North America

BEIJING, June 3 (NNN-XINHUA) – Following the death of African American George Floyd, thousands of protesters gathered for demonstrations across U.S. cities, as well as, around the world.

Floyd, 46, died after Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes. Two separate autopsies released both found Floyd’s death to be a homicide.

(AP) --- Federal safety investigators bypassed aviation regulators on Tuesday and urged leading helicopter manufacturers to install so-called black boxes that would help determine the cause of crashes such as the one that killed former NBA star Kobe Bryant.

The National Transportation Safety Board appealed directly to six manufacturers after the Federal Aviation Administration failed to act on the board’s recommendations to require the devices on most helicopters. The safety board said turbine-powered helicopters should record data, audio and images during flight.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday urged President Donald Trump to be a “healer in chief” while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged “racism in America” as the wrenching debate fueling protests over the treatment of black people in the United States arrived in Congress.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans are planning to press former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on his oversight of the Russia investigation in the first in a series of oversight hearings that coincide with accelerated election-year efforts to scrutinize the FBI probe.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Joe Biden mounted one of his most aggressive attacks against President Donald Trump on Tuesday, deriding the commander in chief’s disregard of core constitutional values and blistering him for being “more interested in power than in principle.”

“He thinks division helps him,” the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said in a speech at Philadelphia’s City Hall. “This narcissism has become more important than the nation’s well-being.”

ATLANTA (AP) — Six Atlanta police officers were charged Tuesday after dramatic video showed authorities pulling two young people from a car and shooting them with stun guns while they were stuck in traffic caused by protests over George Floyd’s death.

Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard announced the charges during a news conference.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg isn’t budging over his refusal to take action on inflammatory posts by President Donald Trump that spread misinformation about voting by mail and, many said, encouraged violence against protesters.

His critics, however, are multiplying. Some employees have publicly quit over the issue and civil-rights leaders who met with him Monday night denounced Zuckerberg’s explanation for choosing to leave Trump’s posts alone as “incomprehensible.”

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — President Donald Trump announced Tuesday night that he is seeking a new state to host this summer’s Republican National Convention after North Carolina refused to guarantee the event could be held in Charlotte without restrictions because of ongoing concerns over the coronavirus.

Trump announced the news via tweet, complaining the state’s governor, Democrat Roy Cooper, and other officials “refuse to guarantee that we can have use of the Spectrum Arena” and were not “allowing us to occupy the arena as originally anticipated and promised.”

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The state of Minnesota on Tuesday launched a civil rights investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department in hopes of forcing widespread changes following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for minutes, even after he stopped moving.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — As demonstrators flooded streets across America to decry the killing of George Floyd, public health experts watched in alarm — the close proximity of protesters and their failures in many cases to wear masks, along with the police using tear gas, could fuel new transmissions of the coronavirus.