USA

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Kneeling on George Floyd ’s neck while he was handcuffed and lying on his stomach was top-tier, deadly force and “totally unnecessary,” the head of the Minneapolis Police Department’s homicide division testified Friday.

“If your knee is on a person’s neck, that can kill him,” said Lt. Richard Zimmerman, adding that when a person is handcuffed behind their back, “your muscles are pulling back ... and if you’re laying on your chest, that’s constricting your breathing even more.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Capitol Police officer was killed Friday after a man rammed a car into two officers at a barricade outside the U.S. Capitol and then emerged wielding a knife. It was the second line-of-duty death this year for a department still struggling to heal from the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Video shows the driver of the crashed car emerging with a knife in his hand and starting to run at the pair of officers, Capitol Police Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman told reporters. Authorities shot the suspect, who died at a hospital.

WASHINGTON, April 2 (NNN-AGENCIES) — A US couple was charged with support for a terror group after trying to board a Yemen-bound ship to join the Daesh group, the Justice Department said.

James Bradley, 20, of New York and Arwa Muthana, 29, from Alabama were stopped as they stepped onto the gangplank of a cargo ship in Newark, New Jersey.

The Justice Department said that Bradley had expressed violent extremist views since at least 2019, and in contacts with an undercover law enforcement agency last year repeatedly said he believed in the Daesh group.

02 Apr 2021; MEMO: The US State Department has reaffirmed its position which considers the West Bank as territory occupied by Israel.

"It is a historical fact that Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights after the 1967 War," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters on Wednesday.

The clarification came after the Department published its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2020.

02 Apr 2021; MEMO: The administration of US President Joe Biden plans to revoke the sanctions imposed by his predecessor, President Donald Trump, on the International Criminal Court (ICC) top officials as early as this week, the Foreign Policy magazine reported.

01 Apr 2021; MEMO: UN officials are reviewing plans to build a new canal along the Egypt-Israel border following the week-long blockage caused by the grounded cargo ship Ever Given, the Guardian has reported.

Hundreds of ships were caught in a bottleneck on the Suez Canal after a Panamanian vessel, the Ever Given, ran aground on Tuesday last week.

01 Apr 2021; MEMO: A new survey has found further evidence of waning support for Israel within the US with more Americans saying that they do not want the Zionist state to be a major recipient of US aid.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s first Cabinet meeting looked and felt different from those of his predecessor.

Biden’s full Cabinet met Thursday in the spacious White House East Room, not the comparatively cramped West Wing room that bears the group’s name, to allow for social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Thursday welcomed a European Union announcement that the participants in the Iran nuclear deal will meet this week to discuss a possible return of the United States to the 2015 accord.

Friday’s virtual meeting of officials from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and Iran comes as the U.S. is exploring ways to rejoin the deal that former President Donald Trump withdrew from in 2018. The State Department praised the meeting and said it would be watched closely by U.S. officials.

WASHINGTON (AP) — After more than two months of living in temporary housing, Vice President Kamala Harris will soon be able to unpack and unwind at her official residence on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory.

Symone Sanders, senior adviser and chief spokesperson for the vice president, tweeted Thursday that Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, will move into the official vice presidential residence on Massachusetts Avenue in northwest Washington next week — after some repairs are completed. Sanders did not provide a date.