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Wisconsin school shooting victims named as teacher Erin West and student Rubi Vergara

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Wisconsin school shooting victims named as teacher Erin West and student Rubi Vergara

Tributes have been paid to the two victims who died in the shooting at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, on Monday, who have been named as 42-year-old teacher Erin M. West and 14-year-old student Rubi P. Vergara.

The Dane County Medical Examiner’s office confirmed their identities in a press release Wednesday night, while in a separate statement, the school said, “our hearts are heavy with these losses.”

The suspected shooter, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, a freshman at the school who was also known as Samantha, died on the way to hospital on Monday from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.

“ALCS is a better school for the work of Erin West. She brought her love of Jesus and love of people to our staff and school family all wrapped in a hug and topped with a smile,” the school’s statement said.

Erin West.Empire Photography

The school said West worked as a substitute teacher for three years before taking a full-time staff role as an in-house substitute teacher and coordinator, “a role tailor made for her abundant skills and breadth of knowledge.”

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“She served our teachers and students with grace, humor, wisdom, and — most importantly — with the love of Jesus. Her loss is a painful and deep one and she will be greatly missed not just among our staff, but our entire ALCS family,” the statement added.

Rubi Vergara, a 9th grade student, had been at the school since kindergarten and was described as popular and a keen volunteer.

“Her gentle, loving, and kind heart was reflected in her smile. Rubi was a blessing to her class and our school. She was not only a good friend, but a great big sister,” the school said.

“Often seen with a book in hand, she had a gift for art and music. Yet, it was Rubi’s love for Jesus that shined brightest and she shared His love with others by volunteering faithfully. She will be missed deeply by her teachers and fellow students,” the statement added.

An online obituary uploaded to a local funeral home website said Vergara loved art, singing and playing keyboard in her family’s worship band. “She shared a special bond with her beloved pets, Ginger (cat) and Coco (dog),” the obituary said.

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Wisconsin school shooting victims named as teacher Erin West and student Rubi Vergara
Rubi Patricia Vergara.Jenn Vergara

The funeral home said a service for Vergara would be held on Saturday at 11 a.m. CST (12 a.m. ET) and would be livestreamed online.

The police investigation into the shooting continues. Authorities said Wednesday night that the two unidentified students who received life-threatening injuries remain in a local hospital, while the four people who were treated in hospital for minor injuries sustained in the shooting have been discharged.

Police said that the shooter opened fire in a second-floor classroom “during a study hall for mixed graders.”

Two guns were found at the school, but only one was used in the shooting, police said.

Police said they were working to establish a motive and said they were aware of the suspect’s alleged social media activity and “documents and photos circulating the internet,” that have yet to be verified.

Detectives want to speak to any who may have interacted with Rupnow in the days or weeks before the shooting — they can contact police anonymously through Madison Area Crime Stoppers at p3tips.com or by calling 608-266-6014. 

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The U.S. Is Trying to Deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Legal Resident. Here’s What to Know.

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The U.S. Is Trying to Deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Legal Resident. Here’s What to Know.

The Trump administration invoked an obscure statute over the weekend in moving to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the United States who recently graduated from Columbia University, where he helped lead campus protests against high civilian casualties in Gaza during Israel’s campaign against Hamas.

Mr. Khalil was arrested by immigration officers on Saturday and then sent to a detention center in Louisiana. On Monday, a federal judge in New York, Jesse M. Furman, ordered the federal government not to deport Mr. Khalil while he reviewed a petition challenging the legality of the detention.

Here’s what to know about the administration’s attempt to deport Mr. Khalil.

Mr. Khalil, 30, earned a master’s degree from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs in December. He has Palestinian heritage and is married to an American citizen who is eight months pregnant.

At Columbia last spring, Mr. Khali assumed a major role in student-led protests on campus against Israel’s war efforts in Gaza. He described his position as a negotiator and spokesman for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a pro-Palestinian group.

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The Trump administration did not publicly lay out the legal authority for the arrest. But two people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations, said Secretary of State Marco Rubio relied on a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that gives him sweeping power to expel foreigners.

The provision says that any “alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”

That is not very clear.

Mr. Rubio reposted a Homeland Security Department statement that accused Mr. Khalil of having “led activities aligned to Hamas.” But officials have not accused him of having any contact with the terrorist group, taking direction from it or providing material support to it.

Rather, the administration’s rationale is that the protests that Mr. Khalil played a key part in were antisemitic and created a hostile environment for Jewish students at Columbia, the people with knowledge of the matter said. Mr. Rubio’s argument, they said, is that the United States’ foreign policy includes combating antisemitism across the globe and that Mr. Khali’s residency in the nation undermines that policy objective.

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President Trump said Mr. Khalil’s case was “the first arrest of many to come.”

But a lawful permanent resident, or green card holder, is protected by the Constitution, which includes First Amendment free-speech rights and Fifth Amendment due-process rights. The Trump administration’s efforts to deport Mr. Khalil under the I.N.A. provision are likely to face a constitutional challenge, several legal experts said.

There is little precedent for deporting a legal permanent resident based on the provision of the 1952 law that gives the State Secretary a broad power to do so on foreign-policy grounds.

A lawyer for Mr. Khalil, Amy Greer, said her client would “vigorously” challenge the Trump administration’s actions in court. On Monday, Judge Furman, of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, scheduled a hearing for two days later after barring the Trump administration from deporting Mr. Khalil “to preserve the court’s jurisdiction.”

Since 2023, Mr. Trump has repeatedly vowed to revoke visas of international students who participate in pro-Palestinian protests and criticize Israel’s war efforts.

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At a rally in Iowa on Oct. 16, 2023, Mr. Trump declared that “in the wake of the attacks on Israel, Americans have been disgusted to see the open support for terrorists among the legions of foreign nationals on college campuses. They’re teaching your children hate.”

He added: “Under the Trump administration, we will revoke the student visas of radical, anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities, and we will send them straight back home.”

At a speech in Las Vegas on Oct. 28 of that year, Mr. Trump said that “we’ll terminate the visas of all of those Hamas sympathizers, and we’ll get them off our college campuses, out of our cities and get them the hell out of our country.” And at a Nov. 8, 2023, campaign stop in Florida, he said he would “quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism.”

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OpenAI strikes $12bn deal with CoreWeave

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OpenAI strikes bn deal with CoreWeave

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OpenAI has forged a near-$12bn contract with CoreWeave and will take a stake in the cloud computing provider, boosting the group ahead of its expected $35bn public listing.

The ChatGPT maker has signed a five-year deal in which CoreWeave will supply computing power to train and run OpenAI’s artificial intelligence models, said two people with knowledge of the deal. OpenAI is looking to expand beyond a reliance on Microsoft, its biggest partner, for its computing needs.

The Financial Times last week reported Microsoft had walked away from a planned deal with CoreWeave because of the cloud computing provider’s delivery issues. That decision was a blow to the New Jersey-based company, which this month filed for a New York initial public offering in which it will seek to raise about $4bn.

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OpenAI’s new $11.9bn contract helps fill that void, and could lead to it outspending Microsoft, which accounted for 62 per cent of CoreWeave’s revenues last year, according to public disclosures. Microsoft has agreed to spend $10bn on CoreWeave’s services by 2030.

As part of OpenAI’s agreement with CoreWeave, the AI company will also get a $350mn equity stake in the group at the time of the IPO, said one person with knowledge of the plans.

CoreWeave, which was founded in 2017 as a cryptocurrency mining operation, pivoted to offering cloud services for technology companies to build and train AI models using Nvidia’s high-performing graphics processing units (GPUs). The group has amassed more than 250,000 of Nvidia’s AI GPUs, making it among the chipmaker’s biggest customers.

OpenAI’s deal with the company is its latest effort to boost and diversify the computing power it has available.

Sam Altman, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, has argued infrastructure will be vital in the race to build cutting-edge AI models. Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, meanwhile, recently raised concerns about an “overbuild” of computing capacity as Big Tech giants pour hundreds of billions of dollars into data centres.

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OpenAI has also partnered with SoftBank on a potential $500bn data centre effort dubbed ‘Stargate’ in recent months, and struck data centre agreements with Oracle.

OpenAI and CoreWeave declined to comment. Reuters first reported OpenAI had signed a contract with CoreWeave.

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Menendez brothers face resentencing hurdles with new L.A. district attorney

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Menendez brothers face resentencing hurdles with new L.A. district attorney
Menendez brothers face resentencing hurdles with new L.A. district attorney – CBS Texas

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The Menendez brothers are facing challenges in their bid for resentencing due to a new district attorney in Los Angeles County.

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