A committee investigating the October mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, questioned colleagues of the shooter, Robert R. Card Jr., at an Army Reserve hearing and pressed for answers about their failed efforts to prevent he would cause harm and provoke some of the violence. most detailed accounts yet of the months leading up to the disaster.

Committee members delved into key moments of inaction by military supervisors who were aware of the shooter’s threats, erratic behavior and access to weapons, and sought accountability from the many law enforcement agencies and military personnel who raised concerns about Mr Card, as his mental condition deteriorated last year.

“Since families cannot control their own guns, was it a very good plan that relied on the family removing its guns?” George Dilworth, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Maine and a member of the committee, asked Army Reserve Capt. Jeremy Reamer, who was involved in the response to Mr. Card’s troubling behavior.

After a failed attempt by the local sheriff’s office to check on Mr. Card’s welfare in September, authorities consulted with his family on a plan to secure his firearms.

“I didn’t know the family dynamics, so I can’t comment on that, but it was a plan, and in my experience, a viable plan,” said Captain Reamer, his voice soft and his demeanor solemn as he sat. alone at the witness table.

On the night of Oct. 25, Mr. Card, a 40-year-old Army Reserve grenade instructor, shot and killed 18 people at two popular Lewiston recreation spots, a bowling alley and a bar where cornhole enthusiasts gathered to relax. After a two-day manhunt for the missing gunman, he was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The seven-member Independent Commission to Investigate the Facts of the Lewiston Tragedy did not discuss Thursday an autopsy report released this week detailing the findings of Boston University scientists who examined the gunman’s brain and found significant identified damage. The trauma they found was similar to damage found in the brains of veterans exposed to weapon explosions, the researchers said. A spokesperson for the committee did not immediately respond when asked whether it wanted to hear testimony from the scientists.

The findings shed new light on the symptoms of mental illness that Mr. Card began exhibiting last year, a year after he began losing his hearing and nearly a decade after he began teaching summer courses for the Army Reserve. This included live grenade training for military cadets, work that exposed him to thousands of blasts.

A 2020 study by Army researchers found rampant abnormalities in the brains of grenade and explosives instructors. But the military has been slow to investigate more deeply or implement changes that could help protect personnel from harm.

Mr Card’s family made the autopsy findings public on Wednesday, along with an apology to the victims’ families. The gunman’s sister, Nicole Herling, said in an interview that the additional insight had allowed her to forgive her brother, whose exposure to the explosion and resulting trauma may have been a factor in his actions.

During previous sessions, the committee heard from local, state and federal law enforcement officials, as well as family members of the dead, who struggled to understand how the gunman was able to keep his weapons despite being considered a threat.

At times, the testimonies offered glimpses of a stop-and-start response to widespread concerns about the troubled Army reservist, with moments of intense intervention followed by missed opportunities and lost momentum.

The committee, which has met six times since January, planned to issue an interim report with its findings later this month, the spokesperson said.

Questions to the five witnesses on Thursday focused on their failure to monitor the gunman’s mental health after his release from a two-week stay in a psychiatric hospital last summer and after a colleague expressed concerns to superiors in mid-September that Mr. Card would “go shooting and do a mass shooting.”

One witness, Army Reserve First Sgt. Kelvin Mote recalled an interaction in which Mr. Card looked blankly through him with a “thousand-yard stare,” a moment that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Sergeant Mote also described his urgent and successful effort to have Mr. Card committed to a New York psychiatric hospital in July after hearing him describe himself as “capable” of harming others.

Sergeant Mote said he tried to call Mr Card three times after his release to follow up, but was unable to reach him. And when the local police’s attempt to check on his welfare failed because Mr. Card was not home or did not answer the door, Sergeant Mote said, “There was nothing I could do.”

“You could have contacted the Army Reserve psychiatric program, the resources that were available to members and their families,” said Paula Silsby, a committee member and a former U.S. attorney, said.

“Yes, on paper,” he said.

“But you didn’t,” said Mrs. Silsby.

Dave Phillips reporting contributed.

The national body that certifies lactation consultants is investigating whether a consultant in Boise, Idaho, inappropriately forced an unproven procedure on new mothers struggling with breastfeeding, according to a letter reviewed by The New York Times.

