Tuesday morning news - April 27, 2021

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Protests continue over N.C. police shooting after family views body cam footage »

SOUND: Say his name: Andrew Brown!

Protesters continue to march in the streets of Elizabeth City, North Carolina, one day after the family of a black man fatally shot by deputies viewed body camera footage of the shooting.

Attorney Chantel Cherry-Lassiter says the video showed 42-year-old Andrew Brown Jr. in his car last Wednesday when shots rang out.

LASSITER: He was not reaching for anything. He wasn’t touching anything. He wasn’t throwing anything around. He had his hands firmly on the steering wheel. They run up to his vehicle shooting.

Attorneys for the Brown family said he was fatally shot in the back of the head.

An eyewitness account also indicated Brown was shot in the back as he tried to drive away from police.

Earlier Monday, a search warrant was released that indicated investigators had recorded Brown selling illegal drugs to an informant.

Brown attorney Ben Crump argued that authorities were trying to release negative information about Brown while shielding themselves by holding back the video.

CRUMP: We do not feel that we got transparency. We only saw a snippet of the video.

Attorneys and the family saw a 20-second portion of the incident.

The law allows authorities to show video footage to the family, but a judge will have to sign off on public release. Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten over the weekend said he will seek approval to release the footage.

Census produces fewer changes than expected in U.S. House » The 2020 U.S. Census data is in, showing a slight congressional power shift toward red states but not as much as expected. WORLD’s Leigh Jones has more.

LEIGH JONES, REPORTER: The nationwide headcount, held once every 10 years, determines how many seats each state will have in the U.S. House of Representatives.

And following last year’s count, Texas will pick up two more seats. Other states gaining in the House are Florida, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina, and Oregon.

On the flipside, for the first time in 170 years of statehood, California is losing a congressional seat.

Other states losing members in the House are Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

But the changes were smaller than expected with just 13 states seeing gains or losses. In fact, the 2020 headcount produced the fewest changes of any Census in at least 80 years.

Altogether, the U.S. population rose to more than 331 million. That was a 7.4 percent increase, the second-slowest ever.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leigh Jones.

Supreme Court to hear challenge to N.Y. concealed carry restrictions » The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to review a New York law that limits the rights of citizens to carry a concealed firearm in public.

Lower courts have upheld the law, and in the past, the high court has declined to review it. But that was before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s death.

The high court will likely hear an appeal sometime in the fall.

New York is one of eight states that limit who has the right to carry a weapon in public.

Paul Clement, representing challengers to New York’s permit law, said the court should use the case to settle the issue once and for all.

But the state of New York in calling on the court to reject the appeal said its law promotes public safety.

U.S., WHO ship emergency supplies to India amid COVID-19 surge » The White House says the United States will soon ship supplies to India to help battle a deadly surge of COVID-19 cases there. Press Secretary Jen Psaki:

PSAKI: We are exploring options to provide oxygen and related supplies. Dept. of Defense and USAID are pursuing options to provide oxygen generation systems. We may be in a position to reroute shipments planned for other countries with lower immediate needs, given the urgency of the conditions in India.

And the head of the World Health Organization also said Monday that the WHO is sending critical supplies. Director-general Tedros Ghebreyesus said those include oxygen machines, pre-made mobile field hospitals and lab supplies.

The WHO has also redeployed more than 2,000 staff to support health officials in India.

The surge is dramatic. On March 13th, India reported 21,000 new cases. On April 25th: 321,000 new cases.

Reported COVID-19-related deaths were just over 100 per day in early March. Now: nearly 3,000 each day with many more likely unreported.

Ghebreyesus called the surge in India “heartbreaking,” and he added that globally, the pandemic “continues to intensify.”

GHEBREYESUS: Cases have now increased for the ninth straight week, and deaths have increased for the sixth straight week.

He said there were as many recorded “cases globally last week as in the first five months of the pandemic.”

COVID-19 cases once again falling in the United States » But in the United States, we appear once again to be winning the battle against the virus. WORLD’s Anna Johansen Brown reports.

ANNA JOHANSEN BROWN: Beginning in late February, COVID-19 cases largely plateaued after five weeks of steep decline. And in fact, cases rose slightly for several weeks until the middle of April.

But cases are on the decline once again, dropping, albeit modestly, for more than a week. Hospital admissions and deaths are also down.

That’s likely due to more Americans getting vaccinated.

The United States leads the world in vaccinations with nearly 230 million doses administered. Roughly 30 percent of the U.S. population is now fully vaccinated. No other highly populated nation is even in double digits.

With vaccine supplies now outstripping demand in some parts of the country, the White House says it will soon begin sharing its entire stock of AstraZeneca vaccines.

As soon as it clears federal safety reviews, the United States could export as many as 60 million doses in the coming months.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Anna Johansen Brown.

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