Christopher Wray testifies before a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on his nomination to be the next FBI director in Washington, D.C. Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters

In a prepared statement Wednesday, Christopher Wray told senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI’s work will only “be driven by anything other than the facts, the law, and the impartial pursuit of justice.”

President Donald Trump’s pick for the FBI said as his confirmation hearing began Wednesday that his loyalty is to the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.

WATCH LIVE: Chris Wray, Trump’s FBI nominee, testifies before Senate judiciary.

If confirmed, Wray would replace former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by the president in May.

Read more about Wray’s background here.

And read Wray’s full opening remarks as prepared below:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Feinstein, and Members of the Committee. I would like to thank the Committee for the privilege of appearing before you today. I also want to thank Senator Nunn for his kind introduction.

I would not be able to set out on this next endeavor without the love and support of my family. I am joined today by my wife Helen, and our children, Caroline and Trip. Also here are my parents, Gilda & Cecil Wray; my sister, Katie Baughman; my niece Maggie; my sister-in-law and brother-in-law Kate and Jason Klitenic; and two of their children, Amelia and Clark. A commitment of this order affects the whole family, and I am grateful beyond words to them.

I am honored to be nominated by the President to lead the FBI and humbled by the prospect of working alongside the outstanding men and women of the Bureau. Time and time again—often when the stakes are at their highest—they have proven their unshakeable commitment to protecting the American people, upholding the Constitution and laws of the United States, and demonstrating the virtues found in the FBI motto: Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity.

Former Attorney General and Judge Griffin Bell—with whom I worked early in my career—often repeated the saying that there is no limit to what we can achieve if no one cares who gets the credit. The men and women of the FBI reflect the limitless potential of this saying, born of their steadfast dedication to their work.

While the FBI has justly earned its reputation as the finest law enforcement agency in the world, its special agents, analysts, and support staff operate largely out of public view. They toil at great risk to themselves and at great sacrifice by their families. But they happily defer individual recognition because they believe that the principles they serve are so much larger than themselves.

I feel fortunate to have been able to witness this selfless and inspiring commitment firsthand throughout my career in public service. As a line prosecutor, I learned a great deal from working with many brave special agents of the FBI on cases ranging from bank robberies to corruption, from kidnapping to financial fraud. My friends to this day, they taught me much about playing it straight and following the facts wherever they may lead.

I continued my career in public service in the summer of 2001 by moving to Washington, D.C. to work at the Justice Department with my friend and mentor, then-Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, After 9/11, I witnessed the FBI’s extraordinary capabilities as the people there moved heaven and earth to try to ensure that horrific attacks like those on September 11 never happen again. I know, from up close — and I sleep better because I know — that the horror of 9/11 has never faded from the FBI’s collective memory. The Bureau has never grown complacent and continues to work tirelessly every day to protect all Americans.

As head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, I likewise saw countless examples of the FBI’s unflagging pursuit of justice, free and independent of any favor or influence. From counterterrorism and counterespionage to the escalating threats of cybercrime; from human trafficking to public corruption and financial fraud — I worked with and learned from the men and women of the FBI, who put it all on the line to make our streets safer and our lives better.

If I am given the honor of leading this agency, I will never allow the FBI’s work to be driven by anything other than the facts, the law, and the impartial pursuit of justice. Period.

My loyalty is to the Constitution and the rule of law. They have been my guideposts throughout my career and I will continue to adhere to them no matter the test.

There is no doubt that our country faces grave threats. As others have noted, America’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies have to pitch a perfect game every day, while those that would inflict harm on us need only succeed once to advance their aims. I consider the Director’s most important duty to ensure that nothing distracts the selfless patriots at the FBI from their mission.

In conclusion, I pledge to be the leader that the FBI deserves—and to lead an independent Bureau that will make every American proud.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to answering the Committee’s questions.

READ MORE: Who is Christopher Wray, Trump’s pick for FBI director

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St. Anthony Police Department officer Jeronimo Yanez poses for investigation photographs after he fatally shot Philando Castile during a traffic stop in July 2016, in a combination of photos released on June 20, 2017, after a jury declared Yanez not guilty of second-degree manslaughter. Photo courtesy of Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension/Handout via Reuters

The Minnesota officer who was cleared of all charges in last year’s shooting death of black motorist Philando Castile no longer works for the St. Anthony Police Department, officials announced Monday.

Following his removal from the department, Jeronimo Yanez will receive $48,500, according to details of the separation agreement reported by the Star Tribune.

Additionally, Yanez will be paid for up to 600 hours of unused personal leave pay. At the time of the shooting, Yanez was earning more than $72,000 a year, excepting overtime pay, documents showed, the Associated Press reported.

On the city’s official website, a statement posted Monday said that the agreement “ends all employment rights” of Yanez for St. Anthony, adding that this latest development “brings to a close one part of this horrible tragedy.”

“The City concluded this was the most thoughtful way to move forward and help the community-wide healing process proceed,” statement continued.

The Tribune noted that the five-page agreement also “forever” releases St. Anthony from “all liability and damages and from all claims” by Yanez over Castile’s death, adding that the former officer has 15 days to rescind it as well. The agreement listed June 30 as the official date of separation between Yanez and the city.

In mid-June, a Minnesota jury acquitted Yanez, who is Latino, of second-degree manslaughter and other charges in the July 6, 2015, fatal shooting of 32-year-old Castile during a traffic stop.

The jury’s announcement came during a week of several, high-profile police shooting trials that ended with no convictions.

Why do so few trials of police officers charged in on-duty shootings end in convictions? Most recently, the officers who shot and killed Philando Castile and Sylville Smith were acquitted by juries who saw video of the fatal encounters. John Yang discusses issues of race and deadly force with David Klinger of the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Brittany Packnett, co-founder of Campaign Zero.

On the same day of the jury’s verdict, officials for the City of St. Anthony announced that Yanez would no longer be employed by its police department, saying that it will offer the ex-officer a “voluntary separation agreement” to help him transition to a different career.

“The City of St. Anthony has concluded that the public will be best served if Officer Yanez is no longer a police officer in our city,” the city said in a statement at the time.

Shortly after the trial, it was announced that Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, reached a $2.995 million settlement with the city. The settlement is pending approval by a state court.

READ MORE: Fundraising site will not support lawsuits against Black Lives Matter

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Sixteen people are dead after a Marine Corps tanker crashed Monday in a field in northern Mississippi, officials said Tuesday.

Air traffic control lost contact with the KC-130 refueling tanker that left from South Carolina around 4 p.m. local time. Its last known location was over rural Mississippi, and the resulting debris from the crash was found in LeFlore County, fewer than 100 miles from Jackson, the state’s capital.

Investigators have yet to identify the cause of the crash and reveal the names of the service members aboard the aircraft, the Marine Corps said in a statement. Fred Randle, county emergency management director, told reporters that there were no survivors and that all 16 victims were on the plane when it crashed.

Two Marine Corps CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters receive fuel from a KC-130 Hercules over the Gulf of Aden in 2003. Photo courtesy of U.S. Marine Corps/Cpl. Paula M. Fitzgerald/Handout via Reuters

Images of the aftermath showed a black plume of smoke amid a field of bean stalks. Witness Andy Jones told the Associated Press he was nearby at his family’s catfish farm when he heard a boom and then saw the plane spin downward.

“You looked up and you saw the plane twirling around,” he said. “It was spinning down.”

Jones added that he saw the plane hit the ground in a field of soybeans and that the plane was flattened by the wreck.

“Beans are about waist-high, and there wasn’t much sticking out above the beans,” he said.

The Marine Corps initially acknowledged the “mishap” on its official Twitter account, promising that additional information would be provided.

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When the crash was initially announced, the death toll hovered around 12 bodies. That figure was updated to 16 by Monday night. This morning, Richard V. Spencer, President Donald Trump’s nominee for Navy secretary, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that 15 Marines and one sailor was killed in Monday’s crash.

The president tweeted his condolences Tuesday, saying the crash was “heartbreaking.”

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Mississippi’s two senators addressed the crash on Twitter as well, both saying they were “saddened” by the news.

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Reuters pointed out that the U.S. Navy’s website said the aircraft is able to carry 92 ground troops or 64 paratroopers.

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President Donald Trump shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the their bilateral meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met face-to-face Friday for the first time, with several topics like Syria and North Korea purportedly up for discussion.

But after the two-hour meeting, two key people in the room for the Trump-Putin talk gave differing accounts of what happened when one particular issue — Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election — came up.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Mr. Trump opened the meeting by addressing concerns over Russian meddling in the 2016 election, adding that Trump “pressed” Putin on the issue “on more than one occasion” during the conversation.

U.S. intelligence agencies have blamed Russia for meddling in the election last year in an effort to tilt the race in Trump’s favor.

According to Tillerson, who spoke to reporters in an off-camera briefing after the meeting, Putin denied that Russia had interfered in the election when Trump brought it up.

Tillerson added that the two presidents then agreed to move forward and focus on advancing the relationship between the United States and Russia, “because it’s not clear to me that we will ever come to some agreed-upon resolution” on the 2016 race.

One problem? Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a different takeaway.

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held their first face-to-face meeting since Mr. Trump took office on Friday during the G20 summit, discussing Syria and North Korea, as well as Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Judy Woodruff learns more from special correspondent Ryan Chilcote.

Lavrov told reporters after the meeting that Trump had actually accepted Putin’s assurances that Russia didn’t interfere in the 2016 election.

“President Trump said he’s heard Putin’s very clear statements that this is not true and that the Russian government didn’t interfere in the elections and that he accepts these statements. That’s all,” Lavrov is quoted as saying, according to CNN.

The White House, however, denied Lavrov’s claim that Trump had accepted Putin’s denial, an administrative official told the NewsHour.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, strongly decried Russian involvement in addressing concerns about interference, saying, “the establishment of a working group as reported by Foreign Minister Lavrov to study how to curb cyber interference in elections in which the Russians would play any role, would be akin to inviting the North Koreans to participate in a commission on nonproliferation — it tacitly adopts the fiction that the Russians are a constructive partner on the subject instead of the worst actor on the world stage.”

LISTEN: Trump confronts Putin on election hacking in first meeting

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A man lights a candle in his family’s shack in an area where, according to local residents, several people have been killed in police operations since the beginning of country’s war on drugs, in Manila, Philippines. Photo taken in November 2016. Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters

Another week, another series of Trump tweets that stole the media’s attention.

Trump went after the media at least 15 times last week on Twitter, as catalogued by NPR. Among his targets: The Washington Post, The New York Times, MSNBC’s Greta Van Susteren and, most explosively, Mika Brzezinski, whom he called crazy and “bleeding badly from a facelift” as he criticized the “poorly-rated” show she co-hosts with Joe Scarborough.

Early Sunday, Trump posted a 28-second video clip from Reddit of his “Wrestlemania” match with Vince McMahon with a logo of CNN superimposed over his face. The network fired three employees earlier in the week over a story it later retracted about Trump officials’ ties to a Russian investment fund. “#FraudNewsCNN #FNN,” the video is captioned, as Trump tackles the giant logo to the ground.

Seventy percent of Americans think civility has gotten worse since Trump took office, according to a new NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll. Sixty-one percent of American’s don’t trust his administration. But they don’t trust Congress or the media, either.

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The tweets have put Republicans in a difficult position: They need the president to enact major legislation on health care and tax reform, even as he breaks “every modern standard of presidential decorum,” 140 characters at a time.

(To Senate Republicans trying to work through a health care compromise, for instance, Trump suggested on Twitter that they just repeal and replace later, raising doubts about the president’s support for legislation about which some lawmakers are already uncertain).

Trump agrees with his critics on one point: “My use of social media is not Presidential – it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again!” he tweeted, later saying he isn’t planning to slow his 140-character musings any time soon.

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Get back in touch with the great big world outside of Twitter with these five stories that may have been lost in this week’s deluge of tweets.

1. Illinois could become the first “junk state” in the U.S.

The entrance to Francis Parkman School is boarded up in Chicago, Illinois, May 8, 2015. Forty-nine elementary schools were targeted by the country’s largest mass closing in 2013, and many are still empty, due to a budget stalemate. Photo by REUTERS/Jim Young.

For the past two years, Illinois has gone without a budget.

This summer, three credit-rating houses suggested that Illinois — without a budget plan for a third straight year — was at risk for a downgraded bond rating, making it the first U.S. state to fall under “junk status.”

Such a downgrade would make borrowing money more expensive, exacerbating the state’s dire financial situation at a time when the state already has $15 billion in unpaid bills. (The state has another $251 billion in pension debt, according to CNN.)

On Sunday, a day after the close of the fiscal year, the Illinois House rushed to pass a massive budget plan that would increase the personal tax rate by 32 percent. It would also raise the corporate tax rate from 5.25 percent to 7 percent, in all generating nearly $5 billion a year to replenish the state’s coffers.

On Tuesday, the Illinois Senate passed the tax hike and budget plan. But three hours later, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoed the legislation, calling it a “permanent income tax increase.” The Senate quickly overrode Rauner’s veto.

Now, the House must pass the override. It’s expected to address the issue Thursday, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The House initially voted to pass the budget plan 72-45 on Monday, with one more vote than necessary to override a veto. More than a dozen Republicans broke ranks to support the bill, in the face of intense pressure from their districts. They will need the same support in order to override the governor’s veto.

“[T]his is the sword that I’m willing to die on,” Republican Rep. Michael Unes told the Chicago Tribune. “And if it costs me my seat, so be it.”

On Thursday, the House voted to override the governor’s veto, enacting a $36 billion spending plan and ending the longest budget stalemate in U.S. history.

Why it matters

How did Illinois get here?

When a temporary income tax increase expired in January 2015, the Republican governor and Democrat-controlled legislature were unable to resolve their differences to pass a budget. Yet state spending continued at the same levels, leaving Illinois with a $6.2 billion annual deficit.

Even with a budget plan now in place, lawmakers must address how the deficit has affected all parts of the state. State funding for public universities fell 61 percent for the 2015-2016 school year, according to data from the Illinois Board of Higher Education. Illinois public universities are now at risk of losing their accreditation. Meanwhile, the state’s public schools have had to cut staff, and classrooms have ballooned in size. Without state funding, many will not be able to stay open for more than a few weeks into the 2017-2018 school year. Others may not open at all, reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The budget crisis has also led to major cuts to social services. Domestic violence centers were told in December 2016 that the state had cut $9 million in state funding — five months after the cuts were approved. Other social services, such as addiction and mental health services and Meals on Wheels, have also seen crippling cuts.

Illinois may have the longest-running budget dispute, but it’s not the only state dealing with one. As of July 1, nearly a dozen other states were also without budgets. New Jersey and Maine both faced partial government shutdowns, thanks to budget standoffs between Democratic lawmakers and Republican governors, but both closed deals to end their standoffs on Tuesday.

Let’s hope the same scene doesn’t play out when Congress faces its own budget showdown this fall.

2. Is a higher minimum wage helping or hurting Seattle?

People rally in support of a $15 minimum wage at Seattle Central Community College in Seattle, Washington. Photo by Jason Redmond/Reuters

In 2014, Seattle became the first city to pass legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15.

But a study published last week by researchers at the University of Washington suggests the hike might be doing more harm than good.

The city is gradually raising hourly wages to $15 by 2021. It made its second of a series of pay hikes in January 2016, raising hourly wages to between $10.50 and $13 an hour.

That hike increased pay for low-wage workers by about 3 percent. But it also caused employers to give those workers fewer hours, the study says, which means workers on average saw a 6 percent drop — or $125 loss — in earnings per month.

Another blow: “There are about 5,000 fewer low-wage jobs in the city than there would have been without the law,” the Seattle Times reports.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray wrote a letter to the study authors questioning their conclusions. He pointed to another study from the University of California that said the legislation “raised wages for low-paid workers without causing disemployment.”

“Businesses across the city are competing for employees and our city is in the midst of a period of nearly unprecedented growth. Raising the minimum wage helps ensure more people who live and work in Seattle can share in our city’s success, and helps fight income inequality,” he told The Seattle Times.

Why it’s important

The Seattle news comes as the minimum wage increased this month in several cities in California, as well as Chicago, Washington, D.C., and the states of Oregon and Maryland. (Meanwhile Missouri has lowered its minimum wage, from $10 to $7.70 an hour).

Experts say Seattle isn’t necessarily a test case for other states and cities; how much workers benefit varies widely depending on industry — fast food and restaurants versus manufacturing, for instance — as well as how the economy is doing nationwide.

“There is no one ‘the effect of the minimum wage,'” one researcher involved in the latest study told the Washington Post.

Democrats introduced federal legislation to raise the minimum wage in April, but the bill is unlikely to go anywhere amid fights over health care, tax reform and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. The Post points out the study “could exacerbate divisions among Democrats, who are seeking an economic agenda to counter President Trump’s pitches for protectionism, reduced taxes and restrictions on immigration.”

3. Police in the Philippines may be using hospitals to cover up crime scenes

Funeral workers carry a dead body, whom police said a drug pusher killed during an anti-drug operation in metro Manila, Philippines. Photo by REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco/File Photo.

When Phillipines President Rodrigo Duterte took office last June he promised to “kill all the drug lords.”

A year later, thousands of people have been killed in his war on drugs.

That’s not necessarily a surprise, given some of Duterte’s previous declarations. (“Hitler massacred 3 million Jews. Now, there is 3 million, what is it, 3 million drug addicts, there are. I would be happy to slaughter them,” he said at a conference last year.)

