The nation is reeling from yet another mass shooting, this time in the small town of Monterey Park, Calif., where eleven victims died and another nine were injured on Jan. 21 following the city’s Lunar New Year festival.

Members of the majority-Asian American community in Southern California were shocked and devastated to see a time of celebration where tens of thousands had gathered transpire overnight into a moment of sorrow as people mourn and honor the lost lives.

“Violence of this nature is always meant to frighten and instill fear in the community and those who want to sell these things. And if we let that fear take over then we let them win,” Council Member Thomas Wong told TIME. But as a “community,” he added, “we can still come together and [be] resilient.”

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Here are some ways you can support the Monterey Park community.

Donate to a verified, event-specific GoFundMe fundraiser

GoFundMe has a centralized hub with verified fundraisers for people affected by the Monterey Park shooting. There are currently three fundraisers in the hub, though more may be added by GoFundMe’s Trust & Safety team.

The Los-Angeles based nonprofit Classroom of Compassion is raising funds to make 11 public altars to honor the lives of those lost. The organization says it will set up a “pop-up space on-site” where mourners will be able to leave flowers, notes, or paintings to add to the memorial. “We hope to provide art resources that promote healthy and safer expression of intense emotional experiences,” the fundraiser description said.

A team of nonprofits and organizations including the Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, Gold House, and others have set up a fundraiser with a $500,000 donation goal, to support “the many individuals who are now suffering from this senseless violence.”

And another fundraiser was organized on behalf of Mary Ma, the daughter of Ming Wei Ma, who was the owner of Star Dance Studio and one of the victims of the shooting. The fundraiser, which has already surpassed its initial goal of $30,000, was established to help the family cover funeral costs.

Donate to other organizations addressing related issues

While the motive of the shooter’s actions remains unknown, there are multiple organizations dedicated to serving the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.

Stop AAPI Hate, for instance, was created in response to a wave of xenophobia that stemmed from the COVID-19 pandemic. The organization uses funds to help track and respond to any hate or harassment faced by the community.

Changing Tides, a program of the Little Tokyo Service Center based in Los Angeles, seeks to normalize mental health in the Asian American community, through events and other outreach programs. Founded in 2018, it hosts walks for suicide prevention, peer specialist training for trauma informed care, and more. Consider donating here.

Donations to both organizations are U.S. tax deductible.

Visit a public memorial

The Monterey Park City Hall has a memorial at 320 W. Newmark Avenue for the community to mourn, a press release on the city’s website said.

Other makeshift memorials have been placed throughout the city, with candles, flowers. and balloons decorating locations like the entrance to the dance hall where the gunman opened fire.

If you are seeking help, you can also visit the Survivor’s Resource Center at Monterey Park’s Langley Senior Center. The center is offering counseling and legal assistance. Please call (626) 307-1395 for more information.

Seven people were killed in a mass shooting at two locations in the coastal northern California city of Half Moon Bay on Monday, and the suspect was arrested after driving to a police parking lot, apparently attempting to turn himself in, officials said.

The shooting in Half Moon Bay, about 30 miles (50 km) south of San Francisco, came on the heels of another mass shooting in the southern California city of Monterey Park on Saturday that killed 11 people.

California Governor Gavin Newsom said he was visiting Monterey Park victims in the hospital when he was called away and informed of the shooting in Half Moon Bay, about 380 miles (610 km) to the north.

“Tragedy upon tragedy,” Newsom said on Twitter.

The rural area was recently pounded by a series of heavy rainstorms that caused extensive damage, affecting immigrant laborers in the area, farm worker advocates said. A series of atmospheric rivers in the three weeks following Christmas killed 20 people statewide.

San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus identified the suspect as Chunli Zhao, 67, and said he worked at one of the shooting locations. Corpus called the sites nurseries, and other officials said they were staffed by farm workers. Local media described at least one of them as a mushroom farm.

“There were farm workers affected tonight. There were children on the scene at the incidents. This is a truly heartbreaking tragedy in our community,” San Mateo County Supervisor Ray Mueller told reporters. “The amount of stress that’s been on this community for weeks is really quite high.”

The suspect was cooperating with investigators but a motive had yet to be established, Corpus said.

A semi-automatic handgun was found in his car, she said.

