George Floyd's funeral hears calls for racial justice

The funeral of George Floyd, an African American whose death in police custody spawned global outrage, has heard impassioned pleas for racial justice.

Speakers in the church in Houston, Texas, lined up to remember a man whose "crime was that he was born black".

Mr Floyd died in Minneapolis last month as a white police officer held a knee on his neck for nearly nine minutes, his final moments filmed on phones.

Four police officers involved have been sacked and charged over his death.

His coffin was taken from the church driven in a motorcade to the Houston Memorial Gardens where he was to be buried beside his mother.

One of Mr Floyd's nieces, Brooke Williams, called for a change in laws which, she argued, were designed to disadvantage black people. 

"Why must this system be corrupt and broken?" she asked. "Laws were already put in place for the African-American system to fail. And these laws need to be changed. No more hate crimes, please! Someone said 'Make America Great Again', but when has America ever been great?"

 Republican President Donald Trump's Democratic opponent in the November presidential election, Joe Biden, addressed the service in a video message, saying: "When there is justice for George Floyd, we will truly be on our way to racial justice in America."

Mr Biden has sharply criticised Mr Trump, accusing him at the weekend of making "despicable" speculative remarks about Mr Floyd.

But the Democratic politician was himself recently accused of taking black American votes for granted when he said African Americans "ain't black" if they even considered voting for Mr Trump.