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CNN
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Belarusian-born Aryna Sabalenka defeated Elena Rybakina in three sets to win a thrilling women’s Australian Open final Saturday, becoming the first player competing under a neutral flag to secure a grand slam.

Amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, tournament organizer Tennis Australia required Russian and Belarusian players to compete as neutrals.

Outplayed in the opening set, Sabalenka came from behind to overpower the reigning Wimbledon champion 4-6 6-3 6-4 in a remarkable turnaround in Melbourne.

Breaking Rybakina’s serve in the seventh game of a tense third set proved to be the crucial breakthrough for the fifth seed, whose venomous serve and intense groundstrokes ultimately paved the way for her success.

A nervous start from Sabalenka – she made five double faults and won only four points on the second serve in the first set – made it seem as if it would be a routine second grand slam for Rybakina as she secured the first set in 34 minutes.

But Sabalenka found accuracy as well as power in the second and third sets, with Rybakina faltering at crucial stages. The Russian-born Kazakh, who is also a big hitter, saw off three championship points but sent a forehand long on the fourth. Sabalenka fell to the ground, reduced to tears on wining her maiden major.

She celebrated by climbing to the players’ box where her coach, Anton Dubrov, could be seen sobbing into a towel.

“I’m still shaking and super nervous,” she told the spectators in her on-court speech before the presentation.

On receiving the trophy from Billie Jean King, Sabalenka thanked the American great for her pioneering work for the women’s game, and went on to thank her team, whom she described as the “craziest on tour.”

“We’ve been through a lot of downs last year,” she said. “We worked so hard, you guys deserve this trophy, it’s more about you than about me. Thank you so much for everything you do for me. I love you.”

Minsk-born Sabalenka was competing in her first grand slam final, having previously lost three major semifinals. Serving first, she opened the match with a double fault as nerves clearly played a part on an occasion such as this. She later admitted that she tactically didn’t “play my best” in the first set.

In the second set she targeted the Rybakina forehand and broke early for a 3-1 lead. When Rybakina threatened to break back immediately, as she had done in the first set, Sabalenka held firm, overcoming another double fault to further extend her lead at 4-1 before going on to clinch the set with an ace.

After an impressive second set from Sabalenka, the match entered a tense third set decider. Initially the pair went toe-to-toe, both having the bravery to go for their shots, to maintain the power, but it was Sabalenka who eventually broke through.

“I need a few more days to realize what happened,” Sabalenka told Eurosport.

“I’m just super happy and proud. There’s so many things in my head. I’m not on this planet right now. It’s kind of relief, I’ve been in the top 10 but I didn’t have a grand slam trophy yet and it’s been really tough to get it, every slam was super emotional.

“It’s relief, it’s a joy, I’m just proud of myself, of everyone.”

Asked how she would celebrate, Sabalenka said, laughing: “Probably eating everything that I couldn’t this week.”

More to follow.

A 17-year-old armed with a knife was hospitalized after being shot twice by an officer in Tracy on Friday afternoon, police said.

Tracy police said an officer was called to Foxtail Way at 1:47 p.m. after reports of a male chasing another male with a knife. Police said numerous 911 calls were made.

Police said an officer arrived and contacted the person with a knife and told him to drop it.

“The suspect failed to follow the commands as he advanced toward the officer. Fearing for his safety and the safety of those in the area, the officer discharged his duty firearm, striking the individual,” Tracy police said on Facebook.

The officer who shot the teen is a 28-year-old veteran of the department, police said.

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A department spokesperson told KCRA 3’s Lee Anne Denyer that investigators are reviewing body camera footage and plan to release it as soon as possible.

“With any use of force, and certainly an officer-involved shooting, we will turn every leaf to make sure that we’ve done it correctly, that there isn’t a training or even legal issue. That’s our obligation to the community,” said Lt. Mario Ysit, a spokesperson for the department on scene Friday.

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The teen who was shot was given first aid by officers at the scene until emergency medical personnel arrived, police said. He is in serious but stable condition.

Ysit said detectives were still working to confirm the relationship between the teenager and the other male involved as well as the circumstances leading up to the officers’ arrival.

“I don’t yet know the exact dynamic of what was happening prior to our arrival,” he said.

James Cummings, who lives nearby, said he saw the young man with the knife chasing the other individual and that, at one point, the young man without the knife tried to come into his garage during the ordeal. Cummings said he called police and later heard two shots being fired.

“It ended the way it ended and I guess everything else is in God’s hands,” he said.

The Sacramento Valley/Central California office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said the person who was shot was a Muslim teen and called for an independent investigation.

