Just moments after the jury had exited the courtroom on Monday to begin deliberations in the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer charged in the death of George Floyd, Chauvin's defense attorney pushed for a mistrial over its coverage. “Now that we have U.S. representatives threatening acts of violence in relation to the specifics of this specific case, it's mind-boggling to me,” Eric Nelson, Chauvin's attorney, said to the judge. “Well, I'll give you that Congresswoman Waters may have given you something on appeal that may result in this whole trial being overturned,” Judge Peter Cahill replied.
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -Pakistan's government will seek a vote in parliament on Tuesday on whether to expel the French ambassador after violent anti-France protests by Islamists demanding action over cartoons depicting Prophet Mohammad, the interior minister said. Prime Minister Imran Khan warned his nation in a televised address late on Monday that Pakistan risked paying a price if it expelled the French envoy, as half the country's exports are sold to the European Union. Relations between Paris and Islamabad became more strained after President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute late last year to a French teacher who was beheaded by a man of Chechen origin for showing cartoons depicting the Prophet in a class on freedom of speech.
The judge overseeing the trial of a former Minneapolis police officer in the death of George Floyd on Monday called recent comments by U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters “abhorrent," saying they could lead to a verdict being appealed and overturned. Waters, a California Democrat, had joined protesters on Saturday outside the police department of a Minneapolis suburb where a police officer fatally shot a Black motorist earlier this month. Waters, who is Black, told the crowd she wanted to see a murder conviction against Derek Chauvin for Floyd's death.
India is reeling under a severe second wave of Covid-19 and many states are struggling to cope with the rising numbers. Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, is among the worst affected in the country and its people are suffering even as authorities insist the situation is under control, reports the BBC's Geeta Pandey. Kanwal Jeet Singh's 58-year-old father Niranjan Pal Singh died on Friday in an ambulance while being ferried from one hospital to another.
Southeast Asian countries will discuss the crisis in Myanmar at a summit in Jakarta on Saturday, the ASEAN bloc's secretariat said on Tuesday, but Thailand's prime minister said several will be represented only by their foreign ministers. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said he would not be attending and that Thailand would be represented by Deputy Prime Minister Don Pramudwinai, who is also foreign minister. "Some other countries will also send their foreign ministers," Prayuth, a former army chief who led a coup in Thailand in 2014, told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting.
A state House committee report released Monday called for a new Missouri lawmaker's ouster over allegations that he physically and sexually abused his children years ago. The Missouri House Ethics Committee found the claims against Lee's Summit Republican Rep. Rick Roeber credible, according to the report. Several of his children told investigators that he also frequently beat them with a belt, choked them and once drowned a litter of puppies.
The judge in the Chauvin trial stated Monday that inflammatory remarks by Representative Maxine Waters could lead to the trial being “overturned” on appeal. Waters had called for demonstrators to “get more confrontational” and protest in the streets if no guilty verdict was reached in the case. Waters delivered the comments over the weekend ahead of closing arguments in the high-profile case against former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who's been charged with the murder of George Floyd.
Officials in Indianapolis have released the names of the eight people who were killed when a gunman opened fire at a FedEx warehouse on Thursday night. Among the victims were four members of the local Sikh community - including a mother, a father and two grandmothers. Other victims include two 19-year-olds, a university graduate and a father.
Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday called for more equitable management of global affairs and, in an implicit rejection of U.S. dominance, said governments shouldn't impose rules on others. Xi's speech at an economic forum comes amid rising tension with China's neighbors and Washington over its strategic ambitions and demands for a bigger role in making trade and other rules. Without mentioning the United States, Xi criticized “unilateralism of individual countries” and warned against decoupling, a reference to fears U.S.-Chinese tension over technology and security will split industries and markets into separate, less productive spheres with incompatible standards.
A teenage boy suspected in a shooting at a Nebraska mall that left one man dead and a woman injured was arrested Sunday on a murder warrant, police said.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said on Monday he was prepared to send his military ships in the South China Sea to "stake a claim" over oil and mineral resources in the disputed part of the strategic waterway. With some critics complaining Duterte had gone soft by refusing to push Beijing to comply with an arbitration ruling, he said the public can be assured he would assert the country's claims to resources like oil and minerals in the South China Sea. Duterte has sought to build an alliance with China and has been reluctant to confront its leadership, having been promised billions of dollars of loans and investments, much of which have yet to materialise, frustrating nationalists.
Dallas police officers fatally shot a man Monday evening in north Dallas after he pulled a replica handgun, authorities said. Police responded to a call about a carjacking in the Rolling Hills area in which a caller said the perpetrator was armed with a handgun around 4 p.m. Officers arrived and confronted a man who pulled what appeared to be a handgun, police said.
House minority leader Kevin McCarthy plans to introduce his own resolution to censure Maxine Waters. McCarthy announced his decision after Marjorie Taylor Greene said she wanted to "expel" Waters for "inciting Black Lives Matter terrorism." Waters has maintained that she did not encourage violence when she spoke to protesters near Brooklyn Center, Minneapolis.
Two men were killed after a Tesla car crashed into a tree and caught fire in Texas, and police believe there was nobody present in the driver's seat at the time of the accident. The 2019 Tesla Model S was travelling at a high speed when it failed to negotiate a curve on a winding road. The victims, both in their 50s, were found in the front passenger seat and in the back of the vehicle.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Monday he will ask U.S. President Joe Biden to give work visas to Mexican farmers who participate in a government tree-planting program. López Obrador touted the program as a way to help the United States regulate migration. The United States “is looking for alternatives because migration is out of control,” López Obrador said.
Israel has registered eight cases of a coronavirus variant first identified in India and believes that the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is at least partially effective against it, an Israeli health official said on Tuesday. An initial seven cases of the Indian variant were detected in Israel last week among people arriving from abroad and who have since undergone preliminary testing, the Health Ministry said. "The impression is that the Pfizer vaccine has efficacy against it, albeit a reduced efficacy," the ministry's director-general, Hezi Levy, told Kan public radio, saying the number of cases of the variant in Israel now stood at eight.
Defense lawyers insisted Ghislaine Maxwell is “no monster” as they asked an appeals court Monday for her release on bail so she can better prepare for trial on charges she procured girls for Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse. The lawyers told the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the British socialite has not been given an adequate opportunity to prove that she would not flee if she was allowed to await trial at home under 24-hour armed guard and with collateral posted to support a $28.5 million bail. The attorneys have thrice failed to convince a Manhattan federal judge to release their 59-year-old client.
Boris Johnson will today host a roundtable with football's governing bodies the FA and the Premier League, as well as fans' representatives, as he looks to block plans for the European Super League - as a Cabinet minister warned could include new laws. Gavin Williamson, the Culture Secretary, told Sky News the Prime Minister would use the meeting to "outline his clear view that this is a super league that must be stopped", said it was "not right, and not fair". While Mr Johnson would initially look to "find a solution within the football family", the Government "reserves its position to take any action required, whether that be legislation or sanctions to protect football interests in this country," he added.
The government is compensating farmers, but Mr Chuang says a lot of landowners take the subsidies instead, and farmers can't object for fear they will not be able to lease the land. Even if they get the money, they risk hurting their brand and losing clientele they've worked hard to build by not growing their products. He points out the government has been encouraging young people to go into farming as Taiwan's farmers are ageing, but young farmers are now left with no way to farm after they've invested in equipment and land.
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. As high schools and elementary schools across the country gradually re-open for full-time classes, Asian American families are wrestling with whether to send their children back out into the world at a time when anti-Asian hostility and violence is on the rise.
A California woman has been charged with killing her three young children in Los Angeles earlier this month, prosecutors said Monday. Liliana Carrillo, 30, is charged with three counts of murder, with an allegation of using a knife as a deadly and dangerous weapon against her youngest child, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said Monday in a news release. Carrillo admitted to drowning her 3-year-old daughter Joanna, her 2-year-old son Terry and 6-month-old daughter Sierra during a jailhouse interview with KGET-TV.
Derek Chauvin's defense cited comments from US Rep. Maxine Waters in a motion for a mistrial. Over the weekend, Waters called on protesters to stay on the streets if there's no guilty verdict. Judge Peter Cahill denied the motion but said Waters may have given the defense a successful appeal.
An upstate New York couple may have finally solved the mystery of who's been tossing used coffee cups in their front yard for nearly three years.
Florida Highway Patrol want the public's help in restoring the latter. On Monday, FHP released a postmortem artist's reconstruction from the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's Office of the Black man, who is around five-eight and 145 pounds. The crash report says a witness saw the unidentified man jumped in front of a 2019 Ford Mustang around 9:30 p.m. Jan. 24 at about 17015 Okeechobee Road, U.S. 27.
Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene are presenting top House Republicans with a test of how to handle a new breed of Trump-era, social media-savvy firebrands. Gaetz, a third-term Floridian, and Greene, a Georgia freshman, have attracted more public attention lately than most junior members of Congress. Much of it hasn't been positive.
“High-speed rail is bold and attention-grabbing, but the scale of the project makes it near impossible.”
“While a long, slow train ride across the country can be a great thing, the US needs real high-speed rail too.”
“Liberals are right that America has a car problem — but it's commutes, not road trips, that suck.”
“Investments into a high-speed rail system wouldn’t just improve the railroads — automobile traffic could also see some relief.”
“Big cities that are reasonably close together is pretty much a prerequisite for high-speed rail.”