Oakland police officers respond to a multiple shooting during a Juneteenth celebration near Lake Merritt in Oakland, California, June 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Fifteen people were shot after an illegal “sideshow” took over a peaceful Juneteenth celebration in Oakland, California, police said on Thursday.

Investigators are seeking multiple shooters — more than 50 shell casings were recovered at the scene — following the violence on Wednesday night at Lake Merritt, but no arrests had been made by Thursday afternoon.

About 20 vehicles — mostly all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes — arrived around 8.15 p.m. on Wednesday and started a sideshow on the north side of the lake as 5,000 people attended the Juneteenth event.

Sideshows, also known as street takeovers, involve stunts like doughnuts, drifting and burnouts. Street takeovers often involve hundreds of spectators. Cars block access to an intersection, stopping traffic in all directions and making it harder for police to respond. It’s become a widespread problem around the country, including Oakland and other cities across the U.S.

Oakland Police Chief Floyd Mitchell on Thursday said one person walked across the hood of a sideshow vehicle. Multiple occupants got out and attacked the person, whose injuries required them to be hospitalised.

Some of the people in the crowd also attacked police officers, Mr. Mitchell said during a news conference. A woman was taken into custody for assaulting an officer while the officer was giving first aid to a gunshot victim.

Detectives are combing social media for leads to the shooters’ identities, Mr. itchell said.

At least one gunshot victim was in critical condition. The victims’ ages ranged from 20 to 30 years old. Other injuries included the loss of fingers and minor gunshot wounds.

“The opportunity to celebrate with your family and friends should never be marred by gunfire,” he said.

June 19, or Juneteenth, marks the day in 1865 enslaved people in Galveston, Texas found out they had been freed — after the end of the Civil War, and two years after President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

Juneteenth was designated a federal holiday in 2021 and has become more universally recognised beyond Black America. Many people get the day off work or school, and there are a plethora of street festivals, fairs, concerts and other events.

In 2021, a shooting during a Juneteenth celebration at Lake Merritt left several people injured and a 22-year-old San Francisco man dead.

An American flag is seen upside down at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, on May 31, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Upside-down American flags emerged outside homes and on social media on May 31 in support of Donald Trump after a New York jury returned a historic guilty verdict against the former Republican president.

Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and country music singer Jason Aldean were among the prominent Americans to display the inverted flag, a symbol of distress or protest in America for over 200 years.

The symbol, popular among some avid Trump supporters since his 2020 election defeat, exploded across pro-Trump social media accounts after he was convicted on Thursday of falsifying documents to cover up a hush money payment to a porn star to illegally influence the 2016 election.

Minutes after the verdict Greene, a Trump loyalist, posted an inverted U.S. flag on her X account. By Friday afternoon more than 8 million people had viewed it.

Mr. Aldean posted an inverted flag on his Instagram account, saying: “Scary times in our country right now, man.” He added: “If there was ever a time to speak up, ITS NOW! Make no mistake. We are in trouble.”

Don Tapia, a former Trump ambassador to Jamaica and a Republican donor, flew an inverted flag outside his Arizona home. He said he had received phone calls of support and that motorists had honked as they drove by. “Will switch back Sunday to regular flag,” he told Reuters by text message.

Dan Bongino, a conservative radio talk show host who interviewed Trump on his show on Wednesday, posted an inverted U.S. flag on his X account after the verdict. It had received 250,000 views by mid-afternoon on Friday.

A Miami chapter of the Proud Boys, a far-right militant group, posted an inverted flag on the message channel Telegram, as did a similar group called Patriot Voice, with the words: “In dire distress.”

Also read | Biden says questioning Trump’s guilty verdict is ‘dangerous’ and ‘irresponsible’

On pro-Trump corners of the internet, some supporters called for riots, revolution and violent retribution.

The symbolic inverting of the flag drew nationwide attention when the New York Times reported in mid-May that an upside-down Stars and Stripes was flown outside the home of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in the weeks after the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters rioting in protest at his 2020 election defeat.