“We are monitoring this extremely disturbing incident and demand that law enforcement authorities operate with full transparency and conduct an independent investigation that will swiftly make public all the facts in this case,” said CAIR-SV/CC Executive Director Basim Elkarra.

Elkarra said Friday he wanted to see the body camera footage before making additional comments.

Tracy police said investigators are working to interview witnesses and will not release police body-worn camera footage until those interviews are completed.

Anyone with information to share is encouraged to call Detective Philip Giusto at Philip.Giusto@TracyPD.com or at 209-831-6551.

CNN
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Western countries will deliver more than 300 tanks to Ukraine, Kyiv’s ambassador to France said Friday.

“As of today, numerous countries have officially confirmed their agreement to deliver 321 heavy tanks to Ukraine,” Vadym Omelchenko told French TV station and CNN affiliate BFM television.

He did not specify which countries would provide the tanks or provide a breakdown of which models.

The figure from Omelchenko comes after the US this week pledged to provide 31 M1 Abrams tanks and Germany agreed to send 14 Leopard 2 A6s. Previously the United Kingdom has pledged 14 Challenger 2 tanks, while Poland has asked for approval from Germany to transfer some of its own German-made Leopard 2s to Ukraine.

Omelchenko’s interview came as North Korea accused the United States and its allies of “further crossing the red line” by sending tanks to Ukraine.

The US has a “sinister intention to realize its hegemonic aim by further expanding the proxy war for destroying Russia,” said Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in a statement run by North Korean media on Friday.

She accused the US and other Western countries of “wrecking the global peace and the regional security while handing military hardware running into astronomical sums of money over to Ukraine in total disregard of Russia’s concern about security” – and vowed North Koreans would “always stand in the same trench” as the people of Russia.

When the tanks will arrive in Ukraine remains unclear. Omelchenko said delivery dates would vary depending on the type of tank and the country of origin, and the timing would be adjusted during the next round of consultations between Ukraine and Western countries.

However, echoing the words of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who had previously urged the West to provide what some experts see as game-changing military hardware, Omelchenko said Ukraine needed the assistance “as fast as possible”.

“If it had to wait until the month of August or September, it would be too late,” he said.

Ukrainian forces have warned they are in a race against time. The country fears that a second Russian offensive may begin within two months and is bracing for the coming weeks.

Previous military aid, like the American HIMARS rocket system, has been vital in helping Ukraine disrupt Russian advances and make a series of successful counter-offensives in recent months.

But tanks represent the most powerful direct offensive weapon provided to Ukraine so far, military experts said.

This week, several Western nations led by Germany and the United States said they would send contingents of tanks to Ukraine.

US President Joe Biden said he would be providing 31 M1 Abrams tanks to “enhance Ukraine’s capacity to defend its territory and achieve its strategic objectives” in both the near and long terms.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in parliament on Wednesday said that his government would send 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, wrapping up months of deliberation and several days of tense negotiations with NATO partners.

“This is the result of intensive consultations that took place with Germany’s closest European and international partners,” a German government statement read.

Ukraine hopes that Berlin’s announcement will encourage other European nations who own Leopards to re-export some of their vehicles.

Poland on Tuesday formally asked for approval from Germany to transfer some of its German-made Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine.

Military experts previously told CNN that the extra tanks could make a difference in the war. But some analysts said that the new tanks wouldn’t be the instant game-changer that some would expect.

MEMPHIS, Tenn., Jan 27 (Reuters) – The city of Memphis released a shocking video on Friday of the violent encounter between Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, and the five police officers charged with murder in his beating death earlier this month.

The highly anticipated footage from police body-worn and dashboard cameras was posted Friday evening on the city’s YouTube site a day after the officers were charged with second-degree murder, assault, kidnapping, official misconduct and oppression.

The officers, all Black, had already been dismissed from the police department last Saturday following their Jan. 7 confrontation with Nichols during a traffic stop that led to him being severely beaten.

He succumbed to his injuries and died three days later while hospitalized.

Memphis police chief Cerelyn Davis and lawyers for Nichols’ family who watched the video with his relatives before it was released, warned in advance that the images were brutal and likely to cause outrage, while appealing to the public for calm.

“You are going to see acts that defy humanity,” Davis told CNN in describing the footage.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, representing Nichols’ family, said the last words on the video were Nichols crying out for his mother.

“No mother should go through what I am going through right now, no mother, to lose their child to the violent way that I lost my child,” Tyre Nichols’ mother, RowVaughn Wells, said on Friday.

