The White House signaled that President Donald Trump plans to sign a joint resolution passed by Congress Tuesday condemning white supremacists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members in the wake of violence sparked by a white nationalist rally last month in Charlottesville, Virginia.

"[The president] looks forward to [signing it] as soon as he receives it," said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders Wednesday.

Sanders added that Trump continues to stand by his response to Charlottesville -- in which he said "both sides" share blame -- even following a month’s worth of pushback from his own party and even members of his Cabinet.

“The president was clear in his initial statement that he condemned hatred, bigotry, racism of all forms,” Sanders said. “He continues to stick to that message. He's been very consistent in that fact.”

The House on Tuesday unanimously approved the bipartisan resolution from Virginia lawmakers condemning the events in Charlottesville, and pushed for Trump to commit his administration's resources to combat hate crimes.

Along with recognizing the death of Heather Heyer, the measure urges Trump to "use all available resources to address the threats posed by those groups," and describes the violence in Charlottesville in August as a "domestic terrorist attack."

It also calls on Attorney General Jeff Sessions to work with the Department of Homeland Security to "thoroughly" investigate actions taken by white supremacist groups to determine if any criminal laws were broken in Charlottesville.

The resolution was introduced by Sens. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, and Tim Kaine, D-Virginia, in the Senate, and endorsed by a bipartisan group of senators. Reps. Tom Garrett, R-Virginia, and Gerry Connolly, D-Virginia, introduced the measure in the House.

Trump has ten days to sign or veto the measure before it becomes law.

(Yahoo News)

The Plano Police Department identified Spencer Hight, 32, as the gunman who took the lives of spouse Meredith Hight and seven others in the worst mass shooting in the city’s history. Two other victims survived the shooting and were taken to the hospital, where one later died, according to police.

In addition to Meredith, the deceased victims have been identified as Anthony Michael Cross, 33; Olivia Nicole Deffner, 24; James Richard Dunlop, 29; Darryl William Hawkins, 22; Rion Christopher Morgan, 31; Myah Sade Bass, 28; and 25-year-old Caleb Seth Edwards.

Top row, from left: Meredith Hight, Rion Morgan, Tony Cross and Olivia Deffner. Bottom row, from left: Myah Bass, Caleb Edwards, James Dunlop and Darryl Hawkins

The shooting rocked the normally peaceful Dallas suburb.

“We’ve never had a shooting of this magnitude,” Plano Police Chief Gregory Rushin said at a news conference on Monday afternoon.

“We’re one of the safest cities in the country,” he said. “It’s just a terrible event, and our hearts go out to the families and loved ones.”

Next of kin have been notified, police say. All victims were located in the backyard or the inside of the home.

No children were involved in the shooting. Police did not specify which victim died at the hospital.

Meredith Hight

Spencer Hight was shot and killed by a responding officer, the police chief said.

Meredith’s family is devastated.

“She was our only child,” her father, Gene Lane, told the Washington Post. “All we know is she is gone.”

Trying to Build a New Life

After getting married in May 2011, Meredith and Spencer Hight bought a house together about two years ago — the same residence where the shooting took place, her mother, Debbie Lane, told the Dallas Morning News.

The couple’s relationship began to deteriorate a couple of years ago, Debbie told local TV station KXAS.

“I think he saw our comfort, ease, and happiness … and her [Meredith] embracing new life, and resented it to the maximum and responded the way he did,” Debbie told the station.

“He was not moving on,” she said. “And she was.”

Violence Breaks Out at Party

Police said an officer responded about 8 p.m. on Sunday to calls about multiple shots being fired at the home. When the officer entered the backyard, he found two victims outside. When he went inside the house, he saw more shooting victims, according to authorities.

“The officer found the suspect inside and ended his shooting spree,” Chief Rushin said at Monday’s news conference.

Spencer “came to the party with numerous weapons,” Rushin said.

Police are still investigating the incident.

One of the victims, Caleb Edwards, was Meredith’s roommate. Another victim, James Dunlop, was a longtime friend. Rion Morgan was in Meredith’s wedding party.

“They were fine, fine young men. The best. The best,” Debbie, Meredith’s mom, told local media.

She said her daughter was a supervisor at Coca-Cola and had earned a math degree from University of Texas at Dallas.

“She was one of those people who felt life was a gift,” Debbie said.

PEOPLE’s calls for comment to the Plano Police Department and to the Lane and Hight families were not immediately returned.

(people.com)

SEOUL — New radar satellite images show the Sept. 3 nuclear test by North Korea was powerful enough to sink a roughly 85-acre area on the peak of a mountain above the tunnels where the test likely took place.

North Korea carries out its nuclear tests in a complex of tunnels at its Punggye-ri site, and images of the mountains, in this case Mount Mantap, above it can give experts a sense of where the device was tested exactly and how powerful it was.

The new Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite images, captured before and after Sept. 3, showed “significant changes at Mount Mantap’s peak elevation," wrote Jeffrey Lewis, head of the East Asia program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California. "Before the test, Mount Mantap was 2,205 meters high; the mountain has since diminished in height,” he added.

“You can see that the explosion visibly displaces the mountain, which demonstrates both how large the explosion was but also that it occurred in the same tunnel complex as the preceding four nuclear tests,” Lewis wrote on the Arms Control Wonk website. “This is useful because the relationship between the size of the explosion and the magnitude of the seismic signals is sensitive to the overburden — how much rock is above the explosion.”

The images were taken by Airbus, a space technology company that makes earth observation satellites, using its TerraSAR-X satellite, and were provided to experts at the center. You can see the change in this animated image that Lewis posted on Twitter:

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Our friends at @AirbusDefence shared radar images of North Korea's nuclear test site showing post-test subsidence.http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1203852/sar-image-of-punggye-ri/ …

1:26 PM - Sep 13, 2017

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The device, which North Korea described as a hydrogen bomb capable of being placed on a ballistic missile, was the most powerful it has tested to date. Original estimates had put its yield in the 100-kiloton range, but updated seismic data analyzed by experts this week put it closer to a whopping 250 kilotons, or nearly 17 times more powerful than the bomb that flattened Hiroshima.

The new images are “additional proof that the September 2017 explosion was much larger than ever before at this site,” said Melissa Hanham, senior research associate at the ­Center for Nonproliferation Studies. In comparison, radar images of last year’s nuclear test did not show a noticeable change in the surface area of the same mountain, she said.

The sunken area corresponds with some of the highest peaks of Mount Mantap, Hanham said.

“It makes sense that they would use their existing tunnel network attached to the North Portal entrance, because this leads to where the overburden is the greatest,” Hanham said. “If they used a tunnel with less overburden, they might have blown the top off the mountain.”

The growing threat from the north has led to more South Koreans calling for their own nuclear weapons. A Gallup Korea poll conducted after the Sept. 3 test found that 60 percent of respondents supported nuclear weapons for the south.

But in an interview with CNN on Thursday, South Korean President Moon Jae-in ruled out the idea: “To respond to North Korea by having our own nuclear weapons will not maintain peace on the Korean Peninsula and could lead to a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia.”

In response to the Sept. 3 nuclear test, the United Nations on Monday unanimously agreed on its toughest sanctions against North Korea to date, setting limits on its oil imports and banning its textile exports. North Korea condemned the sanctions and warned that the United States would “suffer the greatest pain” it has ever experienced for leading the effort to ratchet up economic pressures on the reclusive nation.

On Thursday, North Korea issued another threat, this time targeting both Japan and the United States. In a statement issued by North Korea’s official news agency, Pyongyang said it would use nuclear weapons to “sink” Japan and “reduce the U.S. mainland to ashes and darkness.”

(The Washington Post)