Mr. Alito, a conservative appointed to the court by Republican former President George W. Bush, told the Times he had “no involvement whatsoever in the flying of the flag.” He said his wife raised the inverted flag over a neighborhood dispute.

Trump, the first former president to be convicted of a crime, said on Friday he will appeal the verdict. He is locked in a tight race with Democratic President Joe Biden ahead of their November. 5 election rematch.

Staring down a bank of cameras inside Manhattan’s Trump Tower, he rattled off a list of adversaries and grievances in rambling remarks while vowing to keep on fighting.

An upside-down U.S. flag was first used by sailors in the 1700s to signal distress, said presidential historian Timothy Naftali. It has since taken on a long history of political symbolism on the American left as well as the right.

It was used in the anti-slavery movement in the mid-1800s and was carried by anti-Vietnam War protesters in the 1960s, said Mr. Naftali, a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

He said it was ironic that when Vietnam War protesters inverted the flag or burned it, Republicans generally decried that.

“We live in an era now where the deepest and most virulent conspiracies about the nature of our Constitution are on the right. Inverting the flag is part of that,” he said.

An inverted U.S. flag was flown by some people protesting the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minnesota police officer in 2020.

It was carried by people protesting the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2022 to end the federal right to an abortion.

Trump and his Republican supporters have in recent years decried Black football players taking a knee during the playing of the U.S. national anthem, known as the Star-Spangled Banner, itself a reference to the flag.

Law enforcement gathers on Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis, on May 30, 2024, following a fatal shooting.
| Photo Credit: AP

Three people, including the suspected gunman, are dead after a shooting on on May 30 at a Minneapolis apartment complex, police said.

Two police officers were also hospitalised with injuries from the shooting in the south Minneapolis neighborhood of Whittier.

Police said the public was not in danger but encouraged people to stay away from the scene.

No other details were immediately released. Police planned a late evening news conference to address the shooting.

An earlier statement from police indicated there were four civilians injured along with two officers.

News footage showed a large police presence at both the apartment complex and the hospital.

Melvin Carter, the mayor of neighboring St. Paul, said the city was sending police and other first responders to Minneapolis to provide support, including having officers help with security at the NBA playoff game between the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Dallas Mavericks.

Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had responded to “an active shooting situation,” said Ashlee Sherrill, a spokeswoman for the local field division.

ATF agents were “there to help expedite the firearms investigation piece of it,” she said.

Helping hand: Omar Abu Kuwaik with his aunt, Maha Abu Kuwaik, at Shriners Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia on February 28, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Omar Abu Kuwaik is far from his home in Gaza. The four-year-old’s parents and sister were killed by an Israeli airstrike, when he lost part of his arm.

He’s one of the ‘lucky’ ones.

Through the efforts of family and strangers, Omar was brought out of Gaza and to the U.S., where he received treatment, including a prosthetic arm. He spent his days in a house run by a medical charity in New York City, accompanied by his aunt.

It was a small measure of grace in a sea of turmoil for him and his aunt, Maha Abu Kuwaik, as they looked to an uncertain future. The grief and despair for those still trapped in Gaza is never far away.

Ms. Abu Kuwaik is glad she could do this for her beloved brother’s son, whom she now considers her fourth child.

Difficult choice

But it was a terrible choice. Going with Omar meant leaving her husband and three teenage children behind in a sprawling tent camp in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah. With Israel carrying out strikes in areas where it told civilians to take shelter, including Rafah, Ms. Abu Kuwaik knows she might never see her family again.

“My kids love Omar so much,” she said. “They told me, ‘We are not children anymore. Go, let Omar get treated. It’s what is best for him. It’s his only chance.’” Omar was an outgoing boy, she said, and he is clever like his late father, an engineer. Now he is often withdrawn and breaks into tears easily. Ask Omar a question, and he covers his ears with his right hand and the stump of his left arm, declaring, “I don’t want to talk.”