The footage was likely to transform Nichols, the father of a 4-year-old described as an affable, accomplished skateboarder who recently enrolled in a photography class, into the next face of the U.S. racial justice movement.

Raised in Sacramento, California, Nichols moved before the coronavirus pandemic to the Memphis area, where he lived with his mother and stepfather and worked at FedEx, taking a break each day to come home for a meal prepared by his mother.

BIDEN SPEAKS TO FAMILY

Nichols’ family and President Joe Biden have appealed for protests to stay peaceful in Memphis, a city of 628,000 where nearly 65% of residents are Black. Schools were scheduled to close early and Saturday morning events were canceled.

Biden spoke with RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells, Nichols’ stepfather, on Friday afternoon to express his condolences, the White House said, adding that it was coordinating with relevant government agencies in case protests turn violent.

Nichols’ death marked the latest high-profile instance of police officers accused of using excessive force in the deaths of Black people and other minorities in recent years. These have been publicly condemned as systemic racism in the U.S. criminal justice system.

Protests under the banner of the “Black Lives Matter” movement against racial injustice erupted globally following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes.

Antonio Romanucci, another lawyer for Nichols’ family, told National Public Radio in an interview on Friday that Nichols was a strong supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement and “basically died for his own cause.”

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday announced a federal civil rights investigation into Nichols’ death, while law enforcement agencies in some major cities, including New York, Atlanta and Washington, said they were preparing for possible protests following the video’s release.

TRAFFIC STOP BEGAN CHAIN OF EVENTS

Police have described the circumstances of Nichols’ arrest in vague terms. Even Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, who sought the officers’ indictment, was circumspect when announcing the charges.

After Nichols was pulled over for reckless driving, “an altercation” ensued in which officers doused him with pepper spray, and Nichols tried to flee on foot, Mulroy said. “There was another altercation at a nearby location at which the serious injuries were experienced by Mr. Nichols.”

Davis said her department has not yet been able determine whether there was probable cause for the officers to pull Nichols over for reckless driving, a traffic stop which set in motion the violent events that followed.

Crump said the speed at which the criminal charges were brought against the officers – fewer than three weeks after Nichols’ death – should be a standard for police-involved killings.

In some other high-profile cases, such as the police killing of Laquan McDonald in Chicago in 2014, more than a year elapsed before the release of police video and the filing of charges.

“We want to proclaim that this is the blueprint going forward for any time any officers, whether they be Black or white, will be held accountable,” Crump said. “No longer can you tell us we got to wait six months to a year.”

Lawyers for the family also called on the police department to disband the special SCORPION unit focused on violent street crime to which at least some of the officers were assigned. Davis has said the department will review SCORPION and other specialized units.

Crump compared the encounter to the 1991 videotaped beating of Black motorist Rodney King by four police officers whose subsequent acquittal of criminal charges sparked days of riots in Los Angeles.

All five officers – Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith – were fired from the police force on Jan. 21 after an internal investigation found they breached multiple department policies, including use of excessive force.

Four of the officers have posted bail and have been released from jail, a CBS affiliate reported on Friday. A lawyer for Mills, Blake Ballin, said it might be another two weeks before the defendants make their initial court appearances.

Reporting by Alyssa Pointer in Memphis; Additional reporting by Tyler Clifford, Rich McKay, Steve Gorman, Eric Beech, Trevor Hunnicut and Alexandra Ulmer; Writing and additional reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Jonathan Oatis, Cynthia Osterman and Grant McCool

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

CNN
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The San Francisco Superior Court on Friday released video and audio recorded during last year’s attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, including police body-cam footage depicting the moment of the attack and the alleged assailant’s police interview where he admitted he wanted to hold the then-House speaker hostage.

The video and audio files were released after a California court ruled the district attorney’s office must make the materials public.

One of the videos shows body-cam footage from officers who arrived at Pelosi’s home on October 28, 2022, when he was attacked. The footage shows the chaos of the moment in which alleged assailant David DePape attacked.

In the video, Paul Pelosi and DePape both appear to have a hand on the hammer and DePape is holding Pelosi’s arm when the officers opened the door.

“Drop the hammer,” the officer says.

“Uh, nope,” DePape responds.

DePape then grabbed the hammer out of Pelosi’s hand, lunged toward him while striking him in the head. The officers rushed into the home, subduing DePape and handcuffing him.

In addition to the body-cam footage, the files include audio from a police interview with DePape, the 911 call Paul Pelosi made while DePape was in the home and surveillance video showing DePape breaking into the home.

The files were exhibits in a preliminary court hearing. The court’s decision mandating the public release of the materials came following a motion by a coalition of news organizations, including CNN, arguing that the circumstances involving the residence of the then-speaker of the House demanded transparency.

