Illinois police have released bodycam footage that shows the chaotic moments that led to the fatal shooting of a woman who had called 911 to report a suspected intruder at her home.

The killing of Sonya Massey, 36, over Independence Day weekend has led to criminal charges against one of the officers who responded to her home, and has drawn condemnation from President Joe Biden.

Sangamon County Sheriff’s Deputy Sean Grayson has been fired from the police force and charged with murder and official misconduct.

President Joe Biden declared himself 'heartbroken' while stating that 36-year-old black woman Sonya Massey 'should still be alive today' after she was shot dead by a sheriff's deputy inside of her kitchen in Springfield, Illinois, on July 6.

Massey had called 911 to report a prowler on her property, around 200 miles south of Illinois. After two Sangamon County Sheriff's deputies searched the vicinity, they went inside the home to talk to Massey. The press release came in the wake of the release of the horrific bodycam footage in the incident. 

Michael B. Moore sat down, closed his eyes and lowered his head. The pastor standing behind him clamped his palm on Moore’s shoulder, and three women rested their hands on his back and arms. They sang, prayed and shouted “Hallelujah!”

They gave their blessings knowing that the political road ahead would be difficult for Moore, a great-great-grandson of a Civil War hero who commandeered a Confederate steamer to escape slavery before serving five terms in Congress. Moore, 61, hopes to follow in his ancestor’s footsteps by winning a House seat as a Democrat here in South Carolina.

“America may soon be subjected to the country’s first DEI president: Kamala Harris,” screamed the headline of an op-ed in The New York Post on Saturday penned by Fox Business senior correspondent Charles Gasparino.

In the year since the Supreme Court banned the consideration of race in college admissions last June, students have had to give more thought to how they present themselves in their application essays.

Previously, they could write about their racial or ethnic identity if they wanted to, but colleges would usually know it either way and could use it as a factor in admissions. Now, it’s entirely up to students to disclose their identity or not.

The US’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization is calling for hate crime charges to be filed against a Texas woman accused of trying to drown a three-year-old Palestinian-American girl while saying that the child’s mother wasn’t really American.

For now, the suspect in the case has been booked on counts of attempted murder and injury to a child.

This week, the Washington Post and market research group Ipsos jointly released a new poll finding that 61% of Americans think DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) efforts in businesses are “a good thing”, and that support rises to 69% when the concept of DEI is explained in a full sentence-long definition. Meanwhile, businesses around the country are gutting DEI programmes adopted in 2020 and 2021, citing their unpopularity. Can these new figures really be true?

Missouri attorney general Andrew Bailey is suing tech giant IBM for imposing racial and gender quotas on employees and job applicants, as well as tying executives’ compensation to their participation in discriminatory practices.

Juneteenth has been recognized as a US federal holiday since 2021 and acts as a day to celebrate the end of slavery in the country – but millions of Americans will not have the day off today, 19 June, to mark the occasion.

At least 30 states – including most recently Rhode Island and Kentucky – and the District of Columbia recognize Juneteenth as an official public holiday, according to the Pew Research Center.

Three years after it was made a federal holiday, Juneteenth 2024 marks a day of celebration as well as education.

The federal holiday known as “Second Independence Day,” marks the day the last African American slaves were notified that they had been freed from their masters, the National Museum of African American History and Culture said.