Philonise Floyd, George Floyd’s brother, testified to Congress on Wednesday because he wants his sibling to be “more than another name” on a growing list of those killed during interactions with police. Floyd’s appearance before a House hearing came a day after funeral services for his brother, who has become a worldwide symbol in demonstrations over calls for changes to police practices and an end to racial prejudices. “If his death ends up changing the world for the better. And I think it will. I think it has. Then he died as he lived,” Philonise Floyd said. He said he wanted to make sure that his brother is “more than another face on a T-shirt. More than another name on a list that won’t stop growing”. “I’m tired. I’m tired of the pain I’m feeling now and I’m tired of the pain I feel every time another black person is killed for no reason,” Floyd said. “I’m here today to ask you to make it stop. Stop the pain. Stop us from being tired. “George wasn’t hurting anyone that day. He didn’t deserve to die over US$20. I am asking you, is that what a black man’s life is worth? “The people marching in the streets are telling you enough is enough. Be the leaders that this country, this world, needs. Do the right thing.” George Floyd protests leave US failing to win friends and influence Africa The Judiciary Committee is preparing to shepherd a sweeping package of legislation, aimed at combating police violence and racial injustice, to the House floor by July 4, and is expected to hold further hearings next week to prepare the bill for a full House vote. “The nation demands and deserves meaningful change,” Judiciary Committee Jerry Nadler said at the start of the hearing. “We must remember that he is not just a cause, a name to be chanted in the streets. He was a man. He had a family. He was known as a gentle giant. He had a rich life that was taken from him far too early and we mourn his loss.” Here are the developments: Milly says church photo op was a mistake Army General Mark Milley, the nation’s top military officer, said he was wrong to have accompanied President Donald Trump on a walk to a church through Lafayette Square, where he was photographed in his combat uniform with the presidential entourage. The statement by the Joint Chiefs chairman risked the wrath of a president sensitive to anything hinting of criticism of events he has staged. Trump’s June 1 walk through the park to pose with a Bible at a church came after authorities used pepper spray and flash bangs to clear the park and streets of largely peaceful protesters. Milley said his presence and the photographs compromised his commitment to a military divorced from politics. “I should not have been there,” Milley said in remarks to a National Defence University commencement ceremony. Milley’s public expression of regret comes as Pentagon leaders’ relations with the White House are still tense after a disagreement last week over Trump’s threat to use federal troops to quell civil unrest triggered by the death of George Floyd. After protesters were cleared from the Lafayette Square area, Trump led an entourage that included Milley and Defence Secretary Mark Esper to St John’s Episcopal Church, where he held up a Bible for photographers and then returned to the White House. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics,” Milley said. “As a commissioned uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from, and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.” Nascar bans Confederate flag Nascar banned the Confederate flag from its races and properties on Wednesday, formally distancing itself from what for many is a symbol of slavery and racism that had been a familiar sight at stock car events for more than 70 years. The move comes amid social unrest around the globe following the death in police custody of George Floyd, an unarmed black man in Minneapolis. Protests have roiled the nation for days and Confederate monuments are being taken down across the South – the traditional fan base for Nascar. Bubba Wallace, Nascar’s lone black driver, called this week for the banishment of the Confederate flag and said there was “no place” for them in the sport. At long last, Nascar obliged. “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 said. “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.” The move was announced before Wednesday night’s race at Martinsville Speedway where Wallace, an Alabama native, was driving a Chevrolet with a #BlackLivesMatter paint scheme. The flag issue has been a thorny one for Nascar. Former chairman Brian France in 2015 tried to ban the flying of Confederate flags at race tracks, angering many fans. Nascar did not address how it would enforce the policy or indicate any penalties for fans who violate it by bringing the Confederate flag to the track. Australian protesters face arrest Australian officials warned supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement they could be fined or arrested if they breach coronavirus restrictions to take part in public protests. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said weekend rallies in Sydney, Melbourne and other cities that drew tens of thousands of people had already delayed plans to further ease social distancing restrictions. “We actually don’t know right now whether those rallies on the weekend may have caused outbreaks,” Morrison said. The Black Lives Matter movement has refocused attention in Australia on the mistreatment of indigenous Australians, including Aboriginal deaths in custody. Morrison rejected growing calls to remove statues of white leaders, including one of the country’s first prime minister, Edmund Barton, which is located near an Aboriginal burial site. Barton played a key role in drafting the national constitution, which negated Aboriginal rights. Amazon pauses use of facial recognition software by police Amazon said that it would implement a one-year moratorium on police department use of its facial recognition software, a major course change for a company that has been one of the most strident defenders of the controversial technology. “We’ve advocated that governments should put in place stronger regulations to govern the ethical use of facial recognition technology, and in recent days, Congress appears ready to take on this challenge,” the company said in a two-paragraph blog post. “We hope this one-year moratorium might give Congress enough time to implement appropriate rules, and we stand ready to help if requested.” The move comes amid widespread protests over the killing in police custody of George Floyd, who was black. Facial recognition technology has been shown in experiments to sometimes have difficulty identifying people with darker skin. IBM turns away from facial recognition business Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing group, in 2016 released Rekognition, a software service designed to identify objects in still images or video, including the ability to match a face with images in a database without taking the time to manually compare images. Rekognition was not the only such software on the market. Amazon rivals such as Microsoft and Google sell similar capabilities. But Amazon’s software became the focus of an intense debate about the potential for powerful, new software to undermine human rights two years later after the American Civil Liberties Union called out the risks that such software would misidentify people. IBM earlier this week said it would no longer sell general-purpose facial recognition and analysis software. Trump rules out renaming military bases US President Donald Trump ruled out a change to US military bases named after Civil War Confederate leaders, pushing back on pressure to rid public places of reminders of the once pro-slavery South. “These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom,” Trump said in a tweet that was also read out by his spokeswoman at a press conference. ...history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom. The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars. Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 10, 2020 “My Administration will not even consider renaming these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations. Our history as the Greatest Nation in the World will not be tampered with,” he wrote. The importance given by Trump to keeping bases like Fort Bragg in North Carolina as they are was underlined by the decision of press secretary Kayleigh McEnany to read out the tweet and to give printed copies of it to White House reporters. The demand for renaming such installations has taken momentum in the wake of mass protests across the United States against police brutality and racism against African-Americans. Ten bases named after generals from the secessionist South, which lost the Civil War and its effort to preserve slavery, are in the spotlight. They include the famous Fort Bragg, Fort Hood in Texas and Fort Benning in Georgia. Anger from anti-racism protesters has also focused on statues of southern Civil War heroes and most lately a statue of explorer Christopher Columbus, who opened the Americas to European settlement. A statue of the navigator was beheaded in Boston, police said Wednesday. Similar attacks on statues of historical figures seen by activists as glorifying racism and slavery have taken place in Britain and Belgium. Pelosi wants Confederate statues removed from US Capitol House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calledfor removal of 11 Confederate statues from the US Capitol. “Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end are a grotesque affront to these ideals” of American democracy and freedom, the top Democrat in Congress wrote to a bipartisan committee. “Their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage,” Pelosi added. “They must be removed.” Some of the statues of men who led or took part in a failed secession against the United States during the Civil War are featured prominently in the Capitol. Toppling of UK slave trader’s statue woke many to nation’s dark history They include the bronze figure of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, and the marble statue of Alexander Stephens, who served as the Confederacy’s vice-president. Statues of the pair, who Pelosi noted were charged with treason against the United States, are on display in Statuary Hall, one of the most popular tour destinations in the Capitol building. A statue of general Robert E. Lee is one floor below. Pelosi pointed to reprehensible comments by Stephens in his 1861 cornerstone speech when he said the Confederacy was founded on “the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man”. It is not the first time she has called for such action. Pelosi urged then-speaker Paul Ryan to remove the statues in August 2017, days after a white supremacist rally turned deadly in Charlottesville and President Trump equivocated over white nationalism. Trump could use executive order for reform President Trump could take policy action on race and policing via an executive order, his spokeswoman told Fox News in an interview on Wednesday as lawmakers in Congress