Currentaffairsnews (Headlines)

Kaitlin Rust could be heard screaming "I've been shot!" while covering a protest near Louisville City Hall on Friday.

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A woman who says she lost an eye during a protest over George Floyd’s death has urged people to keep demonstrating.Linda Tirado, a journalist and photographer covering the protests in Minneapolis, the city where Floyd died after a police officer knelt on his neck for eight minutes, told people to “stay in the streets” for her.

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* NBC News: general counsel Dana Boente forced out on Friday * Fox News host Lou Dobbs slammed lawyer in April * Flynn transcripts show he discussed sanctions with RussianA top FBI lawyer who was criticised on Fox News for his role in the investigation of Michael Flynn has resigned after being asked to do so by senior figures at the Department of Justice, NBC News reported on Saturday.The FBI confirmed to NBC that Dana Boente, its general counsel and a former acting attorney general, announced his resignation on Friday after a near-40-year career. NBC cited two sources anonymous sources as saying the decision came from “Attorney General William Barr’s justice department”.Boente joined the DoJ in 1984 and in 2015 became the US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, after being nominated by Barack Obama.In January 2017, he briefly served as acting attorney general, after Trump fired Sally Yates, an Obama-era deputy, for refusing to defend an executive order on immigration.Temporarily overseeing the investigation of Russian election interference, Boente signed a warrant authorising FBI surveillance of Flynn.The retired general, Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, was fired for lying to the vice-president about contacts with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition.Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about the conversations and cooperated with the special counsel Robert Mueller as he took over the investigation of Russian election interference and links between Trump and Moscow.Flynn sought to withdraw his guilty plea before sentencing. Earlier this month, Barr said the justice department would drop the case, although a federal judge put that decision on hold.On Friday, the same day Boente was forced out of the FBI, Trump’s new director of intelligence and Senate Republicans released transcripts of the calls in question, between Flynn and the then Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak.Opponents of the president said the transcripts proved that Flynn had been treated fairly. Supporters of Trump said they showed Flynn had been treated unfairly.As Trump attempts to construct a scandal called “Obamagate”, with the surveillance of Flynn at its centre, his administration is releasing material it hopes will put Obama officials in a bad light.Boente also wrote a leaked memo concerning material put into the public domain about Flynn, which he said was not exculpatory.Trump is notoriously open to the views of key Fox News contributors.On 27 April, the Fox News host Lou Dobbs told viewers: “Shocking new reports suggest FBI general counsel Dana Boente was acting in coordination with FBI director Christopher Wray to block the release of that evidence that would have cleared General Flynn.”Trump has reportedly been urged to fire Wray, whom he appointed to replace James Comey, the man he fired in May 2017 in an attempt to close the Russia investigation.Comey’s firing led to the appointment of Mueller, who concluded a near-two-year investigation without proving criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russia.Mueller did, however, obtain convictions of Trump aides and says in his report the campaign was receptive to Russian help. He also laid out extensive evidence of attempts by the president to obstruct his investigation.Trump has fired or forced out FBI and DoJ figures including Andrew McCabe, Comey’s deputy, lawyer Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, an FBI agent who worked on the case.On Friday, Wray issued a statement about Boente.“Few people have served so well in so many critical, high-level roles at the department,” he said. “Throughout his long and distinguished career as a public servant, Dana has demonstrated a selfless determination to ensure that justice is always served on behalf of our citizens.”

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China announced on Sunday two new confirmed cases of coronavirus and four new asymptomatic cases, including one person without symptoms of COVID-19 on a chartered flight from Germany. The two confirmed cases in Shandong province on Saturday compared with four cases the day before, data from the country's health authority showed. The National Health Commission (NHC) confirmed three new asymptomatic cases on Saturday.

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Philippine police have arrested 90 Chinese for allegedly running an online gambling hub without permits and for violating quarantine restrictions, officials said Sunday.

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After making landfall as a tropical storm on Sunday, Amanda turned deadly, and will continue to threaten the region with widespread flooding and dangerous mudslides as it nears the Atlantic Basin into midweek.Before making landfall Sunday morning, the system strengthened into a tropical storm and was given the name Amanda, making it the first-named storm of the 2020 East Pacific hurricane season. A new round of torrential rainfall arrived in El Salvador and southern Guatemala on Sunday as Amanda moved inland. Officials in El Salvador issued an "Red Alert" and extended the state of emergency due to this surge of heavier rain.As of late Sunday morning, there are reports of at least 11 deaths in El Salvador due to impacts from the then Tropical Storm Amanda.> Nuestro despliegue a nivel nacional redobla sus esfuerzos ante la AlertaRoja por la TormentaAmandaSV. > > Haz tu parte, sigue las indicaciones de @PROCIVILSV, QuédateEnCasa. pic.twitter.com/331gKMKwAf> > -- Ministerio de la Defensa Nacional (@DefensaSV) May 31, 2020By Sunday afternoon, Amanda was downgraded to a tropical depression.Amanda is forecast to continue tracking to the northwest across Guatemala into the beginning of the week. The rugged terrain will help to rip the storm apart, but the remaining tropical moisture will continue to fuel heavy rain and thunderstorms across Central America through the beginning of the week.Reports of flooding are already emerging from Costa Rica to end the weekend. "Heavy rainfall will be the greatest threat over Central America, particularly in the higher terrain or Guatemala and El Salvador where rainfall totals of 18-24 inches are possible," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Randy Adkins said.The highest terrain could pick up an AccuWeather Local StormMax™ of 800 mm (30 inches).CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP"Heavy rainfall from Amanda will likely trigger not only flooding threats, but serious mudslides as well for portions of Guatemala and El Salvador early this week'" stated AccuWeather Meteorologist Mary Gilbert. "These mudslides can be very destructive and even life-threatening in nature as heavy rain continues to pound the area." While Amanda will continue to lose wind strength, any locally strong wind gusts can knock over trees or power lines due to the saturated ground.Adkins added, "Amanda is forecast to be a 1 on the AccuWeather RealImpact™ Scale for Hurricanes due to the risks posed by very heavy rainfall."Amanda is forecast to move into the Bay of Campeche before the middle of the week and depending on the strength of the storm, it could set records."If Amanda were to survive and make it into the Bay of Campeche as a named system, it would be unprecedented," stated AccuWeather Meteorologist Courtney Travis. "The only tropical system to cross from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean Basin since 1950 was Hermine in 2010.""However, Hermine was named in the Gulf of Mexico, having only reached tropical depression status in the East Pacific," she added. This satellite image shows Amanda tracking across Central America as a tropical storm on Sunday afternoon, local time. (Photo/RAMMB) Although tropical systems are usually shredded by the rough terrain of Central America when traveling from the East Pacific Basin to the Atlantic Basin. Several storms have made this trek and dissipated then redeveloped once in the Atlantic Basin, according to Travis.AccuWeather forecasters will be monitoring Amanda into the middle of the week and will continue to watch for potential tropical development through the early part of June as the developing weather pattern may keep the region active.The same gyre that generated Amanda could be powerful enough produce additional tropical activity in the coming weeks."A tropical gyre is just a large slowly spinning area of disturbed weather, that can be as wide as a 1,500 km (1,000 miles) in diameter. When they form over Central America, they can create extra moisture to spawn tropical development on the Atlantic side or the Pacific side or sometimes both," said AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Alex Sosnowski.Because of this, AccuWeather meteorologists will also be monitoring the waters of the southern Gulf of Mexico and the western Caribbean very closely for tropical development through the middle of June.Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier and Verizon Fios.

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The plushie indicates when the Crew Dragon spaceship has reached a state of zero gravity, but neither NASA or SpaceX have explained how it was chosen.

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"We don't want to see one officer charged," Killer Mike said. "We want to see four officers prosecuted and sentenced."

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Gen Haftar's forces have been beaten back from Tripoli but that does not mean peace is at hand.

