Thursday, May 28 top news and coronavirus updates
Hello, welcome to The Daily Moth! It is Thursday, May 28. Here are today’s news briefs.
In Minneapolis, there was a second night of protests over George Floyd, who died after being kneeled in the neck by a police officer for over five minutes on Monday night. Many say it was murder. No police officers have been charged, but all four officers involved have been fired and there are multiple investigations by the FBI and other organizations underway.
Floyd was arrested after he allegedly tried to use counterfeit money to pay for food.
The Minneapolis StarTribune reported that emergency first responders saw Floyd had no pulse and was unresponsive from the time they arrived on the street. They said they tried for an hour to revive Floyd but he was gone. He was 46 years old.
The Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo apologized for the pain, devastation, and trauma. He said most protests were peaceful but that there was a “core group” that was looting and committing criminal acts.
News reports said there were property damage and looting in Minneapolis. News images and videos show several structures on fire and people looting a Target store. The city mayor, Jacob Frey, said he has requested support from police departments out of city and for the state of Minnesota to send help with restoring peace and security.
The family of George Floyd, via their attorney Benjamin Crump, thanked those who “stand for justice” and discouraged looting and violence, saying it would distract from the “strength of our collective voice.” Crump encouraged people to donate to a GoFundMe set up for George Floyd, which currently has almost $900,000 from about 40,000 donors.
Former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick has gone viral in an internet meme that shows a side-by-side photo of him kneeling during a NFL game to protest police brutality with an image of the white Minneapolis police officer kneeling on George Floyd’s neck with a caption that says, “This… Is Why.” NBA star LeBron James shared the image and said “Do you understand?!”
Kaepernick posted on social media a response to the protests by saying, “We have a right to fight back!”
The white police officer seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck is Derek Chauvin. There were pictures circulating online that said Chauvin was seen embracing President Donald Trump at a 2019 rally in Minneapolis. According to Fox 45 news, it is not the same person. The person hugging Trump is a president of a police federation in Bloomington.
CNN reported that Chauvin had 18 prior complaints against him that was filed with Minneapolis Police Department’s Internal Affairs and was disciplined two times with a letter of reprimand.
The White House said President Trump was very upset when he saw the George Floyd video. Trump tweeted that he wants the federal investigation to be expedited.
A pawn store owner in Minneapolis, John Rieple, was arrested charged with murder after he allegedly shot and killed a man near his store last night during protests. His store was looted and it was possible that the owner shot someone he thought was stealing things. There is a video that shows police officers performing CPR on a male that is lying motionless on the street near the pawn store.
In separate news, The New York Times reported that the FBI would investigate the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old black woman who worked as an EMT in Louisville, Kentucky. She died on March 13 after three white police officers raided her apartment on a “no-knock warrant” as a part of a drug investigation. Taylor lived with a boyfriend that was one of the suspects in the investigation. They were sleeping together and the boyfriend had a firearm. When the officers barged in, the boyfriend shot at them, hitting an officer in the leg. It is said that the boyfriend didn’t know the men were police officers and thought they were intruders. The officers returned fire, killing Taylor. She was shot eight times. Taylor’s family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the three officers.
[Sponsored Video from Convo: https://bit.ly/2RyMogR ]
Now, here are coronavirus updates.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order that allows business owners to not allow customers without masks to come inside. This is similar to “no shirt or shoes, no service” rules. Store owners already have the right to do this, but the executive order “backs” them up.
An additional 2.1 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week. That brings up the total of Americans who lost their job due to the coronavirus shutdowns to 41 million since mid-March.
A police officer in Kaplan, Louisiana was fired after he wrote a comment on Facebook that it was unfortunate that the coronavirus did not kill more black people. His name is Steven Aucoin. What happened? He replied to a comment on a live video by someone who said “the virus was created to kill all the BLACKS” by saying, “Well it didn’t work, how unfortunate.” The Kaplan Police Department said they terminated Aucoin and that the department would like to apologize.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a warning today that Covid-19 antibody tests — to see if an individual has a substance in their blood that would identify and attach the virus — could be wrong half of the time and should not be used to determine who can be allowed to go back in schools or in the workplace.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va) said he and his wife tested positive for Covid-19 antibodies. That means he was once infected with the coronavirus. He is the second senator to become infected after Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).
President Trump signed an executive order that would put more legal liability on social media companies on what users post on their platforms and to review how the companies “police” users’ content. President Trump has often accused Twitter and other social media companies of being biased against conservative voices. Why now? Twitter put an official “fact check” to say that Trump’s tweet that mail-in ballots were subject to fraud was questionable. A fact check was slapped on the tweet, angering Trump. Now there’s an executive order to put more oversight on Twitter and other companies. There is now a debate on whether Trump has authority to do this and a counter-challenge is likely.
That is all the top news briefs today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light!
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/george-floyd-protest-updates-05-28-20/index.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8365493/Minneapolis-Mayor-says-George-Floyd-alive-white.html
https://twitter.com/AttorneyCrump
https://www.gofundme.com/f/georgefloyd
https://heavy.com/news/2020/05/john-rieple/
https://hudsonvalleypost.com/new-york-stores-can-ban-customers-if-not-wearing-masks/
https://apnews.com/85d596c01ff1132bd9f73724bd0fb1d7
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/louisiana-cop-fired-saying-unfortunate-more-black-people-didn-t-n1215451