First Thing: Monterey Park shooter was a patron of dance hall he attacked

Good morning.

Investigators in California are searching for answers as to why a 72-year-old man gunned down patrons at a ballroom dance hall on Saturday night, a venue he is said to have frequented.

The community of Monterey Park continues to reel from a weekend massacre that killed 11 people and wounded nine. The gunman, identified as Huu Can Tran, attacked the Star Ballroom dance studio then drove to another nearby dance hall where an employee wrestled a weapon away from him, preventing an even greater tragedy.

Tran later killed himself as police closed in. The age of the shooter has surprised some researchers as it defies the typical mass shooter profile.

Robert Luna, the Los Angeles county sheriff, said investigators had not established a clear motive and were looking into whether Tran had relationships with the people he shot at the Star Ballroom dance studio. Tran was previously arrested for illegally possessing a firearm, had a rifle at home, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and appeared to be manufacturing gun silencers. Investigators are also homing in on the possibility he was motivated by jealousy, according to the Los Angeles Times.

• What have police found out in the Half Moon Bay shootings? Detectives are piecing together a motive. “All of the evidence we have points to this being the instance of workplace violence,” Christina Corpus, San Mateo’s first Latina sheriff, said. “The only known connection between the victims and the suspect is that they may have been co-workers.”

• What happened in Washington? A 21-year-old man wanted in connection with the random killing of three people at a convenience store in Yakima, Washington, shot and killed himself early on Tuesday as officers approached, authorities said.

Two more papers found in Trump’s storage last year were marked secret

Two documents that Donald Trump’s legal team returned to the justice department last year after retrieving them from a private storage unit in Florida as part of an additional search for materials were marked classified at the secret level, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The materials included one document marked as secret on the cover page, and a second marked as secret with its classified attachment removed, one of the sources said – which Trump’s lawyers told the department was an indication of that document no longer being classified.

The two documents were found inside sealed boxes that appeared to have been unopened from when they were moved to the storage unit in Florida, near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, from the White House at the end of the Trump administration, the lawyers told the justice department.

Since the two documents were returned as soon as the lawyers were informed of the discovery, the department is not expected to include them as part of the wider criminal investigation into Trump’s retention of national security information and obstruction of justice.

• Why is Mike Pence in the news? Close aides to Pence discovered about a dozen classified-marked documents stored in boxes at his home in Indiana last week and turned over the materials to the US justice department, according to a top adviser to the former vice-president.

• What else is happening with Trump? An Atlanta district attorney has said “decisions are imminent” on whether to charge the former president with criminal offences over his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.

US poised to send dozens of Abrams tanks to Ukraine in policy U-turn – reports

The US appears ready to start a process that would send dozens of its M1 Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine, US media reported, in a reversal that could have significant implications for Kyiv’s efforts to repel Russian forces.

The development prompted swift reaction from Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov. “If the United States decides to supply tanks, then justifying such a step with arguments about ‘defensive weapons’, it will definitely not work. This would be another blatant provocation against the Russian Federation,” Antonov said in remarks published on the embassy’s Telegram messaging app on Wednesday.

The step follows reports on Tuesday that Berlin had succumbed to huge international and domestic pressure and was about to announce that it would send German-manufactured tanks to Ukraine, and allow other countries to do the same.

• How has Russia reacted? Antonov said it would be a “blatant provocation”.

• What else is happening? Here is what we know on day 336 of the invasion.

In other news …

• School teachers in Florida’s Manatee county are removing books from their classrooms or physically covering them up after a new bill went into effect that prohibited material unless deemed appropriate. If a teacher is found in violation of these guidelines, they could face felony charges.

• The Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, reiterated on Tuesday that he would block the Democratic representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell of California from serving on the House committee that oversees national intelligence, saying the decision was not based on political payback but was because “integrity matters.”

• Weather authorities in Japan and the Korean peninsula have issued warnings over freezing temperatures and gales that have killed at least one person and stranded thousands. Severe cold weather has already caused fatalities, havoc and record low temperatures across the region in the past fortnight.

• A worker at an airport in Alabama who died after being sucked into a jet engine on New Year’s Eve had been warned repeatedly about the dangers of going near it, federal investigators said. The employee, along with other colleagues of the facility’s ground crew, had undergone “safety huddles”.

Stat of the day: Everything Everywhere All at Once takes Oscars lead with 11 nominations

Everything Everywhere All at Once, the action comedy starring Michelle Yeoh as an unsuspecting launderette owner who fights evil by connecting with different versions of herself in parallel universes, heads into this year’s Oscar race as the title to beat with 11 nominations. As well as nods for Yeoh and her supporting co-stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan, the film is up for best picture, director (for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), costume design, editing, original song, original score and original screenplay. Yeoh’s nomination makes the Malaysian star the first Asian academy award best actress nominee (1936 nominee Merle Oberon suppressed her Indian roots).

Don’t miss this: ‘It just didn’t feel right’ – top Iran chess player on why she removed headscarf

The routine played out each time Iran’s Sara Khadem travelled abroad for chess tournaments – between contemplating openings and sizing up her opponents, the top-ranked chess player kept a constant eye on the cameras that roamed the hall, pulling off her headscarf as soon as they stopped rolling, writes Ashifa Kassam.

But when the invite arrived for a tournament in Kazakhstan in December – Khadem’s first in three years – the 25-year-old knew she no longer wanted to keep up the pretence. Soon after, photos began circulating of Khadem, Iran’s top female chess player, deep in thought, with her hair uncovered, as she took on opponents at the Fide World Rapid and Blitz championships. “It felt, let’s say, unfaithful to people if I had gone with the headscarf,” she said. “It just didn’t feel right.”

… or this: ‘It felt like a job application’ – the people weeding out first dates with questionnaires

An increasing number of people are using forms or scripted questions on dates to weed out romantic time-wasters. But can a pop quiz ever actually lead to love? Though it may not be the most romantic way to get a date, more women are taking a page from the HR playbook and screening matches before spending any time on them.

Kennedy, 26, from Vancouver, is one woman who made her own Google form to combat pandemic-era loneliness. She fell in love with one of the more serious candidates who responded. “I found my soulmate, who answered most of my questions correctly,” she said. “It’s good to have a few things in common, but having a couple of differences gives the relationship a little spice.”

Climate check: ‘No chance’ of global heating below 1.5C but nuclear tech ‘promising’ in climate crisis, Bill Gates says

The world will be lucky to avoid 2.5C of heating, but emerging technology may help avert even worse, Bill Gates has told a Sydney audience. The US billionaire and philanthropist told the Lowy Institute on Monday that while malaria still killed more children – 400,000 a year – the climate crisis was “worth investing in massively because it will get worse and worse over time”. There was “no chance” of limiting warming to the Paris climate goal of 1.5C compared with pre-industrial levels, and it was “very unlikely” it could be kept to 2C, Gates said. “The key is to minimise the warming as much as possible,” he said. “At this point, to stay below 2.5C would be pretty fantastic. I do think that’s possible.”

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