World News: Your weekend must reads 🗞

Saturday, May 28

Happy Memorial Day weekend, friends of The Short List! It's John, and I hope you are getting to relax a bit after a pretty horrific week.

First, the fun stuff: Memorial Day deals have arrived and they are massive. All weekend long, you can save on mattresses, tech, furniture and clothing from your favorite brands. Reviewed has rounded up the very best sales:

•	The best Memorial Day sales: Save at The Home Depot, Best Buy, Walmart and more
•	Amazing Amazon deals: Save on TVs, headphones, furniture
•	TVs galore: Shop Samsung, LG and TCL

And now, back to the news.

Tragedy in Texas: Details from the deadly school shooting in Uvalde are still emerging, with major questions about how police handled the incident. A few things, however, were made crystal clear this week:

•	School shootings are at a historic high.
•	Democrats and Republicans are speaking different languages when it comes to gun violence. There appears to be little chance Congress will take major action.
•	People are frustrated. Passionate expressions of grief and anger – from U.S. Sen Chris Murphy, Steve Kerr, Matthew McConaughey, poet Amanda Gorman and others – were all over the media this week.

Here's how USA TODAY Opinion writer Louie Villalobos put it, "We have crossed every metaphorical line of rage without lifting a single finger to do anything about it."

While Uvalde dominated the news this week, I also want to point out to major USA TODAY investigations that rolled out this week.

🔵Xinjiang police files: Rahile Omer looks into the camera, her eyes showing the only hint of emotion. Just 14 years old, she has been flagged and by China's sweeping surveillance system in Xinjiang province that monitors Uyghurs, the Muslim ethnic group, and other minority groups. Authorities will send Omer and others to a camp that experts say is essentially a prison. Her case is just one among thousands of secret photos and other files obtained by a hacker from two local police agencies in China. The trove offers an unprecedented look inside China's detention and internment of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities – one that sharply contradicts the Communist Party's official line.

•	Main story: Inside China's secret Uyghur detention system
•	Visual: Hacked data and photos offer unprecedented evidence
•	'Appalled': World leaders call for action after release of hacked files

🔴Getting around Title IX: Fifty years after passage of the landmark law banning sex discrimination in education, colleges and universities are circumventing its intent by manipulating athletic rosters to appear more balanced than they are, a USA TODAY investigation found. In some cases, women's teams packed rosters with extra players who never compete, double- and triple-counted women while undercounting men, and even classified male athletes as women.

•	Main story: Title IX was intended to close the gender gap. But schools are rigging the numbers.
•	Visual story: How colleges manipulate rosters to shortchange women
•	Graphic novel: How to game the system for Title IX