“H.R. McMaster has served his country with distinction for more than 30 years. He has won many battles and his bravery and toughness are legendary,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “General McMaster’s leadership of the National Security Council staff has helped my administration accomplish great things to bolster America’s national security.”
General McMaster had struggled for months to impose order not only on a fractious national security team but on a president who resisted the sort of discipline customary in the military. Although General McMaster has been a maverick voice at times during a long military career, the Washington foreign policy establishment had hoped he would keep the president from making rash decisions.
Yet the president and the general, who had never met before Mr. Trump interviewed General McMaster for the post, had little chemistry from the start, and often clashed behind the scenes.
General McMaster’s serious, somber style and preference for order made him an uncomfortable fit with a president whose style is looser, and who has little patience for the detail and nuance of complex national security issues. They had differed on policy, with General McMaster cautioning against ripping up the nuclear deal with Iran without a strategy for what would come next, and tangling with Mr. Trump over the strategy for American forces in Afghanistan.
Their tensions seeped into public view in February, when General McMaster said at a security conference in Munich that the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election was beyond dispute. The statement drew a swift rebuke from the president, who vented his anger on Twitter.
“General McMaster forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians and that the only Collusion was between Russia and Crooked H, the DNC and the Dems,” Mr. Trump wrote, using his campaign nickname for Hillary Clinton. “Remember the Dirty Dossier, Uranium, Speeches, Emails and the Podesta Company!”
Mr. Trump selected General McMaster last February after pushing out Michael T. Flynn, his first national security adviser, for not being forthright about a conversation with Russia’s ambassador at the time. (Mr. Flynn has since pleaded guilty of making a false statement to the F.B.I. and is cooperating with Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.)
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General McMaster carried out a slow-rolling purge of hard-liners at the National Security Council who had been installed by Mr. Flynn and were allied ideologically with Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, earning the ire of conservatives who complained that his moves represented the foreign policy establishment reasserting itself over a president who had promised a different approach.
General McMaster’s position at the White House had been seen as precarious for months, and he had become the target of a concerted campaign by hard-line activists outside the administration who accused him of undermining the president’s agenda and pushed for his ouster, even creating a social media effort branded with a #FireMcMaster hashtag.
Last summer, Mr. Trump balked at a plan General McMaster presented to bolster the presence of United States forces in Afghanistan, although the president ultimately embraced a strategy that would require thousands more American troops.
General McMaster had been among the most hard-line administration officials in his approach to North Korea, publicly raising the specter of a “preventive war” against the North. He was among those who expressed concerns about Mr. Trump’s abrupt decision this month to meet Kim Jong-un, according to a senior official.
WASHINGTON—The Federal Reserve said it would raise short-term interest rates a quarter-percentage point and signaled it could lift them at a slightly more aggressive pace in coming years to keep the strengthening economy on an even keel.
Fed officials said they would increase their benchmark federal-funds rate to a range between 1.5% and 1.75% and penciled in a total of three rate increases for this year.
A storm dubbed #DeleteFacebook is brewing in techie communities, on Twitter and — irony alert — on Facebook. The idea is this time is different from all the other times the social network has violated our trust. The co-founder of WhatsApp Brian Acton, who became a billionaire when Facebook purchased his app in 2014, tweeted Tuesday, “It is time. #deletefacebook.”
Is this the beginning of a movement? Here’s the difficult truth: Holding Facebook accountable for data abuses through a mass walkout would be very hard because it is woven into so many lives. But Facebook members are not without recourse to help bring change. We should follow the money.
I agree enough is enough. In the last week, we learned Facebook allowed our likes, our religions, our network of friends — data that millions of us didn’t intend to share — to be weaponized in political campaigns. A political marketing firm that worked for the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, is in trouble for what it did with the data. But what’s really scary is that it didn’t have to hack into anything to get it. Facebook was designed to collect all that info and handed it over without policing how it was being used. Now Facebook’s having an overdue existential crisis about being a spy machine.
But Facebook isn’t like other products you boycott. Last year’s #DeleteUber movement, which attracted an estimated 200,000, helped drive a management change at the start-up because it hit Uber’s bottom line. We don’t buy products from Facebook — we are its product. We’ve given it our information for free. And in North America, we were each worth $26.76 to Facebook in the fourth quarter of 2017.
Facebook became America’s fifth most-valuable public company (worth about $490 billion as of Wednesday) by selling advertisers highly targeted access to us. It takes data about what we and our friends do and then combines that with data from other places to make all sorts of inferences about us.
It’s true that Facebook needs our eyeballs to sell ads to marketers, and is very attuned to how much time people spend looking at its apps. But you quitting — or even 200,000 people quitting — wouldn’t make much of a dent in its 2.2 billion sets of eyeballs. #DeleteFacebook doesn’t work as a phenomenon only among the elite — it would take tens of millions.
And while it’s easy to press the button to quit Facebook (here’s a link), it’s spectacularly difficult in practice. Facebook has a hold on us because of its network effect: Even if you don’t like Facebook, you might still need it to stay in touch with your mom, your second cousin or even your boss. They’d have to quit, also — and all their friends, too. Many people rely on Facebook to sign in to other websites, dating services and other apps.
There aren’t great alternatives, either. Several of the most popular other social apps in the United States — Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp — are also owned by Facebook. People peeved at Facebook’s data practices have tried making new services, but none took off.
Follow the money
There have been many calls to boycott Facebook for past indiscretions. If we want the result to be any different this time, we need to address the broader problem.
Aside from a dramatic change of heart from founder Mark Zuckerberg, getting Facebook to reform what data it collects and how it uses it requires destabilizing its business. And that boils down to this: Making Facebook an unreliable or expensive way for marketers to reach us.
“The only way the boycott will be effective is if it creates enough reputational damage that regulation becomes a reasonable option or if advertisers leave en masse,” says Brayden King, a professor at the Northwestern Kellogg School of Management who studies how social movement activists influence corporate social responsibility and policymaking. Just the threat of either of those made Facebook’s stock price drop by 7 percent this week.
Comments made by Unilever chief marketing officer Keith Weed in February sound mighty relevant in the light of Cambridge Analytica: “It is acutely clear from the groundswell of consumer voices over recent months that people are becoming increasingly concerned about the impact of digital on well-being, on democracy — and on truth itself,” Weed said. “This is not something that can be brushed aside or ignored. Consumers are also demanding platforms which make a positive contribution to society.”
(Unilever didn’t respond to questions about whether it followed up on Weed’s threat, or how it views the Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica flap.)
And the ad industry already has an action force: an anonymous group called Sleeping Giants, which has been effective at getting advertisers to step away from Breitbart News and other outlets the group accuses of racist or sexist content. A member of Sleeping Giants who asked to remain anonymous says it doesn’t currently have plans to target Facebook, but it is watching closely. “What is clear now is they are being irresponsible with information. Advertisers need to be aware of that and ask themselves what they want to support,” he said.
Option B is more of a hammer: If governments force Facebook to change the way it uses data, advertisers may become less enamored with Facebook just because it won’t be as effective.
Current U.S. privacy laws go deep on areas like children and health data. But there’s no general-purpose privacy law. Some members of the U.S. Congress have this week renewed calls for Facebook — even Zuckerberg himself — to testify on the Cambridge Analytica case. But turning that into laws is a long, slow process. Not even last year’s massive Equifax hack got lawmakers to act.
The world will soon get one kind of control from the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which requires more transparency from companies about the data they collect and how they use it.
In the short term, Federal Trade Commission may also step in and fine Facebook. It happened to have an agreement in place with Facebook from 2011 that holds the social network accountable for incidents where its data gets shared without members’ explicit consent.
The regulation question is: What exactly should change? There will be many ideas floated in the months ahead. One intriguing argument is that policing data is more than just a Facebook problem, so we need an independent agency (beyond the FTC) to deal with it.
We’ve allowed an data-gathering industry to flourish with very few consequences and responsibilities. Now we’re learning just how badly that can end up.
And quitting Facebook alone won’t solve the bigger problem. The biggest consumer challenge of our era calls for a broader consumer movement. Tweeted another celebrity, Jim Carrey, “Who are you sharing your life with? #regulatefacebook.”
A city that has been on edge for weeks as several makeshift bombs exploded without warning — on doorsteps, on a sidewalk and, most recently, in a FedEx shipping center — saw the long-running drama coming to an end. But authorities warned that with the bomber’s obviously extensive preparations, it might not be entirely over.
“Two very important things before we can put this to rest. One, we don’t know if there are any other bombs out there and if so, how many and where they may be,” Mr. Abbott said on Fox News.
“Second, very importantly, we need to go throughout the day to make sure that we rule out whether there was anybody else involved in this process,” he said.
PhotoLaw enforcement responded to an area of Round Rock, Tex., where the police say a bombing suspect blew himself up in his vehicle. Credit
Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, told a local television affiliate that Mr. Conditt bought at least some of his bomb-making supplies from a Home Depot in Pflugerville, a small town about 20 miles northeast of Austin where the suspect lived.
“He did have a battery pack, and he had nails,” Mr. McCaul said.
The crucial break for investigators, Mr. McCaul said, came when Mr. Conditt walked into a FedEx office to mail a package earlier this week.
“From there, we could get surveillance video of him, get his vehicle, his license plate number, identify the individual, go to the Home Depot where he bought the stuff, and eventually, with his cellphone, be able to locate him, which they did this morning,” Mr. McCaul said.
A federal criminal complaint charging Mr. Conditt with unlawful possession and transfer of a destructive device was filed on Tuesday night, the authorities said Wednesday, along with a warrant for his arrest.
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Also on Wednesday, the Austin Police said they had detained Mr. Conditt’s two roommates. One was questioned and released; the other was still being questioned as of Wednesday afternoon. Neither roommate was identified.
Earlier in the day, local police and state troopers went door-to-door in the five blocks around Mr. Conditt’s house and told residents they were evacuating the area for their safety as federal agents worked to remove and dispose of homemade explosives found inside the residence.
As they arrived, federal agents notified neighbors, and then approached someone at Mr. Conditt’s home, said Mark Roessler, 57, an information technology manager who lives across the street.
“I watched the truck come down the street and shove the car out of the way, and they started announcing, ‘This is the F.B.I. We’re here to serve search warrants,’” Mr. Roessler recounted. “And then within a few minutes this individual came out the front door. They were giving him clear instructions, had him remove his shirt, and walk toward them.”
Mr. Roessler said he had never seen the person who emerged from the house. “He was wearing some dark pants and a white T-shirt, looked like he had just woken up,” he said.
Law enforcement authorities spent hours closeted with Mr. Conditt’s parents in their white clapboard home with an American flag hanging outside.
“We do not understand what motivated him to do what he did,” the Austin police chief, Brian Manley, told reporters.
Mr. Conditt was a quiet, “nerdy” young man who came from a “tight-knit, godly family,” said Donna Sebastian Harp, who had known the family for nearly 18 years.
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He was the oldest of four children who had all been home-schooled by their mother, Ms. Harp said, but he had also attended Austin Community College, although college officials said he did not graduate.
“He was always kind of quiet,” she said. “He was a nerd, always reading, devouring books and computers and things like that.”
She said there had never been any hints of violence, until Wednesday morning, when she received a text message from Mr. Conditt’s mother. It read, “Pray for our family. We are under attack” — a reference to a spiritual assault by Satan, Ms. Harp said.
The Conditt family is affiliated with Calvary Chapel of Austin, according to the church’s office manager, Dean Miller. It is an evangelical church that meets in a former grocery store in Pflugerville. Its members believe the Bible prohibits same-sex marriage.
It was not immediately clear how involved Mr. Conditt was in the church, but he argued against same-sex marriage in a post he wrote on a blog he created for a political science class at the community college.
“Political protection of a sexual practice is ludicrous,” Mr. Conditt wrote. “I do not believe it is proper to pass laws stating that homosexuals have ‘rights.’”
