Each Wednesday, we recap the most important headlines from our global community to keep you up to speed on world news.
Police Chief And Officer Who Shot Daunte Wright Resign
Protests spread across the country after police officer, Kim Potter, in Brooklyn Center, Minn., shot and killed 20-year-old Daunte Wright, after a traffic stop.
Potter, the Brooklyn Center, Minn., police officer. Potter had served 26 years on the force before the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright. Officials said she mistakenly fired her handgun instead of her Taser.
Potter, who had previously served as president of the local police union and whose duties included training other officers, had initially been placed on administrative leave, but pressure had grown from community members to fire her. Critics had raised questions of how someone responsible for police training could have mistaken a Taser for a handgun.
Police Chief Tim Gannon, who released the body camera footage and characterized the shooting of Daunte Wright as an “accidental discharge,” has also stepped down.
The moves come after the Brooklyn Center city council passed a resolution in support of relieving both Potter and Gannon of their duties. They also passed motions to give the mayor “command authority” over the city’s police department and to fire the city manager, who previously had responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the police department.
Samoa Election on Cusp of Electing First Female Prime Minister
Samoa may be on the cusp of electing its first female Prime Minister, as the island nation’s women-led opposition party finds itself in a dead heat with the ruling party at the general election.
After 22 years as Samoa’s Prime Minister, Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi, currently the second-longest serving democratically elected leader in the world, is fighting for his political life as he faces a real challenge in the form of Opposition leader Fiame Naomi Mataafa, whose party is just nine months old.
Fiame Naomi Mataafa’s party, Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (known as FAST) has secured 25 seats in the election – the same number as the ruling Human Rights Protection Party. With 51 seats in total, 26 seats are needed to form government outright, leaving the election outcome in limbo.
Fiame Naomi Mataafa is the daughter of Samoa’s first Prime Minister. With 36 years in parliament under belt, Fiame was the country’s first female cabinet minister, and has a proven political record to show. She is a prominent and powerful political figure, and opposes recent changes made by Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi, which she says have undermined the constitution and entrenched a growing authoritarianism in Samoa.
The Pacific has the lowest level of women’s representation of any other region in the world, while three Pacific countries – Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Micronesia – have no women politicians.
CDC and FDA Recommend U.S. Pause Use of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 Vaccine
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US Food and Drug Administration are recommending that the United States pause the use of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine over six reported US cases of a “rare and severe” type of blood clot.
The six reported cases were among more than 6.8 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine administered in the United States.
All six cases occurred among women between the ages of 18 and 48, and symptoms occurred 6 to 13 days after vaccination, according to a joint statement from Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC and Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research.
Will Smith’s Production Pulls Out of Georgia, Citing the State’s Voting Law
Will Smith and the director Antoine Fuqua said that they were pulling their upcoming film production “Emancipation” out of Georgia because of the state’s new voting law, which has been denounced by activists as an effort to make voting harder for the state’s Black population.
The slavery-era drama, which is being produced and financed by Apple Studios, is the first major production to cite the law as a reason to leave the state, which offers generous tax incentives to Hollywood productions and has become a major hub for Marvel Studios, Netflix and other industry heavyweights.
Stacey Abrams, along with Tyler Perry, who owns his own studio in Atlanta, and others have urged Hollywood not to uproot productions despite outrage over the new law.
U.S. to Withdraw Troops from Afghanistan by September 11
United States President Joe Biden will leave US troops in Afghanistan past the current May 1 deadline but will withdraw them by September 11, US officials said.
The new withdrawal date is the 20th anniversary of al-Qaeda’s attacks on the United States.
Turkey will host a peace summit for Afghanistan from April 24 to May 4 meant to jump-start efforts to end the war and sketch out a possible political settlement, Turkish authorities said.
The Taliban, which was ousted from power in 2001 by US-led forces, said it would not take part in any talks that would make decisions about Afghanistan until all foreign forces had left the country, including Turkey the summit.
It remains unclear how Biden’s move would affect a planned 10-day summit about Afghanistan starting on April 24 in Istanbul that is due to include the United Nations and Qatar.
Related All The Pretty Birds Culture and News Posts:
- Murder Trial of Ex-Cop Derek Chauvin Begins
- A World Between the Vaccine and Me: The Global South and Ongoing Geopolitics of the Covid-19 Vaccine
- Keep Your Foot on the Gas With Anti-Racism & Black Lives Matter Movement Resources
The post Police Chief And Officer Who Shot Daunte Wright Resign & Global News appeared first on All The Pretty Birds.
