North America

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) — As authorities in Ohio try to pin down a motive for the weekend’s second U.S. mass shooting and dig into the slain shooter’s life, what they find might also help answer another big question looming over the tragedy: What, if anything, could have stopped it?

Police say the gunman was wearing a mask and body armor when he shot and killed his younger sister and eight others after the pair had arrived together with a friend earlier Saturday evening at a popular entertainment district packed with young people.

DALLAS (AP) — About 20 minutes before the shooting started at an El Paso Walmart, a rambling screed was posted to an online message board saying the massacre was in response to an “invasion” of Hispanics coming across the southern border.

Titled “The Inconvenient Truth,” it railed against the dangers of mass immigration and warned that Hispanics will eventually take over the economy and government. The writer argued that attacking “low-security” targets was a way to “fight to reclaim my country from destruction.”

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Democratic presidential candidates sought to lay blame Sunday on President Donald Trump following a pair of mass shootings in Ohio and Texas, saying his language against minorities promotes racial division and violence.

DAYTON, Ohio (AP) — Nineteen hours after a masked gunman opened fire on revelers enjoying summer nightlife, the blood had been scrubbed from the sidewalk and the crime-scene tape torn down as a somber crowd of hundreds stood in the same street Sunday evening to honor the nine victims killed and 27 left injured in Dayton, Ohio.

They released doves, repeated the names of the dead and sang “Amazing Grace,” but directed an angrier chorus at Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, interrupting his speech at the vigil with chants of “Make a change” and “Do something!”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Diane Foley learned her son’s fate not from any government official but from a sobbing journalist who asked if she’d been on Twitter.

Foley had not, but the ghastly images weren’t hard to find. President Barack Obama soon confirmed the news to the world: James Foley, a 40-year-old American journalist kidnapped in Syria two years earlier, was the American beheaded by Islamic State militants in a video circulating online.

BRIDGEWATER, N.J. (AP) — As the nation reeled from two mass shootings in less than a day, President Donald Trump spent the first hours after the tragedies out of sight at his New Jersey golf course, sending out tweets of support awkwardly mixed in with those promoting a celebrity fight and attacking his political foes.

UNITED STATES (AP) — Two mass shootings at crowded public places in Texas and Ohio in less than 24 hours claimed at least 29 lives and left scores injured, a shocking carnage even in a country accustomed to gun violence.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Democratic presidential candidates and the shootings in Texas and Ohio (all times Eastern):

11:35 a.m.

A top White House aide says President Donald Trump is saddened and angry following mass shootings in Ohio and Texas and “wants to do something about it.”

ISSAQUAH, Wash. (AP) — Nestled in the foothills of Washington’s Cascade Mountains, the bustling Seattle suburb of Issaquah seems an unlikely candidate for anxiety over wildfires.

The region, famous for its rainfall, has long escaped major burns even as global warming has driven an increase in the size and number of wildfires elsewhere in the American West.

04 August 2019; AFP: US President Donald Trump defended Saturday his hardline trade policy against China, arguing that the tariffs he imposed are bringing in "billions" from the Beijing government.

"Things are going along very well with China. They are paying us Tens of Billions of Dollars, made possible by their monetary devaluations and pumping in massive amounts of cash to keep their system going," Trump wrote on Twitter.