AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT
Nation's streets calmest in days, protests largely peaceful
WASHINGTON (AP) — Protests were largely peaceful and the nation's streets were calmer than they have been in days since the killing of George Floyd set off demonstrations that at times brought violence and destruction along with pleas to stop police brutality and injustice against African Americans.
There were scattered reports of looting in New York City overnight, and as of Wednesday morning there had been over 9,000 arrests nationwide since the unrest began following Floyd's death May 25 in Minneapolis. But there was a marked quiet compared with the unrest of the past few nights, which included fires and shootings in some cities.
The calmer night came as many cities intensified their curfews, with authorities in New York and Washington ordering people off streets while it was still daylight.
A block away from the White House, thousands of demonstrators massed following a crackdown a day earlier when officers on foot and horseback aggressively drove peaceful protesters away from Lafayette Park, clearing the way for President Donald Trump to do a photo op at nearby St. John’s Church. Tuesday's protesters faced law enforcement personnel who stood behind a black chain-link fence that was put up overnight to block access to the park.
“Last night pushed me way over the edge,” said Jessica DeMaio, 40, of Washington, who attended a Floyd protest Tuesday for the first time. “Being here is better than being at home feeling helpless.”
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The Latest: S Africa: US police should use maximum restraint
The Latest on the May 25 death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a handcuffed black man who pleaded for air as a white police officer pressed a knee on his neck:
TOP OF THE HOUR:
— South Africa urges US police to use maximum restraint
— Iran's leader blasts US for ignoring human rights
— Pope says world cannot turn “a blind eye to racism."
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The American story, splintered, and those vying to tell it
What does the United States of America mean?
Perhaps it’s Storyline No. 1: Americans are part of an epic tale of equality, of optimism and trajectory, a steady path toward prosperity that includes everyone from the melting pot working together to form a more perfect union. Its best days are still ahead.
Maybe it’s Storyline No. 2: The United States was brutal, unfair from the get-go, colonized by quarreling white European factions that shared little but a tendency to overrun indigenous cultures and hold human beings as property. Its best days, if there really were any, are receding.
Or is it somewhere in between: countless shades of gray — infinite competing and overlapping visions of America, including many from those whose stories have been muzzled for a long time.
The hard times that have befallen this nation in 2020 — a deadly pandemic, millions unemployed, political warfare, the upheaval after George Floyd’s death — have revealed an increasingly evident truth: The storylines that have long held the nation together are coming apart.
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With wins in 7 states and DC, Biden closes in on nomination
Joe Biden is on the cusp of formally securing the Democratic presidential nomination after winning hundreds more delegates in primary contests that tested the nation's ability to run elections while balancing a pandemic and sweeping social unrest.
Biden could lock down the nomination within the next week as West Virginia and Georgia hold primaries.
On Tuesday, voters across America were forced to navigate curfews, health concerns and National Guard troops — waiting in line hours after polls closed in some cases — after election officials dramatically reduced the number of in-person voting sites to minimize the spread of the coronavirus outbreak.
Biden and President Donald Trump easily swept their respective primary contests that ranged from Maryland to Montana and featured the night’s biggest prize: Pennsylvania. The two men are certain to face each other on the presidential ballot in November, yet party rules require them first to accumulate a majority of delegates in the monthslong state-by-state primary season.
Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination in March.
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Iowa voters oust Rep. King, shunned for insensitive remarks
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republicans in northwest Iowa ousted Rep. Steve King in Tuesday’s primary, deciding they’ve had enough of the conservative lightning rod known for making incendiary comments about immigrants and white supremacy throughout his nearly two decades in Congress.
The nine-term congressman, shunned by his party leadership in Washington and many of his longtime supporters at home, lost to well-funded state Sen. Randy Feenstra in a five-way GOP primary. The challengers argued that King’s loss of clout, even more than his continuous string of provocative and racially-charged statements, was reason enough for turning on him.
“I said from day one that Iowans deserve a proven, effective conservative leader that will deliver results and I have done that in the Iowa Senate, being in the Iowa Legislature for the last 12 years, and I promise you I will deliver results in Congress," Feenstra said during a Facebook Live appearance with his family behind him.
Iowa Democrats also chose a challenger for Republican freshman Sen. Joni Ernst in a race earlier thought to heavily favor Ernst until her approval shrank over the past year. Des Moines businesswoman Theresa Greenfield, who raised the most money and garnered the widest cross-section of the Iowa Democratic coalition of elected officials and labor unions, won the nomination over three others.
But the focus was on the 4th District primary featuring King, the lone Republican in Iowa’s U.S. House delegation.
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'Dangerous': Around world, police chokeholds scrutinized
LE PECQ, France (AP) — Three days after George Floyd died with a Minneapolis police officer choking off his air, another black man writhed on the tarmac of a street in Paris as a police officer pressed a knee to his neck during an arrest.
