Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from NorthStarNewsToday.com
(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Several leading medical organizations have said racism is a public health issue and that police brutality must stop.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians made their comments in the wake of the May 25 murder of Floyd George, who was murdered while in the custody of the Minneapolis, Minnesota, police.
The American Academy of Pediatrics posted on its Twitter feed Sunday night linking the impact of racism on child and adolescent health.
“AAP condemns violence, especially when perpetrated by authorities, and calls for a deep examination of how to improve the role of policing,” the academy tweeted. Systemic violence requires a systemic response.”
The American Medical Association also released a joint statement from Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, its board chair, and Dr. Patrice Harris, the organization’s president.
“AMA policy recognizes that physical or verbal violence between law enforcement officers and the public, particularly among black and brown communities where these incidents are more prevalent and pervasive, is a critical determinant of health and supports research into public health consequences of these violent interactions,” Harris and Ehrenfeld said in a joint statement.
The two added: “Racism as a driver of health equity is particularly evident in findings from a 2018 study showing that law enforcement-involved deaths of unarmed black individuals were associated with adverse mental health among black American adults—a spillover effect on the population, regardless of whether the individual affected had a personal relationship with the victim or the incidents was experience vicariously.”
The American College of Physicians wrote that it is gravely concerned about discrimination and violence against communities of color, whether by the police or private individuals.”
Several studies suggest that racism or discrimination raise the risk of emotional and physical health problems, including depression, cardiovascular disease, hypertension —more than 40 percent of black adults have high blood pressure—and even death.
Floyd suffered from coronary artery disease and hypertensive heart disease, according to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner.
Category: Newswire
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Newswire: Racism is a Public Health Issue
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Newswire : Congress moves George Floyd Justice in Policing Act measure forward
By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent
U. S. Capitol
The House Judiciary Committee has introduced the George Floyd Justice In Policing Act, the first-ever bold, comprehensive approach to hold police accountable, end racial profiling, change the law enforcement culture, empower communities, and build trust between law enforcement and minority communities by addressing systemic racism and bias.
In a conference call with the Black Press of America just before voting on the measure, members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) said the bill should help save lives.
“This is a real historic day here in the capital as last week we introduced the Justice in Policing Act, and today we amend the bill,” CBC Chair Karen Bass (D-Calif.) said during the conference call.
“We call it the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and I call it historic because this is the first time in many years that Congress has taken up a bill dealing with policing and I’m sure it is the first time that Congress has introduced such a bold transformative piece of legislation,” Bass stated.
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act would establish a national standard for the operation of police departments and mandate data collection on police encounters.
If it becomes law, the bill would reprogram existing funds to invest in transformative community-based policing programs and streamline federal law to prosecute excessive force and establish independent prosecutors for police investigations. It would also eliminate no-knock warrants and ban chokeholds.
“The idea that a chokehold is legal in one city and not the other, the idea that no-knock warrants are okay in one jurisdiction and not in another is very important. That must end,” Bass proclaimed.
A bill crafted by Republican South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, and an executive order issued by President Donald Trump, ask only for studies to be done on matters like no-knock warrants and chokehold bans, and have little bite, Bass and her CBC colleagues noted.
“In essence, their bills take the teeth out of this bill. This is not the time for superficial action,” Bass warned. “This is the time for us to demonstrate our ability to address the people who are peacefully in the street every day with comprehensive legislation.”
The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020:
• Prohibits federal, state, and local law enforcement from racial, religious, and discriminatory profiling.
• Mandates training on racial, religious, and discriminatory profiling for all law enforcement.
• Requires law enforcement to collect data on all investigatory activities. saves lives by banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants.
• Bans chokeholds and carotid holds at the federal level and conditions law enforcement funding for state and local governments banning chokeholds.
• Bans no-knock warrants in drug cases at the federal level and conditions law enforcement funding for state and local governments banning no-knock warrants at the local and state level.
• Requires that deadly force be used only as a last resort and requires officers to employ de-escalation techniques first.
• Changes the standard to evaluate whether law enforcement use of force was justified from whether the force was “reasonable” to whether the force was “necessary.”
• Condition grants on state and local law enforcement agencies’ establishing the same use of force standard.
• Limits military equipment on American streets, requires body cameras.
• Limits the transfer of military-grade equipment to state and local law enforcement.
• Requires federal uniformed police officers to wear body cameras and requires state and local law enforcement to use existing federal funds to ensure the use of police body cameras.
• Requires marked federal police vehicles to have dashboard cameras.
• Hold Police Accountable in Court.
• Makes it easier to prosecute offending officers by amending the federal criminal statute to prosecute police misconduct. The mens rea requirement in 18 U.S.C. Section 242 will be amended from “willfulness” to a “recklessness” standard.
• Enables individuals to recover damages in civil court when law enforcement officers violate their constitutional rights by eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement.
• Improves the use of pattern and practice investigations at the federal level by granting the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division subpoena power and creates a grant program for state attorneys general to develop authority to conduct independent investigations into problematic police departments.
Empower Our Communities to re-imagine Public Safety in an Equitable and Just Way.
This bill reinvests in our communities by supporting critical community-based programs to change the culture of law enforcement and empower our communities to reimagine public safety in an equitable and just way.
It establishes public safety innovation grants for community-based organizations to create local commissions and task forces to help communities to re-imagine and develop concrete, just, and equitable public safety approaches. These local commissions would operate similar to President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing.
• Changes the Culture of Law Enforcement with Training to Build Integrity and Trust.
• Requires the creation of law enforcement accreditation standard recommendations based on President Obama’s Taskforce on 21st Century policing.
• Creates law enforcement development and training programs to develop best practices.
• Studies the impact of laws or rules that allow a law enforcement officer to delay answers to questions posed by investigators of law enforcement misconduct.
• Enhances funding for pattern and practice discrimination investigations and programs managed by the DOJ Community Relations Service.
•Requires the Attorney General to collect data on investigatory actions and detentions by federal law enforcement agencies; the racial distribution of drug charges; the use of deadly force by and against law enforcement officers; as well as traffic and pedestrian stops and detentions.
•Establishes a DOJ task force to coordinate the investigation, prosecution and enforcement efforts of federal, state, and local governments in cases related to law enforcement misconduct.
Improve Transparency by Collecting Data on Police Misconduct and Use-of-Force.
• Creates a nationwide police misconduct registry to prevent problematic officers who are fired or leave one agency, from moving to another jurisdiction without any accountability.
Mandates state and local law enforcement agencies to report use of force data, disaggregated by race, sex, disability, religion, age.
• Make Lynching a Federal Crime.
• Makes it a federal crime to conspire to violate existing federal hate crimes laws. -
Newswire: Trump team attempts to block World Court from investigating possible U. S. war crimes
Ms. Fatou Bensouda, ICC Chief Prosecutor
June 15, 2020 (GIN) – A world court designed to investigate allegations of human rights violations has found itself in the crosshairs of the President of the United States.
A new Trump executive order threatening the court’s operations has been condemned by prominent global institutions and individuals as it appears to give cover to human rights abuses committed in the course of U.S. foreign wars while demanding accountability from foreign countries in similar circumstances.
The International Criminal Court (ICC), for example, has the power to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in north east Nigeria, and by so doing, offers the possibility of justice for Nigerians who suffered abuses by the military fighting Boko Haram in that region.
In March, the ICC ruled that it could also investigate allegations of war crimes in Afghanistan – including any committed by the U.S. – taking a step that outraged the Trump administration.
Param-Preet Singh of the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, praised the decision of the ICC to greenlight an investigation of brutal crimes in Afghanistan, reaffirming the court’s essential role for victims when all other doors to justice are closed.
After years of collecting information on the Afghanistan war, the court’s chief prosecutor, Ms. Fatou Bensouda of The Gambia, said that enough information had been found to prove that U.S. forces “committed acts of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, rape and sexual violence” in Afghanistan in 2003 and 2004, and later in clandestine C.I.A. facilities in Poland, Romania and Lithuania.
She requested permission to open an investigation into claims of war crimes and crimes against humanity attributed to the U.S. military and intelligence personnel, the Taliban and Afghan forces.
The United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan has documented the killings of more than 17,000 civilians by the Taliban since 2009, including nearly 7,000 targeted killings. Yet, last April, a U.N. report found that U.S. and Afghan forces had killed more civilians in the first three months of 2019 than the Taliban did..
Objections by the U.S. to being examined for serious crimes in Afghanistan began with John R. Bolton, then the national security adviser, who denounced the court as “illegitimate.” He said: “We won’t cooperate with the I.C.C. We will provide no assistance to the I.C.C. And we certainly will not join the I.C.C. We will let the I.C.C. die on its own.” He added, “If the court comes after us, we will not sit quietly.”
Similar comments have been made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Shaharzad Akbar, the head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, said the court had made the right decision to procede over U.S. objections. “We will advocate for victims regardless of the group affiliation of the perpetrator — whether U.S. actors, Taliban or Afghan forces,” Ms. Akbar said.
The ICC was established more than 15 years ago to seek justice for victims of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.17, 2020- -
Newswire : NASCAR joins growing list of those taking stand against racial injustice
By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior Correspondent
NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace stands on pit row at Martinsville (Photo: nascar.com)
Since protestors and demonstrators have taken to the streets around the globe in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, many businesses and organizations have issued statements and taken measures to communicate their stand against racial injustice.
On Wednesday, June 10, NASCAR joined that ever-growing list with the announcement that it’s removing the Confederate flag from all of its events.
“The presence of the Confederate flag at NASCAR events runs contrary to our commitment to providing a welcoming and inclusive environment for all fans, our competitors and our industry,” NASCAR officials wrote in a statement.
“Bringing people together around a love for racing and the community that it creates is what makes our fans and sport special. The display of the Confederate flag will be prohibited from all NASCAR events and properties.”
Companies and organizations like the National Basketball Association, Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Ben & Jerry’s, and Nike have also issued statements condemning racial injustice.
However, skeptics say it remains too early to tell if the growing list of businesses will support African American-owned businesses and the continued cry for racial equality.
“NASCAR isn’t a museum. It’s a sport. And on race day, it’s a sport that invests more time and pageantry honoring America than anyone,” writer Dan Wolken wrote in an Op-Ed for USA Today. “The people who insist the Confederate flag is an important part of that pageantry are not amplifying the values inherent to American sports. They’re mocking the long road to progress that has once again arrived at a defining, historic moment,”
While many took to social media to voice their surprise about NASCAR’s decision, one of the sport’s premier drivers and NASCAR’s lone Black competitor joined in to applaud the move.
“I’m just really proud of the efforts of NASCAR for stepping up and wanting to be a part of the change,” Bubba Wallace, who’s No. 43 Chevrolet car has the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag painted over the vehicle, told Good Morning America.
“I know it’s tough, they’re in a tough situation,” Wallace stated. “They’ve been in a tough situation for a long time now, but I think this is the most crucial time and time is of the essence right now in the world that we’re in and the nation that we’re in to create change and create unity and come together and really try to be more inclusive.” -
Newswire : Senator Doug Jones urges President Trump to appoint Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board Members
Doug Jones
BIRMINGHAM – U.S. Senator Doug Jones (D-Ala.) today wrote to President Donald Trump, last week to urge him to appoint members to the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board. While Congress passed Senator Jones’ legislation to establish the board in 2018, and later appropriated $1 million requested by the Trump Administration to implement it, delays continue in the appointment of board members who would carry out the board’s work.
Senator Jones’ bipartisan legislation, the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act of 2018, required the review, declassification, and release of government records related to unsolved Civil Rights-era criminal cases. To do this work, it established a Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board and required that appointments to the board should be made within 60 days.
“When you signed the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Collection Act of 2018 on January 8, 2019, you helped this country take an important step towards finding truth and reconciliation for families and communities still struggling with the pain of unsolved civil rights crimes,” Senator Jones wrote. “As our country is once again grappling with important questions related to civil rights, I urge you to appoint the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board as expeditiously as possible and fulfill the promise of this important legislation.”
Senator Jones, who successfully prosecuted two of the former Klansmen responsible for the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, has long advocated for expanded public access to civil rights cold case records in an effort to uncover the truth. In 2007, he also testified to the House Judiciary Committee in support of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act that established a special initiative in the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate civil rights cold cases. -
Newswire: Black Lives Matter protesters tear down statue of the U.K.’s leading slave trader
Statue of Edward Colson toppled in England and protestor throwing Colson statue in Bristol harbor By Frederick H. Lowe, BlackmansStreet.Today
Black Lives Matter protesters in the United Kingdom pulled the statue of Edward Colston, a 17th century slave trader, off its base in Bristol, England, and rolled it down the street before pushing it into the harbor to a watery grave to loud cheers, according to the BBC. The entire event was captured by photographers.
Protesters in Bristol, a city in South West England, used ropes to pull down the 18- foot tall bronze statue of Colston leaning on his walking stick.
The statue was dedicated in 1895, but for many city residents and others it had been a source of controversy because of his slave-trading past, although streets, buildings and bridges in Bristol are named after Colston who died in 1721. Before he died, he gave his wealth to charities.
Any association with his name is controversial by some. In February 2019, St. Mary Redcliffe and Temple School in Bristol announced that it would be renaming Colston House as Johnson House, after the American mathematician Katherine Johnson, a black woman, who plotted astronaut John Glenn’s successful February 20, 1962, orbit of the Earth.
Colston was an official of the Royal African Company and for a short time as Member of Parliament. In 1680, the company monopolized Britain’s slave trade, selling 80,000 to 100,000 black men, women, and children to businessmen in the Americas in exchange for tobacco, sugar and other goods.
Royal African Company employees branded captured slaves with the initials RAC, using a red-hot branding iron.
Bristol was a key port in the triangular slave trade. In the first side of the slavery triangle, manufactured goods were shipped to West Africa and exchanged for Africans. The enslaved captives were transported across the Atlantic to the Americas in the Middle Passage under brutal conditions.
The third side of the triangle, plantation goods such as sugar, tobacco, rum, rice, cotton, and a few slaves (sold to the aristocracy as house servants) returned across the Atlantic to the United Kingdom.
At the height of the Bristol slave trade from 1700 to 1807, more than 2,000 slave ships carried an estimated 500,000 people from Africa to slavery in the Americas.
After the Colston statute was torn from its base, a protester pressed his knee on Colston’s neck similar to the way former Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin pressed his knee to back of a handcuffed George Floyd’s neck as he lay face down on the ground, killing him.
The removal of Colston’s statute occurred during the second day of demonstrations in Manchester, Wolverhampton, Nottingham, Glasgow, and Edinburgh over Floyd’s murder and in protest of police brutality and racial inequality. -
Newswire: Rayshard Brooks police shooting was homicide, says Medical Examiner
By Frederick H. Lowe, BlackmansStreet.Today
Rayshard Brooks and Protestors in Georgia at State Capitol
The death of Rayshard Brooks, a black man killed by a white police officer in Atlanta on Friday, was a homicide caused by gunshot wounds to the back, the Fulton county medical examiner’s office has said, as the US headed into a fourth week of unrest over police violence.
An autopsy conducted on Sunday showed that Brooks, 27, died from blood loss and organ injuries caused by two gunshot wounds, an investigator for the medical examiner said in a statement. The manner of his death was homicide, the statement said.
Brooks’s death reignited protests in Atlanta after days of worldwide demonstrations against racism and police brutality prompted by the death of George Floyd, an African American, in police custody in Minneapolis on 25 May.
Garrett Rolfe, a six-year veteran of the Atlanta Police Department, who shot a fleeing Rayshard Brooks twice in the back, killing him, had completed de-escalation and cultural-awareness training after which he received a department certificate. However, in 2017, the department reprimanded him with a use of force complaint.
Employees of an Atlanta Wendy’s restaurant called the police and told them Brooks had fallen asleep in his car while stopped in the drive-through lane, causing other motorists to drive around him. Rolfe woke up Brooks. He fell back to sleep before Rolfe woke him up again.
In a video, Brooks is shown holding what appears to be friendly 20-minute conversation with Rolfe, agreeing to park his car and walk home.
What appears to be a cordial exchange turns violent and later deadly when Rolfe and Devin Brosnan, another officer, attempted to handcuff Brooks after claiming he failed a sobriety test.
Brooks wrestled with the two cops, overpowered them, and took one of the officer’s tasers and runs away. They chase him.
During the chase, Brooks turns around and fires the taser. He turns around and continues to run before Rolfe shoots him twice in the back.
The 27 year-old Brooks collapses in the Wendy’s parking lot and dies. The next day, the Fulton County Medical Examiner ruled that his death was a homicide.
Brooks’ death sparked a number of other incidents and anger in the black collective memory about our treatment by police. The Wendy’s restaurant was set on fire. Police are looking for two white women suspects. One of the women was dressed in black.
Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields resigned to take an undisclosed position in the department and Rolfe was fired. Brosnan was placed on administrative duty.
Brooks’ death sparked demonstrations throughout the city and demands for him to be charged with a crime.
On Facebook, one man wrote about the unequal treatment black men receive from the police.
“If the police can take Dylan Roof to Burger King to get something to eat after he murdered nine black parishioners attending Bible Study at Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., why couldn’t they drive Brooks home or get him a Uber?”
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said she would issue orders for the cops to de-escalate situations. Earlier this month, Mayor Bottoms named a “Use of Force Advisory” committee to transform the relationship between law enforcement and Atlanta’s citizens.
The council was scheduled to make initial recommendations in 14 days and to make a more extensive report in no later than 45 days.
During a news conference Monday, Mayor Bottoms said Brooks’ death increased the urgency for the recommendations to be implemented.
Brook’s death follows the May 25th murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. His murder sparked worldwide protests that continue to this day, resulting police shooting being handled with much more urgency in a break from the past. -
Newswire : Snoop Dogg says he will vote for the first time ever
Rapper says he was brainwashed into believing that his criminal record prevented him from voting in elections
By Ny Magee -June 8, 2020
Snoop Dogg
Snoop Dogg has confessed that his criminal record prevented him from voting in the past. But the Hip-Hop star intends to hit the polls for the first time ever come November.
During an appearance on Real 92.3’s Big Boy’s Neighborhood on Thursday, Snoop, who was convicted of a felony in 1990 and 2007, explained that for many years, he was “brainwashed” into thinking that “you couldn’t vote because you had a criminal record,” he said, PEOPLE reports.
“I didn’t know that. My record’s been expunged so now I can vote” the 48-year-old “Gin & Juice” rapper added.
“I ain’t never voted a day in my life, but this year I think I’m going to get out and vote because I can’t stand to see this punk in office one more year,” he said of President Donald Trump and the 2020 race for the White House.
Snoop said if he’s going to encourage his fans and social media followers to vote in the November election, then he better lead by example.
“We got to make a difference, I can’t talk about it and not be about it,” he explained. “I can’t tell you to do it and then not go do it. If I tell you to do something, I done it already.”
Elsewhere in the conversation with Big Boy, the West Coast rapper addressed the protests erupting across the nation over the police killing of George Floyd. He encouraged demonstrators to stay safe amid the ongoing coronavirus crisis.
While he continues to practice social distancing and staying home, Snoop said he will use his social media platforms to support the Black Lives Matter movement amid the civil unrest over race relations in this country. -
Newswire: George Floyd, whose death energized a movement, laid to rest
By: Juan A. Lozano and Nomaan Merchant, Associated Press
George Floyd’s golden casket wheeled into church HOUSTON (AP) — George Floyd was lovingly remembered Tuesday as Big Floyd — a “gentle giant,” a father and brother, athlete and mentor, and now a force for change — at a funeral for the Black man whose death has sparked a global reckoning over police brutality and racial prejudice.
Hundreds of mourners wearing masks against the coronavirus packed a Houston church a little more than two weeks after Floyd was pinned to the pavement by a white Minneapolis police officer who put a knee on his neck for what prosecutors said was 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
Cellphone video of the encounter, including Floyd’s pleas of “I can’t breathe,” ignited protests and scattered violence across the U.S. and around the world, turning the 46-year-old Floyd — a man who in life was little known beyond the public housing project where he was raised in Houston’s Third Ward — into a worldwide symbol of injustice.
“Third Ward, Cuney Homes, that’s where he was born at,” Floyd’s brother, Rodney, told mourners at the Fountain of Praise church. “But everybody is going to remember him around the world. He is going to change the world.”
The funeral capped six days of mourning for Floyd in three cities.
Following the service, Floyd’s body was to be taken by horse-drawn carriage to a cemetery in suburban Pearland, where he was to be laid to rest next to his mother.
“George Floyd was not expendable. This is why we’re here,” Democratic Rep. Al Green of Houston told the crowd. “His crime was that he was born Black. That was his only crime. George Floyd deserved the dignity and respect that we accord all people just because they are children of a common God.”
While the service was private, at least 50 people gathered outside to pay their respects. Some held signs with messages including “Black Lives Matter” and “Together because of George Floyd.”
“There’s a real big change going on, and everybody, especially Black, right now should be a part of that,” said Kersey Biagase, who traveled more than three hours from Port Barre, Louisiana, with his girlfriend, Brandi Pickney. They wore T-shirts printed with Floyd’s name and “I Can’t Breathe.”
Dozens of Floyd’s family members, most dressed in white, were led into the sanctuary by the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights activist.
The mourners also included rapper Trae tha Truth, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo and Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who brought the crowd to its feet when he announced he will sign an executive order banning chokeholds in the city.
“No child should have to ask questions that too many black children have had to ask for generations: Why?” former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic presidential candidate, said in a video eulogy played at the service. “Now is the time for racial justice. That is the answer we must give to our children when they ask why.”
Biden made no mention of politics. But other speakers took swipes at President Donald Trump, who has ignored demands to address racial bias and has called on authorities crack down hard on lawlessness.
“The president talks about bringing in the military, but he did not say one word about 8 minutes and 46 seconds of police murder of George Floyd,” Sharpton said. “He challenged China on human rights. But what about the human right of George Floyd?”
The Rev. William Lawson, a contemporary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said: “Obviously the first thing we have to do is clean out the White House.”
Most of the pews were full, with relatively little space between people.
“So much for social distancing today,” the Rev. Remus Wright told mourners, gently but firmly instructing those attending to wear face fasks.
With the funeral inside the church still underway, hundreds of people lined the route to the cemetery. Many said they had arrived hours ahead to secure a spot.
“We’re out here for a purpose. That purpose is because first of all he’s our brother. Second, we want to see change,” said Marcus Brooks, 47, who set up a tent along the route with other graduates of Jack Yates High School, Floyd’s alma mater. “I don’t want to see any black man, any man, but most definitely not a black man sitting on the ground in the hands of bad police.”
The funeral came a day after about 6,000 people attended a public memorial, also in Houston, waiting for hours under a baking sun to pay their respects to Floyd, whose body lay in an open gold-colored casket. Over the past six days, memorials for Floyd were also held in Minneapolis, where he lived in recent years, and Raeford, North Carolina, near where he was born.
The services have drawn the families of other black victims whose names have become part of the debate over race and justice — among them, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Ahmaud Arbery and Trayvon Martin.
In the past two weeks, amid the furor over Floyd’s death, sweeping and previously unthinkable things have taken place: Confederate statues have been toppled, and many cities are debating overhauling, dismantling or cutting funding for police departments. Authorities in some places have barred police from using chokeholds or are otherwise rethinking policies on the use of force.
Floyd, a bouncer who had lost his job because of the coronavirus outbreak, was seized by police after being accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store.
Four Minneapolis officers were arrested in his death: Derek Chauvin, 44, was charged with second-degree murder. J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao were charged with aiding and abetting. All four could get up to 40 years in prison.
Some of the mostly peaceful demonstrations that erupted after Floyd’s death were marked by bursts of arson, assaults, vandalism and smash-and-grab raids on businesses, with more than 10,000 people arrested. But protests in recent days have been overwhelmingly peaceful.
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Newswire : World food security increasingly at risk due to climate change impact
African farmer with maize crop by BlackmansStreet.Today
Speaking at the launch of a Special Report on Climate Change and Land by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Geneva, experts highlighted how the rise in global temperatures, linked to increasing pressures on fertile soil, risked jeopardizing food security for the planet.
Humans affect more than 70 percent of ice-free land and a quarter is already degraded, noted Valérie Masson-Delmotte, Co-Chair of one of three Working Groups that contributed to the bumper 1,200-page report.
“Today 500 million people live in areas that experience desertification,” she told journalists. “People living in already degraded or desertified areas are increasingly negatively affected by climate change.”
Plant-based food and fuels, key to climate change fight
This soil degradation has a direct impact on the amount of carbon the earth is able to contain, Dr. Masson-Delmotte explained.
Amid recent reports that more than 820 million people are undernourished around the world, Co-chair of another Working Group, Jim Skea, highlighted the fact that up to 30 percent of food is lost or wasted.
In the future, countries should consider all options to tackle loss and waste, thereby reducing the pressure on land and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions, including by growing plant-based, or so-called “bio” fuels, he said.
“Limiting global warming to 1.5 or even two degrees (Celsius) will involve removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and land has a critical role to play in carbon dioxide removal,” Dr. Skea insisted. “Agricultural practices can help build up carbon in soils, but it could also mean using more bio-energy with or without carbon capture and storage and expanding forests.”
Produced by 107 scientists from more than 50 countries across all regions of the world – with more than half of the contributing authors from developing nations – the IPCC report provides a peer-based review of the latest research on land use today.
According to the IPCC report, agriculture, forestry and other land use contribute to around a quarter of greenhouse gas emissions, a fact that policy-makers should consider when considering how they should invest to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change.
“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from all sectors is essential if we want to keep the load two degrees Celsius,” said Debra Roberts, Co-Chair of Working Group II, before cautioning that there were “limits to the scale of energy crops and afforestation that could be used to achieve this goal”.
Reason for hope, if immediate action is taken
The need for immediate action in the face of a warming planet was underlined by another Working Group Co-Chair, Hans-Otto Pörtner, who stressed that there was “no possibility for anybody to say, ‘Oh, climate change is happening and we (will) just adapt to it.’ The capacity to adapt is limited.”
Despite the challenges many countries face from climate-change related pressures on land, positive action was needed now, Dr Pörtner maintained, amid estimates that the global population is set to reach around 10 billion by 2050.
“There are some regions and some places, especially in the lower latitudes where vulnerability is extreme,” he said. “But even in those countries, when there is an emphasis on adaptation in their development strategies, mitigation should play a key role.”
Before Thursday’s report launch, the text had to be assessed and approved by 195 Member States, a process that took longer than expected on Wednesday. In addition to the Special Report on Climate Change and Land, the IPCC plans to release its latest findings on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate next month, ahead of the UN Climate Action Summit on 23 September in New York.
The IPCC was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments concerning climate change, its implications and potential future risks, and to put forward adaptation and mitigation strategies.