Deputies responding to a call found four people dead and a fifth victim with life-threatening wounds at the first location in Half Moon Bay, then found three more dead at another place nearby, Corpus told a news conference.

Video on ABC 7 from the Bay Area showed the arrest as two men in plainclothes and one uniformed deputy, guns drawn, ordered the man out of his car. The suspect came out, was thrown to the ground and searched for weapons. Multiple uniformed officers quickly arrived on the scene with long guns.

Corpus said investigators speculate that the suspect drove to the station to turn himself in. The description of car and license plate were already circulating among law enforcement when a deputy spotted the car in the parking lot, Corpus said.

A woman who witnessed the arrest told reporters she had gone to the sheriff’s department to get more information as she was involved in agriculture and concerned about the well-being of the farm workers.

“I came down here to find out what I could about the situation and why this happened and I hadn’t expected to get quite that close to it,” Kati McHugh told reporters on the scene. “It was a little too close for my comfort.”

There were 38 mass shootings in the United States in the first 21 days of the year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which describes a mass shooting as four or more people shot or killed, not including the shooter.

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COX’S BAZAR, Bangladesh (Reuters) – Mohammed Ismail says four of his relatives were killed by gunmen at the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh between April and October last year. He recalls the September night when, he says, he almost met the same fate: masked men kidnapped him, cut off parts of his left arm and leg and dumped him in a canal.

“They repeatedly asked me why I gave their personal details to the police,” Ismail, seated on a plastic mat with his left limbs covered in white bandage and cloth, told Reuters at the Kutupalong refugee camp. “I kept telling them I didn’t know anything about them and had not provided any information.”

About 730,000 Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority present in Myanmar for centuries but denied citizenship in the Buddhist-majority nation since 1982, fled to Bangladesh in 2017 to escape a military crackdown. Including others who migrated in prior waves, nearly 1 million live near the border in tens of thousands of huts made of bamboo and thin plastic sheets.

An increasing number of Rohingya are now leaving Bangladesh for countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia via perilous boat journeys, as rising crime in the camps adds to longstanding troubles like a lack of educational and work opportunities and bleak prospects of returning to military-ruled Myanmar.

Crimes recorded in the camps – including murder, kidnapping, rape, robbery, human trafficking and narcotics trade – have soared in recent years, according to data that Bangladesh police shared exclusively with Reuters. Murders rose to 31 in 2022, the highest in at least five years.

“A series of murders of Rohingya men, including some leaders, at the camps have sparked fear and concern about militant groups gaining power, and local authorities failing to curb increasing violence,” said Dil Mohammed, a Rohingya community leader in the camps.

“That’s one of the main reasons behind the surge in Rohingya undertaking dangerous sea voyages.”

Police declined to comment on questions about Ismail or the issues at the camps beyond the data they shared.

Data from UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency, show that about 348 Rohingya are thought to have died at sea in 2022, including in the possible sinking late last year of a boat carrying 180 people, making it one of the deadliest years since 2014. Some 3,545 Rohingya made or attempted the crossing of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea to Southeast Asian countries last year, up from about 700 in 2021, the UNHCR said.

‘BETTER TO DIE AT SEA’

Ismail, 23, said he believes insurgents targeted him and his relatives, who were aged between 26 and 40, after his cousins rejected repeated approaches over the preceding three or four years to join a militant outfit, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). The group has fought against Myanmar’s security forces and some Rohingya say it has been recruiting fighters, often through coercion, in the Bangladesh camps.

In letters to the UNHCR in November and this month seen by Reuters, Ismail said he witnessed the killings of two of his cousins on Oct. 27.

Reuters could not independently verify the deaths of Ismail’s relatives, but his account was corroborated by his brother, Mohammed Arif Ullah, 18. The UNHCR declined to comment on Ismail’s case, citing safety and privacy risks.

About a dozen Rohingya men in the camps, who spoke to Reuters on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said that ARSA militants, whose stated goal is to fight for and restore the rights and freedom of the Rohingya in their ancestral homeland, were involved in criminal activities in the camps, including human and drug trafficking.

An ARSA spokesperson did not respond to questions Reuters sent by email and Twitter about the fates of Ismail and his family, and its alleged involvement in trafficking and attempts to recruit fighters in the camps. The group said on Twitter in December that its activities were confined to Myanmar.

