Several camouflage-clad gunmen opened fire at a popular concert venue on the outskirts of Moscow on Friday evening, killing around 60 people and wounding more than 100, the FSB, Russia’s top security agency, said. said. That death toll would make it the deadliest attack in the capital region in more than a decade.

As gunshots rang through the building housing the concert hall, one of the largest and most popular music venues in the Moscow area, a fire broke out on the upper floors of the building and intensified after an explosion, the RIA news agency reported Novosti.

Islamic State claimed responsibility through an affiliated news agency. US security officials, including a senior counterterrorism official, said they believed the attack was carried out by the US Secret Service Islamic State in Khorasan, a branch of the terrorist group active in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Multiple videos posted on social media and verified by The New York Times show several people entering the Crocus City Hall, a sprawling shopping and entertainment complex in the Krasnogorsk suburb northwest of Moscow, and firing guns. Other videos show people running past bloodied victims lying on the ground or screaming at the sound of gunfire, while photos show bodies outside the building.

A woman who gave her name only as Marina said in a text message that she was queuing outside in the cold for a concert around 8 p.m. when people without overcoats ran out of the building saying they heard shots.

“As soon as I heard automatic gunshots, I started running too,” she said.

State news agency TASS reported that emergency services had sent helicopters to try to rescue people from the roof of the building, where flames and smoke could be seen billowing into the night sky. The roof at the concert stage collapsed around 10 p.m. local time, RIA Novosti reported.

Hours after the chaos began, the Russian National Guard said the officers were still searching for the attackers and evacuating people from the complex. State media agencies reported that there had been up to five perpetrators.

At least 115 people have been hospitalized as a result of the Moscow concert hall attack, including five children, according to Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko. Among the injured are 60 adult patients who are in serious condition, the minister said. Another 30 people were treated and released.

The Russian Investigative Committee, the country’s equivalent of the FBI, said it had opened a criminal case for a terrorist act and sent its investigators to the site. RIA Novosti said a special police unit was working in the building.

John F. Kirby, a spokesman for President Biden’s National Security Council, told reporters that the White House had “no indication at this time that Ukraine or Ukrainians were involved.” Mykhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to the Ukrainian presidential office, said in a video statement that “Ukraine had absolutely nothing to do” with the attack.

On March 7, the US embassy in Moscow issued a decision security alarm that warned that its staff was “monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, including concerts.” The statement, which said nothing about the extremists’ ties, warned Americans that an attack could occur in the next 48 hours.

Pro-Kremlin voices seized on the US embassy’s warning to portray America as trying to scare the Russians. On March 19, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called the statement “clear blackmail” with “the intention to intimidate and destabilize our society.”

Friday’s attack was related to the March 7 warning, according to U.S. officials briefed on the matter. They added that the United States privately warned Russia at the time about intelligence about Islamic State’s activities.

Statements of condolence and outrage came from around the world, including the governments of the United States and other countries that disagree with Russia. Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, who died in a Russian prison last month, said on social media: “All those involved in this crime must be found and brought to justice.”

The attack came on a day when 165 missiles and drones attacked Ukraine, drawing US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink. said was “the largest attack on the Ukrainian energy network since the start of the Russian war.”

The shooting took place minutes before a sold-out performance by veteran rock band Piknik was set to begin. According to the website, the concert hall has 6,200 seats.

“At least three people in camouflage stormed into the ground floor of the Crocus town hall and opened fire with automatic weapons” and threw firebombs, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported from the scene. “There are definitely injured people.”

In videos shot inside the concert hall, the audience can be heard shouting and crouching as repeated gunshots ring out outside the venue.

Russia’s emergency service said it had sent 130 vehicles and three helicopters to the scene to drop water on the fire that destroyed the upper floors. By late evening the fire appeared to have died down considerably.

Shootings are rare in Russia, where the state strictly regulates the ownership of firearms. One of the deadliest occurred in 2022, when a gunman killed 18 people and injured 23 others at a school in the city of Izhevsk.

If Friday’s figures of 60 dead and more than 100 injured are correct, the toll would be comparable to the 2011 suicide bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport, which killed 37 people, and two coordinated suicide bombings in Moscow metro stations in 2010. 38 killed.

In 2004, 172 people were killed in a siege of a theater in Moscow by Chechen separatists. Police pumped a tranquilizer gas into the theater to incapacitate the attackers, but the gas killed 132 hostages.