The lactation consultant, Melanie Henstrom, was featured in an investigation by The Times that examined the explosion in the number of “tongue-tie” procedures, which have become increasingly popular even though there is little evidence that the surgeries help babies to breastfeed to give.

Ms. Henstrom is part of a booming industry of lactation consultants and dentists who are aggressively marketing the procedures, even for babies who show no signs of tongue-tie and despite a small risk of serious complications.

The procedures often involve a dentist who uses a laser to cut the bundle of tissues that attach the tip of the tongue to the floor of the mouth. Many tongue ties are harmless, and there is little evidence that their treatment improves the condition to feed. As procedures have accelerated, some lactation consultants and dentists have also recommended lasering the tissue that connects the lips and cheeks to the gums. Severing all these “verbal ties” can cost parents hundreds of dollars.

Only three states license lactation consultants, and they have little oversight compared to other medical professionals such as nurses, doctors and dentists. A professional organization, the International Board of Lactation Consultant Examiners, provides credentials to 19,000 lactation consultants in the United States. The board's guidelines say consultants should not diagnose tongue ties or other oral ties in babies.

Since 2002 according to the board's websiteit revoked the certifications of only three lactation consultants.

At least three people have complained to the board about Ms. Henstrom's practices. They said she diagnosed babies with tongue, lip and cheek ties despite not having the authority to do so, and pressured parents to carry out the procedures, claiming untreated tongue ties could lead to migraines or speech problems to lead. One complainant said Ms. Henstrom pushed her baby's wounds open after the procedure, causing pain.

Ms. Henstrom did not respond to detailed questions about her practices. In a brief telephone interview last fall, she said she had many satisfied clients who believed the procedures had helped their babies.

Since The New York Times published its article in December, the board has sent letters to three people who filed complaints, informing them that their complaint was “valid and actionable,” and that the board had opened an investigation into Ms. Henstrom .

The board did not respond to questions about the investigation.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating an outbreak on a luxury cruise ship after more than 150 people reported symptoms of gastrointestinal illness, including diarrhea and vomiting.

The ship, the Queen Victoria, operated by Cunard Line, departed Southampton, England, on January 11 on a 107-night cruise with recent stops in Florida and San Francisco. according to the company's website. The ship arrives in Honolulu on Monday.

The CDC said there are 129 passengers as of Thursday and 25 crew members had reported being ill on the ship. According to the agency, there were 1,824 passengers and 967 crew members on board at the time of the outbreak.

The cause of the illnesses was unknown, the agency said.

In a statement, Southampton-based Cunard Line said “a number of guests reported symptoms of gastrointestinal illness” on the ship, which arrived in San Francisco on Tuesday after stops in Mexico, Guatemala, Panama and Aruba.

The cruise line “immediately activated their enhanced health and safety protocols to ensure the well-being of all guests and crew on board and these measures were effective,” the company said.

In response to the outbreak, the crew of the Queen Victoria has “increased cleaning and disinfection procedures” and “isolated sick passengers and crew,” the CDC said.

The agency said it was monitoring the situation remotely, including “assessing the ship's outbreak response and sanitary procedures.”

The ship left San Francisco for Honolulu on Wednesday and sailed off the west coast of the United States on Thursday. according to the ship tracking website Cruise Mapper.

After arriving in Hawaii on Monday, the ship will stop in Fiji, New Zealand and Australia, among others.

Although intestinal diseases can spread quickly on cruise ships, outbreaks are rare. According to the CDC

One high-profile outbreak occurred in 2014, when 595 passengers and 50 crew aboard Royal Caribbean's Explorer of the Seas fell ill with bouts of vomiting and diarrhea, forcing the ship to return early to New Jersey.

Acute gastrointestinal illnesses, including highly contagious norovirus, are associated with cruise ships because the close proximity of passengers and crew increases the amount of group contact, the agency said.

People who become infected when they board the ship can spread viruses to other passengers and crew members.

Public health officials monitor illnesses on cruise ships so that “outbreaks are discovered and reported more quickly on a cruise ship than on land,” according to the CDC.

The U.S. Department of Education said Tuesday it had opened an investigation into Harvard over whether it failed to protect Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students and their supporters from intimidation, threats and intimidation.

Harvard has been in turmoil for months over its response to the attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, which played a role in the eventual departure of the school's president, Claudine Gay. The Department of Education has already opened a separate investigation into Harvard following complaints of anti-Semitism.

