US police officer who brutally assaulted Indian in Alabama arrested, will be fired; FBI to probe matter

New York, Jun 4: The Minneapolis police officer who used his knee to pin down George Floyd's neck before his death was the most experienced of the four officers involved in the arrest, with a record that included medals for bravery and 17 complaints against him, including one for pulling a woman out of her car during a speeding stop.

New details about Derek Chauvin and the other now-fired officers emerged Wednesday after prosecutors upgraded Chauvin's charge to second-degree murder and charged the others with aiding and abetting in a case that has convulsed the nation with protests over race and police brutality.

Heavily redacted personnel files show that Chauvin, a 19-year veteran of the force, was initially trained as a cook and served in the Army as a military police officer.

Eleven-year veteran and native Hmong speaker Tou Thao began as a community service officer and was the subject of six complaints.

The other two officers were relative newcomers to the department, including Thomas Lane, a former juvenile detention guard who did volunteer work with Somali refugees, and J. Alexander Kueng, who got his start in law enforcement by patrolling his college campus and a department store.

The files were notable for what they didn't include. Only one of the 17 complaints against Chauvin was detailed, none of the six against Thao were mentioned and there was no further detail about a 2017 excessive force lawsuit against Thao.

Records show that the 44-year-old Chauvin initially studied cooking before taking courses in law enforcement and doing two stints in the Army as a military police officer in the late 1990s, serving at Fort Benning, Georgia, and in Germany.

Chauvin became a Minneapolis police officer in 2001 and the lone reprimand in his file involved a 2007 incident when he was accused of pulling a woman out of her car after stopping her for going 10 mph (16 kph) over the speed limit.

Investigators found it was not necessary for Chauvin to remove the woman from the car and noted that his squad car video was turned off during the stop.

But Chauvin was also singled out for bravery. Files show he won two medals of valor, one in 2006 for being part of a group of officers who opened fire on a stabbing suspect who pointed a shotgun at them, and another in 2008 for a domestic violence incident in which Chauvin broke down a bathroom door and shot a suspect in the stomach.

He also won medals of commendation in 2008 after he and his partner tackled a fleeing suspect who had a pistol in his hand, and in 2009 for single-handedly apprehending a group of gang members while working as an off-duty security guard at the El Nuevo Rodeo, a Minneapolis nightclub.

Since his arrest, the former owner of the club, Maya Santamaria, said Chauvin and Floyd both worked as security guards there at various times but that she wasn't sure if they had known one another.

She said Chauvin was unnecessarily aggressive on nights when the club had a black clientele, quelling fights by dousing the crowd with pepper spray and calling in several police squad cars as backup, a tactic she called “overkill.”

Chauvin's wife, Kellie, a Laotian immigrant who became the first Hmong winner of the Mrs. Minnesota pageant, said shortly after his arrest last week that she intends to divorce him.

Before news of the upgraded charges, an attorney for Chauvin said he was not making any statements at this time. Lawyers for the others did not return messages seeking comment.

In cellphone video of the May 25 arrest of Floyd, Chauvin is shown pressing his knee onto Floyd's neck for more than eight minutes while Floyd cries out “I can't breathe” and eventually stops moving.

During much of the arrest, Kueng and Lane were helping Chauvin restrain Floyd. Thao was standing nearby keeping onlookers back.

According the complaint, at one point during the arrest, as Chauvin held Floyd down with his knee, Lane asked Chauvin twice whether they should roll Floyd over.

“No, staying put where we got him,” Chauvin replied, “I am worried about excited delirium or whatever,” Lane said. And Chauvin replied again, “That's why we have him on his stomach.” None of the three officers moved from their positions.

Lane joined the police early last year as a 35-year-old cadet — much older than most rookies — and became a full-fledged officer last December. He had no complaints in his file during his short time on the force.

On employment forms, the University of Minnesota graduate said he done volunteer work tutoring Somali youth and as a mentor helping at-risk elementary school students with reading and homework.”

