Republican Senator Ted Cruz received a torrent of criticism after he tweeted his condolences after a mass shooting in Allen, Texas, killed eight people and left seven injured. On Saturday, Mr Cruz tweeted his condolences and said he would be monitoring events unfolding after 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia opened fire at Allen Premium Outlets on Saturday afternoon. “Heidi and I are praying for the families of the victims of the horrific mall shooting in Allen, Texas,” he tweeted out. “We pray also for the broader Collin County community that’s in shock from this tragedy.” In response, many pointed out how Mr Cruz ardently opposes measures to curb gun violence. David Hogg, a survivor of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who has since become an outspoken advocate for gun control, criticised Mr Cruz. “Man if only there was something you could do to prevent these tragedies,” he tweeted in response. Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, tweeted how Mr Cruz supported regulation of industries other than guns. “After 16 people were killed in a hot air balloon in Lockhart, Cruz authored and passed legislation improving safety rules. After mass shootings, he only offers his prayers,” she tweeted. “That’s not because laws don't work, but because there's no hot air balloon lobby funding his Senate seat.” In recent years, Mr Cruz has opposed measures to curb gun control, including last year when his fellow Senator from Texas John Cornyn engaged in bipartisan negotiations with Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Democrat-turned-Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. The legislation ultimately passed with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell voting for it. Last week, Democratic Representative Colin Allred announced he would challenge Mr Cruz in 2024. Mr Allred criticised the lack of action after the shooting. “Eight lives tragically cut short,” he tweeted on Sunday. “As I grieve with my fellow Texans and pray for those who were injured, I won't accept that we are powerless to prevent this. It's our responsibility as lawmakers to help make our communities safer. We must take common sense steps to save lives.” Read More Allen mall shooting – live: Texas outlet worker died saving shoppers from ‘white supremacist’ gunman Hero Texas outlet worker died in mall shooting after risking life to hide customers Texas mall gunman was allegedly removed from military due to ‘mental health concerns’ Tanked Biden pick highlights escalation of dark-money forces Colin Allred, former NFL player, announces Democratic challenge to Ted Cruz in Texas Will the Supreme Court have to answer to ethics rules?

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A mom promoted a children's book on grief on local TV before being arrested for her husband's murder. Kouri Richins, 33, appeared on TV only last month to speak about her book Are You With Me? “My husband passed away unexpectedly last year. March 4 was a one-year anniversary for us, He was 39,” she said on ABC4. “It completely took us all by shock,” she added. “We have three little boys, ten, nine and six, and my kids and I kind of wrote this book on the different emotions and grieving processes that we’ve experienced in the last year. I went on Amazon and Barnes and Noble to try to find something to help us cope at night, nights are the hardest. I just wanted some story to read to my kids at night and I couldn’t find anything that suited them, so I was like ‘let’s just write one’.” Ms Richins was arrested Monday for the March 2022 murder. She is accused of having poisoned her husband with fentanyl at their home in Kamas, Utah – a small town in the mountains close to Park City, according to the Associated Press. Prosecutors argue that Ms Richins made a late-night call to the authorities in March last year to say that her husband was “cold to the touch”. Ms Richins told police that she made her husband a mixed drink using vodka to supposedly celebrate a recent sale of a home before she left to help one of their three children to sleep in their bedroom. She claimed that when she returned, she found him unresponsive and called the emergency services. A medical examiner found that Eric Richins had five times the lethal amount of fentanyl in his system. Ms Richins has been charged with murder in addition to allegedly possessing GHB. It’s a narcolepsy drug often used recreationally, such as at dance clubs, the AP notes. The charges are based on the officers’ accounts of their interactions with Ms Richins as well as the account of an “unnamed acquaintance” who said they sold the fentanyl to Ms Richins. The charges come two months after Ms Richins appeared on local TV to speak about her picture book Are You With Me? – which she authored to help children after losing someone close to them. Ms Richins appeared on a segment called Good Things Utah, saying that the death of her husband was unexpected and describing how it adversely affected her and her three children – all boys. She said that grieving for children was about “making sure that their spirit is always alive in your home”. “It’s, you know, explaining to my kid just because he’s not present here with us physically, doesn’t mean his presence isn’t here with us,” she told the local TV station. A police search warrant states that Mr Richins died on 4 March 2022. The Richins family is notable in Summit County, according to KPCW. The Richins Building in Kimball Junction was named after one member of the family – Sheldon Richins. Members of Mr Richins’s family said not long after his death that they suspected his wife of having killed him. Warrants state that “he warned them that if anything happened to him, she was to blame”. One of Mr Richins’s sisters claimed that he called her a few years ago when he was in Greece on vacation. He claimed that one of the drinks his wife had given him had made him very ill. The sister claimed that Ms Richins had made an attempt to take her brother’s life. A warrant also states that Ms Richins was caught changing her husband’s life insurance policy to make herself the only beneficiary. On Valentine’s Day last year, less than a month before his death, Mr Richins had an allergic reaction after having dinner with his wife. He broke out in hives, was unable to breathe, and passed out after using taking Benadryl and using his son’s EpiPen. According to court filings, Ms Richins had bought fentanyl pills for $900 a few days before the dinner. She asked for another $900 not long before Mr Richins’s death. Before he died, Mr Richins changed the beneficiary of his will and his power of attorney from his wife to his sister. A warrant states that he thought his wife might “kill him for the money”. Warrants also state that Mr Richins was planning on divorcing his wife, but that proceedings had yet to start at the time of his death. Ms Richins published the book on 7 March of this year, telling KPCW a few weeks later that it’s “designed to offer comfort and solace to young minds”. Last month, she told KPCW that the book was inspired by her own kids’ questions. “You know, ‘Is dad with us?’” she said. “Because they’re going through the sadness of knowing that he’s not here, presently.” The Independent has reached out to Ms Richins’s attorney for comment. Read More She wrote book on husband's death; police say she killed him Who is Lori Vallow? The ‘doomsday cult mom’ on trial for her children’s murders Alex Cox, Tammy Daybell and Charles Vallow: Key players in the Lori Vallow trial

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Scientists have seen one of the mysterious “dark spots” on Neptune from Earth for the first ever time. Researchers spotted the feature using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, or VLT. Using that telescope, astronomers were able to examine a large dark spot – which was joined by a smaller, bright spot, they said, of a kind that has never seen before. Scientists still do not know why those spots form on Neptune’s blue atmosphere. But they hope that the new observations could help answer questions about their origin. “Since the first discovery of a dark spot, I’ve always wondered what these short-lived and elusive dark features are,” said Patrick Irwin, professor at the University of Oxford and lead investigator of the study. It has already helped rule out one possibility: that the dark spots are caused when the clouds on the planet clear. The observations instead suggest that the spot is formed when air particles make a layer below the main one go darker, caused by ice and haze mixing in the atmosphere. Understanding the spots has been difficult because they leave the planet’s surface as mysteriously as they arise. They have also been difficult for researchers to actually examine, given the difficulty of spotting them through telescopes. Previously, scientists were forced to send spacecraft to see the spots, and the first was observed in 1989, when Nasa’s Voyager 2 flew past. It disappeared a few years later. In recent years, scientists have been able to examine them with the Hubble Space Telescope, which has seen more spots on the atmosphere. When it did so, astronomers were able to point ground-based telescopes towards them, allowing for more detailed research. “This is an astounding increase in humanity’s ability to observe the cosmos,” said Michael Wong, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley and a co-author on the paper. “At first, we could only detect these spots by sending a spacecraft there, like Voyager. “Then we gained the ability to make them out remotely with Hubble. Finally, technology has advanced to enable this from the ground.” The new observations allowed scientists to examine the spot using the VLT’s Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer, which let them split the light from Neptune and the spot into its component colours. That in turn means that astronomers can understand the height at which the spot sits, and how the atmosphere is composed. As well as helping examine the dark spots, scientists also saw a surprise result: another, entirely new kind of bright spot. “In the process we discovered a rare deep bright cloud type that had never been identified before, even from space,” said Wong. The work is described in a new paper, ‘Cloud structure of dark spots and storms in Neptune’s atmosphere’, published in Nature Astronomy. Read More Mysterious dark spot on Neptune detected from Earth for the first time We just received the first ever pictures taken near the Moon’s uncharted south pole Chandrayaan-3 mission rover exits Moon lander to explore lunar south pole Mysterious dark spot on Neptune detected from Earth for the first time We just received the first ever pictures taken near the Moon’s uncharted south pole Chandrayaan-3 mission rover exits Moon lander to explore lunar south pole