USA

Asian Americans wary about school amid virus, violence

BOSTON (AP) — A Chinese American mother in the Boston suburbs is sending her sons to in-person classes this month, even after one of them was taunted with a racist “slanted-eyes” gesture at school, just days after the killings of women of Asian descent at massage businesses in Atlanta.

In the Dallas area, a Korean American family is keeping their middle schooler in online classes for the rest of the year after they spotted a question filled with racist Chinese stereotypes, including a reference to eating dogs and cats, on one of her exams.

USA: Biden’s virtual climate summit: Diplomacy sans human touch

WASHINGTON (AP) — There will be no hands to shake or backs to slap, no way to look a foreign leader in the eye. The small human moments that define statecraft will be reduced to images on a screen.

President Joe Biden, a most hands-on politician, this week will host a major climate summit with dozens of world leaders — all of them stuck on Zoom.

USA: NASA’s Mars helicopter takes flight, 1st for another planet

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s experimental Mars helicopter rose from the dusty red surface into the planet’s thin air on Monday, achieving the first powered flight on another planet.

The triumph was hailed as a Wright Brothers moment. The mini 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) copter named Ingenuity, in fact, carried a bit of wing fabric from the 1903 Wright Flyer, which made similar history at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

USA: Biden pressed on emissions goal as climate summit nears

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Joe Biden convenes a virtual climate summit on Thursday, he faces a vexing task: how to put forward a nonbinding but symbolic goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that will have a tangible impact not only on climate change efforts in the U.S. but throughout the world.

USA: Search for 9 missing from capsized boat in Gulf on 6th day

PORT FOURCHON, La. (AP) — For a sixth day, rescue crews returned Sunday to a capsized lift boat in the Gulf of Mexico off Louisiana, looking for nine crew members who have not been found, the Coast Guard said.

Officials have released little information about their continuous search in the murky seas surrounding the capsized Seacor Power lift boat some 8 miles (13 kilometers) off the coast since announcing divers found two bodies inside the ship Friday night.

USA Police: Suspect on the run in fatal shooting of 3 in Texas

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A manhunt was underway Sunday for a former sheriff’s deputy wanted in the fatal shooting of three people in Austin, Texas, as an official said it wasn’t known if the suspect was still in the city.

Interim Austin Police Chief Joseph Chacon said those who live near where the shooting happened late Sunday morning no longer had to shelter in place, but he said they should “remain vigilant.” He said officials were transitioning the search for Stephen Broderick, 41, from that area to a “fugitive search.”

USA: Attorneys at Chauvin trial in Floyd death make final pitch

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Attorneys in the trial of a former Minneapolis police officer charged with killing George Floyd are set to make their closing arguments Monday, each side seeking to distill three weeks of testimony to persuade jurors to deliver their view of the right verdict.

USA: FedEx terrorist legally bought guns used in shooting

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The former employee who shot and killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis legally bought the two rifles used in the attack despite red flag laws designed to prevent such purchases, police said.

A trace of the two guns found by investigators at the scene revealed that suspect Brandon Scott Hole, 19, of Indianapolis, legally bought the rifles last July and September, officials with the Indianapolis police said Saturday.

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