National

About The Episode

The killing of George Floyd by a police officer has sparked massive protests nationwide. This hour, writer and scholar Clint Smith reflects on this moment, through conversation, letters, and poetry.

About Clint Smith

Clint Smith is a writer, poet, teacher, and Emerson Fellow at New America.

Tens of thousands of people were planning to gather across Australia this weekend to protest the treatment of Indigenous people in police custody and to show solidarity with U.S. demonstrations calling for racial justice.

Chanting "black lives matter," hundreds of protesters filled Garema Place, in the capital, Canberra, Friday morning. But much larger protests were being planned for Saturday in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.

Editor's note: NPR will be continuing this conversation about Being Black in America online and on air.

As protests continue around the country against systemic racism and police brutality, black Americans describe fear, anger and a weariness about tragic killings that are becoming all too familiar.

President Trump will visit one of Maine's least populous towns and its most conservative county when he tours a factory producing medical swabs for coronavirus testing on Friday.

Conspicuously absent during the trip will be the state's only Republican member of Congress, Sen. Susan Collins.

Collins, who faces a tough reelection fight to secure her fifth consecutive term, will remain in Washington, D.C., when the president travels to Puritan Medical Products in Guilford, Maine.

A month ago, America's pork farmers were in crisis. About 40 percent of the country's pork plants were shut down because they had become hot spots of coronavirus infection.

India and Pakistan have experienced their largest single-day increase in coronavirus infections, confirming more than 14,700 cases between them Friday, as the virus shows no sign of peaking in South Asia.

Each country now exceeds the number of reported cases from China, where the pandemic originated.

Updated at 3:00 a.m. ET Friday

Protesters poured into streets again across the nation to honor George Floyd following a memorial service in Minneapolis. Demonstrations have taken place every day since Floyd's death last week after a police officer pressed a knee into his neck while detaining him.