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A sheriff in Florida went on a rant against gun control while announcing the arrests of a 12-year-old and a 17-year-old in connection with a shooting that left three dead.

Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said the two suspects were charged with murder, and a third suspect, a 16-year-old remains at large.

Addressing a press conference, Mr Woods said: “There are individuals out there viewing, and includes some of you media, that want to blame the one thing that has no ability or the capacity to commit the crime itself, and that’s the gun. These individuals committed the crime.

“All the gun laws we got in place didn’t prevent it, did it? Neither will any new ones. Because here’s the fact: The bad guy is going to get a gun no matter what law you put in place.

“These juveniles shouldn’t even possess a handgun but they did.”

Sheriff Billy Woods speaking at a press conference

He added: “I am a father, and here’s the one thing my boys know. Growing up, the barber had my permission to whip their a****.”

On 30 March, Layla Silvernail, 16, was found injured on the side of a road with a gunshot wound. She later died.

The next day authorities discovered the body of 17-year-old boy with the same injury, lying on a road a few miles from the first incident.

The third victim, another 16-year-old girl, was found dead on Saturday inside Layla’s vehicle, which was partly submerged in a body of water.

Mr Woods said the victims and suspects all knew each other and were involved in committed robberies and burglaries. They also had affiliations to gangs.

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 Rally of Parents and Kids to End Gun Violence at the State Capitol Thursday, March 30, 2023. Pic: AP
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Protest at the State Capitol on 30 March. Pic: AP

Later in the conference Mr Woods took aim at the education system, saying the country needs to “stop minimising the actions of students” and hold them accountable.

Debates concerning gun control have become more prominent since the mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school that killed six people – including three nine-year-old children.

In response to the shooting, hundreds of demonstrators packed the Tennessee Capitol calling for the Republican-led State to pass gun control measures. Two Democrats were also expelled from the House in Nashville after protesting against gun violence.

Justin Pearson and Justin Jones raise their hands after being expelled from their seats in Nashville, Tennessee,
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Democrats Justin Pearson and Justin Jones were expelled from their seats in Nashville

Guns became the leading cause of death among children and teenagers in 2020, killing more people aged one to 19 in the US than car crashes, drug overdoses or cancer, according to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“In the last 40 years, and almost certainly before that, this is the first time that firearm injuries have surpassed motor vehicle crashes among kids,” said a co-author Jason Goldstick, a research associate professor at the University of Michigan.

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At least two dead and eight critically injured in US university shooting

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At least two dead and eight critically injured in US university shooting

At least two people have been killed and eight others critically injured in a shooting on the campus of Brown University in Rhode Island, officials have said.

The incident is believed to be unfolding near an engineering building on the campus, according to the school’s alert system.

Providence Police and the Rhode Island State Police are responding.

It is unclear at the moment whether arrests have been made.

Brown University says no suspects are in custody and that additional shots may have been fired.

US President Donald Trump corrected an earlier post he shared online, clarifying that a suspect was not in custody. In his previous post, he had stated that a suspect was in custody.

University officials initially told students and staff that a suspect was in custody, but later said this was not the case and police were still searching for a suspect or suspects.

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Officials noted that the information remained preliminary as investigators try to determine what has occurred.

Police are actively investigating and still gathering information from the scene, said Kristy DosReis, the chief public information officer for the city of Providence.

The shooting was reported near the Barus & Holley building, a seven-storey structure that houses the School of Engineering and Physics Department, according to the school’s website.

It includes 117 laboratories, 150 offices and 15 classrooms.

Brown is a private university with roughly 7,300 undergraduate students and more than 3,000 graduate students.

Providence Council member John Goncalves, whose ward includes the Brown campus, said: “We’re still getting information about what’s going on, but we’re just telling people to lock their doors and to stay vigilant.

“As a Brown alum, someone who loves the Brown community and represents this area, I’m heartbroken. My heart goes out to all the family members and the folks who’ve been impacted.”

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Trump says US ‘will retaliate’ after three Americans killed in Syrian ‘Islamic State attack’

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Trump says US 'will retaliate' after three Americans killed in Syrian 'Islamic State attack'

Donald Trump has said the US “will retaliate” after three Americans were killed in a suspected Islamic State attack in Syria.

Two US service members and one civilian died and three other people were injured in an ambush on Saturday by a lone IS – also often called ISIS in Syria and Iraq – gunman, according to the he US military’s Central Command.