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Joe Biden's family history and the tragedies and losses that have shaped his politics and public persona have loomed large throughout his career, relying on a narrative of mourning, resilience and a dynamic with voters who also have emerged from the other side of their shared pain.Grieving alongside him is Hunter Biden, the former vice president's last living son, whose private life has been mired in controversy as he struggled with sobriety and emerged as a central figure in Donald Trump's efforts to undermine his political rival as he seeks re-election.

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Israeli forces shot and killed an unarmed autistic Palestinian man on his way to a special needs school in Jerusalem’s Old City on Saturday, prompting comparisons to the police violence in the US and accusations of excessive force by Israeli forces. In a statement, Israeli police said they spotted a suspect “with a suspicious object that looked like a pistol” and opened fire on 32-year-old Iyad Halak, when he failed to stop. No weapon was found on him. Israel’s Channel 12 news station said members of the paramilitary border forces fired at Mr Halak’s legs and chased him into an alley. A senior officer was said to have called for a halt to fire as they entered the alley, but a second officer ignored the command and fired six or seven bullets from an M-16 rifle. Mr Halak’s father told AP that police later came and raided their home, but didn’t find anything. The shooting has caused widespread outcry on social media with many comparisons to the racially-charged shooting and killing of George Floyd in the US last week. Benny Gantz, Israel’s ‘alternate’ prime minister and defence minister apologised for the death of Mr Halak in a cabinet meeting on Sunday morning. Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, made no mention of the incident in his opening remarks. Both officers were taken into custody and interrogated for several hours and an investigation has been opened. “We must resist the expected cover-up and make sure that the police will sit in jail,” Ayman Odeh, the leader of the main Arab party in parliament, wrote on Twitter. “Justice will be done only when the Halak family, their friends and the rest of the Palestinian people know freedom and independence.” Mr Halak had been on his way to the school for students with special needs when he was shot and killed, a trip that he made every day. According to the Times of Israel, his father told public broadcaster, Kan, that he suspected Mr Halak had been carrying his phone when he was spotted by the police. “We tell him every morning to keep his phone in his hand so we can be in contact with him and make sure he has safely arrived at the educational institution,” his father reportedly said. In west Jerusalem, about 150 protesters, some pounding drums, gathered to demonstrate against police violence on Saturday. “A violent policeman must stay inside,” they chanted in Hebrew. At a smaller protest in Tel Aviv, one poster read “Palestinian lives matter.”

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Chinese President Xi Jinping is so nervous about the position of the Communist Party that he is risking a new Cold War and imperilling Hong Kong's position as Asia's pre-eminent financial hub, the last British governor of the territory told Reuters. Chris Patten said Xi's 'thuggish' crackdown in Hong Kong risked triggering an outflow of capital and people from the city which funnels the bulk of foreign investment into mainland China. The West, he said, should stop being naive about Xi, who has served as General Secretary of the Communist Party since 2012.

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Footage from Wave 3 local news in Louisville, Ky., appears to show police shooting pepper rounds directly at news crew.

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"This is not a protest," Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said. "This is chaos. A protest has purpose."

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Police say they used tear gas to disperse hundreds of demonstrators in Brazil's largest city on Sunday as groups protesting and supporting President Jair Bolsonaro neared a clash. The demonstration by several hundred black-clad members of football fan groups in Sao Paulo appeared to be the largest anti-Bolsonaro street march in months in a country that has become an epicenter of the spreading COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the protesters chanted “Democracy!” as they marched.

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The launch won't be a success until NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley reach orbit, about 12 minutes after liftoff.

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Saudi Arabia's mosques opened their doors to worshippers on Sunday for the first time in more than two months as the kingdom, the birthplace of Islam, eased restrictions imposed to combat the coronavirus. "It is great to feel the mercy of God and once again call people for prayers at mosques instead of at their homes," said Abdulmajeed Al Mohaisen, who issues the call to prayer at Al Rajhi Mosque, one of the largest in the capital Riyadh.

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A Labour MP has stepped down from her front bench position as whip after admitting she broke lockdown rules to meet her married lover. Rosie Duffield met her boyfriend for a long walk in April, while it was still against the lockdown rules to meet people from different households, the Mail on Sunday reported. She resigned as a whip on Saturday night and said she was “attempting to navigate a difficult personal situation". Ms Duffield, 48, was living separately from married father-of-three James Routh, pictured below, a TV director, when they went for a long walk in her constituency and he visited her home, it was reported. The MP for Canterbury told the Mail on Sunday the pair observed the two-metre social distancing rules, but these incidents were before meetings between people from different households were allowed.

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Tropical storm Amanda, the first named storm of the season in the Pacific, lashed El Salvador and Guatemala on Sunday, leaving nine people dead amid flooding and power outages. El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele declared a state of emergency, announcing it on his Twitter account. "We have nine dead," Salvadoran Interior Minister Mario Duran said, adding that the toll could rise.

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Patrick Rust, 24, was last seen on March 16, 2007, at a bar in Watertown, New York, called “Clueless.” The soldier had just finished two tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was stationed in New York at Fort Drum and had just received news he was being assigned to Fort Lewis, Washington, where he'd be trained to become a staff sergeant. Six months later, a farmer found Patrick’s skeletal remains in a field about five miles from the bar. The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office is inves

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Brazil records almost 1,000 deaths in a day, taking its overall number of fatalities past France.

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Boris Johnson has blocked Jeremy Corbyn’s recommendation for John Bercow to receive a peerage over allegations of bullying by the former Speaker. Downing Street said it would not approve Labour’s nomination of Mr Bercow for elevation to the upper chamber because there are outstanding concerns about his “propriety”. Karie Murphy, Mr Corbyn’s former chief of staff, was also blocked for appointment to the Lords over an Equalities and Human Rights Commission investigation into alleged institutional anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. The Jewish Labour Movement said her nomination was “deeply inappropriate”. Ms Murphy denies all allegations of anti-Semitism. Officials at Downing Street informed Mr Corbyn his nominations would be rejected before he stepped down as leader, The Sunday Times reported. The House of Lords Appointments Commission had concerns about both Mr Bercow and Ms Murphy’s “propriety”. Mr Bercow, who stood down as Speaker at the end of October, was referred to the parliamentary commissioner of standards in January over allegations of bullying, which he denies. Commons officials accused him of creating a climate of “fear and intimidation” during his time in office, and a former clerk of the Commons said he used “sexually and racially inappropriate” language. Mr Bercow said the claim was “unadulterated rubbish”. His nomination by Labour, which was greeted with surprise when it was leaked in January, cannot proceed to formal approval from the Queen without the backing of the Government. The rejection comes after Boris Johnson broke with tradition by refusing to nominate Mr Bercow for a peerage himself, which is customary of a Government after a Speaker’s retirement. Dawn Butler, a Labour MP who ran for the deputy leadership of her party, said Mr Johnson’s refusal to nominate Mr Bercow was in itself a “form of bullying”. After the commission advised against Labour’s nomination, Downing Street offered Mr Corbyn the option of replacing his nominees last month, allowing him to choose “antiwar” activists instead, the Sunday Times reported. Mr Corbyn is thought to have declined that offer after some consideration. The House of Lords Appointment commission, which does not comment on individual cases, said: “Our guidelines make clear that an individual must be in good standing in general and with the public regulatory authorities in particular.”

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In cities across the country, protests turned violent as local authorities called for calm.

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Thousands of protesters on marched through the streets of the Fairfax district, expressing outrage over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

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One's right to attend church ends at the tip of another person's nose. People who flout social distancing rules by going to church should quarantine.

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"Hey guys, just get out of the street. Just be safe," someone could be heard saying in the video. It's unclear if there were any injuries.

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A spokesperson for North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said Trump insists on a "full convention arena with no face coverings and no social distancing."

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Kentucky’s governor on Saturday called in the National Guard to “help keep the peace” in Louisville after a second night of protests sparked by the police shooting of a black woman led to widespread damage. Gov. Andy Beshear said he didn’t want to silence protesters but decided to activate the Guard to quell the actions of “outside groups” that are “trying to create violence.” Police said six people were arrested during Friday’s protest, which began peacefully but grew more destructive as the night went on.

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Boente was asked to resign on Friday and two sources familiar with the decision to dismiss him said it came from high levels of the Justice Department rather than directly from FBI Director Christopher Wray.

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Violent clashes between police and civilians took place during protests in Brooklyn on Friday.

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Video captured shows a protester being led away after being arrested among the crowds throwing rocks and bottles at officers.

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A former top Justice Department official told Yahoo News she is deeply worried that President Trump could “delegitimize a lawful election" this November "and not cede power."

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged Friday that the Fed faces a major challenge with the launch in the coming days of a program that will lend to companies other than banks for the first time since the Great Depression. The Fed's Main Street Lending is geared toward medium-sized companies that are too large for the government's small business lending program and too small to sell bonds or stock to the public. Powell said that Main Street will make its first loans in a “few days.”

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David Roddy's tweet about police brutality has garnered over 159,000 retweets. He has been part of the Chattanooga Police Department for 24 years.

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The European Union urged the United States on Saturday to reconsider its decision to cut ties with the World Health Organization over its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. "In this context, we urge the U.S. to reconsider its announced decision," they said a day after President Donald Trump announced the move, accusing the U.N. agency of becoming a puppet of China. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas also condemned the move and pledged intensive talks with Washington on the issue.

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NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley are on a roughly 19-hour journey to the International Space Station. It’s a mission nearly a decade in the making.

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Vanita Gupta, head of the department's Civil Rights Division in the Obama administration, said the Minneapolis Police Department was on her “radar” during her tenure.

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The ongoing riots in Minnesota hurt Senator Amy Klobuchar's prospects for Democratic nomination as vice president, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D., S.C.) said on Friday.Klobuchar declined to bring charges against multiple Minneapolis police officers involved in shootings over the course of her seven-year tenure as attorney for Hennepin County. Minneapolis has seen four days of riots after resident George Floyd, an African-American man, died following his arrest at the hands of white officers."We are all victims sometimes of timing….This is very tough timing for Amy Klobuchar, who I respect so much," Clyburn told reporters. When asked directly if Klobuchar's chances at the nomination were diminished, Clyburn said, "that is the implication, yes,” although he added that Klobuchar "absolutely is qualified" to be vice president.Clyburn is the highest-ranking African American member of Congress, and was instrumental in Biden's victory over Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) in the Democratic primaries. Following Clyburn's endorsement of Biden, the former vice president received overwhelming support from African American primary voters.Biden on Friday denied that his campaign's vice presidential nomination process was affected by the Minnesota riots."What we are talking about today has nothing to do with my running for president or who I pick as a vice president," Biden told MSNBC. "It has to do with an injustice that we all saw take place."Klobuchar has expressed regret for not prosecuting police officers accused of offenses, instead opting to send the cases to grand juries."I think that was wrong now,” Klobuchar said in a Friday interview on MSNBC. “I think it would have been much better if I took the responsibility and looked at the cases and made the decision myself.”