“Kindergarten was nice,” he eventually admits, “and I was happy on the first day.” He started school just weeks before the war. But he does not want to go to kindergarten anymore. He is afraid to leave his aunt’s side.

Flying to New York may have given him a new dream, though. “When I grow up, I want to be pilot,” Omar said, “so I can bring people places.”

Two weeks into the war, Omar and Ms. Abu Kuwaik narrowly escaped death. The two families evacuated their Gaza City apartments just before Israeli airstrikes flattened the buildings.

With only the clothes on their backs, the families split up to stay with different relatives.

On December 6, two Israeli airstrikes slammed into Omar’s grandparents’ home in the Nuseirat refugee camp. The explosion peeled the skin from his face. His left arm could not be saved below the elbow. He had burns on his leg and torso. His parents, six-year-old sister, grandparents, two aunts and a cousin were killed.

‘Anywhere is better’

Omar was pinned beneath the rubble. Rescuers dug until they found his little body, still warm, bleeding but somehow alive. “Our view was, anywhere is better for him than being in Gaza,” said Adib Chouiki, vice president of Rahma Worldwide, a U.S.-based charity, who heard about Omar from the group’s team in Gaza.

Israel and Egypt tightly restrict movement of people out of Gaza, allowing just a few hundred to exit each day, mostly those with foreign citizenship. The World Health Organization says 2,293 patients — 1,498 wounded and 795 ill — have left Gaza for medical treatment alongside 1,625 companions. Yet roughly 8,000 patients remain on a waiting list to go abroad, according to the UN refugee agency.

Mr. Chouiki began reaching out to contacts in the Palestinian, Israeli and Egyptian governments. He got new passports for Omar and Ms. Abu Kuwaik, and Israeli security clearance for them to travel to Egypt. An ambulance brought them to the border, where an Egyptian ambulance whisked them across the Sinai desert.

Inside an Egyptian military hospital, Omar and his aunt waited for weeks until U.S. Customs and Border Protection gave them the green light to fly to New York on January 17.

At Shriners Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, Omar had skin graft surgery for the burn on his leg. He was eager to get his new prosthetic arm on Wednesday, smiling mischievously as he reached out to touch it. “My arm is nice.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off on the IM-1 mission with the Nova-C moon lander built and owned by Intuitive Machines from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S., on February 15, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The moon lander dubbed Odysseus is “alive and well” but resting on its side a day after a white-knuckle touchdown as the first private spacecraft ever to reach the lunar surface, and the first from the United States since 1972, the company behind the vehicle said on Friday.

The chief executive officer of Houston-based Intuitive Machines, which built and flew the lander, said the vehicle is believed to have caught one of its six landing feet on the lunar surface during its final descent and tipped over, coming to rest propped up sideways on a rock.

Still, CEO Stephen Altemus said Odysseus “is stable near or at our intended landing site” near a crater called Malapert A in the region of the moon’s south pole.

“We do have communications with the lander” and sending commands to the vehicle, Altemus said, adding that teams were working to obtain the first photo images from the lunar surface at the landing site.

A brief update on the mission’s status posted to the company’s website earlier on Friday described Odysseus “alive and well.”

The company had said shortly after touchdown on Thursday that radio signals indicated Odysseus had landed in an upright position, but Atlemus said that faulty conclusion was based on telemetry from before the landing.

Intuitive Machines mission director Tim Crain said the spacecraft, burning a propulsion fuel of liquid methane and liquid oxygen for the first time in space, “performed flawlessly” during its flight to the moon.

Altemus said the spacecraft was recharging properly from solar energy and was charged at 100%.

The six-legged, uncrewed robot spacecraft reached the lunar surface on Thursday after a nail-biting final approach and descent in which a problem surfaced with the lander’s navigation system, requiring engineers on the ground to employ an untested work-around at the 11th hour.

It also took some time after an anticipated radio blackout to re-establish communications with the spacecraft and determine its fate some 239,000 miles (384,000 km) from Earth.

When contact was finally renewed, the signal was faint, confirming that the lander had touched down but leaving mission control immediately uncertain as to the precise condition and position of the vehicle, company officials said during a webcast of the event on Thursday evening.

The lander is carrying a suite of scientific experiments for NASA and several commercial customers designed to operate for seven days on solar energy before the sun sets over the polar landing site.

U.S. President Joe Biden has been interviewed as part of an independent investigation into his handling of classified documents, the White House said late on Monday. It’s a possible sign that the investigation is nearing its end.

Special counsel Robert Hur is examining the improper retention of classified documents by Mr. Biden from his time as a U.S. Senator and as Vice President that were found at his Delaware home, as well as at a private office that he used in between his service in the Obama administration and becoming President.

Mr. Biden has said he was unaware he had the documents and that “there’s no there there.”

Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House counsel’s office, said in a statement that the interview was voluntary and conducted at the White House on Sunday and Monday.

It’s not clear when Mr. Hur’s team approached President Biden’s lawyers about an interview or how long they’d been negotiating. Asked on August 25 if he planned to sit for an interview with the special counsel, Biden replied, “There’s no such request and no such interest.”

The interview could signal that the special counsel investigation is nearing its conclusion.

In 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey announced his recommendation against criminal charges for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. the Democratic presidential nominee, over her handling of classified information just three days after agents interviewed her at FBI headquarters.

Investigators with Hur’s office have already cast a broad net in the Biden probe, interviewing a wide range of witnesses about their knowledge of the handling of classified documents.

In his statement, Mr. Sams reiterated that President Biden and the White House were cooperating. He referred any questions to the Justice Department.

“As we have said from the beginning, the President and the White House are cooperating with this investigation, and as it has been appropriate, we have provided relevant updates publicly, being as transparent as we can consistent with protecting and preserving the integrity of the investigation,” he said. “We would refer other questions to the Justice Department at this time.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland in January 2023 named Mr. Hur, a former U.S. attorney for Maryland, to handle the politically sensitive Justice Department inquiry in an attempt to avoid conflicts of interest.

It is one of three recent Justice Department investigations into the handling of classified documents by politically prominent figures.

The investigation into Biden is separate from special counsel Jack Smith’s probe into the handling of classified documents by former President Donald Trump after he left the White House. Smith’s team has charged Trump with illegally retaining top secret records at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida and then obstructing government efforts to get them back. Trump has said he did nothing wrong.

No evidence has emerged to suggest that Biden engaged in comparable conduct or willfully held onto records he wasn’t supposed to have.

Questioned in January about the discovery, Biden told reporters that the documents were immediately turned over to the National Archives and the Justice Department. He said he was cooperating fully with the investigation and was “looking forward to getting this resolved quickly.”

“I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there,” he said. “There’s no there there.”

In June, the Justice Department informed former Vice President Mike Pence’s legal team that it would not pursue criminal charges against him related to the discovery of classified documents at his Indiana home. The news came as Pence finalized plans to launch his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

About a dozen documents with classified markings were discovered at Pence’s home in January after he asked his lawyers to search his vice presidential belongings “out of an abundance of caution” after the Biden discovery. The items had been “inadvertently boxed and transported” to Pence’s home at the end of the last administration, Pence’s lawyer, Greg Jacob, wrote in a letter to the National Archives.

The FBI then discovered an additional document with classified markings at the Indiana house during its own search the following month.

Pence repeatedly had said he was unaware of the documents’ existence, but that “mistakes were made” in his handling of classified material.

It is hardly unprecedented for sitting presidents to be interviewed in criminal investigations.

President George W. Bush sat for a 70-minute interview as part of an investigation into the leak of the identify of a CIA operative. President Bill Clinton in 1998 underwent more than four hours of questioning from independent counsel Kenneth Starr before a federal grand jury.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team negotiated with lawyers for then-President Donald Trump for an interview but Trump never sat for one. His lawyers instead submitted answers to written questions.