Kueng, at 26 the youngest of the four officers, was also a recent recruit to the police force. He completed his year's probation just three months before the Floyd arrest.

His personnel file, which notes that he speaks, reads and writes Russian, did not include any commendations or disciplinary actions during his short time on force.

Kueng was a 2018 graduate of the University of Minnesota, where he worked part-time as part of the campus security force. He also worked nearly three years as a theft-prevention officer at Macy's.

Thao joined the police force part-time in 2008 while attending a community college. Before that, he worked as a security guard, a supermarket stocker and trainer at McDonald's.

City records show six complaints were filed against Thao, but there was no mention of that in the records released Wednesday. There also was no mention of a 2017 federal lawsuit accusing him and another officer of excessive force.

According to the lawsuit, Lamar Ferguson claimed that in 2014, Thao and his partner stopped him and beat him up while he was on his way to his girlfriend's house. The lawsuit was settled for $25,000 ___

Richmond reported from Madison, Wisconsin. Associated Press writer Scott Bauer in Madison and researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York contributed to this report.

Jun 4: A malaria drug President Donald Trump took to try to prevent COVID-19 proved ineffective for that in the first large, high-quality study to test it in people in close contact with someone with the disease.

Results published Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine show that hydroxychloroquine was no better than placebo pills at preventing illness from the coronavirus.

The drug did not seem to cause serious harm, though -- about 40% on it had side effects, mostly mild stomach problems.

 “We were disappointed. We would have liked for this to work,” said the study leader, Dr. David Boulware, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Minnesota.

“But our objective was to answer the question and to conduct a high-quality study,” because the evidence on the drug so far has been inconclusive, he said.

Hydroxychloroquine and a similar drug, chloroquine, have been the subject of much debate since Trump started promoting them in March.

Hydroxychloroquine has long been used for malaria, lupus, and rheumatoid arthritis, but no large studies have shown it or chloroquine to be safe or effective for much sicker patients with coronavirus, and some studies have suggested the drugs may do harm.

Trump took a two-week course of hydroxychloroquine, along with zinc and Vitamin D, after two staffers tested positive for COVID-19, and had no ill effects, according to results of his latest physical released by his doctor Wednesday.

Federal regulators have warned against hydroxychloroquine's use except in hospitals and formal studies because of the risk of side effects, especially heart rhythm problems.

Boulware's study involved 821 people in the United States and Canada living with someone diagnosed with COVID-19 or at high risk of getting it because of their job -- doctors, nurses, ambulance workers who had significant exposure to a sick patient while not wearing full protective gear.

They were randomly assigned to get either the nutrient folate as a placebo or hydroxychloroquine for five days, starting within four days of their exposure. Neither they nor others involved in the research knew who was getting which pills.

After 14 days in the study, 12 per cent on the drug developed COVID-19 symptoms versus 14 per cent in the placebo group, but the difference is so small it could have occurred by chance, Boulware said.

“There's basically no effect. It does not prevent infection,” he said of the drug. Even if it were to give some slim advantage, “we'd want a much larger effect” to justify its use and risk of side effects for preventing illness, he said.

Results were no different among a subgroup of participants who were taking zinc or vitamin C, which some people believe might help make hydroxychloroquine more effective or fight the coronavirus.

There are some big caveats: The study enrolled people through the Internet and social media, relying on them to report their own symptoms rather than having them tracked in a formal way by doctors.

Participants were not all tested for the coronavirus but were diagnosed as COVID-19 cases based on symptoms in many cases. And not all took their medicines as directed.

The results “are more provocative than definitive,” and the drug may yet have prevention benefits if tried sooner or in a different way, Dr. Myron Cohen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wrote in a commentary in the journal.

Others were glad to see a study that had a comparison group and good scientific methods after so many weaker reports on hydroxychloroquine.

“This fits with everything else we've seen so far which suggests that it's not beneficial," said Dr. Peter Bach, director of a health policy center at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

This study was in younger relatively healthy people, but the results “would make me very discouraged about trying to use this in older people” who are most vulnerable to serious illness from the coronavirus, Bach said.

“If it does work, it doesn't work very well.” Dr. Dan Culver, a lung specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, said there's still a chance that giving the drug sooner than four days after someone's exposure to the virus may help prevent illness.

But the study “takes 'home run' off the table” as far as hopes for the drug, he said.

The study was mostly funded by David Baszucki, founder of Roblox, a California-based game software company, and other private donors and the Minnesota university.

Boulware also is leading a study testing hydroxychloroquine for treating COVID-19. The study is finished and results are being analyzed now.

On Tuesday, the journal Lancet posted an “expression of concern” about a study it published earlier this month of nearly 15,000 COVID-19 patients on the malaria drugs that tied their use to a higher risk of dying in the hospital or developing a heartbeat problem.

Scientists have raised serious questions about the database used for that study, and its authors have launched an independent audit.

That work had a big impact: the World Health Organization suspended use of hydroxychloroquine in a study it is leading, and French officials stopped the drug's use in hospitals. On Wednesday, the WHO said experts who reviewed safety information decided that its study could resume.

Jan 30: The death toll rose to 170 in the new virus outbreak in China on Thursday as foreign evacuees from the worst-hit region begin returning home under close observation and world health officials expressed “great concern” that the disease is starting to spread between people outside of China.

Thursday’s figures cover the previous 24 hours and represent an increase of 38 deaths and 1,737 cases for a total of 7,711. Of the new deaths, 37 were in the epicenter of the outbreak in Hubei province and one in the southwestern province of Sichuan.

The news comes as the 195 Americans evacuated from Wuhan, the Hubei province city of 11 million where the outbreak originated, are undergoing three days of testing and monitoring at a Southern California military base to make sure they do not show signs of the virus.

A group of 210 Japanese evacuees from Wuhan landed Thursday at Tokyo’s Haneda airport on a second government chartered flight, according to the foreign ministry. Reports said nine of those aboard the flight showed signs of cough and fever. Three of the 206 Japanese who returned on Wednesday tested positive for the new coronavirus, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said during a parliamentary session. Two of them showed no symptoms of the disease.

France, New Zealand, Australia and other countries are also pulling out their citizens or making plans to do so.

The World Health Organization emergencies chief said the few cases of human-to-human spread of the virus outside China — in Japan, Germany, Canada and Vietnam — were of “great concern” and were part of the reason the U.N. health agency’s director-general was reconvening a committee of experts on Thursday to assess whether the outbreak should be declared a global emergency.

The new virus has now infected more people in China than were sickened there during the 2002-2003 SARS outbreak.

Dr. Michael Ryan spoke at a news conference in Geneva on Wednesday after returning from a trip to Beijing to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other senior government leaders. He said China was taking “extraordinary measures in the face of an extraordinary challenge” posed by the outbreak.

To date, about 99% of the cases are in China. Ryan estimated the death rate of the new virus at 2%, but said the figure was very preliminary. With fluctuating numbers of cases and deaths, scientists are only able to produce a rough estimate of the fatality rate and it’s likely many milder cases of the virus are being missed.

In comparison, the SARS virus killed about 10% of people who caught it. The new virus is from the coronavirus family, which includes those that can cause the common cold as well as more serious illnesses such as SARS and MERS.

Scientists say there are many questions to be answered about the new virus, including just how easily it spreads and how severe it is.

In a report published Wednesday, Chinese researchers suggested that person-to-person spread among close contacts occurred as early as mid-December.

“Considerable efforts” will be needed to control the spread if this ratio holds up elsewhere, researchers wrote in the report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

More than half of the cases in which symptoms began before Jan. 1 were tied to a seafood market, but only 8% of cases after that have been, researchers found. They reported the average incubation period was five days.