First Thing: Biden says white supremacy has no place in US after Florida killings

A white man shot and killed two men and one woman, all of whom were Black, before shooting himself. Plus, exposing Andrew Tate

Good morning.

Joe Biden said yesterday that “white supremacy has no place in America” after three people were killed in a racist shooting in Florida and it emerged that the gunman had been turned away from a historically Black college or university (HBCU) campus moments before opening fire at a discount store.

Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, yesterday called the gunman a “hateful lunatic” and said “we will not allow HBCUs to be targeted”.

The FBI is investigating Saturday’s shooting as a hate crime after officials said the attack at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, was racially motivated, and community leaders also expressed horror.

A white man, armed with a high-powered rifle and a handgun and wearing a tactical vest and mask, entered the store just before 2pm and shot and killed two men and one woman, before fatally shooting himself. All three victims were Black.

• Who were the victims? TK Waters, the sheriff of Jacksonville, on Sunday afternoon named the victims, saying that the gunman was caught on video shooting Angela Michelle Carr, 52, in her car outside the Dollar General. The gunman then entered the store where he shot 19-year-old Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre Jr and Jerrald De’Shaun Gallion, 29.

• How are the community of Jacksonville coping? The shooting has traumatized a historically Black neighborhood in Jacksonville. “Our hearts are broken,” the Rev Willie Barnes told about 100 congregants Sunday morning. “If any of you are like me, I’m fighting trying to not be angry.”

‘Racism is still with us’: celebration of King’s 1963 speech shadowed by racist attack

On the eve of the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s legendary I Have a Dream speech, his son and granddaughter have decried continuing racial violence and hatred in the US, lamenting that the civil rights leader’s call for equality and justice has yet to be fulfilled.

Speaking a day after a vast crowd gathered in the nation’s capital in an echo of the 28 August 1963 march on Washington at which King made his famous remarks, his eldest son, Martin Luther King III, warned of a resurgence of hate crimes. Violence against minorities was “unconscionable” and “unacceptable”, he said.

He added that his daughter, Yolanda Renee King, had fewer rights today than when she was born. “The Voting Rights Act was struck down in 2013, women’s reproductive rights were struck down in 2022, affirmative action was struck down in 2023 – so she has fewer rights,” he told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.

To mark the anniversary, Joe Biden has invited all of King’s children as well as surviving organisers of the original march to a commemorative reception in the Oval Office today.

• What did Yolanda Renee King, 15, the only grandchild of the civil rights leader, say? She said that if she could talk to her grandfather today, she would apologise. “I would say I’m sorry we still have to be here to rededicate ourselves to finishing your work and ultimately realizing your dream. Today, racism is still with us. Poverty is still with us. And now, gun violence has come for places of worship, our schools and our shopping centers.”

• What else happened 60 years ago at the Lincoln Memorial? Martin Luther King changed America that day. But there was more to the day than just his “I have a dream” speech. There was music too.

Study casts doubt on Neanderthal ‘flower burial’ theory

Buried in a partial foetal position and surrounded by flower pollen, the discovery of Shanidar 4, a Neanderthal skeleton unearthed in 1960, prompted a dramatic reappraisal of our ancient cousins.

Far from being brutish thugs, the Shanidar flower burial, as it became known, painted a picture of Neanderthals as empathic beings who cared enough for their dead to scour the mountains for funeral bouquets. Now, fresh evidence suggests this interpretation may have been incorrect – although Neanderthals may still have had strong funerary rituals.

Neanderthals are estimated to have died out 45,000 years ago and few physical remains of them have survived. However, during the late 1950s and early 60s, an archaeologist called Ralph Solecki discovered the skeletons of 10 Neanderthal men, women and children at Shanidar cave in the Zagros mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. Surrounding one of the males, Shanidar 4, were clumps of ancient pollen – presumed to be pollen sacs (anthers) from whole cut flowers – launching Solecki’s flower burial hypothesis.

“Although the evidence was subsequently questioned, the story was spectacular enough that it is still found in most archaeology textbooks,” said Prof Chris Hunt at Liverpool John Moores University, who also credits it with inspiring him to pursue a career in environmental archaeology.

• What did the study find? Hunt and his colleagues have identified two further Neanderthal bodies – one, known as Shanidar Z, immediately adjacent to and slightly below where Shanidar 4 was found – plus further bones and teeth about 15cm below these remains. “Although it is very difficult to infer traditions from archaeology, this looks like a tradition of disposing of the dead in a very similar way and it’s obviously with care, because two of the bodies are very complete,” Hunt said.

• What about the pollen? The team revisited the original pollen identifications, finding that the clumps contained pollen from more than one type of flower, with not all of these plants blooming at the same time of year –throwing the idea of funeral flowers into doubt. Rather, the most likely source of the pollen clumps is nesting bees, evidence of which was discovered nearby, the team suggests.

