fox news top of the hour, three big stories topping the news. china s military carrying out massive blockade drills around taiwan today. china announced three days of drills on saturday after taiwan s president met in california with house speaker kevin mccarthy. protests expected in tennessee today where the state legislature is back in session for the first time since it voted to expel two democrats for their role in a chaotic gun control protest. a at the detention of erin gershkovitch. more on those stories throughout the hour. first. someone got shot. dana: the army sergeant convicted in the death of a black lives protestors in 2020 says it is self-defense but facing a possible sentence of life in prison. texas governor abbott is calling for the state to grant a pardon. that is developing now. welcome to a new hour of america s newsroom, i m dana perino. good morning. bill: i know you had a good weekend. excellent. great easter weekend, thank you. i m bill hemmer
six cities across iran were targeted, and in some of the cities, multiple schools were attacked. we started receiving videos from the city of qom, which is the iranian vatican. parents are furious. they re talking to officials, they re shouting at them. there are scenes of chaos and horror. in other cities, we have obtained videos from hospitals where parents are picking up a girl student who has fainted on the floor. other students are crying, gasping for breath on hospital beds, and we have reports that in the north western town of ardabil and also in the southern kurdish town in western iran, the hospitals are packed with schoolgirls. reports of poisonings have become frequent. no girls have died, but dozens have suffered respiratory problems, nausea, dizziness and fatigue. at the beginning of this month, bbc reality check looked into this. the first known case was recorded in november in the city of qom. it s spread to a number of other provinces, including the capital, t
we want to start with the latest news from israel. hundreds of palestinians have barricaded themselves inside al aqsa mosque injerusalem. remember, earlier this week, israeli police raided the mosque after palestinians barricaded themselves inside, after the evening ramadan prayer. that led to palestinian militants firing rockets into israel from lebanon and gaza, and israel hitting back with airstrikes. the al aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in islam, is located on a hilltop complex known by muslims as al haram al sharif and byjews as the temple mount. jews revere it as the location of two biblical temples and it is the holiest site injudaism. thousands of muslims and jews are gathering injerusalem with ramadan and passover overlapping this year. it is around this time thatjewish visitors are supposed to be allowed in to the al aqsa mosque so we will be keeping a close eye on events there for you, and we ll bring you any update on that when we get it. meanwhile, this fra