move forward with their proposals. “We do believe that we’ll have proactive policy prescriptions, whether that means legislation or an executive order,” White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said. She declined to offer specifics, saying the Republican president was still weighing various possibilities. The potential for executive action comes as both Democrats and Republicans in Congress push forward with proposals. House Democrats on Monday unveiled a sweeping bill that would ban chokeholds, require body cameras for federal law enforcement officers and restrict the use of lethal force, among other steps, while Senate Republicans on Tuesday said they were working on their own proposal. White America is reckoning with racism. It could reshape 2020 McEnany also defended Trump’s tweet promoting an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory about a 75-year-old protester injured by police in Buffalo, saying it was Trump’s “prerogative” to raise questions about the incident. Martin Gugino was shoved by police and critically injured when he approached them during a march against racism and police brutality in an incident that was captured on video and led to criminal charges against the officers involved. Trump, offering no evidence, tweeted on Tuesday that Gugino’s fall could be a “set up”. “The president was just raising some questions, some legitimate ones, about that particular interaction. And it’s his prerogative to do so,” White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News. welp, the WH is doubling down Kilmeade: Trump tweeted the 75-year-old protester might have been an antifa provocateur, can you expand on that? McEnany: He was raising questions, there are questions that need to be asked in every case ...This guy had profanity laden tweets pic.twitter.com/KJUjjbqQxt — Lis Power (@LisPower1) June 10, 2020 Minneapolis police chief takes on union, promises reform The Minneapolis Police Department will withdraw from police union contract negotiations, Chief Medaria Arradondo said as he announced the first steps in what he said would be transformational reforms to the agency in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Arradondo said a thorough review of the contract is planned. He said the contract needs to be restructured to provide more transparency and flexibility for true reform. The review would look at matters such as critical incident protocols, use of force, and disciplinary protocols, including grievances and arbitration. He said it was debilitating for a chief when an officer does something that is grounds for termination, but the union works to keep that person on the job, and on the street. Arradondo also vowed to use new systems and “real-time data” that would examine officer performance data to quickly spot problem officers and intervene. He said an outside analytics firm would be used to track the data. Second-degree murder charge added against officer in Floyd death Floyd died on May 25 after officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck, ignoring the handcuffed black man’s “I can’t breathe” cries and staying there even after Floyd stopped moving. Chauvin – a white officer who had 17 complaints against him and was only disciplined once – is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter. Three other officers at the scene are charged with aiding and abetting the second-degree murder and manslaughter counts. Arradondo fired the four officers before they were criminally charged, while activists took their calls for change to the streets in Minneapolis and beyond. A majority of Minneapolis City Council members called for dismantling the department, but they provided no clear plan on how that would happen. Mayor Jacob Frey said he would not support abolishing the department, but he would favour a cultural shift in how it functions. He did not get into specifics, but told Good Morning America on Monday that the city has difficulty terminating and disciplining officers because of the police union. Olympics chief says athletes must explore ‘dignified’ protest Olympics chief Thomas Bach refused to be drawn on athletes taking a knee in protest against racism, insisting the body representing them must explore ways they can express themselves “in a dignified way”. Many sportspeople across the globe have made a kneeling protest to pay homage to George Floyd. International Olympic Committee rules bar any “demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda” at the Olympic Games, but the kneeling protest is sure to be a hot issue at the Tokyo Olympics, postponed by 12 months to 2021. Bach, speaking after a videoconference meeting of the IOC’s executive board, argued that non-discrimination was one of the founding pillars of the Olympic movement. The German said it was now the turn of the Olympic Athletes’ Commission to draw up a suitable way for athletes to act. Trump takes issue with NFL over anthem kneeling “I will not pre-empt in any way these consultations the Athletes’ Commission now will have with many athletes, representatives, around the world. It would not be fair if I now make a statement giving directions, or even instructions, in this respect.” he said. The placing of one knee on the ground was the pose made famous by former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who began kneeling during pre-game renditions of the national anthem in 2016 to protest police brutality against blacks and other minorities. Kaepernick was ostracised by the NFL over his kneeling protest, which earned him and like-minded athletes