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There is no doubt that airliners were the novel coronavirus pandemic’s main vector. Its first direct breakout into the world (and into the U.S.) was certainly from China, long before its lethality was understood. Epidemiologists have established that the virus was on the move in the central Chinese city of Wuhan by early December at the latest.Unfortunately, Wuhan’s significance in the planning of China's increasingly modernized and organized infrastructure made it the perfect place for an accelerated spread of the pathogen.In the last decade, as China gave priority to the development of travel, internal and external, Wuhan was chosen by both the airline and railway industries to become one of a number of super transportation hubs, built with a speed and efficiency that we can only marvel at.Wuhan sat at the middle of one of the country’s most densely populated and fastest growing regions. As aviation consultants promoted a new Wuhan hub airport as a boost to local industries, as well as to travel, the nation’s railway planners saw and pursued the same prize. They made Wuhan the center of a high-speed rail network, with five main lines radiating from it.From Vietnam to COVID-19, the Arrogance of Ignorance Keeps Killing AmericansRapidly increased mobility was a major goal as the Chinese people became more affluent. A risen middle class acquired the means and the taste for travel—becoming, almost overnight, a welcome new wave of business to hoteliers across the globe.Indeed, China’s demand for air travel nearly quadrupled between 2008 and 2018. By 2019 it was generating 18 percent of the world’s airline passenger traffic, worth $89 billion a year. (The largest region is the European Union and United Kingdom, with 25 percent, worth $169 billion). The eight busiest airports in China together were, in one year, handling far more passengers than the entire population of the United States: a total of more than 482 million. VIRUSES ON THE MOVEThe situation was very different back when the SARS virus appeared in Guangdong  province in southeastern China in late 2002. The explosive growth of Chinese air travel had not yet occurred. That virus reached Hong Kong in February 2003 and Beijing in April. Hong Kong and Singapore were then the principal airline hubs in the region. From Hong Kong the virus jumped to Singapore, Toronto and Hanoi. In the end there were cases in 26 countries, with a total of 774 deaths, but the outbreak was contained without becoming a pandemic. Once the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic was clear, domestic air travel in China was curtailed, but never completely shut down. The lowest point was in mid-February, when 3.7 million seats were available on flights inside China in a week. By May 24 the traffic had significantly rebounded, to more than 11 million seats a week. (Previously, reflecting the nation’s planned growth of air travel, China had predicted that between January and April the number of passengers flying per week would reach 16.8 million.)In the U.S., according to the TSA, the number of passengers flying domestically every week in May averaged around 1.75 million; last year it was 18 million.The Chinese numbers are tracked by the international aviation data bank, OAG. John Grant, an analyst at OAG, told The Daily Beast: “Domestic demand and capacity is recovering ahead of international capacity around the world. China is in many ways ahead of other markets. Its airlines are fortunate to have such a large domestic market to serve.”Fortunate indeed.Around 40 airlines operate in China. They are regulated by the Civil Aviation Administration of China, the CAAC, and their major shareholder is the state-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. This top-down control gives the Chinese government a far tighter grip on the operations of commercial aviation than is possible in any other country because the CAAC has direct control of the airports, airlines and the allocation of routes. That power will be decisive now, not only in deciding how fast domestic Chinese air travel recovers, but how fast foreign airlines will be allowed to return to China. And the outcome of these decisions will inevitably be influenced by the increased escalation of rhetoric and threats between China and the U.S. In fact, China is ideally poised to exploit strategically the situation created by the pandemic. FROM CRISIS, OPPORTUNITYSpecifically, China now sits like a great octopus straddling the air routes of the Asia Pacific region, giving it an entirely new level of influence on how the future of air travel develops, not only in this region but beyond it.That will inevitably impact the three major U.S. airlines, United, American and Delta, that have built very profitable routes into the Chinese market. They suspended all their Chinese flights in February and will have to build them again from scratch.How fast they can do that will be decided by the Chinese aviation authorities, who don’t have to be guided, as the Americans are, by relatively short term market forces. The Chinese can give the green light for their own airlines to start building business again in the Asia Pacific region while restricting the access of U.S. airlines to China, favoring—for example—their national “champions” like China Southern Airlines, already Asia’s largest airline.And they are nimble. Once they saw that the pandemic had created a huge new demand for air cargo, particularly for their own medical products, the authorities decided to begin building a Chinese equivalent of Fedex, combining more sophisticated ground distribution with a greatly expanded worldwide air cargo fleet.OAG’s Grant says: “International capacity remains tightly managed in China. Every market in Asia needs Chinese services. Markets in Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore all have a high focus on China.” All of this coincides with an idea first floated by analysts at The Economist, to identify regional “bubbles” where the principal destination countries have dealt well with the virus. (For example, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, New Zealand and Australia.) Inside these zones air travel would be allowed to return to greater frequency faster than in areas, such as North America and Europe, that have been in much greater and deadlier disarray.One thing is for sure. The future geography of the international airline network soon will be very different. The basic global route map has remained the same since the beginning of the Jet Age 60 years ago, with a strong bias favoring the western airlines who pioneered it. At that time China was virtually a void on the map. Now it's looking more like the center of the world.With America withdrawing from its world leadership role and into a protectionist trade war, now compounded by China’s repressive actions against Hong Kong, the Chinese overlords have been handed a clear path to drive the future growth and fashion the shape of air travel throughout Asia and the Pacific. Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

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A Falcon 9 rocket with two U.S. astronauts aboard lifted off Saturday en route to the International Space Station. It had been nine years since NASA astronauts had been sent into space.

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The Minneapolis police officer who was filmed kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for several minutes even as he said “I can’t breathe” has previously been the subject of multiple complaints filed to the Minneapolis Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division, it has emerged.Mr Chauvin, who has been fired along with the other three police officers who apprehended Mr Floyd, was reported to the division 18 times. According to a police summary, only two of the complaints were “closed with discipline”.

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Nurses across America have been hailed as heroes. But they've struggled to get paid time off, and have been left wondering how to pay the bills.

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Tensions in the Himalaya have the potential to escalate as they pursue their strategic goals.

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France, Germany and Britain on Saturday criticised a U.S. decision to end sanctions waivers allowing work on Iranian nuclear sites designed to prevent weapons development. "We deeply regret the U.S. decision to end the three waivers," the three European countries said in a joint statement. "These projects, endorsed by U.N. Security Council Resolution 2231, serve the non-proliferation interests of all and provide the international community with assurances of the exclusively peaceful and safe nature of Iranian nuclear activities."

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SpaceX will broadcast live video of its first human mission, called Demo-2, but so will NASA, National Geographic, the Discovery Channel, and more.

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Officers in the US are frequently rehired after termination for misconduct – and it increases the likelihood of abuse and killings by police, experts sayThe four Minneapolis officers involved in the killing of George Floyd were swiftly fired after footage of his death went viral.But that doesn’t mean they’re permanently losing their badges. Officers in the US are frequently rehired after their termination for misconduct, a problem that experts say increases the likelihood of abuse and killings by police.Despite the decision on Tuesday to fire the policeman who knelt on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes, along with three other officers at the scene, it’s uncertain if the officers will face long-term repercussions. On the contrary, some civil rights advocates warn the men could ultimately avoid legal and financial consequences, continue working in other police departments or even win back their positions.That’s how policing works across America, researchers and activists said, and it’s a process that can drag victims’ families through years of court proceedings and media attention, with minimal relief at the end. > The officers are afforded every opportunity to clear their name and regain everything they lost> > Adanté Pointer“The officers are afforded every opportunity to clear their name and regain everything they lost – their reputation, their status and their jobs,” said Adanté Pointer, a California lawyer who represents police brutality victims. “The family has to endure disappointment after disappointment.”Floyd’s death on Monday, now under FBI investigation, was the latest example of a black American dying at the hands of a white police officer.Footage captured Derek Chauvin, an officer, kneeling on top of Floyd, 46, as he lay on the ground shouting “I cannot breathe” and “Don’t kill me!” until he became motionless. Bystanders pleaded for Chauvin to stop. Police were responding to a call of a possible forged check, and authorities on Wednesday identified the other terminated officers as Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J Alexander Kueng.The footage sparked widespread condemnation and massive protests marked by rubber bullets and teargas. Minneapolis’ mayor, Jacob Frey, has said the “officer failed in the most basic human sense”. Floyd’s family has called for murder charges, though in the US prosecution and conviction of officers is rare, since the law gives officers wide latitude to kill, and prosecutors often have close ties with police.Prompt termination is also uncommon – and often doesn’t last. Officers can appeal firings, typically supported by powerful police unions. The outcome is frequently decided by arbiters in secretive hearings. A recent analysis by a local Minnesota paper, the Pioneer Press, found arbiters reversed 46% of police terminations in the last five years. Police chiefs across the US have publicly complained that the process forces them to put officers back on the street after firing them for egregious conduct such as unjustified killings, sexual abuse and lying.When officers are rehired, “it says they have a license to kill”, said Cat