AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT
More global protests emerge over racism, police actions
Far-right activists scuffled with police Saturday in London and Paris as more Black Lives Matter demonstrations unfolded across Europe. In the U.S., protesters called attention to the deaths of two black men — one who was fatally shot by police outside an Atlanta restaurant and another found hanging from a tree in California.
Tensions were high in cities around the globe, nearly three weeks after George Floyd, another black man, died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee to his neck. European protesters sought to show solidarity with their American counterparts against police brutality and racism, and to confront bias in their own countries. The demonstrations also posed a challenge to policies intended to limit crowds to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
In Paris, police stopped protesters from confronting far-right activists who unfurled a huge banner from a building denouncing “anti-white racism.” The banner was partly torn down by residents in the building, with one raising a fist in victory.
A Black Lives Matter group in London called off a demonstration, saying the presence of counter-protesters would make it unsafe. Right-wing activists and soccer fans descended on the U.K. capital, saying they wanted to guard historical monuments that have been targeted by anti-racism protesters.
Many gathered around the statue of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the Cenotaph war memorial, which were boarded up Friday to protect them from vandalism. Officials feared far-right activists would seek confrontations with anti-racism protesters under the guise of protecting statues.
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As US seethes over race, Trump calls out 'evil of slavery'
WEST POINT. N.Y. (AP) — As the nation continues to grapple with its racial past, President Donald Trump urged West Point's graduating class Saturday to “never forget” the legacy of soldiers before them who fought a bloody war to "extinguish the evil of slavery.
Trump's appeal to remember history came as his own relationship with the military is under strain from the unrelenting criticism he and Pentagon leaders have faced over their response to protests that erupted after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.
It also came hours after Trump made what amounted to a rare concession for him: He rescheduled a campaign rally planned for Tulsa, Oklahoma, on June 19. The day marks the end of slavery in the U.S., and Tulsa was the scene of a fiery white-on-black attack in 1921.
“What has historically made America unique is the durability of its institutions against the passions and prejudices of the moment,” Trump told more than 1,100 graduates at an unusual outdoor ceremony held during a pandemic. “When times are turbulent, when the road is rough, what matters most is that which is permanent, timeless, enduring and eternal.”
In the past two weeks, Trump has yelled at Defense Secretary Mark Esper for publicly opposing his call to deploy active-duty troops to quell the protests stemming from the killing of Floyd, who was black, by a white Minneapolis police officer.
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Mississippi faces reckoning on Confederate emblem in flag
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The young activists who launched a protest movement after George Floyd’s death are bringing fresh energy to a long-simmering debate about the Confederate battle emblem that white supremacists embedded within the Mississippi state flag more than 125 years ago.
Anti-racism protests have toppled Confederate statues and monuments across the United States in recent days, and even NASCAR banned the display of the rebel flag. But Mississippi has been a holdout for years in displaying the emblem in the upper-left corner of its banner.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves rejects the idea of a legislative vote on erasing the symbol. If the flag is to be redesigned, "it should be the people who make that decision, not some backroom deal by a bunch of politicians in Jackson,” Reeves said this week.
The mere mention of removing the Confederate emblem from the Mississippi flag stirs anger in its defenders, who tell people to leave the state if they don’t like it.
The issue has gained new momentum since Floyd was killed last month by Minneapolis police. Thousands of people turned out June 6 in downtown Jackson for a protest organized by Black Lives Matter. One of the organizers, 18-year-old Maisie Brown, read a list of demands that started with “the removal of all Confederate symbols and memorabilia.”
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Kim Jong Un's sister threatens S. Korea with military action
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened military action against South Korea as she bashed Seoul on Saturday over declining bilateral relations and its inability to stop activists from floating anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border.
Describing South Korea as an “enemy,” Kim Yo Jong repeated an earlier threat she had made by saying Seoul will soon witness the collapse of a “useless” inter-Korean liaison office in the border town of Kaesong.
Kim, who is first vice department director of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, said she would leave it to North Korea’s military leaders to carry out the next step of retaliation against the South.
“By exercising my power authorized by the supreme leader, our party and the state, I gave an instruction to the arms of the department in charge of the affairs with enemy to decisively carry out the next action,” she said in a statement carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
“If I drop a hint of our next plan the (South Korean) authorities are anxious about, the right to taking the next action against the enemy will be entrusted to the General Staff of our army,” she said. “Our army, too, will determine something for cooling down our people’s resentment and surely carry out it, I believe.”
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Body camera video could offer more detail in Floyd encounter
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Video recorded by a bystander showed the world George Floyd’s horrifying last minutes, capturing his cries and pleas for air as a Minneapolis officer used his knee to pin down Floyd's neck.
But the footage recorded by body cameras that officers wore on their chests as they were arresting Floyd is expected to show even more about what the officers and Floyd were doing and saying during that fateful encounter, and it could shape how the officers’ cases play out in court.