“Any crimes and incidents happening in the camps… in all such happenings, most of the time innocent Rohingya refugees from the camps are labelled as ARSA members and extra-judicially arrested by the authorities,” it said.

The UNHCR acknowledged concerns about crime in the camps, saying it had increased its presence so that refugees could access protection and support.

“Among the serious protection incidents reported to UNHCR are abductions, disappearances, threats or physical attacks by armed groups and criminal gangs involved in illegal activities,” said Regina de la Portilla, the agency’s communications officer in Bangladesh.

Reuters could not independently obtain evidence of drug trafficking by ARSA, though previous Reuters reporting described how refugees had been drawn into the trade out of desperation.

Accounts of violent crime in the overcrowded refugee settlements are adding to pressure on densely populated Bangladesh, which has struggled to support the Rohingya and has called for Myanmar to take them back.

Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, Bangladesh’s Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner based in Cox’s Bazar, said the government was trying to control crime, including through a separate police battalion posted to the camps, but that “criminals just flee across borders when we run an operation”.

“For me, ARSA are thugs, hoodlums, hopeless people who now depend on drug peddling and extortion,” he said. “They don’t have a country, society, and nobody recognises them. That is why they are involved in crimes and life is meaningless to them.”

Human Rights Watch said this month, in a report based on interviews with more than 40 refugees, that Bangladesh police’s Armed Police Battalion, which took over security in the camps in 2020, was committing extortion, arbitrary arrests, and harassment of Rohingya refugees. The battalion did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Rahman said returning the Rohingya to Myanmar was the “only solution” to their problems. But Myanmar’s military junta, which took power in a coup two years ago, has shown little inclination to take them back. A Myanmar government spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Ismail, who lives with his parents, wife and brother, says he fears for his life and understands why some Rohingya are fleeing Bangladesh.

“It’s better to die at sea than being killed by terrorists or dying every day living in fear,” he said.

The police data show that crimes in the camps and the number of Rohingya arrested in Bangladesh last year were 16 times the levels of 2017 – a significant jump even after accounting for the influx of refugees. Police arrested 2,531 Rohingya and registered 1,220 cases last year, up from 1,628 arrests and 666 cases in 2021.

About 90% of cases last year, and a similar proportion of arrests, involved murder, illegal use of weapons, trade in narcotics, robbery, rape, kidnapping, attacks on police and human trafficking. Reuters could not determine how many of these resulted in convictions.

The murders of 31 Rohingya marked an increase from a previous high of 27 in 2021. Related arrests reached 290, from 97 a year earlier. Drug-related cases and arrests also soared.

Khair Ullah, a senior Burmese language instructor at the Development Research and Action Group, an NGO, said that besides concern about crime, the refugees were frustrated because about 90% of them had no education or employment.

“They are worried about their future. They can’t support their old parents,” said Ullah, 25, who is Rohingya and lives in the camps. “What will happen when they have kids? The other big issue is that there’s no hope of repatriation from here, so they’re trying to leave the camps illegally.”

Reuters spoke with several refugees who returned to the Bangladesh camps after abandoning journeys to Malaysia, via Myanmar, out of trepidation.

Enayet Ullah, 20, who is not related to Khair Ullah, arrived in Bangladesh in 2017 with his family. In December, he said, he saw the bodies of two Rohingya men who had been killed in the area of the camps where he lives.

“When I saw their bodies, I was traumatised,” he said. “I thought I could have died this way. Then I decided to leave the camp for Malaysia.”

Taking a boat from Teknaf in Bangladesh with nine others on the night of Dec. 13, Ullah said he reached the Myanmar town of Sittwe the next day. He had arranged for traffickers to take him to Malaysia for 450,000 taka (about $4,300).

“More Rohingya were supposed to join us and then a bigger boat would sail for Malaysia,” Ullah said. “They were waiting for a green signal to start the voyage. But my gut feeling was that the journey wouldn’t be safe.”

He got cold feet and asked the traffickers to send him back to Bangladesh for 100,000 taka.

Ullah laments that after more than five years in the camps, his homeland seems as far away as ever.

