WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court hears a challenge on Tuesday to federal regulation of “ghost guns” — firearms sold in easy-to-assemble kits.
Gun manufacturers and owners are objecting to a 2022 rule from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that requires ghost guns, like other firearms, to have serial numbers and for purchasers to undergo background checks.
The ATF rule also requires commercial sellers of what are known as “buy-build-shoot” kits to be licensed and maintain records.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has defended the rule under the Gun Control Act of 1968, saying it makes it “harder for criminals and other prohibited persons to obtain untraceable guns.”
According to ATF figures, nearly 20,000 ghost guns were recovered at crime scenes in the United States in 2021, a tenfold increase from 2016.
Ghost guns, some of which include parts made by 3D printers, are sold online or in stores in kits that can be assembled at home.
Gunmakers and gun rights groups challenged the ATF rule. A federal judge in Texas ruled that the bureau had exceeded its authority and that such regulation is up to Congress.
The Biden administration appealed to the US Supreme Court after the district court ruling was upheld by a conservative-dominated appeals court panel.
The Supreme Court, by a slim 5-4 vote, stayed the order of the lower courts striking down the ATF rule pending Tuesday’s oral arguments in the case.
In their brief to the Supreme Court, the gun rights groups said “an incomplete collection of parts is not a ‘weapon’” and ghost gun kits should not be considered “firearms” under the Gun Control Act.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, in her brief, said ghost gun manufacturers are seeking to get around the ATF rule using “trivial evasion” and included an analogy to the Swedish home goods giant IKEA.
“If a State placed a tax on the sale of tables, chairs, couches, and bookshelves, IKEA could not avoid paying by insisting that it does not sell any of those items and instead sells ‘furniture parts kits’ that must be assembled by the purchaser,” Prelogar wrote.
“So too with guns: A company in the business of selling kits that can be assembled into working firearms in minutes... is in the business of selling firearms.”
The Supreme Court is expected to deliver a decision in the case before the end of June 2025.
US Supreme Court to hear ‘ghost guns’ regulation case
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US Supreme Court to hear ‘ghost guns’ regulation case
- The ATF rule also requires commercial sellers of what are known as “buy-build-shoot” kits to be licensed and maintain records
Water gushes through palm trees and sand dunes after rare rain in the Sahara Desert
- Southeastern Morocco’s desert is among the most arid places in the world and rarely experiences rain in late summer
Southeastern Morocco’s desert is among the most arid places in the world and rarely experiences rain in late summer.
The Moroccan government said two days of rainfall in September had exceeded yearly averages in several areas that get an average of less than 250 millimeters (10 inches) annually, including Tata, one of the areas hit hardest. In Tagounite, a village about 450 km (280 miles) south of the capital Rabat, more than 100 mm (3.9 inches) was recorded in a 24-hour period.
The storms provided more rainfall than had been seen in decades, leaving striking images of bountiful water gushing through the Saharan sands amid castles and desert flora.
In desert communities frequented by the many tourists who visit the Sahara, 4x4s motored through the puddles and residents surveyed the scene in awe.
“It’s been 30 to 50 years since we’ve had this much rain in such a short space of time,” said Houssine Youabeb of Morocco’s General Directorate of Meteorology.
Such rains, which meteorologists are calling an extratropical storm, may indeed change the course of the region’s weather in months and years to come as the air retains more moisture, causing more evaporation and drawing more storms, Youabeb said.
Six consecutive years of drought have posed challenges for much of Morocco, forcing farmers to leave fields fallow and cities and villages to ration water consumption.
The bounty of rainfall will likely help refill the large groundwater aquifers that lie beneath the desert and are relied upon to supply water in desert communities. The region’s dammed reservoirs reported refilling at record rates throughout September. However, it’s unclear how far September’s rains will go toward alleviating drought.
Yet water gushing through the sands and oases left more than 20 dead in Morocco and Algeria and damaged the farmers’ harvests, forcing the government to allocate emergency relief funds, including in some areas affected by last year’s earthquake.
NASA satellites showed water rushing in to fill Lake Iriqui, a famous lakebed between Zagora and Tata that had been dry for 50 years.
Monster hurricane Milton threatens an already battered Florida
- The densely populated west coast of Florida braces for landfall on Wednesday
- Milton became the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean
Hurricane Milton weakened slightly to a still powerful Category 4 storm on Tuesday as it threatened Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on its way to Florida, where more than a million people were ordered to evacuate from its path.
The densely populated west coast of Florida, still reeling from the devastating Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago, braced for landfall on Wednesday.
The US National Hurricane Center projected the storm was likely to hit near the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, home to more than 3 million people and where some evacuees rushed to dispose of mounds of debris left behind by Helene on their way out of town.
With maximum sustained winds of 270kph, Milton eased overnight from the strongest level storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.
Wind speeds could decrease further to 233kph by the time it approaches Florida, according to the hurricane center, but still capable of causing catastrophic damage, including power outages expected to last days.
Fed by warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Milton became the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean, the Hurricane Center said, as it surged from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours.
Its path from west to east was also unusual, as Gulf hurricanes typically form in the Caribbean Sea and make landfall after traveling west and turning north.
“It is exceedingly rare for a hurricane to form in the western Gulf, track eastward, and make landfall on the western coast of Florida,” said Jonathan Lin, an atmospheric scientist at Cornell University. “This has big implications since the track of the storm plays a role in determining where the storm surge will be the largest.”
The Hurricane Center forecast storm surges of 3 to 4.5 meters along a stretch of coastline north and south of Tampa Bay.
Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, said Milton was expected to grow in size before making landfall on Wednesday, putting hundreds of miles of coastline within the storm surge danger zone.
Milton was likely to remain a hurricane for its entire journey across the Florida peninsula, Rhome told a Monday news briefing.
YUCATAN DRENCHED
As of 1 a.m. CDT on Tuesday (0600 GMT), the eye of the storm was 105km north-northeast of Progreso, a Mexican port near the Yucatan state capital of Merida, and 840km southwest of Tampa, moving east at 15kph.
While the eye of the storm appeared to have passed to the north of the Yucatan Peninsula, dangerous conditions were still expected to lash the region the early hours of Tuesday.
“We ask you to be pay attention to the information issued by civil protection officials from the government of Mexico and Yucatan’s government as well and if you live in lowlands it is better to go to the shelters that have been already installed,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said earlier.
The area is home to the picturesque colonial-era city of Merida, population 1.2 million, several Maya ruins popular with tourists and the port of Progreso.
In Florida, counties along the western coast ordered people in low-lying areas to take shelter on higher ground.
Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, said it ordered the evacuation of more than 500,000 people. Lee County said 416,000 people lived in its mandatory evacuation zones. At least six other coastal counties ordered evacuations including Hillsborough County, which includes the city of Tampa.
With one final day for people to evacuate on Tuesday, local officials raised concerns of traffic jams and long lines at gas stations.
Relief efforts remain ongoing throughout much of the US Southeast in the wake of Helene, a Category-4 hurricane that made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, killed more than 200 people and caused billions of dollars in damage across six states.
Russian attack on Ukrainian city of Kharkiv injures 11, governor says
- Kharkiv has been a frequent target of Russian attacks since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022
KYIV: A Russian attack on the city of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine injured at least 11 people on Tuesday, including a child, regional officials said.
Governor Oleh Syniehubov said via the Telegram messaging app that the attack had damaged infrastructure and the authorities were working to verify the type of weapon used.
He and Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov said it was likely that a civilian production facility had been hit. Terekhov said a fire had broken out.
Located 30km from the border with Russia, Kharkiv has been a frequent target of Russian attacks since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Last week, a Russian guided bomb attack on the city struck a five-story apartment block, inuring 10 people, local officials said.
German court acquits McCann suspect of unrelated sexual offense charges
- German national, who has been identified by local media as Christian Brueckner, acquitted of two counts of rape and two of sexual abuse
- Prosecutors had argued he should be given a 15-year prison sentence and kept in preventive detention once he has served it
BRAUNSCHWEIG, Germany: A German court on Tuesday acquitted a man who is also under investigation in the 2007 disappearance of British toddler Madeleine McCann in a trial on charges of unrelated sexual offenses.
The Braunschweig state court acquitted the 47-year-old German national, who has been identified by local media as Christian Brueckner, of two counts of rape and two of sexual abuse.
However, Brueckner will remain in prison another year because he is still serving a seven-year sentence for rape in a different case, German news agency dpa reported.
Brueckner had been on trial since February over offenses he is alleged to have committed in Portugal between 2000 and 2017. Defense lawyers had pointed to what they labeled a lack of evidence and witnesses who weren’t credible, and suggested he might not have been charged if he hadn’t also been a suspect in the McCann case.
Prosecutors had argued he should be given a 15-year prison sentence and kept in preventive detention once he has served it.
The verdict can be appealed, dpa reported.
Brueckner has not been charged in the McCann case, in which he is under investigation on suspicion of murder. He spent many years in Portugal, including in the resort of Praia da Luz around the time of Madeleine’s disappearance there in 2007. He has denied any involvement in her disappearance.
He is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence after being convicted in 2019 by the Braunschweig court for the rape of a 72-year-old American woman in Portugal in 2005.
The Braunschweig state court has jurisdiction because Brueckner had his last German residence in that city in Lower Saxony.
Over 1,000 evacuated from Crimea oil terminal fire: mayor
MOSCOW: Over 1,000 residents have been evacuated due to a fire at a large oil terminal in Russian-annexed Crimea, a local official said Tuesday, after Ukraine claimed it had struck the depot.
Kyiv has ramped up strikes targeting Russia’s energy sector in recent months, aiming to dent revenues used by Moscow to fund its invasion, now grinding through its third year.
Ukraine said Monday its forces had carried out a “successful strike” on an offshore oil terminal overnight in Feodosia.
Russian-installed authorities in Crimea then said a fire had broken out at the depot in the Black Sea port town of some 70,000 people and that there were no casualties.
Russia has not said there was a Ukrainian strike on the terminal.
“To ensure the safety of people living near the scene of the emergency situation, 1,047 people have been temporarily evacuated to shelters,” the Russian-appointed mayor of the town of Feodosia, Igor Tkachenko, wrote on Telegram.
On Monday, the fire caused road and train closures, but the Russian consumer safety watchdog said Monday initial checks did not find excess levels of air pollution.
The watchdog said the fire was raging at the Sea Oil Terminal, whose website says it “stores fuel in case of emergency situations and ensures Crimea’s energy security.”
The fire has spread to “up to 2,500 square meters, a source in the emergency services told RIA Novosti news agency Tuesday.
“The Feodosia terminal is the largest in Crimea in terms of transshipment of oil products, which were used, among other things, to meet the needs of the Russian occupation army,” the Ukrainian military said, vowing to continue such attacks.
Ukraine insists such strikes are fair retaliation for Russian attacks on its own energy infrastructure that have plunged millions into darkness.
