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Do you have something to say? Send us a letter using this form. Cue the challenge Hayley Sum, St Paul’s Convent School Although Hong Kong has recently lifted the ban on children under 16 entering snooker halls between 8pm and 10am, current efforts to promote the sport are still inadequate. The limited availability of facilities and the dissatisfaction among aspiring professional players are significant obstacles to the growth of snooker in Hong Kong. Teenage snooker star Shaun Liu had suggested...

By Zachary Cohen, Evan Perez, Kristen Holmes, CNN (CNN) — President Donald Trump is blaming the Biden administration for this week’s shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, DC, in part by insisting that the suspect, a 29-year-old Afghan, was among millions of foreigners Biden allowed into the US without proper vetting. Details about the alleged shooter’s background, including his previous work for the CIA in Afghanistan, and conversations with sources familiar with the vetting process, paint a far more complicated picture. While investigators have yet to establish a clear motive for the shooting, the incident is likely to rekindle concerns over the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the haste with which thousands of evacuees were brought to the US. Trump officials have suggested a breakdown in vetting is likely tied to the attack, while the president is already using it as a reason to further his crack down on immigrants in the US, including reevaluating the green card status of foreign nationals from a variety of countries. In a video address from his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida late Wednesday, Trump argued the attack carried out by a lone gunman “underscores the single greatest national security threat facing our nation.” “We must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country,” Trump said. The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was among more than 190,000 Afghans admitted into the US following its withdrawal from Afghanistan, under programs designed to resettle those who helped the US during its 20-year war in the country. Over the course of more than a decade, sources told CNN, Lakanwal underwent numerous rounds of vetting — starting around 2011 by the CIA when he began working with the US military and intelligence agencies — and ending earlier this year when he was approved for permanent asylum in the US by the Trump administration. In 2021, Lakanwal was part of a prioritized group evacuated from Kabul after the Afghan capital fell to the Taliban. Due to his work for the US, including serving in an elite Afghan counterterrorism unit, Lakahwal was considered to be at risk of retribution once the Taliban took control of Afghanistan. Once evacuated, Lakanwal went through what sources told CNN were multiple layers of vetting by multiple US government agencies — first in a Middle Eastern country, according to one source familiar with the matter — and then regularly over the past few years while he was residing in the US. In April, Lakanwal, who lived in Washington state, was granted permanent asylum by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. In June, the Justice Department released the results of an audit into the FBI’s role in facilitating screening Afghans brought to the US after the 2021 withdrawal. The audit, conducted by the department’s Inspector General, found no systemic breakdowns in the multi-layered process, involving various federal agencies, that was established at the time to screen and vet Afghan evacuees. The report does acknowledge, however, that “the normal processes required to determine whether individuals posed a threat to national security and public safety were overtaken by the need to immediately evacuate and protect the lives of Afghans, increasing the potential that bad actors could try to exploit the expedited evacuation.” Concerns about the thoroughness of vetting for people admitted into the US after the Afghanistan withdrawal have caused angst in US security agencies for years. In 2023 and 2024, intelligence obtained from allies prompted the FBI to raise concerns about the thoroughness of vetting for Afghan and Central Asian asylum seekers, current and former US officials said. Rampant use of fraudulent identification documents and the use of fixers with ties to terrorist groups were a primary concern. The FBI sent agents to investigate the…