In Other News: Impeachment isn’t the final word on Capitol riot for Trump; On Parkland anniversary, Biden calls for tougher gun laws

Published 2:47 pm Monday, February 15, 2021

Editor’s note: “In Other News” is a list of state, national and global headlines compiled by Daily Citizen-News staff from Associated Press-provided stories. Click on the headlines below to read the full stories.

Impeachment isn’t the final word on Capitol riot for Trump

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s acquittal at his second impeachment trial may not be the final word on whether he’s to blame for the deadly Capitol riot. The next step for the former president could be the courts. Now a private citizen, Trump is stripped of his protection from legal liability that the presidency gave him. That change in status is something that even Republicans who voted on Saturday to acquit him of inciting the Jan. 6 attack are stressing as they urge Americans to move on from impeachment. “President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office, as an ordinary citizen, unless the statute of limitations has run,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said after that vote. He insisted that the courts were a more appropriate venue to hold Trump accountable than a Senate trial.

For Parkland seniors, high school years bookended by tragedy

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — They were baptized by gunfire their freshman year, bonded as they spent hours hiding under desks, inextricably linked by tragedy. For the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Class of 2021, high school would never be about Friday night football and innocent first kisses. Seventeen students and staff were killed in the 2018 Valentine’s Day shooting. As the Parkland students struggled to define high school apart from tragedy, their senior year has been punctuated by the coronavirus pandemic, upending their lives once again. The majority are isolated at home on a computer, their hard-fought normal routines altered and their support systems splintered.

On Parkland anniversary, Biden calls for tougher gun laws

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Sorrow reverberated across the country Sunday as Americans, including President Joe Biden, joined a Florida community in remembering the 17 lives lost three years ago in the Parkland school shooting massacre. “In seconds, the lives of dozens of families, and the life of an American community, were changed forever,” Biden said in a statement released Sunday. The president used the occasion to call on Congress to strengthen gun laws, including requiring background checks on all gun sales and banning assault weapons. There was no time to wait, the president said. “We owe it to all those we’ve lost and to all those left behind to grieve to make a change. The time to act is now.”

The superspreaders behind top COVID-19 conspiracy theories

As the coronavirus spread across the globe, so too did speculation about its origins. Perhaps the virus escaped from a lab. Maybe it was engineered as a bioweapon. Legitimate questions about the virus created perfect conditions for conspiracy theories. In the absence of knowledge, guesswork and propaganda flourished. College professors with no evidence or training in virology were touted as experts. Anonymous social media users posed as high-level intelligence officials. And from China to Iran to Russia to the United States, governments amplified claims for their own motives. The Associated Press collaborated with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab on a nine-month investigation to identify the people and organizations behind some of the most viral misinformation about the origins of the coronavirus.