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Florida, Jacob Zuma, Mikaela Shiffrin: Your Thursday Briefing

Parents waited for news after a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Wednesday.Credit...Joel Auerbach/Associated Press

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Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Nikolas Cruz was charged today with 17 counts of murder in the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla. Our live briefing has the latest.

Here’s what we know about Mr. Cruz, 19, who had been expelled from the school and was described as a “troubled kid” who enjoyed showing off his firearms.

Here’s our full story on Wednesday’s attack, and a map of what happened inside the school.

The numbers are mind-numbing: More than 430 people have been shot in 273 school attacks since the one at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. Three of the 10 deadliest mass shootings in modern U.S. history were in the past five months.

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Filming a Rampage: Students Capture Florida School Attack

Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., hid in closets as a gunman fired a semiautomatic weapon into their classrooms. Seventeen people were killed.

“So, right now, we’re in a school. “An active shooter. It’s not a drill.” “Holy sh—— … holy shit! Oh my God! Oh my God!” “Hands! Hands! Put your hands up!” “Police, police, police, police.” “Let me see your hands.” “Put your phones away. Put your phones away.” “I just hear boom, boom, boom. And I was just like, ‘What the heck was that?’ Like, that can’t be anything other than a gunshot.” “We thought this was a drill initially because we have been having rumors that there was going to be a code red drill for a while. And we thought this was a drill at first. But then we started seeing headlines. People started freaking out a little bit. “He was a former student of Douglas High School. He got expelled for disciplinary reasons. I don’t know the specifics.” “Are you Nikolas Jacob Cruz?” “Yes, ma’am.” “Later this month, I will be meeting with the nation’s governors and attorney generals where making our schools and our children safer will be our top priority.” “Kids were freaking out. Some kids froze. Some kids were on their phones. A lot of were on their phones just trying to Snapchat everything because they thought it was a joke and it wasn’t.” “It’s just a heartbreaking tragedy. It’s a day that you pray every day I get up that we will never have to see.”

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Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., hid in closets as a gunman fired a semiautomatic weapon into their classrooms. Seventeen people were killed.CreditCredit...Saul Martinez for The New York Times

A bipartisan group of senators reached an agreement on Wednesday to pay for President Trump’s proposed wall on the southern border, and to resolve the fate of undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

But the president has said he would veto any plan that didn’t take a harder approach.

Protections for the so-called Dreamers begin expiring on March 5. We look at how the proposals in Congress would affect them, and at five other immigration issues.

• Reince Priebus, the former White House chief of staff, has given his first extended description of his roller-coaster six months in the West Wing.

“Take everything you’ve heard and multiply it by 50,” he writes.

Separately, President Trump said on Wednesday that he was “totally opposed to domestic violence,” his first public condemnation of the alleged conduct that forced a senior aide to resign last week.

• The country inspired the world under the leadership of Nelson Mandela.

But it became known for corruption and other problems during the nearly nine-year presidency of Jacob Zuma, who resigned on Wednesday after his party, the African National Congress, turned against him.

We look at what went wrong under his leadership, and the decline of the A.N.C., which Mr. Zuma once said would govern South Africa until Jesus returned.

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President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, who resigned on Wednesday, is an anti-apartheid hero who was once imprisoned with Nelson Mandela.Credit...Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters

• The American skier Mikaela Shiffrin won the gold medal in today’s giant slalom, the first in a possible multi-medal haul at the Winter Olympics. She is set to compete in the slalom on Friday, after schedules were rearranged because of high winds.

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Mikaela Shiffrin.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

After winning gold in the halfpipe, the snowboarder Shaun White was asked about sexual harassment allegations leveled against him in 2016. Initially dismissing the claims as “gossip,” White later told The Times: “I regret my behavior of many years ago and am sorry that I made anyone — particularly someone I considered a friend — uncomfortable.”

The Daily Poster

Listen to ‘The Daily’: Trump’s Immigration Plan

The president wants merit-based migration. But what counts as merit? We also report on the shooting at a Florida school in which at least 17 people died.

Federal law allows the sale of big rigs equipped with rebuilt diesel engines that don’t need to comply with emissions rules.

The loophole tells a story of money, politics and possible academic misconduct.

Why chicken costs more: Inflation has become a worrisome byproduct of a healthy economy. We traced how price increases can start with demand for building materials and end up affecting what’s on your plate.

Netflix is creating a parallel TV universe, signing hit-making producers like Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes. But imitation isn’t the route to brilliance, our chief TV critic writes.

U.S. stocks were up on Wednesday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets today.

Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.

To help a partner with depression, speak up.

We’ve shown you how to make pizza. Here’s how to make it better.

A Korean braised short-rib stew is the best sort of food to share.

A blood test for concussions

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a method to identify traumatic brain injuries more quickly.

It could be hugely beneficial to the Pentagon and in sports.

A literary road trip into Russia

In the land of Tolstoy and Turgenev, what stories are Russians telling themselves today?

The writer Karl Ove Knausgaard took a trip to find out. Read his essay for The Times Magazine.

The time the C.I.A. tried to recruit me

Scott Shane, a national security reporter for The Times, once received a mysterious recruitment letter from the agency. He reflects on a road not taken.

Mr. Shane will discuss Russian espionage and its Hollywood counterpart tonight with the actress Jennifer Lawrence and the director of her new movie, “Red Sparrow.” Watch video of the TimesTalk here, starting at 6:30 p.m. Eastern.

Best of late-night TV

Several comedy hosts are taking the week off, so our roundup is, too. It will return next week.

Quotation of the day

“People are still going to go out and do their thing and have fun — maybe just in different ways. You can’t ban love.”

Obaid Malik, a businessman in Islamabad, Pakistan, where a court banned Valentine’s Day celebrations, deeming them “against the teachings of Islam.”

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With Valentine’s Day celebrations banned across Pakistan for a second year in a row, heart-shape balloons were essentially contraband this week. But some vendors in Islamabad, the capital, were defiant.
Credit...Fareed Khan/Associated Press

The Times, in other words

Here’s an image of today’s front page, and links to our Opinion content and crossword puzzles.

Canada has one of the world’s most recognizable flags — one that is 53 years old, but took far longer to create.

The red-and-white flag with the silhouette of a maple leaf was raised for the first time on this day in 1965.

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Since 1965, the symbol of Canada.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Previously, Canada had flown the Union Jack as a member of the British Commonwealth. An unofficial flag known as the Canadian Red Ensign, bearing the Union Jack and the Royal Coat of Arms of Canada, had been used on government buildings.

A national maple leaf flag was first suggested in 1895, but it wasn’t until 1964 that the Canadian Parliament approved it.

Prime Minister Lester Pearson had proposed a “truly distinctive” flag that represented all the cultures in Canada, not just its French or British colonial identity. A committee evaluated thousands of designs (including one with a beaver wearing a Mountie hat).

The flag was bitterly debated, especially by Mr. Pearson and his predecessor, the opposition leader John Diefenbaker. (Mr. Diefenbaker called the maple leaf motif “a flag without a past” and wept when it was inaugurated.)

But even though its tree doesn’t grow nationwide, the maple leaf was considered a neutral symbol.

“It was the perfect, perhaps the prototypical, Canadian compromise,” the historian Rick Archbold wrote.

Jennifer Jett contributed reporting.

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Follow Chris Stanford on Twitter: @stanfordc.

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