Ukraine, officials said, as President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of seeking to commit “genocide” across the eastern Donbas.

As the fighting intensified, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba aired Kyiv’s increasing frustration with the West, accusing allies of dragging their feet on arms deliveries and telling his German counterpart that Ukraine needs heavy weapons “as soon as possible.”

Russian forces are now closing in on several urban centres, including the strategically located Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. Lugansk is part of the Donbas, the industrial basin comprising that region and Donetsk.

“The situation remains difficult, because the Russian army has thrown all its forces at taking the Lugansk region,” regional governor Sergiy Gaiday said in a video on Telegram. 

“Extremely fierce fighting is taking place on the outskirts of Severodonetsk. They are simply destroying the city, they are shelling it every day, shelling without pause.”

Russian forces also bombarded Ukraine’s second city Kharkiv, killing nine people, and five civilians were killed Thursday in the Donetsk region to the south, according to the governor.

In his daily televised address, Zelensky said Moscow was pursuing an “obvious policy of genocide” in the Donbas — after failing to take the capital Kyiv — and its bombardments could leave the entire region “uninhabited”.

Kyiv has been losing patience with what it views as the West’s failure to quickly arm Ukraine and impose a ban on Russian oil exports on top of punishing economic sanctions already in place. 

“We need more heavy weapons delivered as soon as possible, especially MLRS (multiple launch rocket systems) to repel Russian attacks,” Kuleba wrote on Twitter after speaking with Germany’s Annalena Baerbock.

– ‘Maximum intensity’ –

Earlier in the day, Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Ganna Malyar told journalists that fighting in the east had reached “its maximum intensity” since Russia invaded its neighbour on February 24.

Pro-Moscow separatist groups have since 2014 controlled parts of Donbas, but Russia now appears set on taking the whole region.

“Enemy forces are storming the positions of our troops simultaneously in several directions. We have an extremely difficult and long stage of fighting ahead of us,” Malyar said.

Gaiday said three people died in recent Russian attacks on Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, which stand on the crucial route to Ukraine’s eastern administrative centre in Kramatorsk.

In Kramatorsk itself, children roamed the rubble left by Russian attacks as the sound of artillery fire boomed.

“I got used to the shelling,” said Yevgen, a sombre-looking 13-year-old who moved to Kramatorsk with his mother from the ruins of his village Galyna. 

And fresh shelling around Kharkiv killed another nine people and injured 19, officials said.

“Today the enemy insidiously fired on Kharkiv,” regional governor Oleg Sinegubov said on social media, warning residents to evacuate to air raid shelters.

An AFP reporter in Kharkiv saw plumes of smoke rising from the stricken area, along with several people injured near a shuttered shopping centre. An elderly man with injuries to his arm and leg was carried away by medics.

– ‘Show me one Nazi!’ –

Russia’s rationale of a “special military operation” to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” Ukraine drew a snort of derision in one village near Kharkiv that came under fire.

“Show me one Nazi in the village! We have our nation, we are nationalists but not Nazis nor fascists,” said retired nurse Larysa Kosynets.

Elsewhere, in the strategic southern port city of Mariupol, occupying authorities cancelled school holidays to prepare students to switching to a Russian curriculum, said a Ukrainian official.

Mariupol fell to Russia earlier this month after a devastating siege that left thousands dead the reduced the city to rubble.

“Throughout the summer, children will have to study Russian language, literature and history as well as math classes in Russian,” city official Petro Andryushchenko wrote on social media.

– ‘Trust is lost for generations’ –

Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin on Thursday became the latest Western official to visit Kyiv, where she said it would take Russia decades to repair its standing in the world after invading Ukraine.

“Trust is lost for generations,” Marin told a press conference.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has faced criticism over Berlin’s slow response, also weighed in Thursday, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin will not negotiate seriously until he realises he might not win in Ukraine.

“Our goal is crystal-clear — Putin must not win this war. And I am convinced that he will not win it,” Scholz told the World Economic Forum in Davos.

– Food crisis fears –

The Ukraine conflict has sparked fears of a global food crisis, on top of the political and economic shockwaves that have already reverberated around the world.