Immobilization techniques where officers apply pressure with their knees on prone suspects are used in policing around the world and have long drawn criticism. One reason why Floyd's death is sparking anger and touching nerves globally is that such techniques have been blamed for asphyxiations and other deaths in police custody beyond American shores, often involving non-white suspects.
“We cannot say that the American situation is foreign to us,” said French lawmaker Francois Ruffin, who has pushed for a ban on the police use of face-down holds that are implicated in multiple deaths in France, a parliamentary effort put on hold by the coronavirus pandemic.
The muscular arrest on May 28 in Paris of a black man who was momentarily immobilized face-up with an officer's knee and upper shin pressing down on his jaw, neck and upper chest is among those that have drawn angry comparisons with the killing of Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis.
The Paris arrest was filmed by bystanders and widely shared and viewed online. Police said the man was driving under the influence of drugs and alcohol and without a license and that he resisted arrest and insulted officers. His case was turned over to prosecutors.
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Protests in top 25 virus hot spots ignite fears of contagion
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.
Many of the protests broke out in places where the virus is still circulating widely in the population. In fact, an Associated Press review found that demonstrations have taken place in every one of the 25 U.S. communities with the highest concentrations of new cases. Some have seen major protests over multiple days, including Minneapolis-St. Paul, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.
The protests have come just as communities across the nation loosen restrictions on businesses and public life that have helped slow the spread of the virus, deepening concern that the two factors taken together could create a national resurgence in cases.
“As a nation, we have to be concerned about a rebound,” Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser warned Sunday after days of protests rocked the nation’s capital. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo bemoaned the crowds, saying that hundreds could potentially have been infected, undoing months of social distancing.
A fresh outbreak in the places where protesters gathered could lead to reinstituting shutdowns.
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A year later, Sudanese raped in crackdown wait for justice
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — Two or three times a week, Mayada goes to visit her baby daughter at the foster home. Sometimes, she breastfeeds her if she has milk, or she just sits and lulls the 3-month-old to sleep.
She left Marwa at the home because she’s too poor and ill to care for her, she said. Not because she doesn’t love her — not because the little girl is a legacy of a horrific day a year ago in the streets of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.
“Sometimes I feel like I love her more than my other children,” said the 22-year-old. “She has no guilt. It’s me who feels guilty.”
Mayada was among dozens of women raped by Sudanese security forces over the course of a few hours on June 3, 2019. In a rampage that day, fighters from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and other troops tore apart a sit-in camp in Khartoum where protesters had been demanding for weeks that the military give up power. At least 87 people were killed, with activists putting the number at more than 120.
A military-backed prosecutor said no rapes or sexual assaults took place during the violence. But over the past year, activists have been documenting what they say was a campaign of rapes — ordered by the military’s leadership to crush the pro-democracy movement.
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Cyclone lashes India's business capital, 100,000 evacuated
MUMBAI, India (AP) — A cyclone made landfall Wednesday south of India's financial capital of Mumbai, with storm surge threatening to flood beaches and low-lying slums as city authorities struggle to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
Live TV coverage showed inky black clouds framing the sea on India’s western coastline. Trees swayed wildly, as the rain pounded the coastal towns and villages of the central state of Maharashtra.
In the state capital Mumbai, the home of Bollywood, India's largest stock exchange and more than 18 million residents, high winds whipped skyscrapers and ripped apart shanty houses near the beach.
Mumbai hasn’t been hit by a cyclone in more than a century, raising concern about its readiness. In the hours before the storm hit India's shores, drivers and peddlers deserted Mumbai's iconic Marine Drive, fishermen yanked their nets out of the wavy Arabian Sea and police shooed people away from beaches.
As the cyclone wended its way up India's western coast, homes in city slums were boarded up and abandoned, and municipal officials patrolled the streets, using bullhorns to order people to stay inside.
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AP PHOTOS: Croissants and hand gel as Paris cafes reawaken
PARIS (AP) — There are bottles of sanitizer gel in place of the salt and pepper pots, and glaring 1-meter (3-foot) gaps between tables.
But in Parisian restaurants and cafes, the mood is sunny.
Locals are savoring their cafe au lait and croissants at the Left Bank’s famed Cafe de Flore, or on the cobbled streets of the ancient Le Marais, for the first time in almost three months.
It’s a far cry from the depressing sight of shuttered eateries, chairs piled up blocking the windows and doors, and empty sidewalks. Menus collected dust in windows as Parisians stayed home, sucking the lifeblood from the cafes that epitomize the city's lifestyle.
Gone was the morning ritual of stopping by the corner cafe for a shot of espresso, the midday three-course meal, the after-work aperitif with friends or lovers at an intimate bistro.