Lawyers for DePape argued against the public release of the audio and footage, writing it would “irreparably damage” his right to a fair trial. DePape has pleaded not guilty to a litany of state and federal crimes related to the attack, including assault and attempted murder.

Speaking briefly to reporters Friday afternoon, Nancy Pelosi said she had “absolutely no intention of seeing the deadly assault on my husband’s life.” She said that Paul Pelosi is “making progress, but it will take more time” and that she would not be making additional public comments about the case.

In the audio recording of a San Francisco police officer’s interview of DePape following his October arrest, DePape admitted to attacking Paul Pelosi and described his plans to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage when he broke into the couple’s San Francisco home.

“Yeah, I mean, I’m not trying to, like, get away with this, so, you know, I know exactly what I did,” DePape said toward the beginning of the 17-minute audio clip.

“Well, I was going to basically hold her hostage, and I was going to talk to her,” DePape said of Nancy Pelosi. “If she told the truth, I’d let her go scot-free. If she f**king lied, I was going to break her kneecaps.”

In the interview, DePape embraced conspiracy theories about Democrats and Pelosi, complaining about a Democratic “crime spree” and baselessly claiming that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats had spied on former President Donald Trump’s campaign.

“They are the criminals,” DePape said.

The officer walked DePape through his break-in of the Pelosi house and his encounter with Paul Pelosi. When he was asked why he didn’t leave after Paul Pelosi called the police, DePape compared himself to the Founding Fathers’ fighting the British.

“When I left my house, I left to go fight tyranny. I did not leave to go surrender,” he said.

DePape explained why he attacked Paul Pelosi after the police arrived, when they both were holding onto a hammer. “He thinks that I’ll just surrender, and it’s like, I didn’t come there to surrender,” DePape said. “And I told him that I would go through him. And so I basically yank it away from him and hit him.”

In the 911 call audio, Pelosi seemed to be subtly attempting to tell the dispatcher he was in danger while DePape was listening in. CNN has previously reported Pelosi made the call when he went into his bathroom, where his cell phone was charging.

“There’s a gentleman here just waiting for my wife to come back, Nancy Pelosi. He’s just waiting for her to come back, but she’s not going to be here for days, so I guess we’ll have to wait,” Pelosi said to the dispatcher.

“He thinks everything’s good. I’ve got a problem, but he thinks everything’s good,” Pelosi said at another point in the 2-minute, 56-second recording.

The dispatcher asked Pelosi if he knew who the man was, and Pelosi said he did not. “He’s telling me to put the phone down and just do what he says,” Pelosi said.

“Who is David?” the dispatcher asked.

“I don’t know,” Pelosi said.

DePape then spoke up on the call. “I’m a friend of theirs,” he said.

“He says he’s a friend. But as I said …” Pelosi said.

“But you don’t know who he is?” the dispatcher responded.

“No ma’am,” Pelosi said.

In the surveillance footage, DePape is seen breaking into the Pelosi home. The scene was captured by a US Capitol Police security camera installed at Pelosi’s San Francisco residence.

The attack on Paul Pelosi was a factor in Nancy Pelosi’s decision to step back from House Democratic leadership, she has said previously.

Court documents revealed DePape allegedly woke Paul Pelosi shortly after 2 a.m., carrying a large hammer and several white zip ties, and demanded: “Where’s Nancy? Where’s Nancy?” He then threatened to tie up Paul Pelosi and prevented him from escaping via elevator, according to the documents. DePape later allegedly told him, “I can take you out.”

Following the attack, Paul Pelosi underwent surgery “to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands,” a spokesman for Nancy Pelosi said in a statement. On Thursday, Nancy Pelosi said her husband’s recovery was “one day at a time.” She said she didn’t know if she would see the video when it was released.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

CNN
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President Joe Biden announced White House chief of staff Ron Klain will step down next week and will be replaced by Jeff Zients, the former Obama administration official who ran Biden’s Covid-19 response operation.

Biden said there will be an “official transition” event at the White House next week to “thank Ron for his tireless work and officially welcome Jeff back to the White House in this role.”

Biden hailed Klain in a statement Friday morning, saying when he was elected president he “knew” he wanted Klain to be his chief of staff calling him “as tough, smart, determined, and persistent as anyone I have ever met.”

On Zients, Biden said he is “confident that Jeff will continue Ron’s example of smart, steady leadership, as we continue to work hard every day for the people we were sent here to serve.”

The announcement confirms earlier reporting by CNN and other news outlets.

In his resignation letter Friday, Klain said it had been “quite a journey” serving Biden, writing that 36 years ago he joined Biden’s then-Senate staff on the day he returned from his honeymoon.

“Leaving and returning to your staff several times since, my work for you has defined my life, both personally and professionally,” Klain wrote to Biden, adding he was “filled with gratitude.”

Klain promised to complete “an orderly handoff” to his successor and promised to do “whatever I can to help your campaign” should Biden choose to run for reelection.

“The halfway point of your first term – with two successful years behind us, and key decisions on the next two years ahead – is the right time for this team to have fresh leadership,” Klain said. “I have served longer than eight of the last nine Chiefs of Staff and have given this job my all; now it is time for someone else to take it on.”

Klain touted Biden’s policy record in the first two years of his presidency, comparing him to some of the most notable Democratic presidents of the last century as he touted “the most significant economic recovery legislation since FDR” and praised him for managing “the largest land war in Europe since the Truman era.”

“You did it all in the middle of the worst public health crisis since the Wilson era, with the smallest legislative majority of any newly elected Democratic president in a century,” Klain wrote.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has maintained an extremely close relationship with Klain through the last two years, praised his tenure as critical to “one of the most historic and productive first two years of a presidency in generations.”

Schumer, a New York Democrat, spoke by phone with Zients before the decision was officially announced and said the two agreed to maintain the “same close relationship with the White House Chief of Staff that I had with Ron.”

“He’s organized, focused, and deliberate, exactly the right person to lead the Biden administration and ensure the American people see and feel the benefits of these new laws,” Schumer, who often spoke to Klain by phone several times a day, said of Zients in a statement.

In replacing Klain with Zients, Biden is turning to a consultant with more business experience than political background as he enters the third year of his presidency.

The decision to pick Zients surprised some internally given that there were differences in Biden’s and Zients’ management styles early on in the administration. But Biden was impressed with his job as the coronavirus response coordinator when Zients inherited what officials described as a “largely dysfunctional” effort by the Trump administration.

Zients is expected to focus on managing the White House and implementing Biden’s legislative and policy agenda, while other senior advisers – namely senior adviser Anita Dunn and deputy White House chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon – take the lead on Biden’s political operation as Biden gears up for a reelection campaign.

The balance of power is expected to be similar to the split portfolios of then-White House chief of staff Jack Lew and David Plouffe, a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama who managed political operations. Klain is also expected to remain involved from the outside and additional political advisers are expected to be hired.

A White House official touted Zients as having the ideal set of skills and relationship with Biden to lead the White House in a year that will be focused on implementing key pieces of Biden’s legislative agenda. Officials pointed to Zients’ experience as Biden’s Covid-19 response coordinator and his roles as director of the National Economic Council and acting director of the Office of Management and Budget under Obama. Zients has also worked closely with Biden’s other senior advisers.

Klain’s departure comes at a difficult time for Biden, with a special counsel investigating his handling of classified information after his time as vice president and with the administration and the president’s family facing renewed scrutiny by the GOP-controlled US House of Representatives. An official familiar with Klain’s plans said his decision to step down is not related to the investigation underway about classified documents found at Biden’s private office and Delaware residence, with the decision being made before the special counsel was announced.

Klain has been mulling his exit since November’s midterm elections, according to a person familiar with the matter, who said people inside the White House have watched closely for clues as to his intentions. Klain is known to email staff at all hours and even check on gas prices in the middle of the night – a work pace that many of his colleagues viewed as unsustainable in the long run.

Klain himself has noted publicly – and in a more detailed manner privately – the grueling and exhausting nature of the position. But his deeply ingrained presence in nearly every aspect of the West Wing, along with his decades-long relationship with Biden, has made him crucial to the administration’s first two years.

Klain’s departure could preface other shifts inside the West Wing, as senior staff either shift over to the expected reelection campaign or decide themselves to depart the administration after two years. A talent search process has been underway, led by Zients, to identify potential replacements for top posts.

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

CNN
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Nearly three weeks after a traffic stop in Memphis, Tennessee, resulted in a violent arrest and subsequent death of a driver, police are expected to release footage of the incident to the public.

Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, was hospitalized after the arrest on January 7 and died three days later from injuries sustained, according to police. Five officers from the Memphis Police Department, who are also Black, were fired and face criminal charges.

The family of Nichols and attorneys have met with police and city officials to view the traffic stop’s video recordings, which have been described as a vicious, prolonged beating that lasted for minutes after officers chased down a fleeing Nichols.

Memphis Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis decried the officers’ conduct, adding additional officers continue to be investigated.

“This is not just a professional failing,” Davis said. “This is a failing of basic humanity toward another individual. This incident was heinous, reckless and inhumane. And in the vein of transparency, when the video is released in the coming days, you will see this for yourselves.”

After charges were announced Thursday, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said of the accelerated investigation, “We have worked to get a resolution to these matters in record time because we take them extremely seriously.”

Here’s what we know about the timeline of the incident, investigations from authorities and reaction from Nichols’ family:

On January 7 at approximately 8:30 p.m., officers pulled over a vehicle for suspected reckless driving, according to a statement from Memphis police.

“A confrontation occurred” between officers and the vehicle’s driver – later identified as Nichols – who then fled on foot, according to Memphis police. Officers apprehended him and “another confrontation occurred,” resulting in Nichols’ arrest, police said.

An ambulance was called to the scene of the arrest after Nichols complained of shortness of breath, police said, and he was transported to a nearby hospital in critical condition.

On January 10, three days after the stop, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation announced Nichols had died due to injuries sustained in the “use-of-force incident with officers,” according to a statement.

Following the traffic stop, the officers involved were relieved of duty – a standard departmental procedure while an investigation into their use of force began, Memphis police said. The TBI and the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office were also enlisted to investigate.

Preliminary findings indicated the serious nature of the officers’ conduct during the stop, police said.

“After reviewing various sources of information involving this incident, I have found that it is necessary to take immediate and appropriate action,” Chief Davis said in a statement released January 15. “Today, the department is serving notice to the officers involved of the impending administrative actions.”

The department needed to follow a required procedural process before disciplining or terminating government civil servant employees, the statement added.

In the days after Nichols’ death, his family’s attorney Ben Crump repeatedly voiced their desire for the release of body camera and surveillance footage of the traffic stop.

“This kind of in-custody death destroys community trust if agencies are not swiftly transparent,” Crump said in a statement.

On January 18, the Department of Justice said a civil rights investigation has been opened into the death of Nichols.

“Last week, Tyre Nichols tragically died, a few days after he was involved in an incident where Memphis Police Department officers used force during his arrest,” Kevin G. Ritz, US Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee, said in a statement.

Acknowledging the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s ongoing efforts, the US Attorney’s office “in coordination with the FBI Memphis Field Office and the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, has opened a civil rights investigation,” Ritz said, declining to provide further details.

After its internal investigation, Memphis police identified and fired five officers involved in the traffic stop due to their violation of multiple department policies.

Officers Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr., and Justin Smith were terminated for failing in their “excessive use of force, duty to intervene, and duty to render aid,” the department said in a statement.

“The egregious nature of this incident is not a reflection of the good work our officers perform, with integrity every day,” Davis said.

A statement from the Memphis Police Association, the union representing the officers, declined to comment on the terminations beyond saying that the city of Memphis and Nichols’ family “deserve to know the complete account of the events leading up to his death and what may have contributed to it.”

Nichols family attorneys Crump and Antonio Romanucci called the firing of the five officers “the first step towards achieving justice for Tyre and his family.”

Two Memphis Fire Department employees who were part of Nichols’ “initial patient care” were also fired, department Public Information Officer Qwanesha Ward told CNN’s Nadia Romero.

After meeting with officials to watch the unreleased police video of the arrest, Nichols’ family and their attorneys described their horror at what they saw.

“He was defenseless the entire time. He was a human piñata for those police officers. It was an unadulterated, unabashed, nonstop beating of this young boy for three minutes. That is what we saw in that video,” Romanucci said. “Not only was it violent, it was savage.”

“What I saw on the video today was horrific,” Rodney Wells, Nichols’ stepfather, said Monday. “No father, mother should have to witness what I saw today.”

Crump described the video as “appalling,” “deplorable” and “heinous.” He said RowVaughn Wells, Nichols’ mother, was unable to get through viewing the first minute of the footage after hearing Nichols ask, “What did I do?” At the end of the footage, Nichols can be heard calling for his mother three times, the attorney said.

According to preliminary results of an autopsy commissioned by attorneys for his family, Nichols suffered “extensive bleeding caused by a severe beating.” CNN has requested a copy of the autopsy, which Crump said will be available when the full report is ready.

Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy told CNN on Tuesday his office was ensuring all necessary interviews with those involved had been conducted before the footage’s release.

“A lot of the people’s questions about what exactly happened will, of course, be answered once people see the video,” Mulroy said, noting he believes the city will release enough footage to show the “entirety of the incident, from the very beginning to the very end.”