PhotoInvestigators at the scene in Round Rock, just north of Austin. Credit
Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times
McKenna McIntosh, another student in the course, said Mr. Conditt’s views as reflected on his blog were “clear as day.” In a biography on the site, Mr. Conditt described himself as a conservative but said he was “not that politically inclined.” His six posts, which date from January to March 2012, also included arguments in favor of the end of sex-offender registries and in support of the death penalty.
“Living criminals harm and murder, again,” he wrote, “executed ones do not.”
In the post, he pointed to Larry James Harper, a Texas fugitive who killed himself in 2001 as the police closed in after he escaped from prison. He compared him to another escapee, George Rivas, who was captured.
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It seemed almost to foreshadow his own fate.
“If he had wanted or wished for death, he would have just shot himself, like his fellow Texas 7 escapee, Larry Harper, who committed suicide, rather than be captured and re-incarcerated,” Mr. Conditt wrote.
Detective David Fugitt with the Austin police said Mr. Conditt’s family was cooperating and was allowing investigators to search the property, including several backyard sheds.
“We are devastated and broken at the news that our family member could be involved in such an awful way,” the family said in a statement published by CNN. “We had no idea of the darkness that Mark must have been in. Our family is a normal family in every way. We love, we pray, and we try to inspire and serve others. Right now, our prayers are for the families who’ve lost loved ones, for those impacted in any way, and for the soul of our Mark. We are grieving and in shock.”
Real estate records show that Mr. Conditt and his father, William Conditt, bought a house together in Pflugerville in 2017, and family friends said the younger Mr. Conditt was remodeling it.
But neighbors said they saw little of him.
“I think he was pretty much a loner,” said Jay Schulze, a network engineer who lived about two blocks down, adding that Mr. Conditt spent most of his time with his parents.
A neighbor of Mr. Conditt’s parents, Jeff Reeb, 75, said the Conditts had never expressed concerns about their son to him.
“I can tell you nothing about him personally, except that he was a nice, young kid,” Mr. Reeb said. “He always seemed like he was smart. And he always seemed like he was very polite.”
Mr. Reeb added: “My summation is it doesn’t make any sense.”
Austin has been in the grip of the wave of attacks since March 2.
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The first explosions hit African-American residents whose families are well-known in the city’s black community, though two white men were injured by an explosive triggered by a tripwire on Sunday.
The suspect is believed to be responsible for at least six bombs that killed at least two people and wounded five. Four bombs detonated in various locations in Austin where they had been left. Another detonated at a FedEx distribution center in Schertz, Tex., near San Antonio, and a sixth was found, unexploded, in a FedEx facility near Austin’s airport.
The attacks began when a package bomb detonated on the porch of an Austin home, killing Anthony Stephan House, 39. That was followed 10 days later by two bombs that were found outside homes, one of which killed a 17-year-old man.
The first three bombs were apparently detonated when they were picked up or jostled. Later, a package bomb exploded outside another Austin home, set off by a tripwire. The bombs at the FedEx centers were found on Tuesday.
The suspect’s vehicle was traced to a hotel in Round Rock, just north of Austin, Chief Manley said, where a SWAT team surreptitiously surrounded the hotel and called other specialized units. But the suspect drove away before those teams could arrive.
Officers followed the suspect, who stopped in a ditch off Interstate 35, and SWAT officers approached the vehicle on foot.
“The suspect detonated a bomb inside of the vehicle, knocking one officer back” and slightly injuring him, the police chief said. Another officer fired his gun at the vehicle.
Michael Luna, a guest at a Red Roof Inn near the confrontation, told a local news channel that he heard the explosion from the bomb, which sounded as if it had gone off 100 to 200 yards away, when he was smoking a cigarette in the parking lot. Mr. Luna, who said he had been in the military, said that the explosion sounded like two grenades going off at the same time, and that he heard a pop afterward that might have been gunfire.
The section of Interstate 35 near that confrontation was a traffic nightmare for hours as commuters moved at a glacial pace in the southbound lanes, many of them presumably unaware of what had happened. State troopers barred access at several ramps along that stretch of the highway.
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By Wednesday morning, aerial video footage of the area from KVUE, a local television affiliate, showed a red sport utility vehicle with blown-out windows next to a blue tarp, surrounded by investigators’ vehicles.
The White House said Tuesday it was not the place of the United States to question how other countries conduct their elections — a contention that runs counter to years of critical statements by presidents and other officials about elections in Russia and many other countries.
“We don’t get to dictate how other countries operate,” the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said. “We can only focus on the freeness and fairness of our elections.”
She later railed against the investigation of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, which could have affected the results in 2016.
Mr. Putin won with more than 76 percent of the vote. International observers said Russian electoral authorities counted the votes efficiently, but that several other factors prevented the contest from being fair.
“Restrictions on the fundamental freedoms of assembly, association and expression, as well as on candidate registration, have limited the space for political engagement and resulted in a lack of genuine competition,” observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said in a report.
Sen. John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was quick to criticize Mr. Trump’s call to Mr. Putin.
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“An American president does not lead the free world by congratulating dictators on winning sham elections,” Mr. McCain said in a statement issued by his office. “And by doing so with Vladimir Putin, President Trump insulted every Russian citizen who was denied the right to vote in a free and fair election to determine their country’s future, including the countless Russian patriots who have risked so much to protest and resist Putin’s regime.”
The White House pointed out that in March 2012, former President Barack Obama had a telephone conversation with Mr. Putin and congratulated him on his election victory at that time.
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Officials in the Obama administration said there was lively debate about whether, and when, Mr. Obama should make that call. Mr. Obama waited several days before calling, prompting questions about whether he was going to snub Mr. Putin.
After the 2012 election, the State Department issued a separate statement in which it said, “The United States congratulates the Russian people on the completion of the Presidential elections, and looks forward to working with the President-elect after the results are certified and he is sworn in.”
In his remarks, Mr. Trump noted that Mr. Putin has expressed concern about the escalating arms race between the United States and Russia.
He noted that his administration was spending $700 billion to upgrade the American military, and said he would never allow Russia, or any other country, to approach its military might.
“We will never allow anybody to have anything even close to what we have,” Mr. Trump said.
The president said he and Mr. Putin would also discuss tensions in Ukraine, Syria and North Korea, among other issues.
The Trump administration issued a new nuclear policy last month that experts say will touch off a new kind of nuclear arms race — one based less on numbers of weapons and more on new tactics and technologies.
The White House vows to counter a rush by the Russians to modernize their forces even while staying within the limits imposed by an arms control treaty negotiated by Mr. Obama.
A female student and a male student were wounded in the attack; sheriff says a resource officer fired at the shooter at Great Mills High School.
A gunman who opened fire at Great Mills High School in Maryland was killed Tuesday after engaging an armed school resource officer, authorities said.
Deputy Blaine Gaskill, the school resource officer, engaged the gunman.
(SMCSO)
The shooter, Austin Wyatt Rollins, 17, was the only fatality. Police said Rollins used a handgun to shoot a 16-year-old female student who is in the ICU with life-threatening, critical injuries. A 14-year-old male student was also shot and is in stable condition.
St. Mary’s County Sheriff Tim Cameron said there were indications Rollins and the female victim had a prior relationship, which police are investigating as a possible motive for the incident.
The school resource officer, Deputy Blaine Gaskill, was alerted of the shooting, immediately responded and engaged the shooter. Gaskill, who is also a SWAT team member, was not injured in the shooting.
A shooting was reported Tuesday morning at Great Mills High School in Maryland.
(GMHS)
“Our school resource officer was alerted to the event. He pursued the shooter, engaged the shooter, fired a round at the shooter,” Cameron said. “The shooter fired a round as well. In the hours and days to come, we’ll be able to determine if our school resource officer’s round struck the shooter.”
Cameron said police were investigating if the shots fired killed Rollins or if he attempted to commit suicide. Police are also investigating if the 14-year-old male student was shot by Rollins or Gaskill while the two exchanged gunfire.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan called the shooting “tragic” and accused the Democrat-led legislature of failing to take action on “one of the aggressive school safety plans in the country.”
“We need more than prayers, we gotta take action,” Hogan said. “We got one of the most aggressive school safety plans in America that we introduced a few years ago. “We’ve got to take action. We’re going to try to get something done in Annapolis.”