Brooks, an activist in Oakland, where transit police killed Oscar Grant in 2009. “If they killed this time, they’ve often killed before or have a history of problematic use of force.” In one Bay Area city with high rates of police violence, there are numerous officers who have been involved in more than one fatal shooting of a civilian. If the fired officers in Minneapolis don’t win their jobs back, “I think they’ll quietly be invited to work in other law enforcement departments”, Brooks predicted. Some police departments also knowingly hire officers who were fired in other jurisdictions, said Roger Goldman, an emeritus law professor at Saint Louis University and expert on police licensing. That’s often because the departments are located in smaller cities with tight budgets and can pay a lower salary to an officer who was terminated. “They are so strapped for cash, so they hire you,” Goldman said. The Cleveland officer who was fired after fatally shooting 12-year-old Tamir Rice in 2014 was hired by a small Ohio village police department four years later. His new employer defended the decision, noting the officer was never charged.The Louisiana officer who killed Alton Sterling in 2016 as he was selling CDs outside a convenience store was eventually fired in 2018. But last year, the city reached a settlement with the officer that retracted the firing and allowed him to resign. “It’s really devastating. You took someone’s life,” Quinyetta McMillon, the mother of Sterling’s son, said in an interview this week. The long process of trying to get justice “impacted us really badly – emotionally, physically, mentally, it was draining”, she said, adding that it was painful to think of the obstacles Floyd’s family will face moving forward, even with the terminations. If fired officers were barred from serving as police, “it would help save a lot of lives”, McMillon said.Sometimes police chiefs unknowingly hire officers with misconduct histories because of laws that allow officers to keep disciplinary records secret. Other times, they aren’t running thorough background checks, or they determine an officer’s record would not be a liability, said Ben Grunwald, a Duke University law professor.In a study Grunwald co-authored last month for the Yale Law Journal, he and another researcher found that an average of roughly 1,100 officers working in Florida each year have previously been fired. They tended to move to agencies with fewer resources and slightly larger communities of color. The fired officers were also twice as likely to be fired a second time compared to officers who have never been fired. The consequences of this rehiring are severe, said L Chris Stewart, a civil rights attorney based in Atlanta. “If you don’t fear losing your job and you know you have all these different immunities that will protect you, you know you will get away with [misconduct].” He said it was hard not to think of this dynamic when watching the video of the Minneapolis killing where the officer ignored Floyd’s cries for help. An attorney for Chauvin did not respond to a request for comment, and the other officers could not be reached. Some advocates have pushed for a publicly accessible national database that documents officers’ disciplinary histories, which could help prevent re-hirings that endanger the public. “You can look up what a doctor has done, what a realtor has done, what you and I have done as members of the public, but you have no way to look into the background of a person with a badge and a gun,” said Pointer.Marc McCoy, whose brother Willie McCoy was killed by police in Vallejo, California last year, said it was hard when the family learned that the officers involved had previously killed other civilians and been the subject of excessive force complaints. “These laws that you think will lead to the officers’ arrest are actually there to protect them,” he said.

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The city of Moscow has issued a revised version of its coronavirus death toll for April after criticism of its initial figures, more than doubling the original tally by using what it said was an alternative counting method. The city initially reported 636 coronavirus-related deaths for April, a figure many times lower than other comparable cities with similar outbreaks. In its revised version, Moscow's Health Department said in a statement that the toll was 1,561 when it included 756 people diagnosed with the coronavirus who died of other causes and 169 people suspected of having the virus despite testing negative.

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Twitter applied the label to the tweets after being questioned by the New York Post over a potential double standard, The Post reports.

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Petal, Mississippi, Mayor Hal Marx tweeted Floyd likely "died of overdose or heart attack" and that Minneapolis police are being "crucified."

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It was one of several incidents in a crackdown in Oromia in 2019, Amnesty International says.

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