Biden pushes plan to rebuild US infrastructure as Covid cases rise – live

The trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd, will continue today, after lawyers delivered their opening statements yesterday.

The Guardian’s Chris McGreal and Amudalat Ajasa report on the first day of the trial from Minneapolis:

Prosecutors accused [Chauvin] of killing a defenceless George Floyd by ‘grinding and crushing him until the very breath, the very life, was squeezed out of him’, at the opening on Monday of a murder trial regarded by millions as a litmus test of US police accountability.

The prosecutor, Jerry Blackwell, told the jury that the death of Floyd last May, which reignited the Black Lives Matter movement and set off months of protests across America and around the world, was caused by Chauvin keeping his knee on the neck of the dying man for more than nine minutes even after he stopped breathing.

Related: Prosecutors accuse Derek Chauvin of killing George Floyd as trial starts

Joe Biden has announced a “trailblazing” set of federal judicial nominees, 11 picks including three Black women.

Ketanji Brown Jackson, a US district judge, was nominated on Tuesday to replace attorney general Merrick Garland on the influential US appeals court for the District of Columbia circuit.

Related: 'Best and brightest': Biden announces 'trailblazing' slate of judicial nominees

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Coronavirus | The Guardian

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