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Scoop: Lloyd Austin to visit Israel next week

06 April 2021
Dan Ackermann

U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is expected to travel to Israel next week, Israeli officials told me.

Why it matters: This will be the first cabinet-level visit to the Middle East from the Biden administration, which has been shifting attention away from the region and toward China and Russia.

Driving the news: Austin is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz. The agenda will include Iran and other regional issues like Syria and Lebanon, Israeli officials say.

  • Israeli officials also intend to raise U.S.-Israel security understandings, reached in the final weeks of the Trump administration, on maintaining Israel's qualitative military edge in the region. Israel wants to ensure the Biden administration is committed to those understandings.
  • The Pentagon declined to comment for this story.

Worth noting: In recent weeks, there has been an escalation of tensions between Israel and Iran in the Red Sea and the Gulf.

  • According to several reports, Israel sabotaged dozens of Iranian ships and tankers last week which had transferred oil to Syria or missile parts to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
  • The Iranians retaliated by attacking two ships owned by Israeli businessmen in the Gulf, signaling to Israel that its ships are vulnerable too.
  • On Tuesday, an Iranian ship operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was attacked in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen.  

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

Section2

Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.