“A video camera, when properly authenticated, is an eye witness. It can testify,” said Michael Primeau, an audio and video forensics expert at Michigan-based Primeau Forensics.
Floyd, a black man who was handcuffed, died May 25 after Derek Chauvin, a white officer, used his knee to pin Floyd to the ground. Chauvin, who kept his knee on Floyd’s neck even after Floyd stopped moving, has been charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter.
The three other officers, Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao, have been charged with aiding and abetting both second-degree murder and manslaughter. All four officers were fired.
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Floyd death sparks efforts to hold more officers accountable
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The murder charges against the four police officers involved in George Floyd's death present rare instances of officers being held legally responsible for their actions. Now state lawmakers around the country want to make it easier to do.
In the days since protests rocked cities across the U.S., lawmakers and other elected officials have introduced proposals to take such charging decisions away from local prosecutors, eliminate officers' wide immunity from lawsuits and make the relationship between prosecutors and police less cozy.
Police fatally shoot about 1,000 people each year across the country, according to a Washington Post database. Since the beginning of 2005, 110 non-federal law enforcement officers have been arrested on murder or manslaughter charges resulting from on-duty shootings. Five were convicted of murder and 22 of manslaughter, said Philip Stinson, a criminal justice professor at Bowling Green State University who maintains a database of cases.
“When there is a fatal shooting by a police officer ... investigators seem to start with the assumption that the shooting by the officer was legally justified,” said Stinson, a former officer. “As a result, the investigations are often incomplete and inadequate, making it difficult for prosecutors to successfully prosecute.”
Initiatives introduced in several states would put the state attorney general's office in charge of investigating and, if warranted, prosecuting officers accused of wrongdoing.
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Dear white people: Being an ally isn't always what you think
NEW YORK (AP) — In one video clip, a black man kneels in front of a line of police, then one by one young white men move in as shields, human barriers between him and the law.
In another, a black woman yells at two white women spray-painting a Starbucks shop with “BLM,” — Black Lives Matter — telling them to stop, that vandalism isn’t helping.
Variations of both scenes have played out around the country many times in the more than two weeks of protests following the killing of George Floyd by police. They raise the issue: For white people wanting to be part of an anti-racist movement, what does it mean to be an ally?
As a new generation steps up, activists and historians believe there’s important work to be done for white people: Listening to black voices and following rather than trying to lead, for one, and undertaking the deep introspection required to confront unconscious bias and the perks of privilege that come just from being white.
White people have played necessary roles in racial justice movements through time, from abolition to the civil rights era of the 1950s and ’60s, said Mark Warren, a professor of public policy and public affairs at the University of Massachusetts in Boston.
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Colombia's Medellin emerges as surprise COVID-19 pioneer
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Two and a half million residents. Four confirmed coronavirus deaths.
As coronavirus cases surge in Latin America, the Colombian city of Medellin is defying expectations and managing to keep numbers remarkably low.
Months into the pandemic, there are just 741 confirmed cases citywide and only 10 patients hospitalized in ICUs with COVID-19. The metropolis recently went five weeks without a single COVID-19 death.
“Medellin can be considered a best-case scenario,” said Dr. Carlos Espinal, director of Florida International University’s Global Health Consortium.
In theory, that shouldn’t be the case. The city is dense, home to many poor residents who will go hungry if they quarantine for too long and connected by a congested public transportation system. All these factors have made the virus especially hard to contain in Latin America.
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Atlanta officer kills black man; police chief resigns
ATLANTA (AP) — Atlanta's police chief resigned Saturday, less than 24 hours after a black man was killed by an Atlanta officer in a struggle following a field sobriety test.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced during a news conference that she had accepted the resignation of Police Chief Erika Shields.
Police were called to the restaurant on a complaint that a man was sleeping in a car blocking the drive-thru lane as customers waited in line, the GBI said. The agency identified the man who was fatally shot as 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
ATLANTA (AP) — A black man killed by Atlanta police in a struggle following a field sobriety test was shot after he snatched an officer's Taser and pointed it back at the officer while fleeing, the head of the Georgia agency investigating the case said Saturday.
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AP FACT CHECK: Trump's law and order and misinformation
WASHINGTON (AP) — “Ugh,” said a Republican senator. “How crude,” said a Democratic governor.
President Donald Trump set off plenty of reactions like that when he peddled a baseless conspiracy theory about an activist who landed hard on the ground, and then in intensive care, in what prosecutors call an assault by police.
Trump's week of law and order rhetoric came with heavy doses of misinformation as he stretched to blame unrest on radical leftists and to put three loaded words — “defund the police” — in the mouth of a Democratic rival who doesn't support them.
Meantime, the coronavirus pandemic is still growing in nearly half the states. Trump and his aides said little about it except to keep up the push to reopen the country. The United States surpassed 2 million COVID-19 cases in the past week; more than 114,000 have died from it in this country.
A look at some claims and reality: