AP News in Brief at 9:04 p.m. EDT
Protests heat up across US, governors call in National Guard
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Protests over the death of George Floyd and repeated police killings of black men grew Saturday from New York to Tulsa to Los Angeles, where police fired rubber bullets to scatter crowds and at least one police car burned, as governors in several states called in National Guard troops in the face of the rising unrest.
The demonstrations, which began in Minneapolis following Monday's death of George Floyd after a police officer pressed his knee on Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes, have left parts of that city a grid of broken windows, burned-out buildings and ransacked stores. They have since become a national phenomenon as protesters decry years of deaths at police hands.
The large crowds involved, with many people not wearing masks or practicing social distancing, raised concerns among health experts about the potential for helping spread the coronavirus pandemic at a time when overall deaths are on the decline nationwide and much of the country is in the process of reopening society and the economy.
After a tumultuous Friday night, racially diverse crowds took to the streets again for mostly peaceful demonstrations in dozens of cities from coast to coast. The previous day’s protests also started calmly, but many descended into violence later in the day.
— In the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of a 1921 massacre of black people that left as many as 300 dead and the city’s thriving black district in ruins, protesters blocked intersections and chanted the name of Terence Crutcher, a black man killed by a police officer in 2016.
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The Latest: National Guard called out in Utah after violence
The Latest on the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who pleaded for air as a white police officer pressed a knee on his neck:
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SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Gov. Gary Herbert has activated the Utah National Guard after protesters angry over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis turned violent during a demonstration at which some participants carried rifles in Salt Lake City.
Herbert says in a tweet that the Guard will help control “the escalating situation” in the downtown area following the unrest Saturday afternoon.
The protest started out peacefully, but degenerated into violence. A group of people flipped over a police car and lit it on fire. Some demonstrators smashed eggs and wrote graffiti on the walls of the Salt Lake City police station. Others marched through downtown to the state Capitol.
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AP PHOTOS: Images from protests across a traumatized nation
In cities across the United States, protesters angered over the death of George Floyd faced off against heavily-armed officers, with some smashing police cars, ransacking businesses and setting fires that smoldered through the night.
Fears of another cycle of violence were palpable on Saturday as cities from Atlanta to Minneapolis grappled with the scope of the damage, and pleas for calm from elected officials and others seemed to do little to dampen the anger.
In Minnesota, where Floyd died Monday after a police officer pressed down on his neck for more than eight minutes, Gov. Tim Walz activated more than a thousand national guardsmen early Saturday, promising a massive show of force to protect the city.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler also declared an emergency and ordered a nighttime curfew for the city. And in Washington, D.C., the guard was on standby as a crowd gathered outside the White House and chanted curses at President Donald Trump.
In all, more than two dozen cities experienced racially diverse protests, many peaceful but some of violent.
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'Back in the game': SpaceX ship blasts off with 2 astronauts
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A rocket ship built by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company thundered away from Earth with two Americans on Saturday, ushering in a new era in commercial space travel and putting the United States back in the business of launching astronauts into orbit from home soil for the first time in nearly a decade.
NASA’s Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken rode skyward aboard a white-and-black, bullet-shaped Dragon capsule on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off at 3:22 p.m. from the same launch pad used to send Apollo crews to the moon a half-century ago. Minutes later, they slipped safely into orbit.
“Let's light this candle,” Hurley said just before ignition, borrowing the historic words used by Alan Shepard on America's first human spaceflight, in 1961.
The two men are scheduled to arrive Sunday at the International Space Station, 250 miles above Earth, for a stay of up to four months, after which they will come home with a Right Stuff-style splashdown at sea, something the world hasn't witnessed since the 1970s.
The mission unfolded amid the gloom of the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 100,000 Americans, and racial unrest across the U.S. over the case of George Floyd, the handcuffed black man who died at the hands of Minneapolis police.
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Squad cars damaged, protesters struck with batons in Chicago
CHICAGO (AP) — Several police cars were damaged, including at least one set on fire, as protests continued Saturday over the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes.
Officers struck multiple demonstrators with batons amid the protest near the Trump Tower on the city's Near North Side, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Video sent out by another local reporter also showed police in tactical gear walking on a downtown street.
The crowd of thousands converged on Chicago's Loop for Saturday's protest march. The demonstration began at 2 p.m. and protesters began marching north about 90 minutes later, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Saturday's demonstration came after Chicago officials, following overnight clashes with protesters, asked that additional protests remain peaceful. Demonstrations are expected throughout the weekend over Floyd's death.
Chicago police Superintendent David Brown said peaceful protests that began Friday afternoon turned more confrontational as the night wore on, resulting in 108 arrests. Protesters blocked traffic along major streets, threw bottles and other objects at police vehicles and shattered the windows of downtown businesses.
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Trump calls for delay in Group of 7 meeting, seeks expansion
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) — President Donald Trump said Saturday that he will postpone until the fall a meeting of Group of 7 nations he had planned to hold next month at the White House despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. And he said the group's membership should include Russia, Australia, South Korea and India.
Trump told reporters on Air Force One as he returned to Washington from Florida that he feels the current makeup of the group is “very outdated" and doesn't properly represent "what’s going on in the world.”
He said he had not yet set a new date for the meeting, but thought the gathering could take place in September, around the time of the annual meeting of the United Nations in New York, or perhaps after the U.S. election in November.
The surprise announcement came after German Chancellor Angela Merkel's office said Saturday that she would not attend the meeting unless the course of the coronavirus spread had changed by then.
The leaders of the world’s major economies were slated to meet in June in the U.S. at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, but the coronavirus outbreak hobbled those plans. Trump announced in March he was canceling the summit because of the pandemic and that the leaders would confer by video conference instead. But Trump then switched course, saying a week ago that he was again planning to host an in-person meeting.
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US cities fear protests may fuel new wave of virus outbreaks
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The massive protests sweeping across U.S. cities following the police killing of a black man in Minnesota have sent shudders through the health community and elevated fears that the huge crowds will lead to a new surge in cases of the coronavirus.
Some leaders appealing for calm in places where crowds smashed storefronts and destroyed police cars in recent nights have been handing out masks and warning demonstrators they were putting themselves at risk.
“If you were out protesting last night, you probably need to go get a COVID test this week,” Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said Saturday evening. “There is still a pandemic in America that’s killing black and brown people at higher numbers.”
Minnesota’s governor said too many protesters weren’t socially distancing or wearing masks after heeding the call earlier in the week.
But many seemed undeterred.
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`Death By Racism': Part of America's DNA from the start?
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a black man or woman living in America in 2020. How could you not believe that racism kills?
If you are black, you need not imagine anything. You know it very well.
You don’t need to see the video of George Floyd, a police officer’s knee on his neck as he struggled for his dying breaths, to know that black people are three times more likely to be killed by police than are white people.
You don't need to hear the racial statistics on COVID-19 to know that black people have been affected disproportionately -- the same is true of eight of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States. Even before the pandemic, black life expectancy was 3½ years shorter than white.
Many blacks are redlined into densely packed, crime-ridden urban areas. Stuck in underfinanced, substandard schools. Subjected to silent environmental catastrophes, like lead hidden in pipes and on walls.
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US faith leaders wrestle twin traumas in protests, virus
NEW YORK (AP) — American religious leaders across faiths are grappling with the heavy burden of helping to heal two active traumas: rising civil unrest driven by the police killing of George Floyd and the coronavirus pandemic.
Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders have raised their voices to condemn racial bias in the justice system while discouraging violence in response to the killing of Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into his neck. Those words of solidarity, for many clergy, came as their worship routines remained upended by a virus that has forced them to rely on digital or outdoor gathering.
At Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, which has provided relief and medical help to demonstrators this week as protests roiled the city, associate pastor Angela T. Khabeb said the shared pain caused by Floyd’s death was exposing the brutal double toll being exacted on people of color.
“There were other pandemics we didn’t always talk about that faced black communities, indigenous, Latinx” before the virus outbreak, Khabeb said, citing “institutionalized racism” and poverty. “And then we layer on COVID-19, which disproportionately affects black, indigenous, Latinx communities.”
Khabeb acknowledged that she felt challenged by the task of tending to her congregation during the current crisis when the latest police killing of a black American had caused “a crisis of my own that’s very personal.”
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US food prices see historic jump and are likely to stay high
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — As if trips to the grocery store weren’t nerve-wracking enough, U.S. shoppers lately have seen the costs of meat, eggs and even potatoes soar as the coronavirus has disrupted processing plants and distribution networks.
Overall, the cost of food bought to eat at home skyrocketed by the most in 46 years, and analysts caution that meat prices in particular could remain high as slaughterhouses struggle to maintain production levels while implementing procedures intended to keep workers healthy.
While price spikes for staples such as eggs and flour have eased as consumer demand has leveled off, prices remain volatile for carrots, potatoes and other produce because of transportation issues and the health of workers who pick crops and work in processing plants.
In short, supermarket customers and restaurant owners shouldn't expect prices to drop anytime soon.
“Our biggest concern is long-term food costs. I believe they will continue to go up,” said Julie Kalambokidis, co-owner of Adriano's Brick Oven, a restaurant in Glenwood, Iowa.