Providence remained on edge, though officials said there were no credible threats to the community and that they would not reimpose a shelter-in-place order for the campus and the surrounding area

International News via Reuters:

Police officers were going door-to-door on Monday seeking footage from home surveillance cameras as investigators renewed a manhunt for the gunman who killed two students and injured seven more in a classroom at Brown University, after releasing a man who had been held on Sunday as a “person of interest.”

Providence remained on edge, though officials said there were no credible threats to the community and that they would not reimpose a shelter-in-place order for the campus and the surrounding area that had been lifted earlier.

“People are very confused and nervous,” said Sue Erkkinen, a real estate agent. “We are staying indoors. We have all been glued to the TV, and it looks like the manhunt is now back on.”

The neighborhood was eerily quiet on Monday, several residents told Reuters, as most people were staying behind locked doors. Officers were knocking on doors, asking whether anyone had seen anything or had any cameras that might have caught a glimpse of the suspect, while police helicopters whirred overhead.

One family left to stay with friends in another town, while a first-floor tenant was so frightened that she asked her landlord to let her spend time on the second floor, neighbors said.

Providence Mayor Brett Smiley’s home, less than a block from the site of the shooting, served as ground zero for officials to gather over the weekend.

EARLY LEAD FIZZLES AS EVIDENCE SHIFTS

Police have released surveillance footage showing the possible shooter dressed in black walking near the building where the attack took place, though his face is not visible.

The gunman fled after opening fire in a classroom in Brown’s Barus & Holley engineering and physics building, where outer doors had been left unlocked while exams were taking place, according to police.

Students spent hours barricaded in classrooms or hiding beneath furniture as officers fanned out across campus searching for the attacker on Sunday.

At a press conference late on Sunday, officials said there had been enough evidence to justify taking into custody the unnamed person of interest, a man in his 20s. The announcement of the detainment early on Sunday provided what turned out to be a short-lived measure of relief for students and city residents.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha later said investigators had determined there was “no basis to believe that he’s a person of interest, so… he’s being released.” Officials did not offer more detail about how the evidence had shifted.

Brown is one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the United States. The Ivy League school, which has nearly 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students, canceled exams and classes for the rest of the year.

SHOOTING VICTIMS MOURNED

The two students killed were Ella Cook, a sophomore from Mountain Brook, Alabama, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, a citizen of Uzbekistan, according to statements from various officials.

Cook was vice president of the school’s College Republicans and a “leading Republican voice at Brown,” according to an X post from the New York Republicans Club. Her LinkedIn profile included jobs as an ice cream server at a Mountain Brook creamery and a program assistant in New York.

“Wesley and I join the Mountain Brook community and all of Alabama in mourning the heartbreaking loss of one of our own, Ella Cook, who was senselessly killed over the weekend on Brown University’s campus,” U.S. Senator Katie Britt of Alabama wrote in a statement with her husband, Wesley.

Umurzokov, an aspiring neurosurgeon, was his family’s “biggest role model,” according to a GoFundMe campaign set up by his family.

“He always lent a helping hand to anyone in need without hesitation, and was the most kind-hearted person our family knew,” the family wrote. “Our family is incredibly devastated by this loss.”

He graduated from Midlothian High School in Virginia this spring as one of the top 10 students in his class, according to video of the school’s graduation ceremony. In a statement, the U.S. ambassador to Uzbekistan, Jonathan Henick, mourned “the loss of his bright future.”

Reporting by Maria Alejandra Cardona in Providence, Svea Herbst-Bayliss in New York and Rich McKay in Atlanta; Additional reporting by Helen Coster, Maria Tsvetkova and Nathan Layne; Writing by Joseph Ax and Steve Gorman; Editing by Donna Bryson and Bill Berkrot

Starting this year, the EU requires importers of oil and gas to Europe to monitor and report methane emissions associated with those imports, in a bid to curb emissions of the potent planet-warming gas

International News via Reuters:

The U.S. has demanded that the European Union exempt its oil and gas from obligations under the bloc’s methane emissions law on fuel imports until 2035, a U.S. government document seen by Reuters showed.

Starting this year, the EU requires importers of oil and gas to Europe to monitor and report methane emissions associated with those imports, in a bid to curb emissions of the potent planet-warming gas.

The world-first climate policy has faced opposition from U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who has called it impossible to implement and warned it could disrupt U.S. gas supplies to Europe. European countries have increased imports of U.S. liquefied natural gas as they phase out oil and gas from Russia.

The U.S. document said that in the absence of a “full repeal” of the EU law, Washington was asking the EU to “delay requiring U.S. emissions data reporting under the EUMR [EU Methane Regulation] until October 2035.”

“The EU Methane Regulations is a critical non-tariff trade barrier that imposes an undue burden on U.S. exporters and our trade relationship,” said the document, circulated to EU member governments ahead of a meeting of their energy ministers in Brussels on Monday.

The U.S. Department of Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the document.

The EU said last week it would offer companies simpler routes to prove compliance with the law, aimed at complex supply chains like those in the U.S. where one LNG shipment contains gas from many different production fields. 

EU Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen told reporters on Monday the bloc was in talks with the U.S., but would not weaken the methane law, which will impose increasingly tough obligations on fuel imports over time.

“We are trying to be as helpful as we can, with regards to implementation, but the legislation stands,” Jorgensen said.

“We are not considering withdrawing the legislation or an exemption to the legislation.”

Methane emissions are the second-biggest cause of global warming, after carbon dioxide.

The U.S. document also asked the EU to deem U.S. methane emissions laws equivalent to its own – meaning U.S. producers would automatically comply – and for Brussels to commit to not apply penalties if U.S. oil and gas imports breach the rules.

Industry sources said it was unlikely the U.S. could be granted this “equivalence”, since the Trump administration has moved to roll back its federal emissions reporting requirements, including by suspending some for the oil and gas sector until 2034.

A joint paper by U.S. and EU oil and gas industry groups, seen by Reuters, also called for changes to the policy, including delaying tougher obligations due to apply from 2027.

Dan Byers, vice president for policy at industry group the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the EU methane law was “uniquely complicated for the United States, where you have all of these countless producers, molecules being co-mingled”.

Reporting by Kate Abnett in Brussels and Valerie Volcovici in Washington; Editing by Bart Meijer, Mark Potter and Matthew Lewis