A classified satellite for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office was launched into space from California on Sunday. 

The NROL-85 satellite lifted off at 6:13 a.m. local time from Vandenberg Space Force Base aboard a two-stage SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. 

It was the first mission by the NRO to reuse a SpaceX rocket booster, Vandenberg said in a statement. 

The Falcon’s first stage flew back and landed at the seaside base northwest of Los Angeles. 

The NRO only described the NROL-85 satellite as a “critical national security payload.” 

Its launch was one of three awarded by the Air Force to SpaceX in 2019 for a combined fixed price of $297 million. 

The NRO is the government agency in charge of developing, building, launching and maintaining U.S. satellites that provide intelligence data to senior policymakers, the intelligence community and the Defense Department. 
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Authorities in South Carolina say they are investigating a shooting at a club in Hampton County early Sunday that left at least nine people injured. It was the third mass shooting in the United States over the Easter holiday weekend.

The three shootings in South Carolina and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, left two minors dead and at least 31 people injured.

South Carolina’s State Law Enforcement Division, which is investigating, said in an email there were no reported fatalities in the early shooting at the Cara’s Lounge in Hampton County. No information was immediately available on the severity of the injuries. Hampton County is roughly 129 kilometers (80 miles) west of Charleston. A phone call to the nightclub was not answered.

In Pittsburgh, meanwhile, two minors were killed and at least eight people were injured during a shooting at a house party. The shooting, which followed an altercation, happened around 12:30 a.m. during a party at a short-term rental property where hundreds of people had gathered — the “vast majority” of them underage, Chief Scott Schubert of the Pittsburgh police department told reporters.

The shootings on Sunday come just a day after gunfire erupted at a busy mall in the South Carolina state capital of Columbia, about 145 kilometers (90 miles) north of where Sunday’s nightclub shooting took place. Nine people were shot and five people were injured while trying to flee the scene at Columbiana Centre, Columbia Police Chief W.H. “Skip” Holbrook said Saturday. The victims ranged in age from 15 to 73.

The Columbia Police Department announced the arrest of 22-year-old Jewayne M. Price, who was one of three people initially detained by law enforcement as a person of interest in the mall shooting. Price was scheduled to have a bond hearing at 2 p.m. Sunday on charges of unlawful carrying of a pistol. It is not immediately known if Price has an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

Police said the 73-year-old victim continues to receive medical treatment, but the other victims have been released from local hospitals or will be released shortly.

“We don’t believe this was random,” Holbrook said. “We believe they knew each other and something led to the gunfire.”

The three Easter weekend mass shootings are in addition to other shootings in recent days. Last week, a gunman opened fire in a New York subway car, injuring 10 people. A suspect was arrested the next day. Earlier this month, police said six people were killed and 12 others wounded in Sacramento, California, during a gunfight between rival gangs as bars closed in a busy area near the Downtown Commons shopping mall and the state Capitol.

One week ago, a shooting inside a crowded nightclub in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, left a man and a woman dead and 10 people wounded, authorities said. And last month, 10 people were shot at a spring break party in Dallas, Texas and several others were injured as they tried to escape the gunfire, police said.
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It’s a convergence that happens only rarely. Coinciding with Judaism’s Passover, Western Christianity’s Easter and Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, Buddhists, Baha’is, Sikhs, Jains and Hindus also are celebrating their holy days in April.

The springtime collision of religious holidays is inspiring a range of interfaith events. In Chicago, there’s the Interfaith Trolley Tour coming up on April 24, in which a trolley will make stops at different faiths’ houses of worship. In cities across the United States, Muslims are inviting people to interfaith iftars so they can break their daily Ramadan fasts in community with their non-Muslim neighbors.

In addition to Passover, Easter and Ramadan, holy days occurring in April this year include the Sikhs’ and Hindus’ Vaisakhi, the Jains’ Mahavir Jayanti, the Baha’i festival of Ridvan, and the Theravada Buddhist New Year.

Across faiths, the celebration of the overlapping holy days and religious festivals is seen as a chance to share meals and rituals. For some, it’s also a chance to learn how to cooperate among faith traditions on crucial issues, including how to help curb climate change, fight religious intolerance, and assist people fleeing Afghanistan, Ukraine and other nations during the global refugee crisis.

“The rare convergence of such a wide array of holy days is an opportunity for all of us to share what we hold sacred with our neighbors from other traditions as a way of building understanding and bridging divides,” said Eboo Patel, the founder and president of Interfaith America, previously known as Interfaith Youth Core. “This is Interfaith America in microcosm.”