A grand jury indicted the five officers fired by Memphis police on several charges, according to the county’s district attorney.

Martin III, Smith, Bean, Haley and Mills, Jr. were each charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, two charges of aggravated kidnapping, two charges of official misconduct and one charge of official oppression, according to both Shelby County criminal court and Shelby County jail records.

“While each of the five individuals played a different role in the incident in question, the actions of all of them resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols, and they are all responsible,” Mulroy said during a news conference.

All five former officers reported to Shelby County Jail on Thursday, with four bonding out by early Friday morning, jail records showed.

Correction: A previous version of this story misspelled RowVaughn Wells’ first name.

WASHINGTON, Jan 26 (Reuters) – President Joe Biden cast Republicans as representing the party of “chaos and catastrophe” on Thursday and sharply criticized their refusal to approve an increase in the U.S. debt ceiling unless they get a deal on spending cuts.

In an impassioned speech at a steamfitters union hall in Virginia, Biden launched attack after attack on Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives, saying some of their proposals are dangerous for the American economy.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, has vowed not to approve a debt ceiling increase unless Biden and his fellow Democrats reach a negotiated deal with Republicans on cutting future government spending.

“We must finally address Washington’s irresponsible government spending if we want to put America on a better fiscal path,” McCarthy wrote on Thursday.

Biden called McCarthy’s position “mind-boggling.”

“I will not let anyone use the full faith and credit of the United States as a bargaining chip. In the United States of America, we pay our debts,” Biden said.

Of Republicans aligned with former President Donald Trump, Biden said: “They seem intent on being the party of chaos and catastrophe.”

Republicans’ threat is unusual – the U.S. debt ceiling has been increased on a bipartisan basis in Congress for decades, with the exception of a 2011 vote that included spending cuts for several years ahead.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Jan. 19 that the United States has reached its current $31.4 trillion borrowing cap, but can continue paying its bills until June by shuffling money between various accounts. Investors have warned edging closer to that deadline could have dire market repercussions.

In his first major economic speech of the year, Biden also promoted his record on the U.S. economy, including the creation of more manufacturing jobs, a low unemployment rate and better-than-expected economic growth figures.

Biden addressed European leaders’ complaint that his legislative package last year offers massive subsidies for U.S.-made products that they say will impact trade. He said he is getting criticism from abroad for focusing too much attention on the United States.

“The hell with that,” he said.

Biden reiterated his threat to veto Republican proposals that would limit his authority to tap the strategic petroleum reserve, cut taxes on corporations and levy a national sales tax should they reach his desk.

Since Democrats control the Senate, his veto pen is unlikely to be needed, but Biden and the White House have lit on these and other fringe Republican proposals to highlight the gulf between the two parties’ plans.

“They want to raise your gas prices. They want to cut taxes for billionaires,” Biden said. “They want to impose a 30 percent national sales tax,” he added.

Biden, who is laying the groundwork for a 2024 reelection bid, told union members in Springfield, Virginia, that he would veto any such bills. “Not on my watch, I will veto everything they send us,” he said.

Biden also went after pharmaceutical companies for making huge profits using federal incentives for research and investment and promised to pass legislation extending a $35 cap on insulin for Medicare users to everyone.

The economy under Biden has been gripped by inflation that is now ebbing, as are fears that a recession is imminent. U.S. gross domestic product grew at a 2.9% annualized rate in last year’s fourth quarter, exceeding expectations, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

REPUBLICAN PROPOSALS

Since the new Congress started this month, the House has passed a bill to slash the Internal Revenue Service’s budget, and some Republicans propose cutting Social Security and Medicare, retirement and healthcare spending programs for senior citizens.

“Do they think this is going to help with inflation,” Biden said of the sales tax proposal. “What in God’s name is this all about?”

As Biden started his speech, House Speaker McCarthy tweeted, “If President Biden is so eager to speak on the economy, then he should set a date to discuss a responsible debt ceiling increase.”

A bill on the strategic petroleum reserve that the White House says will raise gas prices was another one of a series of political messaging measures that the House passed in its first week of business, and it is seen as having little to no chance of being taken up by the Senate.

The national sales tax proposal is included in the Fair Tax Act of 2023, introduced on Jan. 9 by Republican Representative Earl “Buddy” Carter of Georgia. It would replace the U.S. income, payroll, estate and gift taxes with a 23% sales tax and stop funding the Internal Revenue Service after 2027.

McCarthy responded “no” this week when asked by reporters if he supported the bill, which Georgia Republicans have been introducing without success since 1999.

Reporting By Steve Holland and Nandita Bose; Additional reporting by David Morgan, Editing by Heather Timmons, Alistair Bell and Jonathan Oatis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Recent evidence suggests that the current bivalent provides protection against severe disease and death from the XBB.1 variant that is dominant in the U.S. right now.

“As we’ve turned the corner from a pandemic phase to an endemic phase,” said Ofer Levy, staff physician at Boston Children’s Hospital, professor at Harvard Medical School and a member of the FDA panel. “Today’s vote marks a big practical win for the American people.”

According to the CDC, roughly 69 percent of adults living in the U.S. have completed their primary vaccination series. More than 80 percent have received at least one shot, but 20 percent remain completely unvaccinated. Only about 15 percent of Americans, or 50 million people, have received bivalent boosters so far.

Advisers stressed that this update would simplify immunizations going forward, which could result in more vaccinations.

“I think anything that results in better public communication, to get more of the unvaccinated vaccinated would be extremely valuable,” said Henry Bernstein, a professor of pediatrics at Hofstra University and a member of the advisory committee.

The recommendation still needs to be adopted by the FDA and the CDC before all vaccines are updated. Although the FDA doesn’t have to agree with its advisory committee, it often does.

“We think that simplification of the vaccination regimen would contribute to easier vaccine deployment and better communication and improved vaccine coverage,” said Jerry Weir, director of the division of viral products in the office of vaccines research and review at FDA.

The update would affect pediatric vaccines, including those for kids 5 and under. Vaccination rates among the youngest children are the lowest of all demographics; only 5.3 percent of children aged 2 to 4 and 3.5 percent of children six months to two years have completed a full vaccine series.

Peter Marks, the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said that for children under 2, the agency hopes to see more data on the bivalent vaccine. “The reassuring thing … is that the safety profile that we have seen with the bivalent boosters mirrors very well the original vaccine in this age range,” he said.

In addition to the panel’s recommendation, advisers focused their discussion Thursday on the best ways to move forward with Covid immunization strategies.

One such strategy would be updating the vaccine annually based on the most widely-circulating variants and distributing it annually, similar to the flu shot. Given the fact that the vast majority of people in the U.S. have already been exposed to Covid-19, it’s possible that healthy adults and teens who have been previously vaccinated would need a single shot annually, while the youngest children, oldest adults or those with compromised immune systems would need two shots.

The advisers cautioned that directly mirroring flu vaccination schedules may not work for Covid, although they understood the desire to roll out an easily implementable endemic schedule. “We need to … make sure that we don’t just follow the dogma,” said Bruce Gellin, the chief of global public health strategy at the Rockefeller Foundation and member of the advisory committee.

They concluded more data would be needed before deciding on a concrete vaccination strategy moving forward. “In order to answer this question of how often, along with the immunogenicity and efficacy data, [we need] safety data,” said Hayley Gans, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University Medical Center.

Still, the FDA stressed its desire to streamline the vaccination process to encourage those who are unvaccinated to get a vaccine. “We heard loud and clear that we need to use a data-driven approach to get to the simplest possible scheme that we can for vaccination,” said Marks. “It should be as simple as possible, but not over-simplified, a little bit like they say about Mozart’s music.”

Advisers also weighed how manufacturers could harmonize any updates to Covid-19 shots to be based on the same variant. Currently, only the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna shots have been updated to induce immunity against BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants. Data suggests that these shots also produce immunity against the XBB.1 strain of the virus, which is currently the most commonly circulating virus. Novavax’s vaccine, which has been authorized as a primary series and booster for adults, has not yet been updated.

“We think we’re an important tool for boosting, and [for] this upcoming season,” said Filip Dubovsky, Novavax’s executive vice president and chief medical officer. Dubovsky said that the company would be looking for the agency’s recommendation on variant selection for future shots.

Novavax presented data that showed its primary vaccine provided ample protection against the BA.4/5 variants, unlike the mRNA shots that required earlier updating. But, he noted, that immunity waned against variants like XBB.1, suggesting it was time for an update.

“MRNA has been fantastic,” said Pamela McInnes, the retired deputy director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences at the National Institutes of Health and voting member. “But it may not give us the breadth of coverage, which is really what I think our problem is right now.”

Some advisers felt it was still too early to say whether managing Covid-19 moving forward would require annual visits. “We may or may not need annual vaccination,” said Cody Meissner, a pediatrician at Tufts Children’s Hospital. “It’s just awfully early, it seems to me, in this process.”

“I don’t think we’re setting it in stone and we’ll see how it goes. We may need to adjust along the way. But overall, I think this is a good path,” said Gellin.