Police Beat: Demonstrations continued for a fourth night in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, even after the former police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black man was charged with second-degree manslaughter. 

  Protesters threw objects and the police responded  with flash-bang grenades, pepper spray, and marker rounds. 

  Kim Potter, 46, faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $20,000. She resigned from the force earlier this week. Police video shows that Potter threatened to use her Taser on 20-year-old Daunte Wright but instead pulled her gun and shot him.

Second Opinion: A pathologist testifying for the defense in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin testified that George Floyd died of cardiac arrest combined with drug use, and even carbon monoxide poisoning from a running police car. He suggested it was anything and everything except the pressure of Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck for nine and a half minutes.

 Dr. David Fowler, contrary to previous expert medical testimony, said the  cause of death was actually “undetermined.” The county Medical Examiner’s Office ruled it a homicide, death caused by another person. 

  Fowler  recently retired after 17 years as the chief medical examiner for the state of Maryland. He is being sued in another case by the family of a 19-year-old black man who died in similar circumstances and Fowler ruled it a heart attack.

  Fowler opened the door on a damaging subject for the defense when he said Floyd did not die immediately after his heart stopped.

  Prosecutor Jerry Blackwell asked, “Are you critical of the fact that he wasn’t given immediate emergency care when he went into cardiac arrest?” Fowler answered, “As a physician I would agree.” 

The Longest War: Over the objections of national security officials and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, President Biden yesterday formally announced a complete withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan by September 11^th, the 20^th anniversary of the infamous Sept. 11^th terrorist attacks.

  Speaking from The White House, Biden said, “I’m now the fourth United States president to preside over American true presence in Afghanistan; two Republicans, two Democrats. I will not pass this responsibility onto a fifth.”

  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who didn’t object when President Trump set an even earlier deadline for withdrawal, said, Biden “needs to explain to the American people why he thinks abandoning our partners and retreating in the face of the Taliban will make America safer.” 

Cold Case: Kristin Smart, the California college freshman who disappeared in 1996, was killed during an attempted rape, and the father of the man charged with her murder helped to hide her body, prosecutors said yesterday.

  Fellow student Paul Flores, now 44, is believed to have been the last person to see Smart alive. He was arrested Tuesday. Both Smart and Flores were students at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo when she disappeared.  

   San Luis Obispo County District Attorney Dan Dow told reporters, “We certainly believe that Mr. Flores’s dorm room was a crime scene.”

  Flores has always been the prime suspect but investigators didn’t have enough evidence to charge him. What proof they have now that they didn’t have then, they aren’t saying. They said they found “items of interest” at the home of Flores’s father, 80-year-old Ruben Flores. The district attorney said they now have “significant new information.” 

The Obit Page: Bernie Madoff, the master of the Ponzi scheme who ripped off tens of thousands of investors for as much as $65 billion, has died at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, at age 82. He had been serving a 150-year sentence for engineering the biggest fraud in US history.

  Investigators said Madoff defrauded as many as 37,000 people in 136 countries over 40 years. His targets were ordinary people as well as the rich and famous, including movie director Steven Spielberg, actor Kevin Bacon, former New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Weisel. 

  Madoff didn’t invest money. He paid investors “profits” with money deposited by other investors. He then sent out fake account reports ultimately amounting to about $50 billion in fictional returns. He was smugly unapologetic when caught.

  Madoff’s own sons, Mark and Andrew, who ran a legitimate wing of the business, turned in their father admitted to them what he had done when the scheme was collapsing in a market downturn. Mark later committed suicide at 46 and Andrew died of lymphoma at 48.

  Madoff is survived by his wife, Ruth, who was once the company book keeper and always claimed she knew nothing about the scheme. The court stripped her of all but one or two million of her wealth.

The Spin Rack: The search continues for crewmen lost in the capsize of a ship off the coast of Louisiana in hurricane force winds. Six were rescued, one found dead, and 13 are missing. — Colton Underwood, a former contestant on the ABC show “The Bachelor” in which a young man selects a mate from a bevy of women, has come out as gay.

Sign Language: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants a state law requiring a signature match when someone votes in his state, but after examining the evolution of the governor’s signature over the years, The Tampa Bay Times concluded that the governor would have a tough time voting under his own law.

  The paper notes that in 2008, DeSantis’s signature “was crisp and elegant: A sharp ‘R’ to start; a stately ‘D’ for Dion, his middle name; and ‘DeSantis’ written with an artistic flourish.”

  The article featuring multiple samples of the governor’s changing signature said that over the next 13 years  “he dropped the middle initial. He altered the look of the ‘R,’ and then switched it back. A quick squiggle and a big swoop replaced most of the letters in his last name.”

  We’re betting he still gets to vote when he runs for President.

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