On Chicago’s south side, the upcoming trolley tour is intended to teach participants about this year’s April holidays, which are converging for the first time in the same month since 1991, said Kim Schultz, coordinator of creative initiatives at the Chicago Theological Seminary’s InterReligious Institute.

The trolley will stop at several sacred spaces, including a Baptist church, a mosque and a synagogue, and will end with an iftar at sunset catered by recently resettled Afghan refugees.

“We’re asking people to take advantage of this confluence, the convergence … more than half of the world is celebrating or commemorating the critical moment in our faith traditions,” said Hind Makki, director of recruitment and communications at American Islamic College.

The event is sponsored by the American Islamic College, the Chicago Theological Seminary, the Center of Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice at the Lutheran School of Theology, the Hyde Park & Kenwood Interfaith Council and the Parliament of the World’s Religions. After more than two years of COVID-19 restrictions that upended many holidays, followers are eager to meet in person again.

Organizers of the Chicago event said they had arranged for a trolley that would carry 25 people, but there was so much interest across faiths that they had to arrange for a bigger trolley for 40 people instead. And then, when more kept joining, a second trolley.

“This is a great time,” Makki said. “So, why not take the opportunity to learn about each other’s traditions, to learn about each other through those traditions.”

As part of the month’s celebrations, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community USA opened its mosques to host dozens of interfaith iftars in cities across the nation centered on the theme of ‘justice through compassion.’

“During our gatherings across 35 cities we emphasized that the world that we see now stands on the brink of a world war,” said Amjad Mahmood Khan, national director of public affairs for Ahmadiyya. “And only the collective prayers and actions of the faithful can really save humanity from self-destruction.”

Faith leaders from Christian, Jewish, Sikh and Hindu faiths gathered recently for a virtual panel celebrating the convergence of their sacred observances. Among the issues discussed were shared concerns over the rise of white Christian nationalism and legislation in Arizona and Florida that they criticized for marginalizing LGBTQ young people.

“We see that convergence as highly symbolic, maybe even divinely ordained as our people need to reaffirm our shared values of love, freedom and justice in order to disrupt white Christian nationalists’ attempts to decide what ideas, identities and practices are valued and respected,” said the Rev. Jennifer Butler, founder and chief executive of the Washington-based multifaith group Faith in Public Life.

“This sacred season presents the opportunity for solidarity, for prophetic witness as we lament the rise of intolerance and discriminatory laws that threaten our nation’s quest to be a multiracial and multireligious democracy,” she said.

It will also be an important moment for members of different faiths to find common ground in the runup to the U.S. midterm elections, said Nina Fernando, executive director of the Shoulder to Shoulder campaign, a multifaith national coalition committed to countering and preventing anti-Muslim discrimination.

“With the time that we’re living where essentially we’re polarized and divided among racial and religious and political lines, we can take this opportunity to talk about how to live well together amidst our diversity and talk about these holidays overlapping,” Fernando said.

The convergence of the holidays also offers a chance to dispel misconceptions about faith traditions and appreciate shared values, said the Rev. Stephen Avino, executive director of the Parliament for World Religions.

“The holidays are the enactment of the core values, and we can actually see before our eyes the beauty of that tradition through the holidays and through ritual,” Avino said. “You can compare that to your own traditions, and you can see the similarities and differences and within that is the beauty of that. And you start to see that faith as being worthy of reverence, while still maintaining your own faith.
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On all but three Sunday afternoons since last Easter, Bob Guerra — a Catholic deacon — has carefully packed his favorite crucifix, a Spanish-language Bible, hundreds of Communion wafers secured in Ziploc bags and other liturgical items into a plastic storage box.

Then he lugs it a few miles to Fort Bliss, an Army base in the desert on the outskirts of El Paso, where he helps celebrate Mass for hundreds of migrant teens held at a vast tent shelter.

That shelter and similar facilities across the southwest were set up by the Biden administration and its predecessors to deal with the number of minors crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without parents or guardians. For the faithful young people they hold, the clergy and volunteers who visit bring comfort and healing through the sacraments.

“They’re praying with such devotion you can see the tears rolling down their eyes,” Guerra says of the acts of faith he witnesses every Sunday from the teens after they receive Communion and kneel before a little cross. On Easter Sunday, he plans to give them their own miniature crosses and cookies baked by local nuns.