Cameron said the entire incident played out in about a minute and Gaskill did everything he was supposed to do in an active shooting situation. Police are currently reviewing surveillance video from the school to determine the exact timeline of the incident.
A mother comforts her daughter after a school shooting at Great Mills High School on Tuesday, March 20, 2018.
(AP)
Cameron said officials were looking into Rollins’ phone, social media and room but have not yet found any warning signs the shooting was imminent.
Earlier, the school was placed on lockdown and students were evacuated to Leonardtown High School to be reunified with their parents.
The Maryland State Police along with the FBI and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms are on the scene assisting with the investigation. The scene at the school which has about 1,600 students and is near the Patuxent River Naval Air Station was said to be “contained.”
President Trump was notified of the shooting, press secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox News.
Ziyanna Williams, a student at the school, said her fellow students were cowered in classrooms as police came inside the room to evacuate the building.
Students leave the scene of an incident at Great Mills High School on Tuesday, March 20, 2018.
(AP)
“They came in with guns, and they probably thought there might be another shooter, of course,” she said. “About an hour or two later they came — more police came — and told us they would search us and search our bags and stuff.” Eventually, the students were escorted outside.
Terrence Rhames, 18, a student at the school, told the Baltimore Sun he was standing with friends before class began when he heard a gunshot. He said he started to run and believed he saw a girl fall nearby.
“I just thank God I’m safe,” Rhames said. “I just want to know who did it and who got injured.”
Just last month, the school’s principal, Jake Heibel, told parents in a letter posted on the local news site The Bay Net that two students were interviewed after they were overheard mentioning a school shooting, and they were found to pose no threat. Heibel said the school increased its security nevertheless after social media posts about a possible school shooting “circulated quite extensively.”
Also last month, the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s office said it arrested two teenage boys for “Threats of Mass Violence” and a 39-year-old man on related charges after the teens made threats about a potential school shooting at Leonardtown High School, a high school about 10 miles from Great Mills. Police said they obtained a search warrant that led to them finding semi-automatic rifles, handguns and other weapons, along with ammunition.
The school is located about 60 miles from Washington, D.C. The St. Mary’s County Public Schools tweeted counselors and support staff would be on hand at Leonardtown High School.
The incident comes more than a month after the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. That massacre, carried out by a former student, left 17 people dead. The shooting also comes days before some 500,000 people were expected to march Saturday in Washington, D.C. to protest gun violence and push for gun control legislation.
In the video, Mr. Nix, sitting in a hotel bar, suggested ideas for a prospective client looking for help in a foreign election. The firm could send an attractive woman to seduce a rival candidate and secretly videotape the encounter, Mr. Nix said, or send someone posing as a wealthy land developer to pass a bribe.
“We have a long history of working behind the scenes,” Mr. Nix said.
The prospective client, though, was actually a reporter from Channel 4 News in Britain, and the encounter was secretly filmed as part of a monthslong investigation into Cambridge Analytica.
The results of Channel 4’s work were broadcast in Britain on Monday, days after reports in The New York Times and The Observer of London that the firm had harvested the data from more than 50 million Facebook profiles in its bid to develop techniques for predicting voter behavior.
On Tuesday, Damian Collins, the chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee of the House of Commons, called on Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, to give evidence in the British Parliament.
In a letter, Mr. Collins said that previous answers from Facebook officials about the misuse of data had been “misleading” to the committee.
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“It is now time to hear from a senior Facebook executive with the sufficient authority to give an accurate account of this catastrophic failure of process,” the letter said, adding, “I hope that this representative will be you.”
In the United States on Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission announced an investigation into whether Facebook violated an agreement on data privacy in the episode. At least two American state prosecutors have also said they are looking into the misuse of data by Cambridge Analytica.
Announcing the chief executive’s suspension, the company said in a statement that “in the view of the board, Mr. Nix’s recent comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 and other allegations do not represent the values or operations of the firm and his suspension reflects the seriousness with which we view this violation.”
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The company said it had asked Alexander Tayler, its chief data officer, “to serve as acting C.E.O. while an independent investigation is launched to review those comments and allegations.”
