Surveillance footage captured the gunman in the Uvalde school shooting entering the building with a AR-15-style rifle and later shows officers in body armor milling in the hallway outside the fourth-grade classrooms where 19 children and two teachers were killed.

The video published on Tuesday by the Austin American-Statesman shows parts of the nearly 80 minutes that passed between the gunman walking into Robb elementary school through an unlocked door and the time when his death put a stop to the US’s deadliest school shooting in nearly two decades.

The four-minute video from 24 May shows two officers approaching the classrooms not long after the gunman and then run back amid the sounds of gunfire. It shows officers, some with shields and rifles, massing in the hall before they breached the room and killed the gunman about an hour later.

The edited footage was published as Texas lawmakers investigating the massacre are preparing to release their findings and show body-camera and surveillance footage to mourning families and other residents of Uvalde.

Officials said the 77 minutes of footage they are preparing to release this weekend did not contain images of children. The footage has received renewed attention over the past week as anger mounts in Uvalde over an incomplete account about the slow police response and calls for accountability seven weeks after the worst school shooting in Texas history.

Source: Uvalde surveillance video shows police lingering in school hallway | Texas school shooting | The Guardian

Fiji’s prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, acknowledged the US’s reengagement with the region, saying: “It is clear the US is certainly looking a lot more like the Pacific partner we have traditionally held it to be.”

In her virtual address to Pacific leaders on Wednesday morning, Harris acknowledged the diplomatic void that the US had left in recent years, saying: “We recognise that in recent years, the Pacific islands may not have received the diplomatic attention and support that you deserve. So today I am here to tell you directly: we are going to change that.”

She also appeared to take a swipe at China’s involvement in the Pacific, speaking of “bad actors” in the region.

“At a time when we see bad actors seeking to undermine the rules-based order, we must stand united,” Harris said. “In this region and around the world, the United States believes it is important to strengthen the international rules-based order – to defend it, to promote it and to build on it.

“These international rules and norms have brought peace and stability to the Pacific for more than 75 years – principles that importantly state that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states must be respected; principles that allow all states, big and small, to conduct their affairs free from aggression or coercion.”

Source: Police remove two Chinese defence attaches from Pacific Islands Forum meeting | Pacific Islands Forum | The Guardian

Source: Covid: 3m adults still unvaccinated in England – BBC News

“The problem is, the technology is far ahead of the science, and we don’t understand all the science of the deep sea yet,” said Hemphill. He explained that deep sea mining would involve the basic destruction of the marine ecosystem. It would be like a “giant lawn mower or vacuum cleaner,” he added, stirring up the sea bed. This would create huge plumes of debris, that would smother coral reefs and have a major impact on everything that lives in the sea, including mammals such as dolphins and fish. Once the nodules of minerals are dug up off the floor, everything would be sucked up into one big tube onto the massive mining ships, where the minerals would be removed and the remainder thrown back into the sea.

The effect of these plumes is, Hemphill emphasized, impossible to predict. However, the noise would be tremendous, affecting marine mammals in particular – disrupting the complex communication systems of whales, for examples.

Two more terrible risks to this altogether devastating vision of the future: the impact on fisheries around the world would, inevitably, be catastrophic. And secondly, the natural mechanism of carbon storage in the deep sea floor would be destroyed. This could have disastrous effects on climate change. The sea is one vast carbon sink. How could we even be considering this, as the climate crisis deepens?

Source: “We don’t even know the life down there”: Greenpeace sounds the alarm on destructive deep sea mining – Petchary’s Blog

Fire morels, which Steinruck says have a mild smokiness to them, are more finicky than naturals. Depending on location, they sprout only in the spring following a prescribed burn or wildfire. Morels have a quirky and understudied lifecycle, which makes farming them on a large scale difficult.

For eager mycophiles, foraging is often the best option. Since last year saw about 6.2 million acres burned by wildfires in the western United States, foragers projected 2022 to be a prolific fire morel season.

Source: The Mysterious Mushroom That Only Grows in Burn Scars – Gastro Obscura

The company is among a number of locations reporting COVID cases in the dozens. From the most recent L.A. County reporting:

• TSA at LAX: 137
• American Airlines at LAX: 94
• Smithfield Foods in Vernon: 48
• Warner Bros. Studios: 43
• Newegg in City of Industry: 34
• Raytheon Technologies in El Segundo: 34
• Southwest Airlines in Burbank: 34

If the county remains in the “high” level and stays there for two weeks in a row, people will once again be required to wear face coverings indoors. Ferrer says universal masking may feel like a step backwards to many more than two years into this pandemic, but it will help reduce the spread.

Source: Warner Bros. Studios Sees Significant COVID Outbreak. It’s Among Several Companies Reporting Dozens Of Cases | LAist