The Kremlin on Thursday pointed the finger at Western countries for stopping grain-carrying vessels from leaving ports in Ukraine — rejecting accusations that Russia was to blame.

Putin said Moscow was ready to make a “significant contribution” to averting the crisis if the West lifts sanctions imposed on Russia over Ukraine, in a telephone call with Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

Speaking to journalists after the call, Draghi said he would continue talking to both Moscow and Kyiv to resolve the food crisis, but added that he had little optimism for ending the war.

“When asked if I have seen any glimmer of hope for peace, the answer is no,” the Italian prime minister said.

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Actor Ray Liotta, who starred in Martin Scorsese’s gangster classic “Goodfellas,” has died suddenly in the Dominican Republic, officials and police said Thursday. He was 67.

Liotta, whose blistering turn as real-life mobster Henry Hill in Scorsese’s crime masterpiece won universal admiration, was shooting a new film in the country when he died in his sleep.

Police said emergency services were called early Thursday morning to a hotel in Santo Domingo where they found Liotta already dead.

The actor’s publicist in Los Angeles, Jennifer Allen, confirmed his death, saying there were no suspicious circumstances.

Allen said he had been working on a movie called “Dangerous Waters.”

Liotta became a household name in 1990 when he was cast alongside Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in what is widely considered one of the greatest films of the 20th century.

“Goodfellas” won one Oscar, and was nominated for five others. Scenes from the movie continue to resonate as cultural touchstones more than three decades later.

A year before “Goodfellas,” Liotta had played baseball star “Shoeless Joe” Jackson in beloved sports movie “Field of Dreams,” opposite Kevin Costner.

The film was nominated for three Oscars, including best picture.

– ‘A gentle man’ –

News of Liotta’s death sparked a flood of tributes from colleagues and contemporaries, with “Goodfellas” co-star Lorraine Bracco, who played on-screen wife Karen, saying she was “utterly shattered to hear this terrible news.”

“I can be anywhere in the world & people will come up & tell me their favorite movie is Goodfellas,” she tweeted.

“Then they always ask what was the best part of making that movie. My response has always been the same… Ray Liotta.”

Actress Jamie Lee Curtis, who worked with Liotta on “Dominick and Eugene,” tweeted: “His work as an actor showed his complexity as a human being. A gentle man. So sad to hear.”

Jennifer Lopez, who starred opposite Liotta in the television series “Shades of Blue,” said he was “the epitome of a tough guy who was all mushy on the inside.” 

“Like a raw nerve, he was so accessible and so in touch in his acting. We lost a great today … RIP RAY … it’s so sad to lose you what seems way to soon.”

Seth Rogen, who was cast alongside Liotta in black comedy “Observe and Report” called him “a true legend of immense skill and grace… a lovely, talented and hilarious person.”

Despite branching out to show the breadth of his talent, Liotta had recently returned to the world of mob films, with roles in Steven Soderbergh’s “No Sudden Move” and 2021’s “The Many Saints of Newark.”

Alessandro Nivola, who played alongside Liotta in “The Many Saints of Newark,” a prequel to hit TV series “The Sopranos,” said his co-star’s death had come “too soon.”

“I feel so lucky to have squared off against this legend in one of his final roles,” he wrote on Twitter.

“The scenes we did together were among the all time highlights of my acting career. He was dangerous, unpredictable, hilarious, and generous with his praise for other actors.”

Liotta was born in Newark, New Jersey, in December 1954.

Variety reported he was left at an orphanage at birth and adopted when he was six months old.

At the University of Miami, he performed in musicals, and after graduating landed a role on a soap opera that would provide him with three years’ work to 1981.

His first movie came in 1983, but it wasn’t until 1986’s “Something Wild” opposite Melanie Griffith and Jeff Daniels that he came to wider attention.

The comedy-action-romance was screened at Cannes and scored Liotta a Golden Globe nomination for supporting actor.

The day after his 18th birthday, Salvador Ramos, a troubled teenager from small-town Texas, bought an assault rifle. A week later, he walked into a local elementary school, where he shot and killed 19 young children and two of their teachers.

Authorities are still trying to piece together what drove Ramos to commit America’s worst school massacre in a decade, but here is what is known so far about the shooting:

– How the shooter attacked –

Described as a long-bullied youth with a history of self-harm, Ramos turned 18 on May 16 and bought an assault rifle the very next day. 

He purchased 375 rounds of ammunition on May 18, and then a second rifle two days after that.

Ramos — a school dropout with no criminal history — messaged on social media Tuesday morning that he planned to attack his grandmother, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said.

Ramos shot his 66-year-old relative in the face. She survived and was airlifted in critical condition to a hospital in nearby San Antonio.

The shooter then messaged again to say he had followed through on his plan to attack his grandmother, and that an elementary school was his next target.

He drove a little over two miles (3.2 kilometers), crashing near Robb Elementary School, where more than 500 students in grades two to four — aged around seven to 10 years old — had just three days of class left before summer vacation.

He fired on bystanders at a funeral home, then climbed a fence, entered the school through a door that was apparently unlocked, and made his way to two adjoining classrooms.

“That’s where the carnage began,” said Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS).

– How he was stopped –

As a crowd grew near the school, police arrived on the scene.

Officers entered the school minutes after the shooter, but were held back by gunfire and called for backup, according to Victor Escalon of DPS.

A tactical team that included US Border Patrol agents entered and killed the suspect “approximately an hour later,” Escalon said.

In the interim, officers evacuated students and teachers from the school, and unsuccessfully tried to negotiate with the gunman, who held them back with rifle fire.

Texas police are facing scrutiny over the delay between the start of the attack and the death of the shooter.

When pressed by journalists on the law enforcement response — and on contradictory accounts provided by officials — Escalon said investigators were still conducting interviews and working to piece together what happened.

There were “numerous officers” involved, he said. “Once we interview all those officers, what they were thinking, what they did, why they did it… we’ll have a better idea.”

– Who was the gunman? –

Ramos had been living with his grandmother for two months, McCraw said. According to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, no psychological problems were known to local health departments.

A cousin, Mia, told The Washington Post Ramos “wasn’t very much of a social person” after being bullied for a stutter.

But two graduating seniors at Uvalde High School — both of whom said they knew the shooter — painted a different picture.

“We went to school with him…. We all knew of him,” Jaime Cruz, 18, told AFP.

“I do vividly remember him being a bully in school. It wasn’t just that he was getting bullied, he was also the bully,” said Cruz.

“He was a bully. He was mean,” agreed Ariana Diaz, 17.

Speaking to ABC News, Ramos’s mother Adriana Reyes said her son could be aggressive when angry but was “not a monster” — and that she was not aware he had been buying weapons.

“I had an uneasy feeling sometimes, like ‘what are you up to?,'” she said. “We all have a rage, that some people have it more than others.”

Firearms have surpassed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death among American youngsters, with official data showing a strong rise in gun-related homicides such as the killing of 19 children in a Texas school rampage.

Overall, 4,368 children and adolescents up to the age of 19 died from firearms in 2020, a rate of 5.4 per 100,000 a dashboard by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed.

Homicides made up nearly two-thirds of the gun deaths.

By comparison, there were 4,036 deaths linked to motor vehicles, the previous leading cause of death among this age group. 

The gap has been narrowing as road safety measures have improved over the decades, while gun related deaths have risen. 

The trend lines crossed in 2020, the latest year for which data is available — a finding identified in a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) last week.

The letter’s authors noted the new data was consistent with other evidence that gun violence rose during the Covid-19 pandemic, for reasons that aren’t fully clear, but “it cannot be assumed that (it) will later revert to pre-pandemic levels.”

The newly updated CDC dashboard shows that nearly 30 percent of the deaths were suicides, just over three percent were unintentional, and two percent were of undetermined intent.

– ‘Deadly consequences’ –

A small number were categorized as “legal intervention” referring to killings by law enforcement.

The deaths disproportionately impacted Black children and adolescents, who were more than four times as likely to die as white children — for whom motor vehicles still posed a greater threat.

The second most impacted group by guns were American Indians, followed by white Hispanics.

Males meanwhile were six times likelier to die by a gun than females.

By region, the gun-related death rate was highest in the capital Washington, followed by the state of Louisiana, then Alaska.

The figures served to underscore that while mass shootings such as the one in Uvalde provoke horror, they make up only a small fraction of overall childhood gun deaths.

“Since the 1960s, continuous efforts have been directed toward preventing deaths from motor vehicle crashes,” wrote the authors of another recent letter to the NEJM, contrasting the situation with that of firearms, where regulations have been loosened.

While vehicle safety has been spearheaded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, there is no equivalent agency to regulate gun safety, and historically very little government research funding was assigned to the area because of Republican opposition.

Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of leading journal Science published an editorial Thursday calling for more research into the public health impacts of gun ownership to advance policy change.

“Scientists should not sit on the sidelines and watch others fight this out,” he wrote.

“More research into the public health impacts of gun ownership will provide further evidence of its deadly consequences,” he continued, arguing that severe mental illness, often blamed for mass shootings, was prevalent at similar levels in other countries that do not have regular mass shootings.

Meghan Markle, the wife of Britain’s Prince Harry, on Thursday made an unannounced visit to the Texas town of Uvalde to pay her respects to the victims of an elementary school shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

The 40-year-old Duchess of Sussex — wearing jeans, a t-shirt and a blue baseball cap — reached down with her head bowed and placed flowers at a makeshift memorial outside the courthouse in Uvalde.

She also walked around the memorial, looking at the white crosses bearing the names of the victims of Tuesday’s carnage.

A spokesperson for Markle said the duchess had been visiting Uvalde in a personal capacity and as a mother, to offer her condolences and support for a grieving community.

Harry and his wife quit royal life and moved to North America two years ago. They now live in California with their two children.

Buckingham Palace announced this month the couple would not be present for official celebrations of Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee on June 2.

Hollywood actor Kevin Spacey is facing sexual assault charges in the UK, police and prosecutors said on Thursday, after a review of allegations against him.

The two-time Oscar winner for “The Usual Suspects” and “American Beauty” was artistic director of The Old Vic theatre in London between 2004 and 2015.

Allegations against him first emerged in the wake of the #MeToo movement that saw numerous claims of sexual assault and harassment in the movie industry.

That prompted an investigation by London’s Metropolitan Police, and a review by The Old Vic of the 62-year-old Spacey’s time in charge there.

The Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement that it had “authorised criminal charges” against the actor “for four counts of sexual assault against three men”.

“He has also been charged with causing a person to engage in penetrative sexual activity without consent,” said Rosemary Ainslie, from the service.

“The charges follow a review of the evidence gathered by the Metropolitan Police in its investigation,” added Ainslie, who heads the special crime division.

The Met said separately that the first two counts of sexual assault date from March 2005 in London, and concern the same man, who is now in his 40s.

The third is alleged to have happened in London in August 2008 against a man who is now in his 30s. The same man is alleged to be the victim of the separate charge.

The fourth sexual assault charge is alleged to have occurred in Gloucestershire, western England, in April 2013 against a third man, who is now in his 30s.

None of the alleged victims can be identified under English law.

The CPS, which brings prosecutions in England and Wales, and the police both referred to Spacey by his full name, Kevin Spacey Fowler.

British legal restrictions are in place limiting what the media can report until the case comes before a jury to avoid prejudicing any trial.

The CPS said that when considering whether to approve charges, it makes “fair, independent and objective” assessments about whether a case should go to court.

Claims against Spacey in 2017 led to the end of his involvement in the filming of the final season of the political drama “House of Cards”.

He was also dropped from a Gore Vidal biopic on Netflix and as the industrialist John Paul Getty in “All the Money in the World”.

Christopher Plummer was brought in as a last-minute replacement.

Spacey, considered one of the finest actors of his generation, has previously denied similar charges in the United States.

A criminal case against him for sexual assault there was dropped in 2019.

The actor is currently in New York and facing a civil case arising from the abandoned criminal action, US court documents show.

British media said it was understood he had not been formally charged in the UK because he was not in the country, and there was no immediate word if he would have to be extradited.