The company also said it had hired a lawyer, Julian Malins, “to lead this investigation, the findings of which the board will share publicly in due course.”
It added: “The board will be monitoring the situation closely, working closely with Dr. Tayler, to ensure that Cambridge Analytica, in all of its operations, represents the firm’s values and delivers the highest-quality service to its clients.”
Mr. Tayler trained as a chemical engineer and joined Cambridge Analytica in 2014 as its lead data scientist, according to his LinkedIn profile. Mr. Malins is a seasoned corporate lawyer who has worked on complex litigation, with an expertise in asset recovery and money laundering cases.
Some observers thought the suspension of Mr. Nix was at most a first step.
“If they think ‘suspending’ a chief executive even approaches proportionality for this kind of mass data breach, they underestimate people institutions who will fight for #privacy rights for Facebook to account for their actions,” Claude Moraes, a Labour Party official who represents London in the European Parliament, wrote on Twitter.
BRUSSELS—European Union and British negotiators on Monday agreed on the terms of the U.K.’s 21-month transition after it leaves the bloc next March, but left unresolved a thorny issue—the future of Ireland—that could derail the entire Brexit deal.
The new agreement opens the way for talks on the U.K.’s future economic and security relationship with the bloc, something the U.K. has long asked for. But while the transition was relatively easy to agree on, the most difficult phase of negotiations still lies ahead.
AUSTIN — The explosion in an Austin neighborhood Sunday night had “similarities” with the three bombs that detonated in the Texas capital earlier this month, leading authorities to believe that they are dealing with a “serial bomber” terrorizing the city, police said Monday.
The latest blast, which injured two men while they were walking along the road in a residential area, plunged the city further into a frightening mystery that forced residents in the vicinity of the bombing to remain locked in their homes as investigators scoured the area for answers.
The explosion on Sunday night was apparently set off by a tripwire on the road, causing investigators to determine the bomber or bombers have “a higher level of sophistication, a higher level of skill” than initially believed, said Brian Manley, the interim Austin police chief. He also said this explosion marked an apparent shift in tactics after the three previous devices were left at people’s homes.
“What we have seen now is a significant change from what appeared to be three very targeted attacks to what was, last night, an attack that would have hit a random victim that happened to walk by,” Manley said. “So we’ve definitely seen a change in the method that this suspect … is using.”
The explosive device Sunday adds to the uncertainty in Austin, which has been on edge since previous bombings killed two people and injured two others, one seriously. Authorities have seemed at a loss to explain who could be setting off these devices or why, saying only that the bombs were sophisticated and that the attacks could have been motivated by racial bias, although they acknowledged that this is only a theory.
This latest explosion injured two white men — one 22, the other 23 — walking through part of Austin’s southwest area, far from where the first three devices detonated. The explosive device was on the side of the road, while the previous packages were all left at people’s homes, authorities said.
“With this tripwire, this changes things,” said Christopher Combs, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio office. “It’s more sophisticated. It’s not targeted to individuals. We’re very concerned that with tripwires, a child could be walking down the sidewalk and hit something.”
Authorities have previously described the explosives as the sophisticated work of a person or people who know what they are doing, saying that the bombers have been able to assemble and deliver these packages without setting them off. After telling residents to remain wary of unexpected or suspicious packages, authorities were now urging broader caution.
“We’re even more concerned now that if people see something suspicious, they just stay away from it altogether and contact law enforcement,” said Fred Milanowski, special agent in charge of the Houston division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “Because if they move that package or if they step on that tripwire, it’s likely to detonate.”
Milanowski said devices using tripwires are activated when any pressure is applied to the wires, and he said that can include people “tripping over it or picking up the package.”
The two men wounded Sunday night were taken to a hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, and Manley said they were in stable condition Monday. Residents described the neighborhood as a wealthy area filled with families.
“It’s shocking,” said Austin City Councilwoman Ellen Troxclair, who represents the district. “The trip wire definitely instilled some fear into this neighborhood. They just want to know what’s going on.”
Many in the Southwest Austin neighborhood previously felt that they were immune from the terror that had shaken other parts of town.