“No education, no jobs. The situation will only deteriorate as time passes by,” he said.

Those who reach Malaysia – where there are about 100,000 Rohingya – often find their situation similarly dire. Deemed illegal immigrants, many are jobless and complain of harassment by police. And the deteriorating political situation in Myanmar since the coup has dashed any hopes of repatriation in the near term.

Mohammed Aziz, 21, said he pulled out of a sea trip to Southeast Asia after he saw pictures of boats that traffickers were using, and felt they were too small. He said he had to pay 80,000 taka for the trip to the Myanmar coast from Bangladesh and back.

“People are risking their lives on sea journeys as there is no future here and criminal activities are rising,” Aziz said. “But I’ll beg them not to take this dangerous sea route. You can end up dying at sea.”

($1 = 104.2300 taka)

New Mexico’s top prosecutor on Monday asked the state’s highest court to overturn abortion bans imposed by conservative local governments in the Democratic-run state where the procedure remains legal after Roe v. Wade was struck down.

The move comes after the New Mexico cities of Hobbs, Clovis and two surrounding counties bordering Texas passed ordinances in recent months to restrict abortion clinics and access to abortion pills.

New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez filed an extraordinary writ in New Mexico Supreme Court to block the ordinances which he said were based on flawed interpretations of 19th century federal regulations on abortion medication.

“This is not Texas. Our State Constitution does not allow cities, counties or private citizens to restrict women’s reproductive rights,” Torrez said in a statement.

Right-to-life activists said the regulations remained valid under federal law and vowed to work on bringing such ordinances to more cities in New Mexico, the only state bordering Texas where abortion remains legal.

New Mexico’s largest cities of Las Cruces and Albuquerque have become regional destinations for women seeking abortions since the U.S. Supreme Court in June ended the nationwide constitutional right to the procedure.

Located on New Mexico’s eastern plains, Clovis and Hobbs do not have abortion clinics but approved ordinances to stop providers locating there to serve patients from Republican-controlled Texas, one of the first states to impose a near-total ban on abortion.

In direct response, New Mexico Democrats have drafted legislation to prevent cities from overriding state laws guaranteeing womens’ rights to reproductive healthcare. The legislation is due to be debated this month and has a strong chance of passing the Democratic-controlled state legislature.

The small community of Eunice on Monday became the third New Mexico town to pass an ordinance, according to anti-abortion activist Mark Lee Dickson.

“Cities and counties across the state remain on good standing to pass ordinances,” said Dickson, director of Right To Life East Texas, adding that the regulations had never been repealed by the U.S. Congress or declared invalid by the U.S. Supreme Court.

A member of the Proud Boys wearing a t-shirt that reads “death to liberals” stands with other Proud Boys in Freedom Plaza during a protest on December 12, 2020 in Washington, DC.

Stephanie Keith/Getty Images

• A Proud Boys “initiation ceremony manual” details the far-right group’s policy on masturbation.
• “A Proud Boy may not ejaculate alone more than once every 30 days,” the manual states.
• Prosecutors are seeking to introduce the manual as evidence in a January 6 sedition trial.

A manual for new recruits to the far-right Proud Boys organization details the extremist group’s peculiar stance on masturbation: while its exclusively male members are encouraged to drink booze and engage in street violence against anti-fascists — ostensibly in self-defense — they are told to follow a strict policy of “No Wanks.”

Federal prosecutors are seeking to introduce the document as evidence in the ongoing seditious conspiracy trial involving five Proud Boys, including former leader Enrique Tarrio, accused of taking part in the January 6 insurrection. All have pleaded not guilty. The manual was seized by federal authorities two years ago and recently made public, according to new court papers released as part of the US District Court trial in Washington, DC. 

“A Proud Boy may not ejaculate alone more often than once every thirty days,” states the group’s “initiation ceremony manual,” the document reads. 

“That means he must abstain from pornography during that time and if he needs to ejaculate it must be within one yard of a woman with her consent. The woman may not be a prostitute.”

An excerpt from a Proud Boys defense motion filed January 23, 2023 in US District Court in Washington, DC.

Insider

The Anti-Defamation League considers the Proud Boys a violent, right-wing extremist group whose members commonly engage in misogynistic, Islamaphobic, transphobic, and anti-immigration rhetoric.