Among the teens praying fervently at Fort Bliss during last year’s unprecedented arrivals of unaccompanied children was Elena, then 15. She asked that she not be identified further because of the dangerous circumstances she fled in Guatemala.

Elena told The AP that for weeks she asked God to let her out of the shelter as soon as possible. Then, when some of the other girls also being held grew “inconsolable,” she prayed they’d be released first. As the days went by, she started worrying God might be “bored” by her petitions and prayed for forgiveness.

What sustained her for two months before her release was receiving the sacraments, including Communion distributed during a Mass celebrated by the Catholic bishop of El Paso, Mark Seitz.

“When he arrived, you could feel like a peace, something that comforts you, something that you need,” Elena recalled during this Holy Week, which she’s observing with relatives far from El Paso. “God was with us to endure so many days without family.”

In the shelter, she was so grateful for Mass, which she used to attend with her mother in Guatemala, that she braided a friendship bracelet for Seitz, who wears several on his right wrist.

“They have this faith that, if anything, became stronger on their journey,” said Seitz of the hundreds of teens he has ministered to since last Easter at Fort Bliss.

On most Sundays, the Rev. Rafael García, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish four blocks from the border in downtown El Paso, celebrates Mass there, as he has at different shelters for five years.

“All of us that go, we find we are transformed ourselves,” the Jesuit priest said. “Not all come (to Mass), but those who do are people of very strong faith.”

Suddenly and often tragically detached from their countries and the families who raised them, “their only strength is prayer,” said the Rev. Jose de la Cruz Longoria, pastor at five Catholic parishes around Pecos, Texas, who ministers to teens at the shelter there. “That’s why the point is to show them at Mass that he’s a God who loves and forgives.”

In murmured prayers in Spanish and Indigenous languages at makeshift altars, kids in the shelters — most of them 12- to 17-year-olds from Central America — ask God’s help for their lonely, uncertain journey and for loved ones they left behind.

“They pray for their friends lost on the way, and that their family members might accept and love them,” said Dominga Villegas, who helped organize Palm Sunday Mass, complete with palm fronds, for more than 200 teens at the Pecos shelter.

In growing numbers since 2014, hundreds of thousands of under-18 children have come alone to seek safety and a better life in the United States. Since October, the Border Patrol has encountered an average of more than 11,000 unaccompanied minors a month, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

Some have no family, but many are rejoining a parent or are sent to other family members in the United States to escape poverty and violence.

When unaccompanied minors are apprehended or turn themselves in to U.S. officials after crossing the border without authorization, they are sheltered in facilities managed by the Department of Health and Human Services until the government vets a family member or sponsor to ensure they can be safely released.

Under the past three U.S. administrations, especially when the number of minors crossing the border surges suddenly and emergency intake shelters like that at Fort Bliss are hastily arranged, controversies have erupted over the conditions and duration of the youths’ stay at these facilities, where media access is tightly restricted.

While awaiting their release, many teens struggle with regrets and low self-esteem, faith leaders told The AP. They’re battered not only by the trauma they fled, but by the guilt they feel for fleeing, sometimes without saying goodbye to beloved relatives who raised them — and for having ended up in a place far different from their dreams, with no clear path ahead.

“They don’t have any taste yet for the end of the tunnel. They can’t allow themselves to feel that already this is a victory and a blessing from God,” said Lissa Jiménez, a psychologist who held a daylong spiritual retreat at the Pecos facility in March.

By the end of the 10-hour day, she saw them sit up straighter as she encouraged them to trust in “the identity that being children of God gives us, independently of race, of our situation.”

It’s the same message that priests bring through Mass and confession, even for youths who are not Catholic but approach them anyway because “they just want to talk,” said the Rev. Brian Strassburger, a Jesuit who ministers to shelter youths in Brownsville and celebrates Mass across the border at a migrant camp in Reynosa, Mexico.

“We try to give them comfort, assure them that God is with them. That their parents still love them,” he said.
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Authorities have lifted some evacuation orders for a mountain community in southern New Mexico as firefighters worked Saturday to contain a wind-driven blaze that killed two people and destroyed over 200 homes.

The evacuation orders lifted late Friday covered about 60% of the estimated 4,500 people originally ordered to leave their homes since the fire started Tuesday but specific numbers weren’t immediately available, Village of Ruidoso representative Kerry Gladden told The Associated Press on Saturday. Evacuation estimates were previously reported to be around 5,000 people.

“The big story is we’re in a re-population mode,” Gladden said earlier during a media briefing.

