AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Jefferson Davis statue torn down in Richmond, Virginia
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Protesters tore down a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis along Richmond, Virginia's famed Monument Avenue on Wednesday night.
The statue in the former capital of the Confederacy was toppled shortly before 11 p.m., news outlets reported.
Richmond police were on the scene and videos on social media showed the monument being towed away as a crowd cheered.
About 80 miles (130 kilometers) away, protesters in Portsmouth beheaded and then pulled down four statues that were part of a Confederate monument on Wednesday, according to media outlets.
Efforts to tear one of the statues down began around 8:20 p.m., but the rope they were using snapped, The Virginian-Pilot reported.
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'Stop the pain,' George Floyd's brother pleads with Congress
WASHINGTON (AP) — George Floyd's brother challenged Congress on Wednesday to “stop the pain" as lawmakers consider a sweeping law enforcement overhaul, so the man he looked up to won't become just "another name” on a growing list of black Americans killed during interactions with police.
Philonise Floyd's appearance before a House hearing came a day after funeral services for his older brother, the 46-year-old African American whose death has become a worldwide symbol in demonstrations calling for changes to police practices and an end to racial prejudice.
“I’m here today to ask you to make it stop. Stop the pain,” Philonise Floyd told the silenced hearing room.
Choking back tears, he said he wants to make sure that his brother, whom he called “Perry,” is “more than another face on a T-shirt, more than another name on a list that won’t stop growing.”
Floyd challenged lawmakers to be leaders: “Our country, this world needs the right thing.”
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'Ticking time bomb:' Lack of beds slows Delhi's virus fight
NEW DELHI (AP) — In New Delhi, a sprawling capital region of 46 million and home to some of India's highest concentration of hospitals, a pregnant woman’s death after a frantic hunt for a sickbed was a worrying sign about the country’s ability to cope with a wave of new coronavirus cases.
“She kept begging us to save her life, but we couldn’t do anything,” Shailendra Kumar said, after driving his sister-in-law, Neelam, and her husband for hours, only to be turned away at eight public and private hospitals.
Two and a half months of nationwide lockdown kept numbers of infections relatively low in India. But with restrictions easing in recent weeks, cases have shot up, rising by a record of nearly 10,000 on Thursday, raising questions about whether authorities have done enough to avert catastrophe.
India’s tally has reached 286,579, the fifth highest in the world, with 8,102 deaths. In Delhi, which has reported 32,810 cases including 984 deaths, the rate of infection is higher than the national average, doubling every 12 days.
Half of Delhi's 8,200 hospital beds dedicated to COVID-19 patients are already full and officials are projecting more than half a million cases in the city alone by July 31.
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Homes for disabled hit hard by COVID, faced past violations
Neil Sullivan was angry, frustrated and crushed with guilt. His brother Joe had been rushed by ambulance from his home for the developmentally disabled to the emergency room with a possible case of the coronavirus.
Neil had known the people at the Elisabeth Ludeman Developmental Center near Chicago were at risk. Regulators had flagged the facility over the years for violations such as neglect of residents and not keeping restrooms stocked with soap and paper towels. And now, in the middle of a pandemic, a staffer told Neil they were still short of life-saving equipment like surgical masks, gowns, hand sanitizers and even wipes.
He watched helplessly as COVID-19 tore through Ludeman, infecting 220 residents — more than half the people living there — and 125 workers. Six residents and four staff members would die. Neil was overcome with dread that his 52-year-old brother would be among them.
“You start thinking to yourself, is there something I should have done better?” he said.
The outbreak in Ludeman shows the threat of the pandemic to a highly vulnerable population that is flying almost completely under the radar: The developmentally and intellectually disabled. While nursing homes have come under the spotlight, little attention has gone toward facilities nationwide that experts have estimated house more than 275,000 people with conditions such as Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and autism. Many residents have severe underlying medical issues that leave them vulnerable to the coronavirus.
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Analysis: As US reckons over race, Trump becomes a bystander
WASHINGTON (AP) — At a moment of national reckoning over racism in America, President Donald Trump is increasingly becoming a bystander.
He wasn’t in the pews of churches in Minneapolis or Houston to memorialize George Floyd, the black man whose death sparked protests across the country. He hasn’t spoken publicly about the ways Floyd’s death during a police arrest has shaken the conscience of millions of Americans of all races. And he’s dismissed the notion of systemic racism in law enforcement, repeatedly putting himself firmly on the side of the police over protesters.
In doing so, Trump is leaning into many of the same personal and policy instincts that helped him draw support from disaffected, largely white, Americans in the 2016 election. Yet he appears to be falling out of step with the growing majority of Americans, including some of his supporters in politics, sports and pop culture, who see Floyd’s death as a searing inflection point in America’s fraught racial history.
That not only raises questions about Trump’s standing less than five months from Election Day but also defies expectations that American presidents in the modern era, regardless of their political party, will advocate for equality, particularly during moments of racial turmoil.
“What you have seen since Donald Trump has become president is a complete rejection of that norm and that remains true up until today,” said Russell Riley, professor and co-chair of the Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
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As protests grow, Belgium faces its racist colonial past
TERVUREN, Belgium (AP) — When it comes to ruthless colonialism and racism, few historical figures are more notorious than Leopold II, the king of the Belgians who held Congo as his personal property and may have been responsible for the deaths of millions of Congolese more than a century ago.
Yet across Belgium, the monarch's name is still found on streets and tunnels. Cities are dotted with his statues and busts, even as evidence of his misdeeds has piled up over the decades.
Now a reckoning seems to be at hand.
The protests sweeping the world after George Floyd's death in the U.S. have added fuel to a movement to confront Europe's role in the slave trade and its colonial past. Leopold is increasingly seen as a stain on the nation where he reigned from 1865 to 1909. Demonstrators want him removed from public view.
In just the last week, a long-running trickle of dissent that resulted in little more than occasional vandalism has turned into a torrent, with statues of Leopold defaced in a half-dozen cities. In the port town of Antwerp, where much of the Congolese rubber, minerals and other natural riches entered the nation, one statue was burned and had to be removed for repairs. It is unclear whether it will ever come back.
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Floyd killing finds echoes of abuse in South Africa, Kenya
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Collins Khosa was killed by law enforcement officers in a poor township in Johannesburg over a cup of beer left in his yard. The 40-year-old black man was choked, slammed against a wall, beaten, kicked and hit with the butt of a rifle by the soldiers as police watched, his family says.
Two months later, South Africans staged a march against police brutality. But it was mostly about the killing of George Floyd in the United States, with the case of Khosa, who died on April 10, raised only briefly.
“We also lost our loved one. South Africa, where are you?” Khosa’s partner, Nomsa Montsha, asked in a wrenching TV interview Friday, eight weeks after she held his hand as he died while waiting for an ambulance.
Her words, in a soft, steady voice, were a searing rebuke of the perceived apathy in South Africa over Khosa's death. The army exonerated the soldiers in a report that concluded he died from a blunt force head injury that was no one's fault. His family is still seeking a criminal case.
Floyd's death also emboldened a small number of people in Kenya to march and tell their own stories of injustice and brutality by police.
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Family: Kids missing since September found dead in Idaho
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The bodies of two children uncovered in rural Idaho are a boy and his big sister who have been missing since September, relatives said, and their mother and her husband are in custody in connection with the complex case that spans several states.
Authorities have not released the identities of the bodies discovered on the property of Chad Daybell, who married the children’s mother, Lori Vallow Daybell, a few weeks after the kids were last seen. But Joshua “JJ” Vallow’s grandfather Larry Woodcock on Wednesday told the Post Register in Idaho Falls that “both children are no longer with us.”
Relatives of JJ, who was 7 when he vanished, and 17-year-old Tylee Ryan sent a joint statement to Phoenix television station KSAZ-TV confirming the deaths and asking for privacy.
It’s another gruesome turn in a case that had dragged on for months without answers and grew ever stranger with its ties to the couple’s doomsday beliefs and the mysterious deaths of their former spouses.
But developments were rapid this week: Investigators searched Chad Daybell’s property for evidence, they found children’s bodies, and prosecutors charged him with destroying or concealing two sets of human remains. Then finally, relatives reported that the children they have been fighting to find for months were dead.
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Companies touting Black Lives Matter face workforce scrutiny
SEATTLE (AP) — After hitting the streets to protest racial injustices, Sharon Chuter was disillusioned by the number of corporate brands posting “glossy” messages spouting support for black lives.
The 33-year-old founder of Uoma Beauty, a cosmetics company that caters to black women, came up with a social media challenge to test the sincerity of the companies: She launched the #pulluporshutup campaign on Instagram to push brands to reveal the racial makeup of their corporate workforce and executives.
The hashtag has since gone viral, amassing nearly 100,000 Instagram followers in a week. Chuter said it's a wake-up call for many businesses who couldn’t see or didn’t take seriously enough the silent racism and prejudices that hold black people back in their own workplaces.
“Reflection is painful,” Chuter said. “The truth hurts and I just felt like brands didn’t want to do it.”
As protests over police brutality have erupted across the country over the past two weeks, The Associated Press reviewed the diversity reports of some of the biggest companies pledging solidarity with their black employees as well as the black community, and found that their efforts to recruit, maintain and promote minorities within their own ranks have fallen short.
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AP PHOTOS: 1 year on, tumult of Hong Kong protests echoes
HONG KONG (AP) — A year has passed since the beginning of anti-government protests in Hong Kong that brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets of the semi-autonomous Chinese territory. While the demonstrations have all but died out, none of the underlying issues have been resolved, and a deep unease lies over the city as China moves to tighten its grip.
Beijing cracked down hard on the demonstrations and has moved in recent weeks to make it illegal to disrespect the Chinese national anthem in Hong Kong and and pass a national security law for the city that could severely restrict freedom of speech and opposition political activity.
China says it is justified in making the moves to preserve sovereignty and counter vaguely-defined crimes such as sedition. Critics say Beijing is reneging on commitments it made when the former British colony was handed over to Chinese rule in 1997 with a promise it could maintain its own legal, social, political and economic systems for 50 years.
The original protests were spurred by proposed legislation that would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial. China’s legal system allows far fewer rights for those facing charges, and allegations of torture and coercion to obtain confessions are common.
Although the legislation was eventually shelved, the protests continued with expanded demands, including for expanded democracy and an investigation into alleged police brutality. They appeared to culminate just before opposition candidates won an overwhelming victory in elections for district council delegates last November, but have continued to pop up on a much smaller scale as a push-back against Beijing’s moves to consolidate control in the territory.