Friday, 29 Mar 2024

Eric Garner, Congress, Emmy Awards: Your Tuesday Evening Briefing

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Good evening. Here’s the latest.

1. The Justice Department announced that it would not bring charges against the New York City police officer who used a chokehold on Eric Garner, five years after Mr. Garner’s dying words — “I can’t breathe” — became a rallying cry.

The U.S. attorney in Brooklyn said the government could not meet the legal standard for charges: proving that the officer willfully used excessive force to violate Mr. Garner’s rights. Gwenn Carr, Mr. Garner’s mother, above center, said, “The D.O.J. has failed us.”

The decision caps a yearslong inquiry into Mr. Garner’s death. Here’s how the legal process has played out in other cases of deaths involving police officers.

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2. “I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!”

President Trump tried to rally House Republicans to vote against a resolution condemning his statements, which suggested that four Democratic congresswomen should leave the country, as racist. The House passed the measure, with four Repbulicans voting in its favor, following a bitter partisan brawl.

Mr. Trump held up a photo of Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota during a cabinet meeting earlier in the day, above.

More than a dozen members of Congress are immigrants. For some of them, Mr. Trump’s comments hit home in a personal way.

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3. The second-quarter financial numbers for 2020 campaigns are in, and varied.

Five Democrats — Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — raised a combined $96 million from individual donors in the past three months. Most of the others burned through more campaign cash than they raised.

Here are five lessons from the fund-raising reports (including that Mr. Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., spent more than $1 million to stock campaign merchandise).

Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Harris, a California senator, have clearly arrived in the Democratic primary’s top tier. But liberal activists aren’t convinced that they are committed to widespread change.

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4. Planned Parenthood dismissed its leader after less than a year on the job.

The move comes as abortion battles rage in states across the country, deepening internal strife about the organization’s management and political direction.

Dr. Leana Wen, pictured above in May, who had been the first physician to lead the organization in decades, will be replaced by Alexis McGill Johnson, the co-founder of the Perception Institute, an anti-bias research group.

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5. Big tech got an earful from Congress.

In a series of three hearings on Capitol Hill, lawmakers fired sharp questions at executives from Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google over their market power. We’ll have our full report later this evening.

They also took aim at Facebook’s ambitions to reshape the financial industry with its new currency, Libra. Above, David Marcus, who leads the company’s cryptocurrency initiative.

“Facebook has said ‘just trust us,’” Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, said. “And every time Americans trust you, they seem to get burned.”

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6. How does Kim Jong-un get his luxury cars?

The North Korean leader, pictured above right in June with President Xi Jinping on China, has frequently been seen using expensive Mercedes-Benz and Rolls-Royce limousines, in open defiance of U.N. sanctions intended to keep his country from importing luxury goods.

Using shipping data, corporate records, satellite imagery and interviews, a Times investigation tracked the circuitous routes that North Korea uses to import high-end goods. Watch the video.

In contrast, we also have the tale of a far more rudimentary bit of illegal imports: that of a Colombian man who tried to smuggle more than a pound of cocaine into Brazil — under his toupee.

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7. Fifty years ago today, three American astronauts left Earth for the moon. A week later, two of them became the first to walk on it.

We talked with the third, Michael Collins, who kept Apollo 11 in orbit as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their giant leaps. Above, Mr. Collins in a simulator. “I had this beautiful little domain,” Mr. Collins said. “It was all mine. I was the emperor, the captain of it, and it was quite commodious. I had warm coffee, even.”

We also spoke with Ed Dwight, 85, who was set to be the first black astronaut — but wasn’t chosen for Apollo 11.

Worth noting: With the private sector moving aggressively into space, NASA is no longer the only career track for astronauts.

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8. “What we contribute to food in America is vast.”

That’s Mashama Bailey, bottom right, executive chef and partner at the Grey in Savannah, Ga., one of 16 black chefs we talked to from across the country who are considered new leaders in the food world. The key to maintaining the current momentum, the chefs told us, is working to address lingering barriers and stereotypes.

Also from our Food desk: Our wine critic came up with 15 helpful words to talk about wine (including “energetic,” “plush” and “lean”).

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9. Sometimes you have to cut your losses and start from scratch. So says our 52 Places Traveler, who, after a travel nightmare, did just that.

While trying to get out of Salvador, Brazil, en route to the Falkland Islands, he rewrote his itinerary. After a 40-hour journey, he found the perfect place to recover: Costalegre in Mexico, above.

What’s your favorite summer destination? To celebrate @nytimestravel’s milestone of reaching one million Instagram followers, the Travel desk is collecting readers’ favorite summer getaway spots. Share yours here.

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10. And finally, the Emmy nominees are …

“Game of Thrones” received 32 nominations, setting a record for a TV show in a single year and helping HBO dominate over Netflix. BBC America’s “Killing Eve,” HBO’s “Succession” and Ryan Murphy’s show “Pose” all landed best drama nominations. Here’s a full list of the nominees.

But our critics say that the proof of good TV these days is in the comedy category. They talked about this year’s snubs, surprises and most deserving nominees, including “Fleabag,” which received 11 nominations (one critic described the show as “a very likely candidate for Best Anything on TV this year”).

Have an entertaining night.

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