condemnation and insults from conservatives including US President Trump. The NFL last week, however, sanctioned “peaceful protests” while world football’s governing body Fifa has called on leagues to use “common sense” when deciding whether to discipline players for displaying political messages calling for justice for Floyd. Pompeo vows probe into treatment of foreign reporters US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pledged a probe on Wednesday into complaints that foreign news crews covering the street protests against racism and police brutality were mistreated. Australia, for instance, is investigating a US police attack on two Australian television journalists outside the White House last week. “I know there have been concerns from some countries of their reporters having been treated inappropriately,” Pompeo told a news conference. “We’ve seen some of those allegations come into the State Department. You should know and those countries should know we will handle them in a completely appropriate way. We will do our best to investigate them.” The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, reported last week what she called unprecedented aggression against reporters covering the nationwide protests triggered by the death George Floyd at the hands of white police officers in Minneapolis. She cited reports that at least 200 journalists were harassed or detained while covering the demonstrations. Russia – often accused by the United States of violating human rights and the right to free expression – also complained of violence by US police against reporters, in particular against a woman working as a stringer for the Russian news agency Sputnik. Senate’s only black Republican at centre of debate South Carolina’s US Senator Tim Scott, the chamber’s only black Republican, was thrust into the centre of the national debate on policing when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put him in charge of the caucus’s response to protests over racial inequality and the use of force by law enforcement. In announcing that Scott would lead the party’s effort to craft legislation, McConnell evoked the long fight for racial equality, and Scott’s life as a black American. “I think the best way for Senate Republicans to go forward on this is to listen to one of our own, who’s had these experiences,” McConnell told reporters. Scott reacted quickly after the death of George Floyd two weeks ago while he was in police custody in Minneapolis. “Firing the officers that killed #GeorgeFloyd was the right first move. The second? Arrest them,” Scott wrote on Twitter. He also used the hashtag “Icantbreathe”, the words Floyd said as he was dying, and a hallmark of protests across the United States and internationally since Floyd was killed. Scott has talked about being stopped and questioned by police even during his seven years in the US Senate. On Tuesday, he said it was important to act quickly, and decisively. “I think it’s important for this nation to take a very powerful stand and position that says, ‘We’re listening, we’re hearing and we’re reacting’,” Scott told reporters, saying he did not see “a binary choice” between supporting police and supporting communities of colour. Bon Appétit says magazine 'too white', promises changes Bon Appétit , whose top editor resigned on Monday after a staff revolt over an offensive photo and long-standing issues involving treatment of people of colour, said on Wednesday that “our mastheads have been far too white for far too long” and promised major changes at the magazine. The announcement came in an unsigned statement attributed to staff at both Bon Appétit and Epicurious, a foodie website. Both are owned by luxury magazine publisher Conde Nast, whose CEO, Roger Lynch, issued his own statement of support for the effort. NYT editor resigns after outrage over senator’s ‘send troops in’ op-ed The staff statement called Bon Appétit “white-centric” and said it frequently marginalised “non-white stories” as not newsworthy or trendy. Many people of colour were hired for “entry-level positions with little power”, it stated. To fix that, the statement said, both publications are “prioritising people of colour for the editor-in-chief candidate pool, implementing anti-racism training for our staff, and resolving any pay inequities that are found across all departments”. Lynch said in his statement that Conde Nast plans to release a “comprehensive pay equity analysis” by the end of this year. Top editors have departed several media companies this week as rallies against police brutality have sparked conversations around race in the workplace and journalists of colour speak up about policies at their organisations. Fire chief quits after ‘hosing protester’ post A fire chief in a small Colorado town has resigned after posting a comment on Facebook saying he would spray protesters with high pressure water hoses for fun. Lyons Fire Chief J.J. Hoffman resigned Tuesday over the comment he made last month in response to someone else’s Facebook post that said Denver police should “wash all this human trash into the gutter.” Hoffman said his comment was made in jest and issued a formal apology on June 1. Democratic state Rep. Jonathan Singer said the apology was not enough and that Hoffman had lost credibility and the public’s trust. Singer asked the NAACP to investigate. The Lyons Fire Protection District Board of Directors issued a formal reprimand for Hoffman a week ago and said they believed his apology was sincere. Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse