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Russian pawns, Georgia school shooting and papal olive branch

 
Today's LEGAL story

DOJ charges 2 Russians for funding US far-right media

What happened
The Justice Department on Wednesday announced several steps to push back against Russian efforts to sway U.S. politics ahead of the 2024 election, including the indictment of two Russians accused of illegally funneling $9.7 million into a Tennessee media company. The founders of the unidentified company, widely reported to be Tenet Media, knew their funding came from "the Russians," as they called their patrons, the unsealed indictment said. High-profile far-right influencers hired by the company, including Tim Pool, Benny Johnson and Dave Rubin, said they were unwitting "victims" in the alleged scheme.

Who said what
The indicted Russians, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva — both employees of state broadcaster RT — used fake identities and shell companies to pay the Tennessee company to "pump pro-Russian propaganda and disinformation across social media to U.S. audiences," Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said. "The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power engages in political activities or seeks to influence public discourse," Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference.

"Disinformation experts have long struggled to measure the effectiveness of Russian influence campaigns," The New York Times said, but the indictment said the videos put out by the company, "most of which support the goals of the Russian government, have gained 16 million views on YouTube." Garland said the goals of those videos, and a broader Russian-run influence campaign called "Doppelganger," included "amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Russian interests, particularly its ongoing war in Ukraine."

What next?
"The investigation is ongoing," Garland said. Legally speaking, as long as Pool, Rubin and the other influencers "claim to be duped by these awful Russians, they're in the clear," Marcy Wheeler said at Emptywheel. Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, if caught and convicted, could face two decades in prison.

 
 
Today's NATIONAL story

Teen kills 4 in Georgia high school shooting

What happened
A student shot and killed two classmates and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia, on Wednesday. The 14-year-old suspect, who surrendered when confronted by police, used an "AR-platform-style weapon" in the shooting, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said. Nine other people sustained non-fatal injuries.

Who said what
The GBI identified the victims as Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, and math teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Christina Irimie, 53. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Wednesday night that the suspected shooter, Colt Gray, and his father had been questioned by local law enforcement in May 2023 in connection with "tips about online threats to commit a school shooting," but "at that time, there was no probable cause for arrest" or other "law enforcement action."

Winder, a growing exurb about 50 miles northeast of Atlanta, "now enters the annals of American communities forever scarred by mass gun violence," including Uvalde, Texas; Newtown, Connecticut; and Parkland, Florida, The Washington Post said. "In interviews Wednesday, students did not appear to be terribly surprised that the bloodshed had visited their campus." This was the 24th school shooting of 2024 and the first of the 2024-25 academic year, according to the Post. "Georgia's gun laws," The New York Times said, are considered "among the nation's weakest."

What next?
Gray will be charged with murder and tried as an adult, the GBI said. Authorities did not say where or how the teen obtained the AR-15-style rifle, a common weapon in school shootings. All Barrow County public schools will be closed for the rest of the week.

 
 
Today's INTERNATIONAL Story

Pope urges climate action, unity at Jakarta mosque

What happened
Pope Francis met with fellow religious leaders Wednesday at Southeast Asia's largest mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia. The pope and the mosque's top cleric, Grand Imam Nasaruddin Umar, signed a joint declaration urging Catholics and Muslims to encourage their leaders to fight climate change and religious intolerance.

Who said what
The visit to Indonesia, which has the world's largest Muslim population, highlighted two pillars of Francis' papacy: the environment and interfaith dialogue. The declaration he and Umar signed at Jakarta's Istiqlal Mosque urged "all people of good will to take decisive action" to protect the planet from human-caused climate change and said religion should be used to resolve conflicts, never abused to justify violence.

The "Istiqlal Declaration" was the latest of several joint communiqués Pope Francis has signed with Muslim leaders, including on a historic 2019 trip to the Arabian peninsula and a 2021 visit to Iraq. The Jakarta encounter, "rich with symbolic meaning and personal touches," showed the "personal side" of that Muslim outreach, The Associated Press said, "with Francis and Umar — the aged pope and the youthful imam — showing a clear affinity for one another."

What next?
The pope will leave Indonesia on Friday for Papua New Guinea, the next stop in his "ambitious 12-day journey" through Southeast Asia and Oceania, Reuters said. He is scheduled to return to Rome on Sept. 13.

 
 

It's not all bad

After a motorcycle accident left him unable to stand without being in pain, Austrian chef Peter Lammer and his friend designed an adaptive rail system that allows him to keep working in his kitchen. Lammer and Bernard Tichy crafted a C-shaped bracket with an adjustable seat, connected it to rollers and attached the contraption to a railing on the kitchen's ceiling. From this hanging seat, Lammer easily floats between workstations. The pals started a company, Standing Ovation, to get their device to other workers with disabilities. 

 
 
Under the radar

Its operating strategy could come straight out of a World War II handbook: locals using their intimate knowledge of their land and the element of surprise to harass occupying forces. But this isn't the French Resistance fighting back against the Nazis in the 1940s; it's a Ukrainian guerrilla group called Atesh that claims to be having great success disrupting Russian military activities. 

In the ever-complex landscape of the Russia-Ukraine war, Atesh has emerged as a growing force. It was formed by ethnic Ukrainian, Russian and Crimean Tatar partisans in Russian-occupied Crimea in the summer of 2022, following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine that February. Atesh, the Crimean Tatar word for "fire," issued a statement on Telegram declaring its aims were "to fight for the Ukrainian state" in any way possible – including acting as double agents within the Russian military. 

Successes are said to include damaging railway lines used to transport military supplies, assassinating soldiers and providing valuable information to Ukrainian intelligence, as well as ongoing strikes on Russia's Black Sea Fleet and military bases in the region. Atesh's activities have led to it being "hunted ruthlessly" by the FSB, Russia's security and counter-intelligence service, said The Times of London. Nevertheless, the group has proven resilient, continuing to carry out operations and evade Russian efforts to neutralize it. 

"The resistance movement within the occupied peninsula will only amplify," said journalist David Kirichenko in The Kyiv Independent. "Soon, like the rest of Ukraine, Crimea will be a territory of freedom once again."

 
 
On this day

September 5, 1975

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a member of the Manson family cult, attempted to assassinate President Gerald Ford in Sacramento. Fromme was sentenced to life in prison for the crime but was paroled in 2009. The event was one of numerous attempts to assassinate an American president; the latest occurred in 2024 when a shooter fired at former President Donald Trump.

 
 
TODAY'S newspaperS

Wednesday's mass shooting at a Winder, Georgia, high school caused the "unimaginable loss" of two students and two teachers, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says on Thursday's front page. This "school shooting hits home." The "14-year-old suspect surrendered, in custody," the Detroit Free Press said. The shooting leaves "another U.S. campus forever scarred," The Washington Post says. There is also "unspeakable new suffering for Afghan women" due to the Taliban's "harsh decrees," The New York Times says. 

► See the newspaper front pages

 
 
Tall tale

Looking for love in all the wrong places

A sexually frustrated dolphin may be behind a spate of attacks on beachgoers in central Japan. After examining photos and footage of assaults in Wakasa Bay, experts concluded that the attacks likely involved the same "horny, lonely" male Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin, Putu Mustika, a marine researcher at Australia's James Cook University, told The New York Times. When mating, dolphins "can be very wild," she said, and their strength could lead them to accidentally hurt humans when pressing up against them.

 
 

Morning Report was written and edited by Theara Coleman, Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Elizabeth Carr-Ellis, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Devika Rao, Rafi Schwartz and Peter Weber, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.

Image credits, from top: Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty Images; Christian Monterrosa / AFP via Getty Images; Aditya Aji / Pool / AFP via Getty Images; Illustration by Julia Wytrazek / Getty Images