In other news …

• Ukraine said its troops had liberated the south-eastern settlement of Robotyne and were trying to advance further south in their counteroffensive against Russian forces, Reuters reports. “Robotyne has been liberated,” the deputy defence minister, Hanna Maliar, was quoted as saying by Ukraine’s military.

• The billionaire founder of tech giant Foxconn, Terry Gou, has announced he will run for president of Taiwan as an independent candidate, pledging to fix cross-strait relations and boost Taiwan’s economy. Gou announced what he called “the era of entrepreneurs’ rule”.

• Israeli airstrikes on Aleppo airport in northern Syria have caused the grounding of flights, the Syrian state news agency Sana has reported, citing a military source. During more than 12 years of civil war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes on its territory.

• Donald Trump’s legal spokesperson has predicted that forthcoming early trial dates in the former president’s four criminal cases will not hold, and that his multiple cases could clash with the final stages of the 2024 presidential election campaign andvoting.

Stat of the day: Simone Biles wins record eighth national title at US gymnastics championships

A decade later, Simone Biles is still on top. The gymnastics star won her record eighth US championship last night, 10 years after she first ascended to the top of her sport as a teenage prodigy. Biles, now a 26-year-old newlywed considered perhaps the greatest of all time, posted an all-around two-day total of 118.40, four points clear of runner-up Shilese Jones. The Florida junior Leanne Wong claimed third, bolstering her chances of making a third straight world championship team. Biles became the oldest woman to win a national title since USA Gymnastics began organizing the event in 1963. Her eight crowns moved her past Alfred Jochim, who won seven between 1925-33 when the Amateur Athletics Union ran the championships and the events in men’s competition included rope climbing.

“I don’t think about numbers,” Biles said. “I think about my performance. And I think overall, I hit 8 for 8. I guess it’s a lucky number this year.”

Don’t miss this: ‘To his followers, this man is a messiah!’ Matt Shea on his long fight to expose Andrew Tate

“You’d be forgiven for looking at Andrew Tate, especially at our age, and thinking, ‘This guy must be some niche figure,’” the documentary film-maker Matt Shea says, “but there was a recent survey by Hope Not Hate which found that 52% of 16- and 17-year-old boys in the UK have a positive view of Andrew Tate, and were more likely to have heard of him than they were Rishi Sunak … And that number goes a bit higher when [the respondents are] younger, similar surveys all across the world. US, Australia, India: he’s huge all across the world. You may not have heard of Andrew Tate, or you may have heard of him but think it’s universally accepted that he’s a bad person. But your children, your nephews, they are watching him right now and they may not have the same view.”

Despite constant death threats, Shea has been investigating the world’s most notorious misogynist since 2019. But even he was shocked by what he uncovered working on his latest film.

… or this: Can I forgive myself for my daughter’s death?

“It’s been two years since my daughter, Martha, died in hospital, just before her 14th birthday,” writes Paul Laity. “I divide my life into before her death, and after: nothing is the same and the change is permanent. Alongside Merope, Martha’s mum, I’m grappling with how to live. Consciously or not, we adjust a little more each day to our new reality, wondering: can we manage to appear “normal”? Is it possible to keep being friends with families and not be flayed by envy? If grief can be defined as learning to be in the world without a person you love, I have a lot of learning still to do. As things stand, my thoughts revolve around two questions – they dominate my days. The first is: can I forgive the doctors and the hospital who so badly let her down? (Martha’s was a preventable death.) And second, at the core of everything: can I forgive myself for failing to save her?”

Climate check: After America’s summer of extreme weather, ‘next year may well be worse’

It’s been a strange, cruel summer in the United States. From the dystopian orange skies above New York to the deadly immolation of a historic coastal town in Hawaii, the waning summer has been a stark demonstration of the escalating climate crisis – with experts warning that worse is to come. The repeated climate-driven disasters have started to tear at the fabric of American life this year, with state and federal authorities scrambling to deal with displaced people and major insurers deciding to pull out of California and parts of Florida due to the mounting costs of covering homes menaced by fire and floods.

“This summer is most concerning to me personally and professionally not because it indicates an acceleration of climate change, more that it suggests we are somewhat inured to it,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA said. “This year is shocking and next year may well be worse.”

Last Thing: Drivers in Japan plied with alcohol to show drink-driving dangers

Police and driving instructors in Japan have adopted an unorthodox approach to road safety in the hope of reducing incidences of drink-driving – by allowing drivers to consume alcohol before getting behind the wheel. Chikushino driving school in the south-western city of Fukuoka began offering controlled drink-driving experiences as part of a police campaign to convince “overconfident” motorists never to drink and drive. The initiative was launched around the 17th anniversary of the deaths of three children from the city – two boys aged four and three, and their one-year-old sister – who died when their family car was struck by a municipal government employee who was driving under the influence of alcohol.

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