The complex where Friday’s attack took place was developed by Azerbaijani-born billionaire Aras Agalarov, whose son, Emin, is a famous pop star. Former President Donald Trump held the 2013 Miss Universe pageant at the same complex and world-famous artists such as Eric Clapton, Dua Lipa and Sia have also performed there.

Alina Lobzina, Julian E Barnes And Neil MacFarquhar reporting contributed.

On Sunday evening, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encouraged women around the world to come together to celebrate Relief Society, a women’s organization in the Church that is celebrating its 182nd anniversary.

In a video created for the event, J. Anette Dennis, a Relief Society leader, spoke passionately about the role of women in the Church. “There is no other religious organization in the world that I know of that has given such broad power and authority to women,” she said.

But when the church’s official Instagram page posted an excerpt from Ms. Dennis’ speech, including that quote, the response was immediate, overwhelming and largely negative. “What a joke!” wrote one commenter. “The sexism in this organization runs deep.” The post received more than 14,500 reactions as of Friday morning, with some critical responses receiving thousands of approving likes.

Anger flared a few days earlier when comments were deleted before being reinstated. In a response to the post and in emails to The Times, the church blamed the incident on an Instagram error. A spokesperson for Meta, which owns Instagram, said there was no issue that had affected the comments.

The conversation quickly erupted outside the church’s comments section and spiraled into a flurry of text messages among Mormon women, who shared stories of feeling marginalized and belittled in their interactions with church leaders.

The Instagram post addressed a longstanding outpouring of discontent among some women in the church, who chafe at the church’s restrictions and say the discussion about women’s empowerment is essentially hollow. Women are not eligible for the Church’s priesthood, a designation of God-given authority that applies only to men.

The Church distinguishes between “priesthood authority,” which is available only to men, and “priesthood power,” which is available to everyone. As in many other religious traditions, women are excluded from specific leadership roles and from some gatherings.

“We collect and read responses to all posts and appreciate hearing these genuine messages, concerns, thoughts and experiences,” Relief Society global president Camille N. Johnson said in an email from a spokesperson of the church. . The church provided Ms. Johnson’s comments in response to a request to interview Ms. Dennis.

Mrs. Johnson noted that hundreds of thousands of people watched a broadcast of the Relief Society celebration. “The intense interest we have experienced demonstrates the importance of these issues for women of faith,” she said.

The current groundswell began last fall, when a regional authority cracked down on a San Francisco Bay Area practice of inviting female leaders to sit in “the stands,” a raised seating area facing the congregation during Sunday services. The booth is a place of status, reserved for ‘presiding authorities’, roles for which only men are eligible, along with all others who participate in a specific service, including women and children. Local leaders had extended that invitation to some women leaders who did not participate in the services.

When the church took away this gesture of representation, Amy Watkins Jensen was outraged. She has three daughters and is a lifelong member of the Church, who could have been in the stands in her capacity as a volunteer leader. “We do this work and it should not be invisible,” she said.

She spoke to her bishop and continued down the chain of power, all of whom were men. Nothing has changed. She wrote one public letterwho signed nearly 3,000 Latter-day Saints, and started an Instagram account, Women on the Stand, asking for clarity and consistency on this issue for the global Church.

Mrs. Watkins Jensen’s immediate care was local, but quickly spread to other communities.

In Seattle, Kierstyn Kremer Howes, a therapist and lifelong member of the Church, woke up in the middle of the night with her newborn baby when she read about the removal of women from the stands in Mrs. Watkins Jenkins’ area.

“I was like, ‘I’m so tired of this,’” she recalls.

“You go to church and all you see are male leaders, and all the people we talk about in the scriptures are men,” Mrs. Kremer Howes said. “All that is good, glorious, and wonderful is in the man’s voice or looks manly.”

She stormed away from one fiery opinion piece (“I call it pissed off, my mom calls it sassy”) calling on LDS women to stay home from church on March 17, the anniversary of Relief Society.

“We do a lot of work, and when we ask for representation for that work, we are denied,” she said. “So let’s just get it over with.”

Mrs. Kremer Howes does not believe that many women actually stayed home from church on Sundays. (Several women said they supported the idea, but realized that if they stayed home, they would have to ask other women to cover their volunteer duties.) But the church’s Instagram post kept the discussion going.

“There is not a single decision a woman can make in this church that cannot be overruled by a man,” said Cynthia Winward, co-host of the podcast “At Last She Said It,” which focuses on women in the LDS -culture.