Those evacuation orders remaining in effect may be lifted in the coming days, officials said.

Fire incident commander Dave Bales said crews worked to put out hot spots and clear lines along the fire’s perimeter to keep the fire from spreading. The fire has no containment but Bales expressed a mix of satisfaction with work done so far and prospects for coming days.

Weather conditions Saturday appeared favorable with reduced wind and increased humidity, Bales said. “We have lines in. We just want to make sure they hold in that wind,” he said.

The fire and the winds that spread it, downed power lines and knocked out electricity to 18,000 customers. Electricity has been restored to all but a few dozen customers, said Wilson Guinn, a Public Service Co. manager.

But people returning to their homes needed to be cautious and call utility officials if they encounter downed lines, Guinn said.

“We may have missed something,” Guinn said. “Don’t try to touch them, fix them, roll them up, whatever.”

Gladden, the village representative, said residents also need to be aware that the strong winds earlier in the week may have damaged trees that could still fall or lose limbs.

“It’s important that what started this whole event was a significant windstorm,” she said.

Hotlines lit up Friday afternoon as residents reported more smoke, which fire information officer Mike De Fries said was caused by flare-ups within the interior of the fire as flames found pockets of unburned fuel.

Authorities have yet to release the names of the couple who died. Their bodies were found after worried family members contacted police, saying the couple had planned to evacuate Tuesday when the fire exploded but were unaccounted for later that day.

As of Saturday, the fire had burned 9.6 square miles (25 square kilometers) of timber and brush.

Hotter and drier weather coupled with decades of fire suppression have contributed to an increase in the number of acres burned by wildfires, fire scientists say. The problem is exacerbated by a more than 20-year Western megadrought that studies link to human-caused climate change.

Ruidoso a decade ago was the site of the most destructive wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history when more than 240 homes burned and nearly 70 square miles (181 square kilometers) of forest were blackened by a lightning-sparked blaze.

While many older residents call Ruidoso home year-round, the population of about 8,000 people expands to about 25,000 during the summer months as Texans and New Mexicans from hotter climates seek respite.

Fans also flock to Ruidoso Downs, home to one of the sport’s richest quarter-horse competitions. The racing season was expected to start May 27, and horses that board there aren’t in any danger as fire officials use the facility as a staging ground.
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Ten people were shot and two others injured in a shooting at a shopping mall in South Carolina’s capital that authorities do not believe was a random attack. 

Three people who had firearms have been detained in connection with the Saturday afternoon shooting at Columbiana Centre, Columbia Police Chief W.H. “Skip” Holbrook said. He said at least one of those three people fired a weapon. 

“We don’t believe this was random,” Holbrook said. “We believe they knew each other and something led to the gunfire.” 

Authorities said no fatalities have been reported but that eight of the victims were taken to the hospital. Of those eight, two were in critical condition and six were in stable condition, Holbrook said. The victims ranged in age from 15 to 73, he said. 

The mall was being evacuated store-by-store and police urged anyone still sheltering inside to call 911 so that authorities could find them. 

Workers from a couple of stores clustered in the mostly empty parking lot Saturday evening said they had not heard or seen anything during the shooting but followed the mall’s alert system and were evacuated by police shortly after. They said they had been waiting hours ever since for police to let them back inside to retrieve their car keys and personal belongings so they could leave. They declined to give their names, citing company policies. 

“Today’s isolated, senseless act of violence is extremely upsetting and our thoughts are with everyone impacted,” Columbiana Centre said in a statement. “We are grateful for the quick response and continued support of our security team and our partners in law enforcement.”  
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In the dusty California desert, U.S. Army trainers are already using lessons learned from Russia’s war against Ukraine as they prepare soldiers for future fights against a major adversary such as Russia or China.

The role-players in this month’s exercise at the National Training Center speak Russian. The enemy force that controls the fictional town of Ujen is using a steady stream of social media posts to make false accusations against the American brigade preparing to attack.

In the coming weeks, the planned training scenario for the next brigade coming in will focus on how to battle an enemy willing to destroy a city with rocket and missile fire in order to conquer it.

If the images seem familiar, they are; similar scenes are playing out on televisions and websites worldwide right now as Russian forces pound Ukrainian cities with airstrikes, killing scores of civilians. The information war on social media has showcased impassioned nightly speeches by Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as well as Russian efforts to accuse Ukraine’s forces of faking mass killings in towns such as Bucha — massacres that the West blames on Moscow’s troops.

