Households headed by foreign noncitizens living in the United States, including legal and illegal aliens, use nearly twice as much welfare as native-born Americans, research finds.

In recently released research by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), analysts discovered that about 63 percent of noncitizen households, those who live legally and illegally in the U.S., use some form of public welfare while only about 35 percent of native-born American households are on welfare.

Likewise, roughly 50 percent of naturalized citizens - those who legally immigrated to the country and became citizens - use taxpayer-funded welfare, as well as about 55 percent of all households headed by legal immigrants, those who are naturalized citizens and those who are not yet citizens.

Eight people, including five schoolchildren, have been killed by gunmen who opened fire in a high school near São Paulo, before turning their guns on themselves when police arrived.

The two gunmen, ages 25 and 17, walked into the state school in Suzano, near São Paulo, around 9.30am on Wednesday, and opened fire while students were on a break.

The local police chief, Colonel Marcelo Salles, told reporters that the attackers were armed with a .38 revolver, a crossbow, a bow and arrows and also carried fake explosives. "In 34 years of service, I have never seen [an attack] with a crossbow. It is totally unthinkable," he said.

One student, Rosni Grotliwed, 15, told the G1 news site that students were eating their morning snack when they heard popping sounds and started running.

"The guys came after us and started to kill lots of people," he said. "They were shouting but I didn't understand what it was."

Caterer Silmara de Moraes, 54, said she helped hide 50 students in a kitchen. "It was really desperate because there were a lot of shots, really a lot of shots, and panic," she told G1.

Congress could never get away with creating constitutional rights for illegal aliens to remain here, yet a single lower court just did so on Thursday. And where Congress would face deep reprisal in the next election, faceless judges will never feel the heat.

Conservatives fear that extreme Democrats might actually abolish ICE and all immigration enforcement, but the lower courts are already systematically abolishing ICE's authority, nullifying immigration enforcement statutes, violating separation of powers, and constantly increasing the wave of bogus asylum-seekers that they originally spawned with other radical rulings. The latest ruling from the Ninth Circuit demonstrates that unless Republicans and the president begin pushing back against these radical judges and delegitimizing their rulings, Democrats will get everything they want without ever facing electoral backlash or even the need to win elections.

It's truly hard to overstate the outrageously harmful effects of Thursday's Ninth Circuit ruling. For the first time in our history, the courts have fabricated a constitutional right for those denied asylum to appeal to federal courts for any reason.

Here's the background.

Hundreds of thousands of migrants are flooding our border, claiming the formula of "credible fear" of persecution. They get to stay indefinitely while they ignore their court dates in immigration court. Because of an amalgamation of several prior activist court rulings, mainly by this very circuit, roughly 90 percent of credible fear claims are approved by asylum officers and the claimants shielded from deportation, even though asylum status is ultimately rejected almost every time by an immigration judge. Unfortunately, by that point it's too late for the American people, who are stuck with the vast majority of these claimants remaining indefinitely in the country. Yet rather than ending this sham incentive, the Ninth Circuit drove a truck through immigration law by asserting that there is now a constitutional right for even the few who are denied initial credible fear status and are placed in deportation proceedings to appeal their denials, not just to an administrative immigration judge but to a federal Article III judge for any reason.

Actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin are among some 50 people charged in the massive scam to cheat on admission to elite US universities that involved bribes, fraudulent test scores and even fake photographs.

Huffman (of 'Desperate Housewives' fame) and Loughlin (Aunt Becky from 'Full House') were among the 33 parents indicted on Tuesday by the Department of Justice in what was dubbed 'Operation Varsity Blues.' It is the largest college cheating scheme ever prosecuted by the DOJ.

The ringleader of the scheme was named as William Singer, owner of Key Worldwide Foundation and a company called Edge College & Career Network. Singer and several other employees of his outfits accepted some $25 million dollars in bribes from parents between 2011 and 2018 "to guarantee their children's admission to elite schools," said US Attorney Andrew Lelling. Nine coaches, two ACT and SAT exam administrators, one proctor, and a college administrator were also charged.

"This case is about the widening corruption of elite college admissions through the steady application of wealth combined with fraud," Lelling said Tuesday.

The European Union and India have banned the Boeing 737 Max from flying over their airspace to ensure passenger safety.


They join a long list of countries in suspending the plane, including the UK.

It comes after an Ethiopian Airlines plane crashed on Sunday, killing 157 people on board. It was the second fatal accident involving the 737 Max 8 model in less than five months.

US officials say the aircraft are still safe to fly.

However, the US Association of Flight Attendants-CWA union is now calling for the Federal Aviation Administration "to temporarily ground the 737 Max fleet in the US out of an abundance of caution".

As US authorities continued to resist pressure Wednesday to ground the Boeing 737 MAX following the latest deadly crash, reports from American pilots surfaced who reported issues with the plane late last year.

At least four pilots made reports following the October crash of a Lion Air flight in Indonesia shortly after takeoff, all complaining that the aircraft suddenly pitched downward, according to documents reviewed by AFP on a flight safety database.

The incidents seem to involve the flight stabilization system designed to prevent the aircraft from stalling, the "MCAS," which was implicated in the fatal accident in the Lion Air crash that killed 189 people shortly after takeoff.

After the latest accident Sunday of another 737 MAX 8 from Ethiopian Airlines, shortly after takeoff, killing 157, numerous airlines and governments around the world grounded the aircraft or banned it from their skies, including Canada which just took the step on Wednesday.

However, the Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday said there was no reason as yet to ground the planes, even though it has mandated Boeing update its flight software and training on the aircraft.

The cause of the tragedy in Ethiopia has not been determined, although the black boxes with critical data and recordings of the pilot were retrieved Monday.

The most senior Catholic cleric ever to be convicted of child sex abuse was sentenced to six years in prison in Australia on Wednesday morning.

Cardinal George Pell, 77, faced as many as 50 years in prison after being convicted in December for the molestation of two choir boys while he was the archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s. Pell must serve a minimum of three years and eight months before he is eligible for parole.

He will spend the rest of his life as a registered sex offender.

Pell was convicted for the assault of the 13-year-old boys after he caught them swigging sacramental wine in a rear room of Melbourne's St. Patrick's Cathedral in late 1996.

Police revealed the names of the murderers who killed eight people, including four teenagers, at the Raul Brasil State School in Suzano, in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo.

The killers are Guilherme Taucci Monteiro, 17, and Luiz Henrique de Castro, 25. They both committed suicide afterwards. Castro would turn 26 next Saturday.

The attack occurred around 9:30 this Wednesday (March 13). Four of the dead are high school students. Two other adolescents were rescued, but died at the hospital. Two of the victims are school employees.


Summary

• The attack on the school in Suzano, in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, left eight people dead; the two murderers killed themselves.
• The victims have not yet been identified.
• The authors of the crime are Guilherme Taucci Monteiro, 17, and Henrique de Castro, 25.
• 23 people were taken to hospitals. Among them, those that were wounded and others who were not feeling well after the attack.
• The reason for the attack and the perpetrators' ties to the school are still unknown.
• One witness said she saw one with a gun and another with a knife.
• The police found a .38 revolver, a crossbow, objects that look like Molotov cocktails and a suitcase with wires.
• Before entering the school, the killers shot a man in a nearby car shop.
• The killers arrived at the target school in a rented car.

Attack

The perpetrators arrived at the school in a white car, which was rented by one of the killers. They entered through the school door, which was open (see video below).

"They entered the school, shot the pedagogical coordinator and shot another employee. It was time for recess, they went to the courtyard, they shot four more high school students. At that time, there were only high school students, and [the perpetrators of the attack] went to the language center. The language center students locked themselves in the classroom with the teacher and they [criminals] committed suicide in the corridor," said Col. Marcelo Salles, general commander of the Military Police.

Col. Salles said that, before entering the school, the criminals shot a man in a car wash near the school. He is undergoing surgery at the Santa Casa de Suzano and is in a very serious condition.


Arsenal

Inside the school, police found a .38 revolver, four jet luders, which are plastics for reloading a gun, a crossbow (a type of bow and arrow that shoots horizontally), a traditional bow and arrow and bottles that appear to be Molotov cocktails. Guilherme, one of the authors of the attack, had a kind of axe at his waist.

There is also a suitcase with wires. The bomb squad has been called, but the police have not yet informed if there is any explosive material in the area.

Colonel Fábio Pelegrini, from Military Police's Social Communication, said that the police also disclosed whether the perpetrators of the massacre have records of previous crimes.

The police have no information about the motivation of the crime.

"It was probably an act that was premeditated. They entered the school equipped with a mask. We still do not know the motivation, the correlation between the motive and the act," said Colonel Pelegrini.

Witness accounts

Rosni Marcelo Grotliwed, a 15-year-old student, said that the attack occurred during recess and that one of the criminals had a gun and the other a knife.

"We were at recess, eating as usual and we heard three shots fired. We tried to run over the CEL wall. The guys came after us and started killing a lot of people. But his gun went out of bullets and we ran."

Rosni said that one of the killers passed with a knife next to him, but he managed to dodge it. "I went to the principle's office, and there were a lot of dead people on the floor. They screamed, but I didn't understand what it was," he recalled.

"My friend was stabbed in the shoulder and another was shot. I ran away with a friend to my house and came back to get a friend.

Silmara Cristina Silva de Moraes, a 54-year-old working at the school kitchen, said she helped hide 50 students in the kitchen.

"We were serving snacks and then the shooting started and the children panicked. We opened the kitchen and began to put as many children inside and we closed everything and asked them to lie on the floor," she said, crying.

"It was very desperate, because there were a lot of shots fired, really a lot of shots fired and there was too much panic."

A former Murray County detention officer was arrested Friday on rape charges by the GBI.

Kirk Taylor Martin, 28, of Acworth, is accused of sexually assaulting a woman from Thursday afternoon until Friday morning, the GBI said in a news release.

He faces charges of rape, aggravated sexual battery, aggravated assault (family violence), criminal attempt to commit sodomy, false imprisonment and hindering an emergency call, the release said.

Martin worked as a jailer from March 2017 until he was fired in April 2018, according to Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council (POST) records.

Video footage of a group of Israeli soldiers beating a pair of handcuffed and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners earlier this year was allowed to be published on Tuesday, after the last of the servicemen were convicted of abuse the day before.

The video, which was filmed by one of the convicted soldiers, shows the servicemen repeatedly striking the Palestinian suspects in the back of the jeep in which they were riding in early January.

The Palestinian prisoners - a father and son - are suspected of assisting a terrorist who had killed two of the soldiers' comrades in a shooting attack the month before. The pair were indicted earlier this year.


The footage served as the key piece of evidence in the trial against the five soldiers who this month were convicted of abusing the prisoners and against their commanding officer who was indicted for failing to prevent the assault.

The gag order on the footage was removed by the Israel Defense Forces' Central District Court in Jaffa following requests from a number of Israeli news outlets. However, the voices of the soldiers had to be distorted and their faces blurred in order to protect their identities, which remained under gag order.