April 13, 2021 4:19 am
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – The defense for a former Minneapolis police officer charged in George Floyd’s death started presenting its case on Tuesday. It follows 11 days of a prosecution narrative that combined wrenching video with clinical analysis by medical and use-of-force experts to condemn Derek Chauvin’s actions. Prosecutors called their final witnesses Monday, leaving only some administrative matters before they rested their case. Now that the defense has taken over, Chauvin attorney Eric Nelson has brought his own experts in to testify that it was Floyd’s drug use and bad heart, not Chauvin’s actions, that killed him. A use-of-force expert says the former officer was justified in pinning George Floyd to the ground because of his frantic resistance. The witness, Barry Brodd, testified for the defense, contradicting a parade of authorities from both inside and outside the Minneapolis police force.
April 13, 2021 4:18 am
DETROIT (AP) – The U.S. government’s highway safety agency is investigating complaints that the airbags may not inflate in a crash on thousands of General Motors vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the probe covers nearly 750,000 Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC vehicles from 2020 and 2021. Most are full-size pickup trucks and SUVs. The agency says it has 15 complaints of airbag malfunctions, including six crashes with eight reported injuries. It says that GM issued a service bulletin to dealers about the problem in March, but there hasn’t been a recall. The agency says it opened the investigation to figure out how large the problem is and to assess safety issues
April 13, 2021 4:15 am
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden wants Congress to know he’s sincere about cutting a deal on infrastructure. But Republican lawmakers have deep-seated doubts about the scope of his proposed package, its tax hikes and Biden’s premise that this is an inflection point for the U.S. as a world power. Biden met Monday afternoon with a bipartisan group of lawmakers and insisted the Oval Office gathering was not “window dressing.” One of the core disputes is over what counts as infrastructure in his $2.3 trillion proposal. And a fundamental disagreement has emerged about whether the United States is losing its status atop the global economy because of its deteriorating infrastructure.
April 13, 2021 4:14 am
BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. (AP) – A white Minnesota police officer who fatally shot a Black man during a traffic stop in a Minneapolis suburb and the city’s chief of police resigned Tuesday. Officer Kim Potter and Police Chief Tim Gannon both resigned two days after the death of 20-year-old Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center. Potter was a 26-year veteran. She had been on administrative leave following Sunday’s shooting. Gannon has said he believed Potter mistakenly grabbed her gun when she was going for her Taser. She can be heard on her body camera video shouting “Taser! Taser!”
April 12, 2021 5:18 pm
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – Authorities say a confrontation in a Tennessee high school that involved police officers responding to a report of a possible armed man left one person dead and the officer wounded. Police say no other people were killed or wounded in Monday afternoon’s shooting and that the scene has been secured at at the Austin-East Magnet High School in Knoxville. Knoxville Police posted on Facebook that officers responded to reports of a male subject who was possibly armed at the school. They said shots rang out as officers approached the person. The school was the subject of media reports in February after three students were shot to death over a three-week span. (Photo: CNN)
April 12, 2021 3:30 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. government’s budget deficit surged to an all-time high of $1.7 trillion for the first six months of this budget year. That’s nearly double the previous record, as another round of economic-support checks added billions of dollars to spending last month. In its monthly budget report, the Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit for the first half of the budget year – from October through March – was up from a deficit of $743.5 billion for the same period a year ago. The budget report showed that the deficit for just March totaled $659.6 billion, the third-highest monthly deficit.
April 12, 2021 9:47 am
VILLA RICA, Ga. (AP) – Georgia authorities say three officers were injured when the passenger of a car shot them during a police chase that ended with one suspect killed and the other arrested. The Carroll County sheriff said it began when a Georgia Highway Patrol trooper stopped a car for speeding along Interstate 20. Authorities said the vehicle sped away again and the passenger fired a weapon that stopped the patrol vehicle. Local police officers then joined the chase, which ended with officers wounded, one suspect dead and the other in custody.
April 12, 2021 4:21 am
BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. (AP) – The police chief in a Minneapolis suburb where a Black man was fatally shot during a traffic stop says he believes the officer who fired intended to use a Taser, not a handgun. Police Chief Tim Gannon described the shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright as “an accidental discharge.” Wright died Sunday in Brooklyn Center, a city of about 30,000 people on the northwest border of Minneapolis. His death sparked violent protests, with officers in riot gear clashing with demonstrators into Monday morning. The Minneapolis area was already on edge because of the trial of the first of four police officers charged in George Floyd’s death.
April 12, 2021 4:16 am
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) – A Virginia town has announced that one of two police officers accused of pepper-spraying and pointing their guns at a Black Army officer during a traffic stop has since been fired. The announcement from the town of Windsor on Sunday night came hours after the governor called for an independent investigation into the December 2020 encounter. U.S. Army second lieutenant Caron Nazario, who is Black and Latino, filed a lawsuit this month against two Windsor officers, accusing them of drawing their guns, pointing them at him, pepper-spraying him and knocking him down among other actions. Windsor officials said an internal investigation determined policy wasn’t followed and Officer Joe Gutierrez has since been fired.
April 12, 2021 4:14 am
(AP) – A number of top executives and corporate leaders gathered online this weekend to discuss what to do in response to changes to some state voting laws, according to multiple news reports. The Washington Post reported that more than 100 leaders, including executives from major airlines, retailers and manufacturers – plus at least one NFL owner – talked about potential ways to show they opposed the legislation, which has already been signed into law in Georgia and is being considered elsewhere. While many companies feel a responsibility to speak out, The Wall Street Journal reported that some remain reticent about getting involved in the politically charged issue.
