Derek Chauvin, Georgia, Pride: Your Friday Evening Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/25/briefing/derek-chauvin-georgia-pride.html

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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Friday.

1. Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, a rare rebuke against a police officer who killed someone while on duty.

The decision brought a measure of closure to a case that set off waves of protest across the nation over police abuse of Black people. It came more than a year after a widely shared video captured the former Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes.

Judge Peter Cahill delivered the sentence after final, emotional statements from the Floyd family, including his brother Philonise Floyd, who said his family had already “been given a life sentence,” and Gianna Floyd, the 7-year-old daughter of George Floyd, who said in a prerecorded video, “I ask about him all the time.”

Chauvin, speaking for the first time, expressed his condolences to the Floyd family. His mother said her son “is a good man.”

2. The Justice Department is suing Georgia over its new voting law, a major step by the Biden administration to confront states that have enacted voting restrictions.

The complaint from the Justice Department says the Georgia law effectively discriminates against Black voters and seeks to show that state lawmakers intended to do so. The law gives the Republican legislature and governor a breathtaking assertion of power in elections.

While some G.O.P. lawmakers turned to legislation to alter the balance of power, some Republican allies took another approach: Hard-line conservative spies infiltrated progressive groups to try to manipulate politics and reshape the electoral map. They also targeted moderate Republicans and basically anyone considered a threat to the hard-right agenda advanced by Trump.

3. Donald Trump’s family business could face criminal charges from an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney.

The district attorney’s office has informed Trump’s lawyers that it is considering criminal charges against the Trump Organization in connection with fringe benefits the company awarded a top executive, Allen Weisselberg. If the case moves ahead, the district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr., could announce charges as soon as next week, according to several people.

An indictment of the Trump Organization would be the first criminal charges stemming from Vance’s long-running investigation into the former president and his business dealings.

4. An intense search for survivors stretched into a second day in the rubble of the collapsed condo building near Miami Beach.

As of Friday afternoon, as many as 159 people remained unaccounted for after the Champlain Towers complex crumbled in Surfside, Fla. The death toll rose to four, officials said, and it remained unclear how many others had been inside the building at the time of the collapse. Mayor Daniella Levine Cava of Miami-Dade County said officials “still have hope” of finding survivors in the tangled concrete.

The Champlain Towers complex drew an only-in-Miami mix of residents — beach-seeking retirees from New York, striving young families, Orthodox Jews and well-connected South American immigrants. “I knew them all,” said one survivor who lived in the building for 20 years.

5. President Biden pledged to Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan’s president, that the U.S. would support a safe future for the country amid the withdrawal of U.S. and international troops.

Biden assured the Afghan leader that the administration will continue to support the country with security assistance. Despite an increasing threat from the Taliban and a possible civil war in the coming weeks and months, Biden’s message remains clear, officials say: The U.S. military is leaving by Sept. 11. A Times photographer recently captured Afghanistan’s elite forces as they disrupted Taliban operations in Helmand, one of the country’s most volatile provinces.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris made her first visit to the southern border, where she toured a migrant processing center in El Paso. She immediately faced criticism: Republicans said she should have traveled there earlier, and some Democrats argued that she should have visited another hard-hit location along the border.

6. Meet Dragon Man, a new species of ancient human who lived at least 140,000 years ago, scientists say.

A team of researchers found a massive fossilized skull in northeast China belonging to a mature male who had a huge brain, massive brow ridges, deep set eyes and a bulbous nose. The skull had remained hidden in an abandoned well for 85 years, after a laborer came across it at a construction site and hid it. The new species, Homo longi, is nicknamed “Dragon Man,” for the Dragon River region where the skull was found.

The team said that Homo longi, and not the Neanderthals, were the extinct human species most closely related to our own, Homo sapiens. A number of experts questioned this conclusion. Many still thought that the find could help reconstruct the human family tree.

7. The U.S. government has no explanation for 143 sightings of U.F.O.s over the past two decades, a new report found. It does not rule out alien activity.

Of those, 21 reports of unknown phenomena possibly demonstrate technological capabilities that are unknown to the U.S. The objects in the report are also believed to be beyond the technological capabilities of Russia, China or other terrestrial nations. The government outlined a plan to develop a better program to observe and collect data on future unexplained phenomena.

The report is likely to fuel theories. In a guest essay, Chris Carter, the creator of the TV series “The X-Files,” explains why he’s skeptical.

8. Last year, Pride was a muted celebration. This year, it’s back and full of firsts.

The first sitting vice president at a Pride parade. Inaugural pride parades in places like Haddon Township, N.J. And there is Carl Nassib, who made history this week when he became the first active N.F.L. player to come out as gay. He says he has long yearned to make a difference in the world.

Many activists argue that wearing rainbow flags can go only so far. A T-shirt briefly available from the Gap stood out for using the sobering logo from the Lesbian Avengers, a radical activist group that had its heyday 30 years ago. Its back story turned out to be more complicated than a case of corporate appropriation.

There are plenty of ways to celebrate this weekend. In New York, the city is back in full swing, with parties, demonstrations and family celebrations.

9. This may be the perfect summer cocktail.

For our wine critic Eric Asimov, pastis is the ideal summer aperitif. Popular in the south of France, pastis is both the name of an anise-flavored spirit and an easy drink that requires adding only cold water to that liqueur. And the preparation has built-in entertainment — adding water to the spirit quickly makes it turn milky and pearlescent in an transformation known as the louche.

“Drinking a pastis in summer,” Asimov writes, “gives one the wisdom to understand that repose, not unwarranted exertion, is the preferred course of action.”

Committing just a few key ratios to memory can make at-home mixology a breeze. Here are three equal-parts drinks to get you started.

10. And finally, can you crack these codes?

Erik and Martin Demaine, a father-and-son team of “algorithmic typographers,” have confected an entire suite of mathematically inspired typefaces that are also puzzles. The main application is fun.

One font, a homage to the mathematician and juggler Ron Graham, draws its letters from the patterns of motion traced by balls thrown into the air during juggling tricks. And today, Sudoku font made its debut, based on the puzzles whose unique solutions reveal letters of the alphabet.

“If we get stuck on a problem, we like to find an artistic way to represent it,” Erik Demaine said.

Have an unscrambled weekend.

David Poller compiled photos for this briefing.

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