FLORIDA: No mention of fire arms or gun control, President Donald Trump's statement Thursday skirted the big issues and demanded to know how a “disturbed” former student with an obsession with firearms slipped through the net to sow carnage at a Florida high school, killing at least 17 people in the latest gun massacre to rock the nation.
The 19-year-old suspect Nikolas Cruz has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder over Wednesday’s deadly rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, America’s worst school shooting since the Sandy Hook massacre left 20 children and six teachers dead in 2012.
After a night of questioning in police custody, the young man was reportedly transferred to a local Florida jail early yesterday.
Trump ordered flags to fly at half-staff and was to deliver a televised address later Thursday, to a nation stunned by the mounting toll of school shootings which US authorities have so far appeared powerless to stop.
Wednesday’s harrowing shooting spree saw terrified students hiding in closets and under desks as they texted for help, while the gunman stalked the school with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle.
Fifteen people were killed at the school itself, and two later died in hospital. One of those killed was a football coach in Parkland, a city of about 30,000 people, located 50 miles north of Miami.
The president weighed in on the tragedy on Twitter by pointing to indications the shooter — who had been expelled for disciplinary reasons — was “mentally disturbed.”
“So many signs that the Florida shooter was mentally disturbed, even expelled from school for bad and erratic behavior,” Trump wrote.
“Neighbors and classmates knew he was a big problem. Must always report such instances to authorities, again and again!“
Cruz was reportedly known to have firearms at home and had talked about using them.
A teacher at the school said Cruz had been identified previously as a potential threat to his classmates.
“We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him,” math teacher Jim Gard said in a Miami Herald interview.
“There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus.”
According to a BuzzFeed report, the FBI had been informed Cruz could carry out a school shooting last year, after the teen commented on a video: “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”
The creator of the video tipped off both the FBI and YouTube, BuzzFeed said.
Florida Senator Marco Rubio on Thursday called Cruz a “deeply disturbed person,” and questioned how the teenager “escaped detection, was able to acquire this weapon, and then go on and kill 17 people and injure many more.”
“This was someone that people knew was a danger,” Rubio said.
The United States has been hit by almost 20 school shootings since the start of the year, a terrifying phenomenon that is part of a broader epidemic of gun violence in a country that loses 33,000 people to gun-related deaths each year.
While the latest mass shooting has inevitably reignited questions about America’s permissive gun laws, Trump — who is the first president to have addressed the NRA gun lobby — is staunchly opposed to any additional gun control.
Opponents of gun control have consistently sought to steer public debate away from the issue, and onto the behavior and motives of people using the weapons.
When questioned at a press conference late Wednesday, Florida Governor Rick Scott — who described the massacre as “just pure evil” — declined to make a statement on gun control.
“There’s a time to continue to have these conversations about how through law enforcement, how through mental illness funding that we make sure people are safe, and we’ll continue to do that,” said Scott, a Republican.
Cruz had mixed in with students fleeing the school before being caught, officials said.
“We have already begun to dissect his websites and things on social media that he was on and some of the things... are very, very disturbing,” Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said.
“If a person is predisposed to commit such a horrific event by going to a school and shooting people ... there’s not anybody or not a lot law enforcement can do about it.”
“This is a terrible day for Parkland,” Israel said.
The FBI said it was assisting local law enforcement with the investigation.
Parkland Mayor Christine Hunschofsky said a police officer was always stationed at the school and there was a “single point of entry.”
Since January 2013, there have been at least 291 school shootings across the country — an average of about one a week, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a non-profit group that advocates for gun control.
“It is pretty clear that we’re failing our kids here,” said Melissa Falkowski, a teacher who squeezed 19 students into a closet to shield them from harm.
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Trump demands answers after 17 gunned down at Florida school
Trump demands answers after 17 gunned down at Florida school
Europe explores deporting Afghans back to Taliban-controlled nation
BRUSSELS: The European Union is pushing ahead with plans to deport Afghans with no right to stay in the bloc back to their country, raising practical challenges and concerns from the UN refugee agency.
Under pressure from member states to crack down on irregular migration, Brussels has initiated contacts with the Taliban government in Kabul to assess the feasibility of returns.
EU officials carried out two “technical missions” to the country — the latest in January — to “explore the structuring of the work on readmission and possible organization of return operations,” Markus Lammert, a European Commission spokesman, said this week.
Returns would have been unthinkable only a few years ago and are fraught with legal and ethical concerns. Human Rights Watch this week warned the Taliban authorities “increased their repression” last year, citing new rules curbing media freedom and restrictions on women and girls.
But the issue of returns is now being pushed by a majority of the EU’s 27 nations following a souring of public opinion on migration that has fueled right-wing electoral gains across the bloc.
“There has been a shift... where there’s much more talk about this,” said Arafat Jamal, the United Nations refugee agency’s representative in Afghanistan.
“It is extremely worrying because it seems like a policy based on emotion and reaction, but not on actual wisdom.”
Stepping up deportations has become a common refrain among EU nations, as fewer than 20 percent of people ordered to leave the bloc are currently returned to their country of origin, according to official data.
EU countries received about a million asylum applications filed by Afghans between 2013 and 2024, according to the bloc’s data agency. About half as many were approved over the same period.
In 2025, Afghans represented the largest group of applicants, followed by Venezuelans and Syrians.
Italy, Poland and Sweden are among 20 EU countries that backed Belgium in October in urging the commission to enable voluntary and forced returns of those whose applications were rejected, with some lamenting that even convicted criminals could not be expelled.
Freddy Roosemont, director general of the Belgian Immigration Office, told AFP his government was “currently working” with the EU executive and like-minded partners “to find a solution to this problem.”
- ‘Mass deportation’ -
Meanwhile some have pushed ahead.
Germany has deported more than 100 Afghans since 2024, via charter flights facilitated by Qatar.
Attitudes in the country have been hardened by a string of deadly attacks by Afghans in recent years, including a car-ramming in Munich last year and a 2024 stabbing spree in Mannheim.
Austria has followed, deporting the first Afghan man since 2021 in October.
Others, like France, have aired reservations.
Returns to Afghanistan “pose challenges,” admitted Lammert.
The country is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis, compounded by drought and huge cuts in foreign aid, rights groups say.
Generations of Afghans who fled to neighboring Pakistan and Iran over decades of successive wars are being forcibly pushed back.
More than five million Afghans have returned since 2023 and, often unable to find jobs, most live in poverty.
Talking to the Taliban authorities to arrange returns poses challenges of its own.
European governments shut their embassies in Kabul when the Taliban authorities returned to power in 2021 and imposed their strict interpretation of Islamic law.
The EU has maintained a diplomatic presence in the country but contacts have been limited to certain areas and Brussels has stressed that the engagement “does not bestow any legitimacy” on the Taliban government.
Conversely, the Taliban authorities do not recognize the legitimacy of some of Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions abroad, because of their ties to the previous government.
This poses a host of logistical issues, such as how to issue valid passports to returnees.
The EU’s exploratory missions to Afghanistan focused on these and other practical concerns, according to a source directly involved in the discussions.
“They’re looking at the planes, what is the capacity at the airport, they’re talking with the Taliban about what would happen to the people” who are returned, said the source.
“They’re testing the waters, they want to see if they can implement a mass deportation system.”
If that becomes a reality it should at the very least be accompanied by a significant increase in European aid flowing to the country, warned Jamal, the UN refugee agency’s representative.
“Returning people to Afghanistan without increasing assistance is incoherent, and is bound to create a risky imbalance,” he said.
Under pressure from member states to crack down on irregular migration, Brussels has initiated contacts with the Taliban government in Kabul to assess the feasibility of returns.
EU officials carried out two “technical missions” to the country — the latest in January — to “explore the structuring of the work on readmission and possible organization of return operations,” Markus Lammert, a European Commission spokesman, said this week.
Returns would have been unthinkable only a few years ago and are fraught with legal and ethical concerns. Human Rights Watch this week warned the Taliban authorities “increased their repression” last year, citing new rules curbing media freedom and restrictions on women and girls.
But the issue of returns is now being pushed by a majority of the EU’s 27 nations following a souring of public opinion on migration that has fueled right-wing electoral gains across the bloc.
“There has been a shift... where there’s much more talk about this,” said Arafat Jamal, the United Nations refugee agency’s representative in Afghanistan.
“It is extremely worrying because it seems like a policy based on emotion and reaction, but not on actual wisdom.”
Stepping up deportations has become a common refrain among EU nations, as fewer than 20 percent of people ordered to leave the bloc are currently returned to their country of origin, according to official data.
EU countries received about a million asylum applications filed by Afghans between 2013 and 2024, according to the bloc’s data agency. About half as many were approved over the same period.
In 2025, Afghans represented the largest group of applicants, followed by Venezuelans and Syrians.
Italy, Poland and Sweden are among 20 EU countries that backed Belgium in October in urging the commission to enable voluntary and forced returns of those whose applications were rejected, with some lamenting that even convicted criminals could not be expelled.
Freddy Roosemont, director general of the Belgian Immigration Office, told AFP his government was “currently working” with the EU executive and like-minded partners “to find a solution to this problem.”
- ‘Mass deportation’ -
Meanwhile some have pushed ahead.
Germany has deported more than 100 Afghans since 2024, via charter flights facilitated by Qatar.
Attitudes in the country have been hardened by a string of deadly attacks by Afghans in recent years, including a car-ramming in Munich last year and a 2024 stabbing spree in Mannheim.
Austria has followed, deporting the first Afghan man since 2021 in October.
Others, like France, have aired reservations.
Returns to Afghanistan “pose challenges,” admitted Lammert.
The country is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis, compounded by drought and huge cuts in foreign aid, rights groups say.
Generations of Afghans who fled to neighboring Pakistan and Iran over decades of successive wars are being forcibly pushed back.
More than five million Afghans have returned since 2023 and, often unable to find jobs, most live in poverty.
Talking to the Taliban authorities to arrange returns poses challenges of its own.
European governments shut their embassies in Kabul when the Taliban authorities returned to power in 2021 and imposed their strict interpretation of Islamic law.
The EU has maintained a diplomatic presence in the country but contacts have been limited to certain areas and Brussels has stressed that the engagement “does not bestow any legitimacy” on the Taliban government.
Conversely, the Taliban authorities do not recognize the legitimacy of some of Afghanistan’s diplomatic missions abroad, because of their ties to the previous government.
This poses a host of logistical issues, such as how to issue valid passports to returnees.
The EU’s exploratory missions to Afghanistan focused on these and other practical concerns, according to a source directly involved in the discussions.
“They’re looking at the planes, what is the capacity at the airport, they’re talking with the Taliban about what would happen to the people” who are returned, said the source.
“They’re testing the waters, they want to see if they can implement a mass deportation system.”
If that becomes a reality it should at the very least be accompanied by a significant increase in European aid flowing to the country, warned Jamal, the UN refugee agency’s representative.
“Returning people to Afghanistan without increasing assistance is incoherent, and is bound to create a risky imbalance,” he said.
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