National News at a Glance

Three Dead, Including Gunman, in Shooting at Florida Gaming Tournament

Two people were killed and nine others wounded by gunfire Sunday when a gunman opened fire at a restaurant in Jacksonville, Florida, that was hosting a live video gaming event. Also killed was the gunman, whom police identified as 24-year-old David Katz, of Baltimore. He took his own life, authorities said. Two other people were wounded while fleeing the crowded restaurant as the shooting broke out. Sheriff Mike Williams of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said he was not prepared to discuss a motive but confirmed that the suspect had traveled to Jacksonville for the gaming competition.

8 Dead, Including 6 Children, in Chicago Fire, Officials Say

Eight people, including six children, died after a fire broke out at an apartment in Chicago early Sunday, officials said. The deaths raised the number of fatalities from residential fires in the city this year to 39, surpassing the 27 killed in such fires in all of 2017, a Chicago Fire Department spokesman said. The fire was reported just before 4 a.m. in the Little Village neighborhood. Two people were hospitalized in critical condition, with severe second-degree burns and smoke inhalation. The fire started in a second-floor apartment of a brick building. Its cause had not been determined.

Prison Strike Organizers Aim to Improve Conditions and Pay

Activists are leading a nationwide prisoner strike to call attention to the low inmate wages, decrepit facilities and harsh sentences that they say plague prison populations across the country. A spokeswoman for Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a group organizing the strike, said inmates in several states planned to participate in the strike, which started last week and is scheduled to run through Sept. 9. In addition to increased pay and better living conditions, strikers were calling for changes to sentencing laws and expanded access to rehabilitation and educational opportunities for inmates, among other requests.

Emboldened by Parkland, Newtown Students Find Their Voice

Last year, Natalie Barden, a 16-year-old high school student in Newtown, Connecticut, learned of a meeting of the Junior Newtown Action Alliance, a club for students aimed at reducing gun violence. Natalie, who lost her 7-year-old brother in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, was one of a handful of students to attend the meeting. In February, when 17 people were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Natalie said she "decided that I just needed to do more.” More than 100 students attended the next Newtown meeting after the Parkland tragedy.

$1.7 Billion Federal Job Training Program Is ‘Failing the Students’

The North Texas Job Corps Center is located behind a chain-link fence, accessible only through a gate manned 24 hours a day by guards hired to protect the center’s 436 students, a setting one called “a little bit like prison." This is not what the founders of a federal program with a $1.7 billion annual budget meant to prepare young people for the workforce had in mind. “Job Corps doesn’t work,” said Teresa Sanders, a former teacher at the center. “We are all failing the students.” Labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, who oversees Job Corps, allowed in an email that the program "requires fundamental reform.”

As Nation Unites to Mourn McCain, Trump Is Conspicuously Absent

As leaders of both political parties and foreign dignitaries publicly mourned Sen. John McCain on Sunday, President Donald Trump conspicuously avoided a national moment of tribute to a senator. The president did not make even the most cursory public show of respect Sunday for McCain. Trump spent much of the day golfing and attacking his usual enemies on Twitter. McCain said before his death that he did not want Trump to take part in his funeral, a decision that will render the president a virtual pariah as the senator is eulogized by former presidents and other luminaries as a principled war hero and dedicated public servant.