“It appears that no one is safe, and I’m very fearful for our community,” said Richard Herrington, 75, who was watching the NCAA men’s basketball tournament when he heard the explosion Sunday night. “It’s very concerning that this person is becoming more sophisticated.”
The first two bombs killed black people — a 39-year-old construction worker and a 17-year-old high school student — related to prominent members of Austin’s African American community who were also close friends. The third bomb seriously injured a 75-year-old Hispanic woman, but it was addressed to a different home and apparently exploded when she was carrying it, said two people familiar with the case.
The first three explosions detonated in the eastern part of Austin, affecting areas where black and Hispanic residents live. Some in the area questioned whether the initial blast would have prompted more urgency had it gone off in a more affluent, predominantly white neighborhood.
Police said they are still considering whether some of the bombings were hate crimes.
“We’ve said from the beginning that we’re not willing to rule anything out, just because when you rule something out you limit your focus,” Manley said in an interview Monday with ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “This does change the concerns that we had initially, although we have still not yet ruled it out until we understand what the ideology or motive is behind the suspect or suspects.”
Manley said that police do not have evidence leading them to a particular suspect, and he reiterated his plea to the public for tips and information.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler said that although the bombings initially prompted concerns focused on packages left on doorsteps, Sunday night’s explosion caused officials to cast a wider net.
“We understand the anxiousness that we all feel, but there is just an army of law enforcement personnel working on this at this point,” he said Monday in a telephone interview with The Washington Post.
Adler said that “with each additional event, the horrible part is that people are getting hurt.” But, he added, “it also means that law enforcement folks get additional forensic evidence.”
The fourth explosion went off just hours after the Austin police made a public appeal in the case, increasing the reward for information to $100,000 and addressing the bomber or bombers in particular. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has also offered another $15,000 for information.
“These events in Austin have garnered worldwide attention,” Manley said during the earlier announcement. “And we assure you that we are listening. We want to understand what brought you to this point, and we want to listen to you.”
After Sunday’s explosion, Manley urged residents in the surrounding neighborhood to remain in their homes while investigators continue to search the area. He said that people who needed to leave their homes should call 911 for an escort. The FBI and ATF were also on the scene, and Manley said that more than 500 officers have followed up on 435 leads and have conducted 236 interviews.
Steve Brown, 53, had gone out to dinner Sunday and was returning home when he saw the police tape.
“It’s kind of surreal,” he told The Post. “It had been on the other side of town — now it’s on our street.”
He said his 80-year-old mother-in-law was at home and told them she heard a “boom.”
Early Monday, the Austin Independent School District announced on Facebook that it was keeping school buses out of the neighborhood and would be excusing any related tardiness or absences. Regents School of Austin, a private Christian school near the neighborhood where the explosive went off, said classes would begin later Monday before ultimately canceling school.
After the first explosion on March 2 killed Anthony Stephan House, police initially described it as an isolated incident. However, when two more bombs exploded 10 days later, police said they thought all three were related.
The first blast on March 12 killed Draylen Mason, a high school senior well known for his love of music, playing everything from funk to mariachi to classical music. The second bomb that day critically wounded Esperanza Herrera, who was visiting her mother’s house, where the package was delivered.
At least two of the victims of the bombings have had a connection, although any significance was not immediately clear. House’s stepfather, Freddie Dixon, told The Post last week that he is close to Mason’s grandfather, Norman Mason. They were fraternity brothers, and Norman Mason also attended the church where Dixon was once a pastor, Dixon said.
Dixon said he did not think the connection was a coincidence.
“Somebody’s done their homework on both of us, and they knew what they were doing,” he said, adding that he believed the explosions were possibly a hate crime or the result of a vendetta.
Authorities have said they do not think the bombings were connected to the South by Southwest festival, although fears from these explosions extended into the event, with a bomb threat forcing the Roots to cancel a concert Saturday night. Police said they arrested Trevor Weldon Ingram, 26, in connection with that threat.
Berman and Flynn reported from Washington. Moravec reported from Austin. This is a developing story and will continue to be updated.