She said the discussion about women’s access to the booth is a notable milestone in the ongoing conversation about women in the church because it is driven by women who are, by definition, deeply involved in the church. The women who were given access to the booth had been there because of their volunteer work and leadership. “It no longer fits the narrative of ‘they’re just fringe feminists’,” Ms Winward said. “These are mainstream women.”

For some women, the response to the post does not reflect their own experiences. “I’ve never been in a situation where I was with a male leader or a male counterpart in church and felt like they didn’t hear me because I’m a woman,” said Hayley Clark, who lives in Utah. . She compared her experience in the church favorably to the condescension she occasionally faced as a female business owner, and said she was encouraged by the church’s quote.

For others, the opponents reminded them of deeper disagreements they had with the church. About a quarter of American Latter-day Saints say they have thought about leaving, compared to 16 percent of the overall population who have considered leaving their religion, according to a 2022 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute.

Sarah Schow is pregnant with her second child, a boy. As a young teen, her son will have “more authority in the Church than I will ever have,” she said, referring to a rule that allows boys to be consecrated to the all-male priesthood the year they turn twelve.

Mrs. Schow, who now lives in Canada, as a child belonged to chapters in Montana, California and Washington. She remembered learning as a child that she had a “divine nature,” of which femininity, reproduction, and nurturing were essential parts.

Now, though, she’s wondering about the church’s vision for her. Is her only role to be quiet and supportive? She quoted an emotional ballad from the movie “Barbie” to describe her disappointment with the institution she belonged to all her life: “What was I made for?”

Former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company completed a long-awaited merger with a cash-rich shell company on Friday, boosting Trump’s wealth by billions and potentially giving him a new source of cash to pay his mounting legal bills.

By approving the merger, shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corporation will become shareholders of Trump Media & Technology Group, which will trade on the stock market under the stock symbol DJT. The deal will pump more than $300 million into Trump Media, which has virtually exhausted its available cash, and will allow Truth Social, the company’s flagship digital media platform, to continue operating.

Based on Digital World’s stock price of $44 per share just before the vote was announced, Trump Media will debut with a market value of more than $5 billion. That means Trump’s personal stake will be worth more than $3 billion.

Trump Media shares could start trading under the new stock symbol as early as next week.

The deal’s approval comes as Trump faces a Monday deadline to pay a $454 million fine in a civil fraud case in New York. He is not allowed to sell any of his shares or use them as collateral for a loan for six months, although he could ask the merged company’s board to waive that rule for him.

Trump Media said in a statement before the vote that “the merger will enable Truth Social to improve and expand our platform.”

This is the latest news. Check back for updates.

French regulators said Wednesday that Google has failed to notify news publishers that it is using their articles to train its artificial intelligence algorithms, part of a broader ruling against the company over its negotiating practices with media outlets.

The disclosure by the French competition authority was part of a fine of 250 million euros, or approximately $270 million, for failing to enter into fair licensing agreements with media companies to publish article links in search results. Officials also criticized the company for using news articles to train its AI chatbot, now called Gemini, without notifying media companies or giving them a method to prevent their content from being used until September last year.

Google has been embroiled in a long-running dispute with publishers over how much to pay for displaying news content in search results and other services. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has also struggled with government attempts to extract compensation for publishers in Australia and Canada.

The debate has taken on new urgency as the media objects to the use of their articles to train AI systems. The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in December for copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems.

French regulators say legal questions about the fair use of news content to train AI applications “have not yet been resolved.” Still, authorities say they violated a previous deal with the government by “failing to inform publishers about the use of their content for their Bard software,” using the former name of Google’s AI chatbot.

French authorities have sided with local publishers who claim that Google and other big tech companies have unfairly profited from their content without fair payment. In 2022, regulators fined Google €500 million and ordered the company to negotiate licensing deals with French publishers.

Regulators say Google failed to negotiate with publishers in good faith because it failed to share necessary information with a regulator assigned to the deal talks. Authorities said Google used “opaque” data when determining what to pay publishers and did not fully take into account all the different ways the company monetized content produced by media outlets.

Google said the fine is “disproportionate to the issues raised by the regulator” but agreed to the fine announced on Wednesday.

“We have compromised because it is time to turn the page and, as our numerous agreements with publishers prove, we want to focus on sustainable approaches to connecting Internet users to quality content and working constructively with publishers,” it said company. said in a statement.