Month: July 2020

A government report says Boeing did not give regulators documents about changes it made in a key system blamed in two deadly crashes of its 737 Max jet, and that officials responsible for approving the plane did not know how powerfully the system could push the plane’s nose down. Government personnel involved in flight tests…

(AUSTIN, Texas) — Five Austin police officers are on paid administrative duty amid an investigation into the use of what authorities call “less lethal” force during May protests against police brutality and racial injustice, according to the police department. The investigation follows public outcry after two people participating in protests in Austin sparked by the…

(BOSTON) — Boston’s arts commission voted unanimously Tuesday night to remove a statue that depicts a freed slave kneeling at Abraham Lincoln’s feet. The commission had fielded escalating complaints about the Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Emancipation Group and the Freedman’s Memorial, as a nation confronting racial injustice rethinks old imagery. The statue has…

(NEW YORK) — New York City lawmakers approved an austere budget early Wednesday that will shift $1 billion from policing to education and social services in the coming year, acknowledging protesters’ demands to cut police spending — but falling short of what activists sought. The vote by the City Council came at an extraordinary moment…

The moment Lin-Manuel Miranda conceived the idea of telling the story of Alexander Hamilton almost exclusively with a cast of brown and Black actors was its own kind of big bang. People have tried before to jazz up the story of the founding fathers, with often miserable results (Exhibit A, from 1972: the lackluster film…

(CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico) — An international disaster relief organization reported Tuesday the first confirmed case of COVID-19 among migrants living in a tent encampment of asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. Global Response Management said that one person in the Matamoros, Tamaulipas camp across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas had tested positive. “Aggressive isolation…

Politicians around the world have called for a United Nations probe into a Chinese government birth control campaign targeting largely Muslim minorities in the far western region of Xinjiang, even as Beijing said it treats all ethnicities equally under the law. They were referring to an Associated Press investigation published this week that found the…

(WASHINGTON) — Democrats drove a temporary extension of a popular subsidy program for small businesses through the GOP-controlled Senate late Tuesday, an unexpected development that came as spikes in coronavirus cases in many states are causing renewed shutdowns of bars and other businesses. The move by Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin came hours before a deadline…

When protesters began flooding the streets of Minneapolis last month after the police killing of George Floyd, they were decrying police brutality and systemic racism. There’s little doubt that something as far-removed from that grave situation as The Golden Girls was anywhere near top of mind. But that 1980s sitcom, unrelated as it may seem,…

(JACKSON, Miss.) — With a stroke of the governor’s pen, Mississippi is retiring the last state flag in the U.S. with the Confederate battle emblem — a symbol that’s widely condemned as racist. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on Tuesday signed the historic bill that takes the 126-year-old state flag out of law, immediately removing official…