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Good morning.
The suspect in a deadly mass shooting at a southern California dance studio on Saturday night died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Sunday morning. Ten people were killed and at least 10 others were taken to hospital after a gunman opened fire in a ballroom dance studio in a city close to Los Angeles.
The mass shooting, one of California’s worst in recent memory, happened hours after a lunar new year festival that attracted tens of thousands of revellers in Monterey Park, a majority-Asian American city. The motive for the attack is still under investigation, law enforcement officials said at a press briefing last night.
Officials have identified the shooter as Huu Can Tran, a 72-year-old man. After a manhunt, Huu was found dead in a white van that police had identified as a suspicious vehicle.
Authorities said that after opening fire at one dance studio, the shooter appeared to have targeted a second dance venue in nearby Alhambra, another majority-Asian American town, where he fled after two people were able to take his gun away from him.
Heavy diplomatic pressure has been building on Berlin to send its tanks to Ukraine, or at least allow countries that bought them from Germany to re-export them. As the producer of the Leopard tanks, Berlin has a veto on their transfer.
At a special international summit on Friday at the US military base in Ramstein, south-west Germany, Berlin declined to take a decision on whether to give Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, leading to growing frustration from Kyiv and its allies.
On Sunday, Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, criticised Germany’s failure to supply the hardware to Ukraine: “Germany’s attitude is unacceptable. It has been almost a year since the war began. Innocent people are dying every day. Russian bombs are wreaking havoc in Ukrainian cities. Civilian targets are being attacked, women and children are being murdered.”
He went on: “I try to weigh my words but I’ll say it bluntly: Ukraine and Europe will win this war – with or without Germany.”
It had been hoped in Kyiv and the US that Germany would allow Leopards owned by countries such as Poland and Finland to be re-exported. However, Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said despite heightened expectations, “we still cannot say when a decision will be taken, and what the decision will be, when it comes to the Leopard tank”.
Thousands of protesters gathered across the US on Sunday to protest the end of the federal right to abortion – marching on the 50th anniversary of the Roe v Wade supreme court decision that made abortion a constitutional right in 1973, but which was struck down last year, writes Poppy Noor.