The Muslim Legal Fund of America, who filed a civil rights complaint that led to the new investigation, said more than a dozen students had experienced harassment. Students were “threatened or called terrorists,” sometimes by fellow students, because they wore keffiyehs, a Palestinian scarf, said Christina A. Jump, an attorney for the group. Others were numbed and intimidated, but Harvard administrators dismissed the concerns, she said.

School administrators instead met with donors and alumni who “encouraged the intimidation,” said Chelsea Glover, another attorney on the case. The complaint, which the group's lawyers did not file, does not list donors or alumni, Ms. Jump said.

“Harvard's primary responsibility should be to its current students, not to wealthy donors and alumni with personal agendas that harm students who support Palestinian rights,” Ms. Glover said.

In a statement Tuesday evening, Harvard said it supports the work of the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights “to ensure that students' rights to access educational programs are safeguarded and that it will work with the agency to address their questions.” to answer.”

A spokesperson pointed to several actions the university has taken to protect doxxed students, including reaching out to those who have received online threats, engaging with local police and setting up a task force to combat Islamophobia.

In a open letter to campus in November, Harvard official Meredith Weenick wrote: “I want to assure you that we do not condone and will not ignore acts of intimidation or intimidation, or threats of violence.”

On the night of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, more than thirty student groups posted an open letter holding Israel “fully responsible.”

Students affiliated with these groups were defrauded, family members were threatened, and influential executives demanded students' names to prevent them from hiring. A truck with a digital billboard displayed students' names and photos declaring them “Harvard's Leading Anti-Semites.”

The campus and its students would continue to receive outsized attention, largely after Ms. Gay's appearance at a Congressional hearing on anti-Semitism. Criticism of her answers at that December hearing, accusations that she did not do enough to tackle anti-Semitism, and later accusations of plagiarism would lead to her downfall.

The opening of a Title VI investigation for discrimination involving “shared ancestry” by the Office for Civil Rights does not imply wrongdoing.

The government publicly announces the existence of its investigations, but typically does not disclose which specific claims it is investigating. Universities could lose federal funding due to civil rights violations.

A flurry of such complaints have been filed in recent months, often over allegations of failing to protect Jewish students, including at Harvard. More than five dozen investigations have been opened since October, mostly at colleges, but also at schools and school districts.

Anyone can file a civil rights complaint, including people or groups not affiliated with the campus. Several recent investigations into allegations of anti-Semitism have been opened, for example after complaints filed by Zachary Marschall, the editor-in-chief of Campus Reform, a conservative website.

This week, in addition to Harvard, the Office for Civil Rights opened Title VI investigations into four other universities: the University of South Florida, Indiana University, the New School and the University of Michigan.

The Office for Civil Rights said in November that it is investigating such complaints to “take aggressive action to address the alarming nationwide increase in reports of anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and other forms of discrimination and harassment” since the Hamas attack.

Ms. Jump, of the Muslim Legal Fund of America, said the civil rights complaint about anti-Semitism at Harvard did not compete with the latest complaint.

“The fact that there are two complaints against Harvard for failing to protect those of religious minorities shows that Harvard has failed across the board to take action to protect these students,” she said.

The UN agency that helps Palestinians known as UNRWA said on Friday that it had fired several employees who accused Israeli authorities of involvement in the October 7 Hamas-led terrorist attacks and that it had launched an investigation into the allegations .

The US State Department said it had “temporarily halted additional funding” to the agency, noting that the allegations involved 12 UNRWA employees.

US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke with UN Secretary General António Guterres on Thursday and called for “a thorough and expeditious investigation,” the State Department said. Mr Blinken also told the UN leader that the United States was asking Israel for more information.

Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, said in a statement that he immediately fired the UNRWA employees to “protect the Agency's ability to provide humanitarian assistance.” He added that any UNRWA staff member involved “will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution.” He did not say how many UNRWA workers had been charged.

“These shocking allegations come as more than two million people in Gaza depend on the life-saving assistance the Agency has provided since the start of the war,” he said. “Anyone who betrays the fundamental values ​​of the United Nations also betrays those we serve in Gaza, across the region and around the world.”

UNRWA, or the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, is one of Gaza's largest employers, with approximately 13,000 personnel directing the enclave's education, healthcare and food assistance operations. During the war, it played a crucial role in overseeing the distribution of food and medical aid in Gaza.

United Nations officials have repeatedly said that ordinary Gazans are with the risk of famine and are experiencing a peak infectious diseases as the weather gets colder.

Josep Borrell Fontelles, the EU's top diplomat and vice-president of the European Commission, said he was “extremely concerned” by allegations that UN staff were involved in the terrorist attacks. He said the Commission was in contact with UNRWA and expected it to take immediate action against the personnel involved.

Ukrainian prosecutors announced Tuesday that they had opened an investigation into a bizarre explosion during a birthday celebration that killed an aide to Ukraine’s top military commander in what authorities portrayed as a tragic accident.

The Special Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine’s Central Region said the aide, Major Gennadiy Chastyakov, had returned to his home on the outskirts of Kiev on Monday with birthday gifts from colleagues, including a box of six grenades. The prosecutor’s office said one of the grenades was picked up by the major’s son.

While taking the grenade from the boy, the officer “pulled the ring, causing the explosion.” The office reported this in a statement.

Prosecutors said Major Chastyakov, an aide to General Valery Zaluzhny, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, was killed on the spot by the explosion. The blast also seriously injured the major’s 13-year-old son and slightly injured the major’s 11-year-old daughter, she added. There was no explanation as to why someone would give the large grenades as a gift or why he would have pulled the ring.

“Based on the information collected so far, we can say that it was indeed an unfortunate accident, a result of careless handling of the ammunition,” said Maryana Reva, spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs. told national television on Tuesday.

Still, the peculiar nature of the episode was the impetus some on social media to wonder if it had really been an accident, leading to speculation that the assistant had been killed. Ukrainian authorities have refrained from portraying the death as a potential murder or linking it to the Russian war in Ukraine, but Ms Reva acknowledged: “It is not excluded that this case will be requalified based on the collected evidence.”

The prosecutor’s office said police identified the soldier who gave the gift and searched his office and found two other similar grenades.

The episode came at a delicate time for the Ukrainian military, whose forces are currently engaged in inconclusive fighting with Russian forces. Amid the lack of progress, Tensions have also come to light between Ukraine’s military and civilian leaders.

Ukrainian media initially reported this that Major Chastyakov’s wife told police that the explosion had occurred when her husband tried to open the gift box, adding to speculation that he had been murdered.

Mysterious deaths and murders were one play a role in Kiev’s political landscape before Russia’s full-scale invasion, and officials in Ukraine have been doing so for years accused Moscow of carrying out targeted killing operations in the country, often using inventive methods. Analysts have also cited internal political feuds or disputes related to organized crime as reasons for such killings.

Among the targets of these attacks were members of paramilitary groups in eastern Ukraine, a former member of the Ukrainian parliament, Russian opposition politicians living in exile in Ukraine and Ukrainian military officers.

But since the Russian invasion, no high-profile killings or attempted murders of Ukrainian officers or officials outside the front lines have been uncovered.

Ms Reva said the soldier who presented the grenades to Major Chastyakov had “explicitly” stated that they were military grade.

“Unfortunately the deceased did not take it seriously,” Ms Reva said.

Major Chastyakov’s death came as a shock to other Ukrainian officials.

“He was a practical and modern coordinator,” said Ukrainian parliamentarian Mariana Bezuhla. wrote on Facebook. “I never thought that Gennadiy would die on his birthday due to carelessness.”

Ms Bezuhla added that the practice of giving weapons and ammunition as gifts should be abolished. “Because even the best people fall into the trap of culture and become victims,” she said.

In a statement, General Zaluzhny said expressed deep regret about the loss of a ‘good friend’ who had ‘completely devoted his life to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the fight against Russian aggression’.

The past few days have been challenging for General Zaluzhny, as signs of discord have emerged between him and Ukraine’s political leadership.

Last week, President Volodymyr Zelensky replaced one of the deputies of General Zaluzhny, the head of Ukraine’s special operations forces, without explanation.

Mr. Zelensky also publicly disagreed with General Zaluzhny’s recent comments the war had reached a ‘stalemate’ and a top presidential aide suggested the general’s comments were helpful to the Russians.

Andrew E. Kramer reporting contributed.