TODAY’S MASS SHOOTING story

4 dead in shooting, arson attack in Michigan church

What happened
At least four people were killed and eight injured yesterday when a gunman drove a pickup truck into a Mormon church in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan, opened fire on the hundreds of congregants and then set the building ablaze, local officials and federal agents said last night. Police killed the suspected gunman minutes after the attack began.

Who said what
Police identified the lone suspect as Thomas Jacob Sanford, a 40-year-old Marine veteran who grew up in the area and lived in nearby Burton. They said they were still trying to uncover a motive. The FBI said it was treating the shooting as an “act of targeted violence.”

“Violence anywhere, especially in a place of worship, is unacceptable,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said in a statement. “We will continue to monitor this situation and hold the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc close.” Yesterday’s assault was the “latest of many shooting attacks on houses of worship in the U.S. over the past 20 years,” The Associated Press said, and the second mass shooting “in less than 24 hours,” after a gunman shot dead three people and injured five at a bar in Southport, North Carolina, on Saturday night.

What next?
Southport shooting suspect Nigel Edge, also a 40-year-old former Marine, faces three murder and five attempted murder charges. Grand Blanc Township police said last night they had not finished searching through the fire-damaged church and could still find victims buried in the rubble.

TODAY’S INTERNATIONAL Story

Moldova gives decisive win to pro-EU party

What happened
Moldova’s ruling Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) yesterday won an outright majority of seats in pivotal parliamentary elections, keeping the former Soviet Russian satellite country on track to join the European Union within five years. According to uncertified results this morning, President Maia Sandu’s pro-EU PAS won 50.1% of the vote, versus 24.2% for the Moscow-aligned Patriotic Electoral Bloc.

Who said what
The election had “taken on outsize global importance,” because while Moldova is a “tiny nation of 2.4 million,” its location “wedged between Romania and Ukraine” makes it “strategically important” to the Ukraine war, The New York Times said. Sandu’s government warned throughout the tense campaign that Russia was meddling, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to buy votes and on a massive disinformation effort.

Moldova applied to join the EU after Russia invaded Ukraine, and last fall voters narrowly approved EU membership in a referendum and reelected Sandu to a second term. “In both cases, ballots from the hundreds of thousands of Moldovans living abroad — many in EU countries — were critical in swinging the result,” Politico said.

What next?
Maintaining its parliamentary majority keeps PAS from “having to form a coalition that would have most likely been unstable and would have slowed down the pace of reforms to join the EU,” Oakland University international relations professor Cristian Cantir told The Associated Press. But “Moldova will continue to be in a difficult geopolitical environment characterized by Russia’s attempts to pull it back into its sphere of influence.”

It’s not all bad

New research shows that without human interference, damaged coral reef ecosystems start recovering quickly. A team from the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology studied Oahu’s popular Hanauma Bay before, during and after the 2020 pandemic shutdown. Researchers collected data on wildlife numbers and water quality, and without humans around the “ecosystem responded in remarkable ways,” lead author Dr. Elizabeth Madin told BBC Wildlife. The water was “noticeably” cleaner, the fish population increased and endangered Hawaiian monk seals appeared more often.

Under the radar

The moon is rusting

Like pipes and statues, the moon can rust. Such rusting has occurred despite a seeming lack of necessary components — and all signs of blame point to the Earth.

Hematite, a form of rust, was first found on the moon in 2020 during India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission. The discovery puzzled scientists because rust is typically formed through the process of oxidation, which requires oxygen and water. New research may explain how it happened: “Hematite can form when oxygen ions in Earth’s magnetosphere (Earth wind) are implanted into iron-bearing materials” on the moon, said a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The Earth and the moon are usually “bathed in a stream of charged particles emanating from the sun,” said Nature. But for approximately five days out of the month-long lunar cycle, “Earth passes between the sun and the moon, blocking most of the flood of solar particles.” When that happens, the “moon is exposed mainly to particles that had been part of Earth’s atmosphere before blowing into space.”

This Earth wind contains ions of nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen from the planet’s atmosphere. These charged particles can “embed themselves in the lunar soil and cause the chemical reactions required to create rust,” said The Independent. It’s still unclear where the water comes from, as water on the moon only really exists as ice at the poles. But researchers have come to believe that “hematite may have formed in those polar regions and later spread across the surface by some unknown process,” said Firstpost.

On this day

September 29, 1829

London’s Metropolitan Police Force began its first patrols. The force, based at Scotland Yard, originally patrolled just a seven-mile radius, but quickly grew in power. Today, the Met Police are responsible for law enforcement in Greater London, with specialized units operating throughout the U.K.; officers, nicknamed “bobbies,” have become iconic British figures.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘Weekend of deadly violence'

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is “one and done,” the New York Daily News says on Monday’s front page. “Adams abandons re-election bid, shaking up race,” The New York Times says. “At least 4 dead in Mich. church shooting,” The Washington Post says. “A weekend of deadly violence in U.S.,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution says. “Trump, lawmakers set for talks on averting federal shutdown,” The Wall Street Journal says. “Oregon sues to block Trump from deploying troops to Portland,” The Oregonian says. “No troops in our cities,” says The Commercial Appeal, quoting Memphis nonprofits. “Feds march on Michigan Ave,” says the Chicago Sun-Times.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

Sex sells

Concerned about falling birth rates, Polish property developers Wladyslaw and Lena Grochowski are offering free parties for guests who conceive in one of their Arche hotels. They will also pay $2,675 to anyone who has a child within five years of purchasing an apartment from their company. Poland’s population is around 37.5 million but has been dropping for 12 years, and experts warn it “could be halved by the year 2100,” The Times of London said.

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Justin Klawans, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.