No Prude charges
Police officers who put a hood over the head of a mentally distraught black man, then pressed his body against the pavement until he stopped breathing will not face criminal charges after a grand jury declined to indict them, the state’s attorney general announced Tuesday. Daniel Prude, 41, died last March, several days after his encounter with police in Rochester, New York. Police initially described his death as a drug overdose. It went mostly unnoticed. But nightly protests erupted after body camera video was released nearly six months later following pressure from Prude’s family. Lawyers for the seven police officers suspended over Prude’s death have said the officers were strictly following their training that night, employing a restraining technique known as “segmenting.” They claimed Prude’s use of PCP, which caused irrational behavior, was “the root cause” of his death.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned world leaders yesterday that climate change is a threat to the security of all nations and sharply criticised people who say this is “green stuff from a bunch of treehugging, tofu-munchers and not suited to international diplomacy and international politics”.
He pointed to the 16 million people displaced by weather-related disasters each year, some becoming easy prey to violent extremists; farmers losing another wheat harvest because of drought and switching to growing opium poppies; and girls forced to drop out of school to search for water becoming prey to human traffickers.
He also cited the impacts of changing sea levels and wildfires.
“Whether you like it or not, it is a matter of when, not if, your country and your people will have to deal with these security impacts of climate change,” he warned leaders at a highlevel Security Council meeting on climate-related risks to international peace and security.
Chairing the meeting of the UN’s most powerful body during the United Kingdom’s presidency this month, Johnson urged the council to demonstrate leadership to protect global peace, security and stability.
John Kerry, the United States’ special presidential envoy for climate, thanked European nations for stepping up to tackle climate change during the “inexcusable absence” of the US during the previous administration.
Kerry said President Joe Biden knows there is “not a moment to waste” and his administration aims to put the United States on a route to cutting fossil fuel emissions in a way that is, “and I emphasise, irreversible by any president, by any demagogue in the future”.
That appeared to be one of the most explicit assurances from the Biden administration that foreign countries should go ahead and make deals with the administration on climate despite fears that Trump or one of his populist “America First” supporters will take power again in 2024.
Kerry called the climate crisis “indisputably a Security Council issue”, saying the Pentagon has described it as “a threat multiplier”. But even though climate change has been repeatedly called “an existential threat”, he said, “we honestly have yet as a world to respond with the urgency required.”
He called the UN climate conference that Britain is hosting in Glasgow in November “literally our last best hope to get on track and get this right”.
Nations are expected at the conference to come up with more ambitious pollution cuts.