Parents angered by new report that clears city police of missteps

UVALDE, Texas>> An investigation Uvalde city leaders ordered into the Robb Elementary School shooting put no blame on local police officers and defended their actions Thursday, despite acknowledging a series of rippling failures during the fumbled response to the 2022 classroom attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

Several family members of victims walked out in anger midway though a presentation that portrayed Uvalde police officers as acting swiftly and appropriately, in contrast to past scathing and sweeping state and federal reports that faulted police at every level.

The investigator who presented the report blamed families who rushed to the school that day for compromising the police response, prompting an eruption of anger from several families and some stormed out.

Law enforcement took more than an hour to get inside the classroom and kill the gunman, even as children inside the classrooms called 911, begging police to rescue them.

Law-abiding adults now can carry guns openly

COLUMBIA, S.C.>> Any adult who can legally own a gun can now carry one openly in South Carolina after Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill into law Thursday, just a day after it received final legislative approval. Gun-rights supporters have pushed for the law for nearly a decade, first allowing open carry for people who took the training to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Encouraging that kind of training was one of the biggest roadblocks for the new law. A Senate proposal to provide millions of dollars for free gun training across the state needed to get a concealed weapons permit was part of what cleared the way.

The law also provides stiffer penalties for people who repeatedly carry guns in places where they would still be banned, like schools or courthouses, or commit crimes while armed, whether they use the weapon or not. The penalties can be enhanced if the offender doesn’t have a concealed-weapons permit.

Last month was hottest February ever recorded

WASHINGTON>> For the ninth straight month, the Earth has obliterated global heat records — with February, the winter as a whole and the world’s oceans setting new high-temperature marks, according to the European Union climate agency Copernicus.

The latest record-breaking in this global hot streak includes sea surface temperatures that weren’t just the hottest for February but eclipsed any month on record, soaring past August 2023’s mark and still rising at the end of the month.

And February, as well the previous two winter months, soared well past the internationally set threshold for long-term warming, Copernicus reported Wednesday.

Six dead after stabbing; student arrested

A 19-year-old student from Sri Lanka is accused of stabbing and killing six people he lived with, including a 21/2-month-old baby girl and three other kids from a Sri Lankan family, Ottawa police said Thursday.

Police Chief Eric Stubbs said an “edged weapon” or “knife-like object” was used by the suspect, who was identified as Febrio De-Zoysa. He has been charged with six counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. Mass killings are rare in Canada.

Stubbs said the deceased are Sri Lankans who recently moved to Canada.

He said they include a 35-year-old mother, a 7-year-old son, a 4-year-old daughter, a 2-year-old daughter and the 21/2-month-old baby girl as well as a 40-year-old acquaintance of the family.

— Denver Post wire services