Nation & world news – at a glance for March 29, 2023

Hospitals Increasingly Crowded With Kids Who Tried to Harm Themselves, Study Finds

The portion of U.S. hospital beds occupied by children with suicidal or self-harming behavior has soared over a decade, a large study of admissions to acute care hospitals shows. An analysis of 4,767,840 pediatric hospitalizations by researchers at Dartmouth College, published Tuesday in the medical journal JAMA, found that between 2009 and 2019, mental health hospitalizations increased 25.8% and cost $1.37 billion. Especially striking was the rise in suicidal behavior as a cause: The portion of pediatric mental health hospitalizations involving suicidal or self-harming behavior rose to 64.2% in 2019, from 30.7% in 2009. As a proportion of overall pediatric hospitalizations, suicidal behavior rose to 12.7% in 2019 from 3.5% in 2009.

Nashville Assailant Bought 7 Guns Legally, Including 3 Used in Shooting

Federal and local investigators in Nashville, Tennessee, were working Tuesday to determine the actions and motives of the shooter who killed three students and three adults at a private school before being shot dead by police. The assailant who opened fire at the Christian elementary school on Monday was identified by officials as Audrey E. Hale, 28, a former student at Covenant School. Nashville Police Chief John Drake said Tuesday that Hale had legally purchased the three firearms used Monday. He reiterated that the attack was targeted, rather than random, but that it was too early to discuss a possible motive.

Biden Concedes He Is Powerless to Act on Guns Without Congress

President Joe Biden on Tuesday declared himself powerless to respond to the scourge of gun violence in America, a remarkably blunt admission one day after an assailant killed six people at a school in Nashville, Tennessee. “I have gone the full extent of my executive authority to do, on my own, anything about guns,” Biden told reporters. It was a stark and surprising statement by Biden about one of the most intractable problems facing American society. The political system has remained all but deadlocked for more than a decade on major changes to gun laws — despite one horrifying shooting after another. “The Congress has to act,” Biden told reporters.

Biden Highlights Economic Investments Ahead of Expected 2024 Announcement

President Biden visited North Carolina on Tuesday and said Republicans would undermine his administration’s gains on American manufacturing, as the president began to sharpen his political message ahead of an expected reelection announcement. Biden spoke at Wolfspeed, a semiconductor manufacturer that recently announced a $5 billion investment to expand operations in the state, which would create about 1,800 jobs, according to the White House. But Biden’s visit was less about semiconductors than it was about making an argument that the American economy has recovered since the pandemic, his administration has helped keep it strong and Republican policies would undo that progress.

Pence Must Testify to Jan. 6 Grand Jury, Judge Rules

A federal judge has ordered former Vice President Mike Pence to appear in front of a grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, largely sweeping aside two separate legal efforts by Pence and Trump to limit his testimony, according to two people familiar with the matter. The twin rulings Monday, from the U.S. District Court in Washington, were the latest setbacks to bids by Trump’s legal team to limit the scope of questions that prosecutors can ask witnesses in separate investigations into his efforts to maintain his grip on power after his election defeat and into his handling of classified documents after he left office.

Targeting Biden’s Immigration Policies, Republicans Attack Mayorkas

Republicans in Congress on Tuesday escalated their attacks against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom House leaders have vowed to impeach, accusing him of bearing personal responsibility for Americans’ drug deaths and the rapes of migrant children, and repeatedly calling on him to step down. Mayorkas’ first appearance before the new Congress underscored the depth of partisan anger he is facing on Capitol Hill, where Republicans are intent on hammering at President Joe Biden’s immigration policies and have singled out his top border official as a ripe target for condemnation.

Fire at the Border: At Least 40 Dead in Mexico Migration Center

Katiuska Márquez said she was begging for money on the streets of Ciudad Juárez on Monday when Mexican migration officers took her and her family to a migration detention facility. Hours later, the 23-year-old Venezuelan was released along with her two young children and husband, but she said authorities wouldn’t release her brother. That night, a fire broke out inside the facility, killing at least 40 people and seriously injuring 28 others. Sixty-eight men from Central and South America were being detained at the facility, the Mexican government said. The cause of the fire has yet to be determined, but Mexico’s president said it started when detainees began protesting inside the detention facility.

King Charles Will Travel to Germany for First Visit as Monarch

King Charles III of Britain will travel to Germany on Wednesday for his first trip abroad as monarch, after strikes and protests in France led to the cancellation of his planned state visit there. During a three-day visit to Berlin and Hamburg, the king and his wife, Camilla, will attend a state banquet, hosted by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife at Bellevue Palace, Germany’s presidential residence. On Thursday, Charles will address Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, and will then meet with refugees who have recently arrived from Ukraine. In Hamburg, they will visit a monument commemorating Kindertransport.

A Plan to Lift the Fog of War in Ukraine? It’s in the Cards.

With billions of dollars in weapons, the West has sought to give Ukraine the upper hand in its war with Russia. But the dizzying array of arms can make it hard for troops to tell friends from foes. So the U.S. Army has come up with a new training tool: a set of playing cards with pictures of 52 different NATO-made tanks, armored personnel carriers, trucks, artillery pieces and other weapons systems. The Pentagon has issued similar decks in the past to help forces familiarize themselves with elements of warfare. Each card has a picture of a weapons system, along with its name, the country where it is manufactured, its export destinations and its main armament.

Two People Killed in Knife Attack at Muslim Center in Lisbon

A man stabbed two people to death and wounded several others at a Muslim center in Portugal’s capital, Lisbon, on Tuesday before he was shot, wounded and taken into custody, Portuguese police said. The motive behind the attack, at the Ismaili Center in Lisbon, was not immediately clear. Police said that they arrived a few minutes before 11 a.m. and ordered the attacker, who had a large knife, to stop. Instead, he advanced toward police. The police then opened fire and wounded the assailant. Rahim Shamji, a spokesperson for the Ismaili community, said that the two people killed were women and that they were doing some work at the center.

Kamala Harris, at Former Slave Port in Ghana, Ties Past to Present

After walking down a path where enslaved people once marched in chains to waiting ships, Vice President Kamala Harris entered a dungeon in Cape Coast, Ghana, where captive women had sung songs praying for death. If nothing else, her tour guide said Tuesday, they believed death would bring freedom. Harris, visibly emotional, walked outside this former slave port and connected the past to the present. Harris, who is on a tour of three countries in Africa — Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia — has been focused on promoting investments in the continent and collaboration with the United States. But on Tuesday, she encouraged Americans to honor and learn the bleak history that links many Black Americans to the continent.

Seized by More Protests, France Is Caught in a Tense Impasse

Stuck in a highly charged standoff, France was gripped Tuesday by another round of strikes, street demonstrations and sporadic violent protests against President Emmanuel Macron’s pension overhaul. A surge of violence on the fringes of last week’s largely peaceful marches had ratcheted up tensions between Macron and opponents of the move to raise the legal age of retirement — labor unions, almost all opposition parties and more than two-thirds of the French public. Authorities deployed 13,000 officers across the country before Tuesday’s demonstrations, including more than 5,000 in Paris.

By wire sources