What is unusual is what’s happening to the bodies.

A Reuters investigation found that all but two of 301 drug suspects taken to hospitals in the Quezon City and Manila police districts were dead upon arrival, a strategy officers have been using “to destroy evidence at crime scenes and hide the fact that they were executing drug suspects,” Reuters says.

It suggests that “the purpose of hospital runs was to destroy evidence rather than save lives,” Reuters writes.

“Many drug suspects brought to hospital had been shot in the head and heart, sometimes at close range – precise and unsurvivable wounds that undermined police claims that suspects were injured during chaotic exchanges of gunfire,” Reuters found.

A police official told Reuters that “if that investigation showed police were intentionally moving these dead bodies and bringing them to the hospitals just to alter the evidence, then I think we have to make them explain.”

But doctors said they weren’t optimistic.

Why it matters

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte supporters gather during a February vigil backing the anti-drugs crackdown at the Luneta park in metro Manila, Philippines. Photo by REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco/File photo.

Duterte has had a tumultuous and headline-grabbing first year. Two months after taking office, he threatened to leave the U.N. He called President Barack Obama a “son of a whore.” He even swore at the pope (which would be seemingly even more offensive in a country that identifies as 80 percent Catholic).

While that kind of behavior has drawn criticism from abroad — Human Rights Watch called it a “human rights calamity” — it hasn’t sparked the same kind of outrage at home, where many people felt the police and courts were corrupt before Duterte took office. In a recent survey, 75 percent of Filipinos said they were satisfied with Duterte’s leadership, according to CNBC.

The news comes as Duterte deals with a crisis in Marawi, where ISIS-backed militants are battling government forces for control of the southern city. He declared martial law in late May, telling troops not to worry about killing civilians in their pursuit of Islamic state fighters.

Martial law is set to expire July 23, the day before Duterte gives a state of the nation address. It’s still too soon to tell whether the president’s leadership style will bring stability, or more distress.

4. A new survey reveals 1 in 5 Los Angeles community college students are homeless

A new report released last week spotlighted the high rates of homelessness and “food insecurity” among the 230,000 students enrolled in Los Angeles’ community colleges, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The survey found that about one in five students in the Los Angeles Community College District are homeless, in a city often cited for its rising housing costs.

The report, compiled by the University of Wisconsin Hope lab, also provided more numbers on how acute housing insecurity was among Los Angeles community college students, including 23 percent who said they weren’t able to pay their full rent or mortgage at least once in the last 12 months. And 31 percent said they didn’t pay the full amount of utilities over the same period. Both of these reported stats are higher than those seen nationally.

Additionally, nearly two-thirds — 65 percent — of students reported not being able to afford a balanced meal, which is higher than the national average at 60 percent. And 60 percent of students said they didn’t have enough money to buy more food when their stock ran out.

The HOPE Lab also specifically mentioned how assistance programs, like SNAP, may be available, but still have requirements that could prevent college students from getting help. The survey cited, for example, SNAP’s requirement that undergraduates, who are pursuing their academic goals, work at least 20 hours a week.

The Times said almost 6,000 students responded to the online survey.

Why it’s important

The district’s board of trustees, which commissioned the survey, presented its findings last week. One trustee, Mike Eng, said, “When you have people going hungry for three days straight, you have a really serious problem.”

The Times also noted that “the survey results come during a time of intense competition over the distribution of proceeds from a quarter-cent county sales tax for homeless services,” adding that the L.A. County Board of Supervisors had recently approved homeless college students to be one group of beneficiaries of the city’s tax fund. The tax fund is expected to accumulate $3.55 billion over a decade, the newspaper reported.

The problem of homelessness and food insecurity among college students is also a national problem, extending beyond Los Angeles. As LAist pointed out, when a 2016 Cal State study addressed the problem on its own campus, the report had this conclusion: “The experience of student hunger has become normalized as the ordinary and expected starving student, thus minimizing the problem of students struggling to eat nutritious meals each day.”

5. High school students take action and restore St. Louis’ Emmett Till memorial after vandalization

A group of high school students attending a social justice leadership organization were leaving a grocery store outside St. Louis when they stumbled upon a vandalized memorial dedicated to Emmett Till. Camille Denton, 17, said something had to be done.

“All of us were really quiet, staring, wondering what can we do,” Denton said, in an interview with The Washington Post.

Denton and fellow students are participating in the St.Louis-based Cultural Leadership Program. The group focuses on issues of social justice and civil rights, and one of its prominent projects inadvertently became the restoration of the vandalized memorial.

Members of the group took action by repairing the sign with handwritten notes and drawings, The Post reported, composing educational anecdotes related to Till, who was lynched in 1955 in Mississippi after being accused of whistling at a white woman.

Sign honoring Emmett Till outside Bryant’s grocery is vandalized. @MississippiDOT we made a temp fix. Please help restore this imp history❤️ pic.twitter.com/VwT3zoLc0T

— Cultural Leadership (@CL_StL) June 25, 2017

“I couldn’t fathom that someone would disrespect this man and his death, and we know he died unjustly,” Promise Mitchell told local St. Louis’ television station, KMOV News. This is the second time the sign has been vandalized in the last two years.

Holly Ingraham, the executive director of the Cultural Leadership program, said their actions embodied what the group is about.

“Speaking out and taking action are two of the many leadership and social justice advocacy skills students learn in Cultural Leadership,” Ingraham told The Post.

Why it’s important

A 2016 study conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute of UCLA, found that 40 percent of incoming underclassmen feel it is “essential” or “very important” to become engaged as community leaders. Sixty percent expressed a commitment toward “improving their understanding of other countries and cultures,” while three-quarters indicated that “helping others in difficulty” is important.

“For me it was kind of like a moment of realizing that I didn’t have to just walk away,” Denton told The Post. “We all could have gotten on the bus and kept going to our next destination instead of actually fighting back.”

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The car of Philando Castile is seen surrounded by police vehicles in an evidence photo taken after he was fatally shot by St. Anthony Police Department officer Jeronimo Yanez during a traffic stop in July 2016. Picture released June 20, 2017. Photo courtesy of Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension/Handout via Reuters

In a week fraught with murky developments over the GOP Senate health care bill, President Donald Trump sort of ended a 40-day goose chase into whether there were taped recordings between him and ex-FBI Director James Comey.

Emphasis on “sort of.”

After first suggesting the possibility of these Comey tapes existing, the president last week took to Twitter to say “I have no idea” such tapes existed — thus, still leaving the possibility they still could exist. (They probably don’t.) Lordy!

The president’s fondness for innuendo is able to capture many print headlines and television “Breaking News” chyrons. Here are five important stories that could have easily been bumped by the spigot of news out of Washington.

1. The lessons learned from last week’s police shooting trials

The school identification card of Philando Castile is seen in a police evidence photo released June 20, 2017, taken after he was fatally shot by St. Anthony Police Department officer Jeronimo Yanez during a traffic stop last year. Photo courtesy of Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension/Handout via Reuters

Three separate trials involving high-profile police shootings ended last week. None concluded in a conviction for the officers who fatally shot three black men: Philando Castile, Sylville Smith and Sam DuBose. The NewsHour compiled the many updates from last week to these cases and more.

Part of this isn’t terribly surprising. Criminal justice experts have said it’s difficult to secure a conviction for these trials.

Bodycam footage, too, has been central to the investigations of several of these shooting deaths, but the videos do not point to clear answers for jurors. Or, as The New York Times reported, “Some jurors in these cases have said that, videos aside, they had been swayed most of all by officers’ assertions that they feared for their lives. And in some cases, the videos themselves do not fully show operative moments, leaving jurors to fill in the blanks.”

Why it’s important

To write about police brutality cases is to parse all the minutiae that make up the several seconds it took a law enforcement officer to fatally shoot a minority.

This week, the jury in the case of the officer who shot Philando Castile last July was presented with court documents, a slowed-down dashcam video, the officer’s testimony and both sides’ arguments which sought to legitimize or delegitimize Diamond Reynolds’ famous Facebook live stream of the shooting’s aftermath.

Lost in all the back-and-forth was how mundane Castile’s afternoon was before he was pulled over by Officer Jeronimo Yanez, a particular point drawn out by Elise C. Boddie, a Rutgers professor, for The New York Times.

“[Castile] was just running errands with his family,” Boddie wrote. “It’s this denial of the right to simply be — the perpetual state of otherness — that dangerously shadows black people.”

Boddie also reminded readers that this is nothing new, a reality with firm roots before, during and after the Jim Crow era.

“Throughout history, black people have been criminalized for everyday actions that most whites take for granted,” she added, citing Tamir Rice playing in a park, Akai Gurley taking the stairs after waiting for an unreliable elevator.

I’m reminded of Amadou Diallo who was fatally shot by four police officers in 1999 at the doorway of his Bronx apartment building. The officers shot 41 times. Nineteen of those shots struck Diallo. All the officers were acquitted of all charges.

Why do so few trials of police officers charged in on-duty shootings end in convictions? Most recently, the officers who shot and killed Philando Castile and Sylville Smith were acquitted by juries who saw video of the fatal encounters. John Yang discusses issues of race and deadly force with David Klinger of the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Brittany Packnett, co-founder of Campaign Zero.

One of the videos Minnesota police released related to the Castile case was squad car footage of Reynolds and her 4-year-old daughter, who witnessed the shooting while in the back seat of Castile’s car, now in the back seat of a police vehicle.

A distraught Reynolds, who’s also handcuffed, is comforted by her daughter.

“Mom, please stop cussing and screaming ’cause I don’t want you to get shooted,” the girl is heard saying in the video.

Here’s Boddie again: “The problems we face are not only about the glaring wrongs of the criminal justice system, the structural barriers and persistent inequities that shut out opportunities, but the grinding daily hassles that deny black people the ability to just be.”

2. Federal appeals court lifts injunction to Mississippi’s anti-LGBTQ law

A federal appeals court last week lifted an injunction on a Mississippi law that lets business owners and government workers cite religious beliefs to deny services to LGBTQ individuals. It is widely considered the nation’s most aggressive state response to the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide.

Judges decided the plaintiffs had no standing, meaning Mississippi’s law had not harmed them enough to justify their filing a lawsuit. In 2016, a federal judge placed an injunction on the Mississippi law, HB 1523, to stop it from going into effect.

“None of these plaintiffs has clearly shown an injury-in-fact, so none has standing,” the judges said in their written decision.

In a statement, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant said he was pleased with the ruling: “As I have said all along, the legislation is not meant to discriminate against anyone, but simply prevents government interference with the constitutional right to exercise sincerely held religious beliefs.”

The law has not yet gone into effect, and further litigation is pending.

Why it’s important

The Fifth Circuit Court’s decision comes at a time when public opinion in support of same-sex marriage is on the rise. According to 2017 polling data from the Pew Research Center, 62 percent of U.S. adults said they were in favor of same-sex marriage, a significant increase since 2001 when 35 percent of Americans said gay and lesbian couples should be able to marry legally.

In the 2015 case Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was legal nationwide. Meanwhile, conservative groups pushed religious freedom laws that critics say discriminate against same-sex couples in Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee and other states, including Indiana, where then-Gov. Mike Pence scaled back a version of the controversial law.

In Mississippi, the law protected people with “sincerely held religious beliefs.” Among these beliefs:

• Marriage is only between a man and a woman
• Only married men and women should be having sex
• A person’s gender is assigned at birth

The law allows business owners, school counselors or wedding venue owners to deny services to same-sex couples if doing so violates the provider’s religious beliefs. Gov. Bryant tweeted that the law “does not limit any constitutionally protected rights or actions of any citizen of this state.”

Attorney Roberta Kaplan represents Susan Hrostowski, an Episcopalian vicar and lifelong Mississippian, her wife, Kathryn Garner, and their 18-year-old son in the lawsuit, and she spoke on behalf of her client. Hrostowski declined the NewsHour’s request for comment. Plaintiffs in the case have asked for a hearing with all Fifth Circuit Court judges.

If Hrostowski and Garner wanted to celebrate their anniversary at a restaurant, Kaplan said the law would allow a restaurant owner to deny the couple dinner without fear of a discrimination lawsuit. According to Kaplan, the law defines LGBTQ individuals as “second-class citizens.”

“It’s flatly un-American,” she said. “That’s not what this country stands for.”

3. The debate over private prisons in the U.S.

Sometime during the last push of “tough-on-crime” laws, the federal prison population increased by nearly 800 percent between 1980 and 2013. The increase in federal inmates far outstripped the capacities of the nation’s federal prisons. This led to overcrowding that compelled the Bureau of Prisons to increasingly rely on private prisons.

However, in August, the Justice Department released a report that, among other concerns, cited a declining inmate population, which has prompted questions over the need for these for-profit components in the criminal justice system.

Why it’s important

The Obama administration last year announced it would phase out privately-run prisons, citing little benefits to public safety along with higher rates of assault and violence. The Trump administration reversed that decision while pointing to potential increases in crime and issues of overcrowding, resurfacing a debate about which strategy is better. NewsHour Weekend’s Ivette Feliciano reports.

NewsHour Weekend covered the push-pull effect the 2016 election had on the debate over private prisons and how effective they are in the current environment. The Obama administration had announced plans to phase out the country’s use of private for-profit prisons.

In a memo last year, ex-Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates cited higher levels of violence at these private facilities, saying, “Private prisons served an important role during a difficult period, but time has shown that they compare poorly to our own Bureau facilities.”

Yates also pointed to a declining number of federal inmates since 2013 that helped drive the administration’s decision.

But, with a new president, the policy shifted to a much more favorable outlook for private prisons. Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo in February that supplanted Yates’ from late last year.

Sessions said the previous decision to phase out private prisons “impaired the Bureau’s ability to meet the future needs of the federal correctional system.”

4. SeaWorld reveals it is under federal investigation, as the company continues to be dogged by “Blackfish” fallout

SeaWorld unveils its new Orca Encounter show in San Diego, California, in May. Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters

SeaWorld revealed last week that it is under investigation by two U.S. federal agencies concerning issues related to CNN’s 2013 documentary, “Blackfish.”

Officials from both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission opened separate investigations into “disclosures and public statements” made by the company and its executives, according to a SEC report filed in June.

The statements in question concern those given on or before August 2014, including those that concern the “impact of the ‘Blackfish’ documentary” and trading in the SeaWorld’s securities, the report continued.

Elsewhere in the same filing, SeaWorld stated it “has cooperated with these government inquiries and intends to continue to cooperate with any government requests or inquiries.” The company also said it has organized a special counsel to tackle the investigation.

Why it’s important

The CNN documentary told the story of a captive killer whale named Tilikum, who after years of captivity, fatally attacked his then-trainer, Dawn Brancheau, in February 2010.

The film highlighted the controversial history of orca captivity and led to public backlash from animal activists over the treatment of the killer whales. SeaWorld has denounced the film’s accusations of animal mistreatment.

However, in March 2016, SeaWorld issued a declaration to cease orca breeding.

“SeaWorld has introduced more than 400 million guests to orcas, and we are proud of our part in contributing to the human understanding of these animals,” said Joel Manby, president and CEO of SeaWorld, in a statement. “By making this the last generation of orcas in our care and reimagining how guests will experience these beautiful animals, we are fulfilling our mission of providing visitors to our parks with experiences that matter,” he added.

As the park phases out its orca shows, SeaWorld now has plans to open entertainment venues in Asia and the Middle East, along with a second Sesame Street-themed amusement park in the U.S. by 2021.

The overall ramifications from the release of “Blackfish” vary subjectively. The marine entertainment industry saw a 84 percent drop in net second-quarter income — from $37.4 million in 2014 to $5.8 million in 2015, The UK-based newspaper The Independent reported. Various protests from PETA and other animal activist groups have heavily criticized SeaWorld for keeping orcas in captivity.

5. Judge in Madrid orders the body of surrealist Salvador Dali to be exhumed for a paternity test

A visitor looks at a projection of a picture of Salvador Dali during a presentation of a 2011 exhibition of his work at Moscow’s Pushkin Museum. Photo by Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

Salvador Dali was no stranger to controversy. In fact, he reveled in it.

Now, 28 years after his death, he’s the focus of a paternity suit.

A Spanish court has ordered that the surrealist painter’s physical remains be exhumed to help resolve a paternity claim. A court in Madrid ruled that the “DNA study of the painter’s corpse is necessary due to the lack of other biological or personal remains with which to perform the comparative study,” the Guardian reported.

The foundation that manages the artist’s estate opposes the decision.

Maria Pilar Abel Martinez, a tarot card reader from the Spanish city of Girona, filed the claim back in 2015, saying she was the result of an extramarital affair between her mother and the artist in 1955. Girona is close to Figueres, Dali’s hometown, located in the northeastern region of Catalonia. Dali was buried there after he died from heart problems in 1989.

As BBC pointed out, Martinez told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that she resembled Dali enough that the “only thing I’m missing is a mustache.” She also said her mother would repeat the claim that Dali was her father to her and others.

The alleged affair would have happened when Dali was married to Helena Diakanoff Devulina, more famously known as Gala, who was the muse for several of his paintings. The couple was thought to have an unconventional marriage and didn’t have any children of their own. (Gala did have a daughter from a previous marriage.)

Martinez’s lawyer said there’s no current timetable for digging up Dali’s corpse, but that it could happen as soon as July, BBC reported.

Why it’s important

Dali left his estate to the Spanish state. According to several media reports, if proven to be the true heir as Dali’s daughter, Martinez would have rights to the artist’s surname and a part of the estate.

The Dali Foundation said it was preparing an appeal to the Madrid court’s decision that “will be lodged in the coming days.”

READ MORE: 5 important stories that deserve a second look

The post 5 important stories you may have missed appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

A Chicago grand jury has indicted three police officers on conspiracy charges, alleging they interfered with an independent investigation into the 2014 shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

Officers Thomas Gaffney, David March and Joseph Walsh were all charged with conspiracy, official misconduct and obstruction of justice in their roles “to conceal the true facts of the events” surrounding the Oct. 20, 2014, fatal shooting of McDonald, according to the indictment filed Tuesday. A Cook County special grand jury had approved the indictment Monday.

“The indictment makes clear that these defendants did more than merely obey an unofficial ‘code of silence,’ rather it alleges that they lied about what occurred to prevent independent criminal investigators from learning the truth,” special prosecutor Patricia Brown Holmes, appointed last summer, said in a statement.

In October, Chicago officer Jason Van Dyke shot the black teen 16 times. The fatal encounter was caught on the squad car’s dash cam. The footage was eventually made public in 2015 under orders from a judge and after months of calls for its release.

Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder. He still awaits trial, and, if convicted, faces a sentence of 20 years to life.

READ MORE: Three high-profile police shooting trials ended this past week. Here’s what happened

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St. Anthony Police Department officer Jeronimo Yanez poses for investigation photographs after he fatally shot Philando Castile during a traffic stop in July 2016, in a combination of photos released on June 20, 2017, after a jury declared Yanez not guilty of second-degree manslaughter. Photo courtesy of Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension/Handout via Reuters

Three police brutality trials concluded this week, all of them without a conviction for the officers involved.

The legal developments in what were once high-profile shootings — all of them involving the death of a black man — were largely lost in the nonstop news out of Washington.

Here’s a look at what happened in those trials and in other major police shooting cases, as well as what’s next for the families of the victims and the officers involved.

PHILANDO CASTILE

The school identification card of Philando Castile is seen in a police evidence photo released June 20, 2017, taken after he was shot dead by St. Anthony Police Department officer Jeronimo Yanez during a traffic stop last year. Photo courtesy of Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension/Handout via Reuters

Original incident: St. Anthony, Minnesota, police officer Jeronimo Yanez, who is Latino, fatally shot Philando Castile, 32, during a July 2016 traffic stop.

Castile’s girlfriend Diamond Reynolds — who was in the car along with her 4-year-old daughter when the shooting occurred — famously live streamed the shooting’s aftermath to Facebook. Castile is seen bloodied and slumped in his seat while an officer, later identified as Yanes, is heard yelling, “I told him not to reach for it!”

The latest: Yanez faced one count of second-degree manslaughter and two counts of reckless discharge of a firearm in connection with Castile’s death. Last Friday, a jury acquitted Yanez of all charges. Thousands protested in St. Paul over the outcome of the trial.

Tim Nelson of Minnesota Public Radio joined PBS NewsHour Weekend anchor Hari Sreenivasan to discuss the trial and reaction.

Castile’s mother, Valeria Castile, delivered a very strong rebuke of the verdict, defending her son.

“I will continue to say murder because where in this planet do you tell the truth and you be honest and you still be murdered by the police of Minnesota?” Valerie Castile said.

Days after the verdict, authorities publicly released dashcam video and an audio recording related to the case. The video shows Yanez telling Castile he was pulled over for a broken taillight. Castile is heard telling Yanez, “Sir, I have to tell you, I do have a firearm on me.”

WARNING: Video contains graphic footage that may be disturbing to viewers.

The scene escalates quickly from there, ending with Yanez discharging his gun seven times into the car. Five bullets hit Castile. Reynolds is heard saying the same statements she made in her Facebook live stream. In the audio clip, Yanez tells dispatchers he was stopping a car because two individuals inside looked like suspects in a reported robbery.

Another video was released Wednesday that showed a handcuffed Reynolds with her daughter in the back seat of a squad car moments after the shooting.

The fallout: The New York Times spoke with several experts on their reactions to the videos shown in court. The defense argued that Castile, who was later revealed to have THC in his system at the time of the shooting, was too impaired to listen to Yanez’s orders. Prosecutors argued that Castile was reaching for his wallet, per Yanez’s instructions.

Castile was also licensed to carry a gun. David French wrote that the verdict was a “miscarriage of justice,” saying, “it’s simply false that the mere presence of a gun makes the encounter more dangerous for the police. It all depends on who possesses the gun. If he’s a concealed-carry permit-holder, then he’s in one of the most law-abiding demographics in America.”

As Jelani Cobb of The New Yorker noted, the NRA did not respond to the verdict.

Earl Gray, one of Yanez’s lawyers, told Pioneer Press that “when you look at the whole picture, and what was going through Yanez’s mind at the time, I think he did the right thing.”

What’s next? Attorneys for Valerie Castile announced Monday that Castile’s mother reached a nearly $3 million settlement in her son’s death. The insurance company for St. Anthony, Minnesota will pay the $2.995 million settlement, which required approval by a state court. The Associated Press reported that this could take several weeks.

Following the verdict, the City of St. Anthony said Yanez would not return to an active duty role on the police force. In fact, the city said in a statement that it would offer Yanez a “voluntary separation agreement” after it “has concluded that the public will be best served if Officer Yanez is no longer a police officer in our city.”

Castile was a cafeteria worker at an elementary school in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Huffington Post profiled how nearly 400 students, who adored Castile, were grappling with the news of his death and, now, the news of the acquittal.

SAMUEL DUBOSE

University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing stands near a car after driver Samuel Dubose was allegedly pulled over and shot during a traffic stop in Cincinnati, Ohio July 19, 2015, in a still image from body camera video released by the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office on July 29, 2015. Photo courtesy of Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office/Handout via Reuters

Original incident: Former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing shot and killed Samuel DuBose on July 19, 2015, during a traffic stop. DuBose’s car was missing a front-end license plate.

The Ohio ex-officer was first tried in 2016 for fatally shooting the 43-year-old unarmed black man. That trial ended in a hung jury after jurors said they were unable to reach a verdict after 25 hours of deliberation.

The latest: After trying the case a second time, a judge declared a mistrial again this week. The jury spent more time deliberating this week — 31 hours in total — than it did in the first case. Tensing, who shot DuBose once in the fatal encounter, had faced charges of murder and voluntary manslaughter in the retrial.

Tensing has said he was “dragged” by DuBose’s car after the motorist started to drive away from him. Prosecutors said footage from Tensing’s bodycam contradicted his version of events.

“You have to try to put yourself into the position of an officer on the scene of a situation like this and ask yourselves, ‘What would I do?’” defense attorney Stew Mathews is quoted as telling the jury earlier this week.

What’s next? DuBose’s family has demanded another trial, but it remains unclear whether prosecutors will try the case a third time.

SYLVILLE SMITH

Bodycam footage of the fatal encounter between Milwaukee police officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown and 23-year-old Sylville Smith in August 2016.

Original incident: Milwaukee police officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown, who is black, fatally shot 23-year-old Sylville Smith after an August, 13, 2016 traffic stop turned into a foot chase. Heaggan-Brown was charged with homicide for Smith’s death, which sparked days of unrest in Milwaukee.

The Milwaukee Police Department fired Heaggan-Brown in October after filing charges unrelated to the Smith case — two felony counts of second-degree sexual assault — against him.

The latest: On Wednesday, a Milwaukee jury found Heaggan-Brown not guilty of first-degree reckless homicide in the Aug. 13, 2016, shooting death of Smith.

Smith reportedly fled the scene after Heaggan-Brown stopped him in a traffic stop. At one point during the pursuit, Smith turned around with a semi-automatic gun in hand and turned toward the officer. At this, Heaggan-Brown shot Smith in the right arm.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed that the first shot was justified. But Heaggan-Brown shot Smith again — in the chest — seconds later. Prosecutors argued that the second shot, which proved fatal, was excessive. The defense said the officer shot a second time because he thought Smith still posed a threat.

“[Heaggan-Brown] believed all along he was justified in what he did. It wasn’t a situation that he asked to be put in,” defense attorney Jonathan Smith said after the verdict.

Smith’s stepsister Shannon Daniels said “I feel like no matter what it is, these police officers all over the world, they can just literally murder you.”

What’s next? Moments after the acquittal was announced, Smith’s family said it filed a federal civil lawsuit against the City of Milwaukee and Heaggan-Brown.

Heaggan-Brown will face the unrelated sexual assault charges in another trial set for August.

THE MICHAEL BROWN CASE

Demonstrators gather in Ferguson, Missouri, after the Aug. 9 shooting death of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown by a local police officer Darren Wilson. Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Original incident: Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson, who is white, fatally shot Michael Brown on August 9, 2014. The shooting death of Brown, who was black, brought intense scrutiny to the use of police force, galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement, and ignited a national conversation about race, police treatment of minorities and the problems of the criminal justice system.

A grand jury declined to indict Wilson in Brown’s death. Police had said Wilson acted in self-defense when Brown charged at him. But some witnesses and Brown’s family said Brown was fleeing or had his hands up before the officer shot and killed him, a view that the Department of Justice says is not supported by forensic evidence.

The latest: In 2015, Brown’s parents filed a civil lawsuit against the City of Ferguson and ex-officer Wilson. The wrongful death suit was seeking at least $75,000 in punitive and compensatory damages and attorney’s fees. The lawsuit claimed that Wilson used “an unnecessary and unreasonable” amount of force on the unarmed 18-year-old.

On Tuesday, the city announced that it reached a settlement with the family. Though details are not readily available to the public, U.S. District Judge Richard Webber called the agreement, “fair and reasonable compensation,” The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

A Ferguson City attorney told the Dispatch that an insurance company for the city paid $1.5 million to settle the suit.

What’s next? Ferguson, currently under a consent decree with the Justice Department, reported this week that the city was making progress in its reform for the police department, citing improvements in guidelines over use of force and police accountability, the Dispatch reported.

However, a few of citizens that spoke up at the hearing had some complaints, the newspaper noted.

CHARLEENA LYLES

Original incident: Two Seattle police officers, identified as Steven McNew and Jason Anderson, responded to a report of a robbery June 18 at Charleena Lyles’ residence. Dashcam audio, released by the Seattle Police Department, indicate the situation appeared to be calm when the officers first interacted with Lyles and entered her apartment.

Moments later, one of the officers said “Get back! Get back!” before gun shots are heard. It’s unclear how many shots were fired. It’s also unclear how many hit Lyles, who died at the apartment complex. Lyles, who was pregnant, had grappled with mental health issues the past year and were afraid the officers would take her children away, her family told the Seattle Times.

Authorities said Lyles, at one point during the fatal encounter, was armed with two knives. An initial police statement said both officers, who are white, could have used “less lethal force options” to mitigate the situation. Lyles’ three children were also in the apartment at the time of the shooting.

According to audio released by police, the officers briefly discussed an incident with Lyles that occurred days before the robbery report. Lyles was arrested and charged with obstruction and harassment after allegedly threatening two responding officers with large shears.

The latest: Seattle police released additional surveillance footage and 911 audio Thursday.

In the 911 call, Lyles is heard reporting a break-in at her home, saying she noticed that some items went missing when she left the apartment for a few hours. In the hours-long video from the hallway outside her apartment, no one — other than Lyles — is seen entering or leaving the unit.

Attorney James Bible, who’s representing Lyles’ family, told the Times that this additional evidence was an attempt by the police “to taint the perceptions of Charleena.”

“What this sounds like is that police want to form some kind of inference, that either she’s mentally ill or that she’s flat out lying and trying to get officers to the apartment,” Bible said of the police department’s decision to release the video and audio.

What’s next? The Times reported that the investigation could take months.

Seattle was the subject of a 2011 Justice Department investigation that led to a court agreement between the city and the agency to rollout federally mandated reforms within the police department.

WATCH: Why do so few deadly police shootings end in police convictions?

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University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing is seen in this still from police body camera footage. He’s standing near a car after driver Samuel Dubose was shot during a 2015 traffic stop in Cincinnati, Ohio. Photo courtesy of Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office/Handout via Reuters

An Ohio judge declared a mistrial Friday in the retrial of a former University of Cincinnati police officer who fatally shot Samuel DuBose in July 2015 during a traffic stop after his vehicle was flagged for a missing license plate.

The jury told Judge Leslie Ghiz earlier Friday that it couldn’t reach a verdict. Ghiz asked them to try again. Four hours later, the jury said it was still deadlocked; in all, jurors deliberated more than 31 hours this week.

The hung jury comes after two trials in eight months for Ray Tensing, the officer accused of murdering DuBose, a 43-year-old unarmed black man. Ex-officer Tensing, who is white, had faced charges of murder and voluntary manslaughter in the trial that ended this week.

The first case, in 2016, was also declared a mistrial after the jury announced they were deadlocked after 25 hours of deliberation. The second trial’s jury announced it was deadlocked on the fifth day of deliberation, surpassing the amount of time the jury took in the first trial to determine an outcome in the case, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

Tensing, 27, had previously insisted that he feared for his life when DuBose started driving away from the traffic stop. Tensing told the court his arm was still inside the car, and DuBose “dragged” him with his car. Tensing repeated that account for other officers who eventually arrive at the scene.

When the former officer took the stand last week, he testified that he thought about the fatal encounter “every moment for the last two years,” adding, teary-eyed, that he replayed the moment “millions of times” in his head, WVXU reported.

But prosecutors said video evidence showed the officer was not dragged.

Why do so few trials of police officers charged in on-duty shootings end in convictions? Most recently, the officers who shot and killed Philando Castile and Sylville Smith were acquitted by juries who saw video of the fatal encounters. John Yang discusses issues of race and deadly force with David Klinger of the University of Missouri-St. Louis and Brittany Packnett, co-founder of Campaign Zero.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters has previously said the full 28-minute bodycam footage presented a different scenario. On the recording, Tensing is heard repeatedly asking DuBose for his license. DuBose said he had one, but it wasn’t on him.

Then, things move quickly: There’s an exchange about DuBose taking off his seatbelt for the officer. Tensing opens the driver’s door a few inches, but DuBose pulls it back closed. DuBose reaches for the key in the ignition and starts his car. Tensing then reaches into the car with his left hand and yells “Stop!” twice before pulling out his gun and shooting a single shot in the DuBose’s head. The car moves forward about 100 yards as Tensing falls back.

“It is our belief that he was not dragged. If you slow down this tape you see what happens, it is a very short period of time from when the car starts rolling to when a gun is out and he’s shot in the head,” Deters told reporters last year. Deters maintained the same point for jurors in the retrial.

DuBose’s family members released a statement after a mistrial was declared, commending prosecutors for their “strong presentation in this case,” but adding that they were “outraged that a second jury has now failed to convict Ray Tensing for the murder of our beloved Sam DuBose.”

The family demanded another retrial and called on the community to join them in a peaceful protest “of this unjust result.” It’s unclear whether prosecutors would try the case again, the Associated Press reports.

WATCH: Why do so few deadly police shootings end in police convictions?

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President Donald Trump tweeted Thursday that “he did not make” and does not have recorded conversations with former FBI Director James Comey. File photos by Jonathan Ernst and Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

After days of teasing he would answer the question of whether he had recorded conversations with ex-FBI Director James Comey, President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Thursday to say definitively that he “did not make, and do not have, any such recordings.”

“With all of the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea whether there are “tapes” or recordings of my conversations with James Comey, but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings,” the president wrote on Twitter.

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

There should be an embedded item here. Please visit the original post to view it.

The president first prompted discussions about such tapes when he tweeted in May that Comey “better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

The day before, The New York Times had published interviews with two unnamed Comey associates, who claimed that the president asked Comey for his “honest loyalty” during a private White House dinner. The existence of tapes prompted some to compare the situation to the Watergate hearings and the White House recordings that would undo Richard Nixon’s presidency. Nixon’s tapes eventually led to the 1974 Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, which requires any recordings preserved as presidential records and eventually released to the public.

READ MORE: The complete Watergate timeline (it took longer than you realize)

After the suggestion of tapes on Twitter last month, neither the president nor his aides would not clarify whether such tapes actually existed.

In today’s press gaggles, White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the president’s statement on Twitter “is extremely clear,” saying she didn’t have anything to add. Sanders also wouldn’t comment further on why it took more than 40 days for the president to directly address the tapes question.

When asked about Trump’s statements during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last month, Comey said “Lordy, I hope there are tapes,” suggesting that such evidence would support his detailed accounting of his interactions with Trump. Comey said the president told him he “hoped” the then-FBI director could “let go” of the investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

If no tapes exist, “questions will be raised about why the president would stake his reputation and political capital on promoting something that just isn’t real,” the Associated Press wrote at the time.

READ MORE: President Trump’s tease of possible Comey tapes fits a familiar pattern

The post Trump on Twitter: ‘I did not make, and do not have’ recorded conversations with Comey appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

WARNING: Video contains graphic language.

Moments after Philando Castile was shot by a law enforcement officer, the victim’s girlfriend and her daughter were put in the back of a responding officer’s squad car. Authorities released an excerpt of that video to the public Wednesday.

Diamond Reynolds, who famously live streamed the shooting’s aftermath to Facebook, is seen handcuffed in the back seat of the police vehicle. Distraught after seeing her boyfriend shot multiple times, Reynolds is heard crying and shouting as her daughter consoles her.

“Mom, please stop cussing and screaming ’cause I don’t want you to get shooted,” the girl said.

“OK, give me a kiss. My phone just died, that’s all,” Reynolds told her daughter.

“I can keep you safe,” the girl said in response.

“It’s OK. I got it, OK? … I can’t believe they just did that,” Reynolds said before the girl started to cry.

Minnesota authorities released the video this week as part of a slew of evidence provided by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. They also released a 10-minute video of dashcam footage that shows the final encounter between Officer Jeronimo Yanez and Castile and an audio snippet where, prior to the traffic stop, the officer said, “The driver looks more like one of our suspects, just ’cause of the wide-set nose.”

Yanez, who is Latino, was found not guilty of all charges on Friday. The verdict sparked thousands to protest for days in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Larry Rogers, Reynolds’ lawyer, told the Star Tribune that Reynolds “had always wanted the world to see what happened to Philando, her and [her daughter].”

“And while the jury exonerated officer Yanez, I think the public sentiment is important. It’s important for the public to see exactly what he did to Philando. It’s important for the public to see the trauma he caused Diamond and her daughter,” he added.

READ MORE: Dashcam footage shows Philando Castile’s fatal encounter with police

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A police car with broken windows is seen in a photograph released by the Milwaukee Police Department after disturbances following the August police shooting of a man in Milwaukee, Photo by Milwaukee Police via Reuters

A Wisconsin jury has acquitted the former police officer who fatally shot 23-year-old Sylville Smith, whose death sparked days of uprisings in Milwaukee.

After two days of deliberations, jurors found ex-officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown not guilty of first-degree reckless homicide in the death of Smith. Heaggan-Brown and Smith were both black, and four of the 12 jurors were black.

Former Milwaukee police officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown, charged with first-degree reckless homicide in the death of 23-year-old Sylville Smith following an Aug. 13 traffic stop is shown in this October 2016 Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office booking photo in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo courtesy of Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office/Handout via Reuters

The fatal encounter happened after Heaggan-Brown had stopped Smith in a traffic stop, which led to a foot chase. When the officer was charged, the criminal complaint cited body camera footage that showed Heaggan-Brown shooting Smith in his right arm as he turned with a weapon in hand. Smith fell to his back when Heaggan-Brown shot him again less than a couple seconds later in his chest.

Prosecutors argued that it was unnecessary when Heaggan-Brown discharged his weapon a second time. Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm told the jury that Smith was “in the most vulnerable position that he can possibly be in,” adding that “he looks like a child,” Fox6 reported.

Defense attorney Jonathan Smith countered that the “first shot was a justifiable shot and that justification did not change in 1.69 seconds.”

Heaggan-Brown was fired in October when he was charged with two counts of assault in a separate investigation. This investigation is unrelated to the shooting death of Smith.

As NewsHour’s Kenya Downs reported, Milwaukee is, by several yardsticks, considered to be one of the most segregated cities in the U.S.

Previously, a 2014 police shooting death of Dontre Hamilton, who is black, prompted protests. Officer Christopher Manney shot Hamilton 14 times after Manney responded to a complaint of Hamilton sleeping on a bench in a local park.

READ MORE: Milwaukee’s problems span decades, but solutions divide generations

The post Jury finds Milwaukee officer not guilty in fatal shooting of Sylville Smith appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

An attendee leaves flowers for Nabra Hassanen, a teenage Muslim girl killed by a bat-wielding motorist near a Virginia mosque, during a vigil in New York City. Photo by Brendan McDermid/Reuters

A memorial for the 17-year-old Muslim girl who was murdered nearby a Virginia mosque last weekend was set ablaze in Washington, D.C. this morning, fire officials said.

Officials told Fox5DC that the makeshift memorial in Dupont Circle for Nabra Hassanen was set on fire after remains were found burnt around the neighborhood’s fountain around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.

Authorities have detained a 24-year-old man from South Carolina in connection to the fire, The Hill reported.

The Dupont neighborhood was one of several vigils held across the country Tuesday for the slain teen, who was found dead in a pond in Sterling, Virginia, on Sunday.

Fairfax County Police said the murder is not being investigated as a hate crime. Instead, police said they believe the murder was the result of road rage.

Hassanen and a group of other teenagers were walking and biking along a road after a Ramadan event at the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, ADAMS, Center, a large mosque in Sterling, when they got into a dispute with the suspect, Darwin Martinez Torres. Moments later, he attacked the group with a baseball bat, police said.

Torres is suspected of beating and killing Hassanen. The girl’s body was found in a pond in Loudoun County, Virginia, hours later.

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Trump advisers Steve Bannon (back L) and Jared Kushner (back R) listen as U.S. President Donald Trump meets with members of his Cabinet at the White House in Washington, D.C. Photo by Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

There was a time when the White House press briefings were routine. Now, they’re becoming shorter — that is, if they happen at all.

Last week, most of the briefings with White House press secretary Sean Spicer went off camera; reporters’ questions could only be recorded as audio. On Monday, neither video or audio was allowed at the briefing. When the White House press office does answer questions, it’s increasingly the “verbal equivalent of a shrug,” the Washington Post said.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Jeff Sessions shrugged off some questions from senators during a hearing about Russia’s role in the 2016 elections. Among the things that are still unclear: when President Donald Trump decided to fire Comey and why Sessions was involved. (Sessions also declined to discuss any of his conversations with the president.)

Trump called the whole thing a “witch hunt” in a series of messages that set Twitter afire on Friday. (Trump attorney Michael Cohen, meanwhile, has hired a lawyer of his own.)

While we wait for answers, here are five stories that provide some insight into what’s happening outside the Capitol.

1. For the first time, The Southern Baptist Convention denounces white nationalists and racists

Geyna Moore, 19, raises up her hands amongst other students during a worship service at the Baptist Campus Ministry at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Photo by REUTERS/Brittany Greeson – RTS66II

The Southern Baptist Convention condemned white nationalists and racism at its annual meeting last week in Phoenix, a historic moment for a church born from divisions over slavery before the Civil War.

Other religious groups have taken similar stances; the Episcopal Church voted as early as 1991 that the “practice of racism is a sin.” While the Southern Baptist Convention apologized for its support of slavery and segregation in 1995, it did not formally denounce racism until it was approached by Williams Dwight McKissic, Sr., the preacher of a 3,000-person congregation at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Arlington, Texas.

The issue hit home for McKissic, who began preaching more than four decades ago in his hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. In 2015, after local police officer Brad Miller shot and killed black teen Christian Taylor, McKissic guided community dialogues — often focused on race — to help his congregation move forward. A few months ago, McKissic, a black minister, said he was alarmed by the racist views of alt-right leader Richard Spencer. He said he wanted to be able to tell sympathizers of the alt-right movement, Southern Baptist or not, that the church denounced racism.

“My assumption was that it was a no-brainer,” McKissic told the NewsHour.

McKissic asked the Southern Baptist Convention to reject “the retrograde ideologies, xenophobic biases, and racial bigotries of the so-called ‘Alt-Right,'” a racist movement based on a mix of white nationalism, neo-Nazi beliefs and hard-edged populism.

After some revisions and a series of votes, the resolution earned overwhelming support and a standing ovation.

“This resolution has a number on it. It’s resolution number 10. The white supremacy it opposes also has a number on it. It’s 6-6-6,” Russell Moore, of Grace Community Church in Nashville, Tennessee, said ahead of the vote, referencing an apocalyptic bible passage.

“God loves everyone, and we love everyone,” Southern Baptist Convention President Steve Gaines said in a statement that also told members to “come against every kind of racism that there is.”

Why it’s important

Roughly 15 million people belong to the Southern Baptist Convention. Of those, 85 percent are white, a figure that has remained unchanged since at least 2007, according to the Pew Research Center. What has changed is the percent of black church members — down from 8 percent in 2007 to 6 percent in 2014. Meanwhile, the percent of Southern Baptists who are millennials is growing, up from less than 1 percent in 2007 to 7 percent this year, according to Pew.

McKissic said the convention’s younger generation helped convince church leaders to reverse course and vote against racism: “It reinforced our belief that the Southern Baptist Convention is on the right page and moving in the right direction with regards of race,” McKissic said.

But McKissic said he hopes convention leadership will still address other church teachings that he said promoted racism, like the “curse of Ham,” an obscure Old Testament reference used to justify slavery. McKissic had asked the convention to publicly denounce the theory as part of his resolution, but that part of his proposal was removed by the committee before the final vote.

He wants to see church congregations reflect greater unity, too.

“We’re the church, not a black church and a white church,” McKissic said. “In the 21st century, our churches need to become one.”

2. D.C. police issue warrants for Turkish agents involved in a May brawl

D.C. police issued warrants for the arrest of more than a dozen Turkish security agents that were involved in a brawl outside the Turkish Ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C., last month.

The violence began when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was greeted by a group of protesters at the residence after his May 16 meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House.

Cell phone video posted online from that day shows a heated exchange of words before men with suits run across Sheridan Circle onto the grass; bodies fly to the ground as police try to break up a flurry of fistfights.

“The Turks … the Turks attacked me,” a man, face slashed and bloodied, yelled to a videographer at the scene.

D.C. police said after the brawl that they had arrested two members of Erdogan’s security team. But those people were later released after the State Department argued they had diplomatic immunity, as reported by the Washington Post.

Last week, D.C. police said two people were arrested and charged with felony and misdemeanor assault charges; the department has issued warrants for 14 other people involved in the fight.

Critics were upset that these charges were not pursued more quickly. But a statement from Turkey’s foreign ministry last week said “the decision taken by US authorities is wrong, biased and lacks legal basis; that the brawl in front of the Turkish Ambassador’s Residence was caused by the failure of local security authorities to take necessary measures.”

“This incident would not have occurred if the US authorities had taken the usual measures they take in similar high level visits and therefore … Turkish citizens cannot be held responsible for the incident that took place,” the statement said. The Post reports that Turkish officials also claim they were acting in self defense.

Why it’s important

President Donald Trump, left, welcomes Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on May 16 at the entrance to the West Wing of the White House in Washington, D.C. Photo by REUTERS/Joshua Roberts.

The clash comes at a moment of high tension for the U.S. and Turkey.

The countries disagreed over a decision by the U.S. in February to arm Kurdish rebels fighting against ISIS in Syria. Turkey considers those fighters to be members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (known as PKK), which has led a 30-year revolt against the Turkish government; the U.S. also considers it a terrorist group, the AP notes.

Turkish officials claimed some protesters involved in the May brawl were members of that organization.

What makes this so complicated: Most of Erdogan’s security force is protected by diplomatic immunity, which protects embassy employees from prosecution in a host country.

But a state department official told CNN that “their diplomatic immunity lapsed when they left the country, and they would be subject to arrest if they returned to the United States.”

It’s too early to tell whether Turkey will waive diplomatic immunity, or make those named as suspects available for interviews, the AP writes. Either way, the conflict isn’t likely to make the relationship between the two NATO allies — who must work together closely in Syria as well as on the global fight against terrorism — any better.

3. Seattle police release audio of the fatal shooting of Charleena Lyles

Two Seattle police officers shot and killed a 30-year-old black woman who had alerted authorities of a possible burglary at her apartment over the weekend. The Seattle Police Department released dashcam audio of the fatal encounter on Monday.

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Shortly after 10 a.m. Sunday, two officers responded to reports of a burglary at a fourth-floor apartment, where they found a woman “armed with a knife,” the department initially reported. “Both officers fired their duty weapons, striking the woman,” its online blotter said.

Family members identified the woman as Charleena Lyles and told the Seattle Times that she was several months pregnant and had suffered from mental health issues the past year.

Seattle police confirmed that three children were inside the apartment when the shooting occurred and that the officers had “less lethal force options” at their disposal. The department confirmed to the Times that both officers are white.

Police said a burglary report would normally require one officer, but two were dispatched “because of a recent officer safety caution associated with the caller.”

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The released audio, which can be hard to hear at times, starts with some chatter among the officers about a previous visit to the caller’s home regarding a domestic violence incident. A short time later, a woman is heard greeting the officers. There is talk of a stolen Xbox.

Moments later, an officer is heard saying “Get back! Get back!” before shots ring out. Police said the officers shot the woman multiple times after she had brandished a knife.

“There’s no reason for her to be shot, in front of her babies!” Monika Williams, Lyles’ sister, is heard saying in a Times video.

“Why couldn’t they have Tased her? They could have taken her down. I could have taken her down,” Williams said.

Lyles’ family believes race was a factor in the shooting, the Times reported.

“Today’s incident is a tragedy for all involved,” Mayor Ed Murray said in a statement. The mayor also promised a thorough investigation into the shooting.

Why it’s important

The SPD was the subject of a federal civil rights investigation in 2011, in which the Justice Department found that the department routinely engaged in “in a pattern or practice of using unnecessary or excessive force.”

Since that probe, the city of Seattle has been under a consent decree, meaning there was an agreement between the local police department and the Justice Department to pursue court-enforceable reforms with an independent monitor attached.

But the Trump administration has pushed back on these agreements. In April, Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote in a memo that it “is not the responsibility of the federal government to manage non-federal law enforcement agencies.” Sessions then called for a review of all consent decrees. It’s not clear what that review, or this incident, means for Seattle’s force.

4. Yoko Ono finally gets an “Imagine” songwriting credit

Photo of John LENNON; with Yoko Ono, playing white grand piano at Tittenhurst home during making of the “Imagine” film. Photo by Tom Hanley/Redferns

After more than 45 years, Yoko Ono will finally share the songwriting credit on the 1971 hit “Imagine” with her late husband John Lennon.

Last week, the National Music Publishers Associations announced the long overdue change as it presented Ono with the Centennial Song Award.

In a 1980 BBC interview with the couple, excerpted for the ceremony, Lennon says Ono was left off the credits because he was “a bit more selfish, a bit more macho.”

“[The song] should be credited as a Lennon-Ono song because a lot of it – the lyric and the concept – came from Yoko,” the Beatles co-founder told BBC. “But those days I was a bit more selfish, a bit more macho, and I sort of omitted to mention her contribution,” Lennon said.

Lennon added that Ono’s 1964 book “Grapefruit” directly inspired “Imagine.”

Why it’s important

The sexism Ono faced decades ago still exists today when it comes to female artists and their contributions to their own work, as Bjork explained in a2015 interview with Pitchfork:

“I have nothing against Kanye West. Help me with this—I’m not dissing him—this is about how people talk about him. With the last album he did, he got all the best beatmakers on the planet at the time to make beats for him. A lot of the time, he wasn’t even there. Yet no one would question his authorship for a second.”

Bjork told Pitchform that for her latest album, media reports gave another producer sole credit for her songs, ignoring the Icelandic artist’s own work in the process. Joni Mitchell has talked about encountering a similar problem, as have Solange Knowles, M.I.A. and many others.

“I want to support young girls who are in their 20s now and tell them: You’re not just imagining things. It’s tough. Everything that a guy says once, you have to say five times,” Bjork said.

5. The new grand-slam champion that took women’s tennis by surprise

Jelena Ostapenko celebrates with the trophy after winning the final against Romania’s Simona Halep. Photo by Reuters / Benoit Tessier.

Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia dominated the French Open earlier this month, stunning 15,000 fans and millions of viewers worldwide.

Ostapenko defeated No. 3 Simona Halep, and expressed her gratitude toward the crowd following her win, the Associated Press reported.

“I still can’t believe I won. It was always my dream, when I was a child I was watching players here. I’m just so happy,” she said at the Court Philippe Chatrier. “I’ve just enjoyed it so much. I have no words.”

Ostapenko, 20, is now the first unseeded woman to win the French Open since 1933, CNN pointed out. She’s also the first Latvian player in history to claim a Grand Slam championship. The last woman to win her first tour title at a major was Barbara Jordan of the U.S., who won the 1979 Australian Open.

Why it’s important

The absences of Serena Williams, who is currently pregnant, and Maria Sharapova, who was denied a wild card position after a failed drug test, have created an opening in the sport for new recruits like Ostapenko.

“We didn’t have the big names here,” tennis great Chris Evert told reporters. “But I tell you what, a star was born today, and I’ve got to say, it’s so great for women’s tennis. We need fresh, young blood.”

It’s also a sport of unpredictability, where there sometimes appears to be no clear algorithm when it comes to ranking. Higher-ranked players have won 67.9 percent of Women’s Tennis Association matches, The Economist reported. At this year’s French Open, about 62 percent of the matches were won by higher-ranked players. But since 2014, the publication says, the rate of upsets in the game have also increased.

So what’s next for Ostapenko? She now heads to the All England Club next month and will begin her season in Birmingham at the Aegon Classic, contending with eight of the world’s top 10 players.

READ MORE: 5 important stories that have nothing to do with the Russia investigations

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Homeland Security and FBI officials will face questions from lawmakers Wednesday in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that will focus on what can be done to prevent further Russian interference in future U.S. elections.

A Senate hearing on how to best stop Russia from intervening in the 2018 and 2020 elections will begin at 9:30 a.m. ET. Watch live in the player above.

Several high-profile officials have testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in the last month, including former FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

MORE: What questions remain after Sessions’ Senate testimony?

Officials testifying in Wednesday’s hearing will appear on two panels. The first involves representatives from the Department of Homeland Security and FBI, while the second includes experts from the Illinois State Board of Elections and the National Association of State Election Directors.

On the same day, the House Intelligence Committee will have its own hearing on Russia’s interference in the 2016 election at 10 a.m. Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson will testify.

WATCH LIVE: Jeh Johnson testifies in House Intelligence Committee hearing on Russia

PBS NewsHour will update this story as it develops.

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