Minnesota

With oppressively hot, dry weather looming over much of the Western U.S. and Canada on July 18, the enormous Bootleg Fire in Oregon grew again and authorities ordered new evacuations.

Bootleg, the largest of 80 major fires now active in the U.S., spread overnight from 274,000 acres to 290,000 acres -- three times the size of the metropolis of Detroit, officials said.

Former policeman Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison on June 25 for the murder of African American George Floyd, the killing that sparked America's biggest demonstrations for racial justice in decades.

Amy Klobuchar, US senator of Slovenian descent, shared an Easter Tweet of gifting her father with his favourite Slovenian dessert - a made-in-Minnesota potica.

Many of the millions of Texans who lost power for days after a deadly winter blast overwhelmed the electric grid now have it back, but the crisis was far from over in parts of the South with many people lacking safe drinking water.

Namely, after several days of violent protests, the police has withdrawn from a protest zone in Seattle on Monday.

Trump: The city was taken over by local terrorists AP Photo/Ted S. Warren

Police in central Athens have closed several central metro stations after hundreds of people gathered on Syntagma Square in solidarity with demonstrators in the United States protesting the death of a black man in police custody last month.

More than 10,000 people have been arrested in protests decrying racism and police brutality in the wake of George Floyd's death, according to an Associated Press tally of known arrests across the U.S

Prosecutors on June 3 leveled new criminal charges against four Minneapolis policemen implicated in the death of a black man pinned by his neck to the street during an arrest that sparked more than a week of nationwide protest and civil strife.

Turkey's ruling party spokesman on June 3 hailed demands for equality as anti-racist protests continue in the country after the killing of African-American man George Floyd. 

Turkey is against all groups trying to turn legitimate protests in the US violent and bring public order under their destructive influence, said Ömer Çelik, spokesman for the AKP, after a party board meeting. 

Facebook employees are staging a rare protest against the company for leaving up a post from President Donald Trump they say could incite violence. The employees, who began publicly criticizing the social network on Twitter over the weekend, have escalated their disapproval by staging a virtual walkout and symbolically changing their workplace profile pictures.