According to The New York Times, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner noted that Sheikh’s dream of diplomacy was ongoing, “because even in her death, she is pulling the relationships between Pakistan and the United States, specifically the Houston area, even closer.”

“Ambassador Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry has expressed heartfelt condolences for the victims of the tragic incident at the Santa Fe High School in Texas this morning,” the Pakistan Embassy in Washington wrote on Twitter. “Among the victims was Sabika Sheikh, a Pakistani exchange student. Our thoughts and prayers are with Sabika’s family and friends.”

According to Indian Express, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi met with Sheikh’s family to offer his condolences. “Sabika was an intelligent student, and the whole nation is sad on her death. I pray to God to give the family courage to bear the loss,” he said.

Despite the tragic incident, Sheikh’s father, Abdul Aziz Sheikh, urged foreigners to continue to send their children to America for overseas schooling.

"We are still in a state of denial. We can’t believe it. It’s like a nightmare,” he told Associated Press. “One should not stop going for education to the U.S. or U.K. or China, or anywhere. One must go for education undeterred.”

Sheikh’s body is due to arrive in her hometown of Karachi on Monday night. A funeral service will be held for her at the town’s mosque tomorrow.

The shooting last Friday at Santa Fe High School was described by Texas Governor Greg Abbott as "one of the most heinous attacks that we've ever seen in the history of Texas schools."

(Newsweek)

Moments later, waiter Brandon Wilson was heading to check on the table when a sound shattered the dining room.

“I saw a white Jeep just fly past my face,” Wilson told the Gazette. “It was so unreal. I saw chairs and tables and cups just flying everywhere. It just sounded like a tornado.”

With Self behind the wheel, the car blasted through the restaurant’s log cabin facade, punching into the heart of the building and colliding with the table where Self’s family was sitting, police said. Through curtains of dust, patrons and employees saw some people still pinned beneath the wreckage. “I helped paramedics move tables off this dude, and I moved debris out of the way so they could get to him,” a busboy told WSOC.

On Sunday afternoon, police confirmed that two people were killed in the crash. But the deaths were not the result of an accident, police said. They allege that Self intentionally drove his car into the building.

Self was taken into custody and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. According to WSOC, one of those killed was Self’s daughter, Katelyn Self, 26, a deputy with the Gaston County Sheriff’s Office. The other victim has been identified as Amanda Self, Roger Self’s daughter-in-law, who was an emergency room nurse and the mother of two, the station reported. Three others were injured, including Amanda Self’s 13-year-old daughter, according to the Gazette.

Roger Self has not filed a plea. No lawyer representing him could be located.

Authorities said Roger Self intentionally drove his car into a Bessemer City, N.C., restaurant on May 20, killing his daughter and daughter-in-law. (Spectrum news)

“He drove his car into the building, killing people, so that’s why we took him into custody immediately,” Bessemer City Police Chief Thomas Ellis Jr. told reporters at a brief news conference on Sunday afternoon. But authorities have offered little insight into why a father would run down his family members.

“This is a hard time,” Gaston County Sheriff Alan Cloninger said at the news conference. “All I would ask is for people to keep the family in your prayers, and also the sheriff’s office. Because we’re suffering a little bit right now.”

According to the Gaston Gazette, Roger Self arrived at the restaurant with his family, including Katelyn Self; Amanda Self; Amanda’s husband, Josh, a Gaston County police officer; Josh and Amanda’s 13-year-old daughter; and Roger Self’s wife, Diane. The group was beginning to eat when Roger Self left the table.

Self, however, allegedly returned behind the wheel of his Jeep.

Roger Self. (Gaston County Sheriff’s Office/AP)

“It was chaotic, dust everywhere,” a waiter recounted to the Gazette. “The woman died in my manager’s arms.”

Self joined the Gastonia Police Department in the 1970s, according to a 2017 profile in the Gazette. Eventually, he jumped into private investigations, specializing in loss prevention for stores and corporate clients. “My skill is learning how to gather information, getting someone to talk with me,” Self told the paper.

But in recent months, Self had been wrestling with mental illness, Austin Rammell, a pastor at Venture Church, told WSOC. A family friend for 16 years, he told the station that Self was beset by anxiety, depression and mental breakdowns. Sometimes he would go days without leaving his bed, Rammell said.

“He’s been taking precautions. He had all the guns removed from his house, so he was making steps that were rational steps.”

The family was aware of Self’s battles, Rammell said.

“Family has been loving him through this,” the pastor said. “This was not a conscious act by their father, and they know that.”


(The Washington Post)

Scientists mapping the total mass of organisms on the entire planet have discovered humans make up just 0.01 percent—dwarfed by the mass of bacteria, fungi, earthworms and plants.

Barely a sliver of the planetary pie, humans have nevertheless driven the extinction of ancient megafauna, countless modern animals and even plants, the researchers report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

If you add up all the carbon in all the living organisms on Earth, you can estimate the planet's total "biomass." The researchers think Earth has a biomass of about 550 gigatons—that's 550 billion tons of carbon.

A black-collared hawk flies through the Pantanal wetlands in Mato Grosso state, Brazil, on March 7. This particular ecosystem is one of many at risk of human destruction.CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Plants, they estimate, make up more than 80 percent of this biomass—of which just 2 percent are human-cultivated crops. Bacteria make up about 15 percent of the total biomass, while everything else accounts for just 5 percent. Almost all life, the team estimate, is land-based, with just 1 percent living in the oceans.

The scientists think humanity may be to blame for the loss of more than 80 percent of wild mammals and about half of all plants. Deforestation, overfishing and hunting are just a few of the ways humans are decimating wild species.

Livestock, on the other hand, is booming. The authors estimate that about 60 percent of our planet's mammals are livestock, The Guardian reports. The total biomass of domesticated birds, including chickens, is three times higher than the biomass of wild birds, the authors think.

Related: The last male northern white rhinoceros has died—here are four more animals on the brink

“I would hope this gives people a perspective on the very dominant role that humanity now plays on Earth,” lead study author Ron Milo from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel told The Guardian. "It is definitely striking, our disproportionate place on Earth."

Milo was shocked to find a comprehensive census of Earth’s biomass didn’t already exist, he told The Guardian. By scouring the available scientific literature, his team was able to create its census.

“It’s what you could call a meta-meta-analysis,” Milo told New Scientist. “It’s based on hundreds and hundreds of papers. We also consulted with many, many experts.”

Related: Giant Chinese salamander: World's largest amphibian is heading for extinction

Although the team accounted for a degree of uncertainty in its work, biomass expert Vaclav Smil, author of Harvesting the Biosphere, thinks it has overestimated its grip on the unknown. He told New Scientist: “I am all for integrative biosphere-scale studies, but we have to be always honest about the limits of our knowledge.”

You can calculate the biomass of some organisms—crops, livestock and humans—reasonably well, he said. But “for all other terrestrial and marine fauna, the figures get much more shaky. For insects, bacteria and viruses, they remain essentially the best guesses.”