The attack on US troops in Syria is the first to inflict fatalities since the fall of President Bashar Assad a year ago.

“This is an ISIS attack,” the US president told reporters at the White House before leaving for the Army-Navy football game in Baltimore.

He paid condolences to the three people killed and said the three others who were wounded “seem to be doing pretty well”.

In a post on his Truth Social platform, Mr Trump said “there will be very serious retaliation”.

The shooting took place near historic Palmyra, according to the state-run SANA news agency, and the casualties were taken by helicopter to the al Tanf garrison near the border with Iraq and Jordan.

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The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attacker was a member of the Syrian security force.

Syria’s Interior Ministry spokesman Nour al Din al Baba said authorities are looking into whether the gunman was an IS member or only carried its extreme ideology, and denied reports suggesting he was a security member.

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Central Command earlier said in a post on X that the gunman was killed, while the identities of the service members killed wouldn’t be released until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified.

Pentagon chief spokesman Sean Parnell said the civilian killed in the attack was a US interpreter.

US defence secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X: “Let it be known, if you target Americans – anywhere in the world – you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you.”

The US has hundreds of troops deployed in eastern Syria as part of a coalition fighting IS.

The group was defeated on the battlefield in Syria in 2019 but the UN says the group still has between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq, and its sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks.

Syria’s interim president, Ahmad al Sharaa, made a historic visit to Washington DC last month as Syria signed a political cooperation agreement with the US-led coalition against IS.

“This was an ISIS attack against the US, and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” Mr Trump said in his social media post, adding that Mr al Sharaa was “extremely angry and disturbed”.

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Washington state flooding forces entire city to evacuate as rivers reach historic highs

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Washington state flooding forces entire city to evacuate as rivers reach historic highs

National Guard troops went door-to-door on Friday to evacuate a farming city north of Seattle as severe flooding in western Washington state put levees at risk.

Days of torrential rain have swelled rivers to record or near-record levels, as flooding has stranded families on rooftops, washed over bridges and ripped homes from their foundations.

Burlington, a city of nearly 10,000 residents near Puget Sound – a large inlet of the Pacific Ocean in northwestern Washington – was placed under a full evacuation order with people told to leave immediately and move to higher ground.

The Skagit River, a major waterway that flows from the Cascade Mountains through the Skagit Valley before emptying into Puget Sound, surged to a record high of nearly 38ft (11.6m) at Mount Vernon, about 10 miles south of Burlington.

“We haven’t seen flooding like this ever,” said Karina Shagren, a spokesperson for the state’s emergency management division, adding that there had been no reports of injuries or missing individuals so far.

Pic: Reuters
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Pic: Reuters

Pic: Reuters
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Pic: Reuters

National Guard troops and sheriff’s deputies were going door to assist with the evacuations.

Some responders were seen paddling stranded Burlington residents to safety in inflatable river rafts through the muddy floodwaters.

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Later on Friday, the evacuation order was lifted for part of the city, Burlington police department spokesperson Michael Lumpkin said.

However, while water levels appeared to ease a little, Mr Lumpkin said “it’s definitely not an all-clear”.

Pic: Reuters
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Pic: Reuters

Pic: Reuters
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Pic: Reuters

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The intense rainfall was driven by an atmospheric river, a massive stream of moisture drawn from the ocean and carried inland over the Pacific Northwest earlier in the week.

Although rainfall has begun to ease, the National Weather Service has issued a flash-flood warning for the Skagit River basin all the way downstream to its mouth at Puget Sound.

Snohomish, around 40 miles south of Burlington, has also been affected. Pic: Reuters
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Snohomish, around 40 miles south of Burlington, has also been affected. Pic: Reuters

Pic: Reuters
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Pic: Reuters

The swollen waters could put enough strain on levees to cause them to fail, the weather service noted.

“Extensive flooding of streets, homes and farmland will be possible” if levees and dikes give way, it said.

The Burlington-Mount Vernon area in Skagit County continues to be the hardest-hit area, facing extensive flooding from days of heavy rainfall stretching from northern Oregon through western Washington and into British Columbia.

National Guard troops were also dispatched to deliver food and check on stranded residents in a number of communities cut off by flooding in adjacent Snohomish County, south of Skagit County.

The flooding washed out or forced the closure of dozens of roads throughout the region, including most of the Canadian highways leading to the port city of Vancouver in British Columbia.

Parts of northern Idaho and western Montana have also been impacted.

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