The ban on masturbation was imposed by Gavin McInnes, who founded the group in 2016 as a street gang in defense of “Western chauvinism.” As detailed by journalist Andy Campbell in his book, “We Are Proud Boys,” members of the group are expected to adhere to the policy if they wish to advance to the second of its four tiers of membership.

McInnes cut ties with the group in 2018 after several members were arrested for assaulting anti-fascists outside of a talk he gave in Manhattan honoring a far-right Japanese assassin.

Recognizing that the manual and its policies are at best odd, a defense lawyer for Dominic Pezzola — one of the Proud Boys accused of sedition for their part in trying to overturn the 2020 election — is trying to block prosecutors from mentioning it at the trial. Indeed, the defense attorney highlighted the policy on masturbation, among others, suggesting it might influence jurors.

“The document is riddled with politically incorrect remarks and assertions which would cause most or many Americans to recoil in anger, hatred, and disgust,” states the defense motion filed in federal court on Monday.

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said personnel changes were being carried out at senior and lower levels, following the most high-profile graft allegations since Russia’s invasion that threaten to dampen Western enthusiasm for the Kyiv government.

* Zelenskiy, who did not identify the officials to be replaced, said part of the crackdown would involve toughening oversight on travelling abroad for official assignments.

* A top ally of Zelenskiy said corrupt officials would be “actively” jailed, setting out a zero-tolerance approach.

* Germany is not blocking the re-export of Leopard tanks to Ukraine, the European Union’s top diplomat said on Monday, after Poland vowed to send some as long as other countries did too.

* Poland said on Monday it would ask Germany for permission to send Leopard tanks to Ukraine – and would send them whether or not Berlin agreed as long as other countries did too.

* European foreign ministers, meeting on Monday to discuss aid to Ukraine, pressed Berlin to let countries send German-made Leopard tanks, after Germany appeared to open the door to such shipments by allies.

* South Africa’s foreign minister on Monday deflected criticism of joint military drills planned with Russia and China, saying that hosting such exercises with “friends” was the “natural course of relations.”

* Russia and Estonia downgraded their diplomatic relations and expelled each other’s ambassadors after Moscow accused Tallinn of anti-Russian policies. Latvia also expelled Russia’s ambassador in solidarity with Estonia.

* Russian forces continued to pound the Donetsk region in Ukraine’s east on Monday. One person was killed and two injured in Russian shelling of a residential district of the town of Chasiv Yar that damaged at least nine high-rise buildings, Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of Donetsk region, said on Telegram.

* “Spring and early summer will be decisive in the war,” Vadym Skibitsky, deputy head of Ukraine’s military intelligence, said in an interview with news site Delfi.

* On Monday, the new general in charge of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine used his first public comments to warn that modern Russia had never seen such “intensity of military hostilities“, forcing it to carry out offensive operations to stabilise the situation.

Reuters could not verify battlefield reports.

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Seven people were killed in a mass shooting at two locations in the coastal northern California city of Half Moon Bay on Monday, and the suspect was later taken into custody after driving to a police parking lot, officials said.

Half Moon Bay is about 30 miles (50 km) south of San Francisco.

Deputies responding to a call found four people dead and a fifth victim wounded at the first location in Half Moon Bay, then found three more dead at another place nearby, Sheriff Christina Corpus told a news conference.

One of the locations was a mushroom farm, the San Francisco Chronicle said.

Video on ABC 7 from the Bay Area showed the arrest as two men in plainclothes and one uniformed deputy, guns drawn, ordered the man out of his car. The suspect came out, was thrown to the ground and searched for weapons. Multiple uniformed officers quickly arrived on the scene with long guns.

A gun was found in his car, Corpus said.

A woman who witnessed the arrest told reporters she had gone to the sheriff’s department to get more information as she was involved in agriculture and concerned about the well-being of the farm workers, who were already under stress because of recent flooding in the area.

“I came down here to find out what I could about the situation and why this happened and I hadn’t expected to get quite that close to it,” Kati McHugh told reporters on the scene. “It was a little too close for my comfort.”

The latest mass shooting took place just two days after another in which 11 people were killed in the city of Monterey Park in Los Angeles County, about 400 miles (640 km) to the south.

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