Equipment to communication

“I think right now the whole Army is really looking at what’s happening in Ukraine and trying to learn lessons,” said Army Secretary Christine Wormuth. Those lessons, she said, range from Russia’s equipment and logistics troubles to communications and use of the internet.

“The Russia-Ukraine experience is a very powerful illustration for our Army of how important the information domain is going to be,” said Wormuth, who spent two days at the training center in the Mojave Desert watching an Army brigade wage war against the fictional “Denovian” forces.

“We’ve been talking about that for about five years. But really seeing it and seeing the way Zelenskyy has been incredibly powerful. … This is a world war that the actual world can see and watch in real time. ”

At the center, the commander, Brigadier General Curt Taylor, and his staff have ripped pages out of the Russian playbook to ensure that U.S. soldiers are ready to fight and win against a sophisticated near-peer enemy.

It’s a common tool. For example, his base and the Joint Readiness Training Center in Louisiana both shifted to counterinsurgency training during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. And the military services have focused other training on how to fight in cold weather — mimicking conditions in Russia or North Korea. But these latest changes have happened quickly in the early months after Russia invaded Ukraine.

On the attack

About 4,500 soldiers from 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Texas, are out in the vast desert training area at Fort Irwin, where they will spend two weeks fighting the NTC’s resident 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, which acts as the enemy military. Soldiers from the regiment — known as Blackhorse — are arrayed in and around Ujen, which also includes role-players acting as the locals.

As the sun was rising earlier this past week, Army Col. Ian Palmer, the brigade commander, stood on Crash Hill, on the outskirts of the town, preparing his soldiers to launch an attack. Lines of tanks spread out in the distance. Heavy winds the night before hampered his progress, so the attack was a bit behind.

He said the exercise is using more drones by the friendly and enemy forces, both for surveillance and attacks. So his forces are trying to use camouflage and tuck into the terrain to stay out of sight.

“You know if you can be seen, you can be shot, wherever you are,” he said.

Down in the makeshift town, the opposition forces are confident they can hold off Palmer’s brigade despite the size difference. The Denovians only have about 1,350 forces, but they are throwing everything they have at the brigade, from jamming and other electronic warfare to insurgency attacks and propaganda.

The role of social media

The role-players have their phones ready to film and post quickly to social media.

The Denovian forces want to portray the unit in the worst possible light, said Taylor, and constantly twist the narrative on social media so Palmer’s troops realize they are in a battle for the truth.

That’s a challenge, he said, because “when I’ve got a bunch of casualties and I’m getting overrun on my left flank and my supply trains aren’t where they need to be and I can’t find the bulldozers, it’s hard to think about something that someone said about me on Twitter.”

The training goal, Taylor said, is teaching the brigades that come in how to fuse all elements of their combat power into a coordinated assault.

“Everyone can play an instrument, but it’s about making music — bringing it all together in a synchronized fashion. And what you saw today was the artillery was doing the artillery thing, the aviation was doing the aviation thing and the maneuver guys were doing the maneuver thing. But part of the delay in their assault on the town was they couldn’t synchronize those three,” he said.

Assessing the failures

Again, they can look to Ukraine to see how Russia failed to do that in the early weeks of the war. U.S. leaders repeatedly noted that in Russia’s initial multipronged assault in Ukraine, commanders consistently failed to provide the airstrikes and support their ground troops needed to move into key cities such as Kyiv.

That failure led to Russian troops bombing the cities from the outskirts, hitting hospitals, apartment buildings and other structures, and killing civilians.

When the next brigade arrives at the training center, Taylor said it will face an enemy on board with doing just that.

“We will be very focused on how to fight against an adversary that is willing to destroy infrastructure because that’s how we think our adversaries will fight,” Taylor said. “We’ve got to be prepared for urban combat where we have an adversary that is indiscriminately firing artillery.”

Wormuth, the Army secretary, said seeing the training also underscored other lessons the U.S. is taking from the war in Ukraine.

“As we’re watching what’s happening to the Russians now, it’s informative for us to think about what is right, from a modernization standpoint,” she said, noting that some U.S. tanks are very heavy and the terrain in Europe is muddier, not like the hard-packed sand of the desert.

The Army, she said, has to determine “what’s the right balance between the mobility of a tank, the survivability of a tank and the lethality of a tank? If you want to make it more mobile, you make it lighter, but that makes it less survivable. And so you have to decide where you’re going to take risks.”
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