NEW YORK (AP) — The family of a black man who died after being placed in a white police officer's chokehold reached a $5.9 million settlement with the city on Monday, days before the anniversary of his death.

Eric Garner's family in October filed a notice of claim, the first step in filing a lawsuit against the city, asking for $75 million.

Garner, who was 43, was stopped last July 17 outside a Staten Island convenience store because police officers believed he was selling loose, untaxed cigarettes. A video shot by an onlooker shows Garner telling the officers to leave him alone and refusing to be handcuffed.

Officer Daniel Pantaleo placed his arm around Garner's neck to take him down. Garner, who had asthma, is heard gasping "I can't breathe!" 11 times before losing consciousness. He was pronounced dead later at a hospital.

The city medical examiner found the police chokehold contributed to Garner's death. But a grand jury declined to indict the officer in the death. A federal probe is ongoing.

Chokeholds are banned by New York Police Department policy. Pantaleo says he used a legal takedown maneuver known as a seatbelt, not a chokehold.

Garner's death sparked demonstrations and became a flashpoint in a national debate about relations between police and minority communities.

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FILE - In this July 7, 2015, file photo, Gwen Carr holds a picture of her son Eric Garner during a n …

While the city has a legal department that fields lawsuits, the comptroller's office also can settle claims. Comptroller Scott Stringer has made a point of doing that in civil rights cases, saying that resolving them quickly saves the city money on legal fees.

"Following a judicious review of the claim and facts of this case, my office was able to reach a settlement with the estate of Eric Garner that is in the best interests of all parties," Stringer said.

The city did not admit any liability.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said that hopefully Garner's family "can find some peace and finality" from the settlement.

"By reaching a resolution, family and other loved ones can move forward even though we know they will never forget this tragic incident," said de Blasio, who was scheduled to speak Tuesday at a church memorial service in Garner's honor.

Longtime civil rights attorney Jonathan Moore, the family's lawyer, said there also was a settlement with the Richmond University Medical Center, which responded to the scene. That settlement is confidential, and there was no one available at the hospital to comment. Moore said there would be a press conference Tuesday with the Rev. Al Sharpton and the family.

Sharpton said the settlement to the family was deserved but didn't resolve the larger questions around policing and minorities. He said a rally planned for Saturday calling for an expedited federal investigation into Garner's death would go on as planned.

"We did not march and build a movement just to get money," he said.

The city has reached settlements in other high-profile cases involving deaths of black men at the hands police officers. In 2004, the city agreed to pay $3 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the family of Amadou Diallo, who was shot by four police officers in 1999.

In 2010, the city agreed to pay $3.25 million to the estate of Sean Bell, who was killed in 2006 outside a strip club while leaving his bachelor party. Police had targeted the club for an undercover operation.

In January, the city settled with the family of teenager Ramarley Graham, who was shot by a police officer in 2012, for $3.9 million.

Last month, the comptroller's office agreed to pay $6.25 million to a man who spent nearly 25 years in prison before being exonerated in a killing that happened while he was more than 1,000 miles away vacationing at Disney World. A $6.4 million settlement was reached with a man exonerated in the 1990 killing of a rabbi.

Stringer also agreed to a $2.25 million payout to the family of a mentally ill inmate who died in a Rikers Island jail cell that sweltered to 101 degrees because of a malfunctioning heating system, and he helped put together a $17 million settlement in the case of three half-brothers who spent a combined 60 years in prison before their convictions were thrown out.

North Korea has challenged the entire US Congress to come and inspect a bio-tech institute in Pyongyang that US experts have suggested is a facility for mass-producing anthrax for the military.

A spokesman for the powerful National Defence Commission angrily stressed that the facility in Pyongyang was solely dedicated to the manufacture of pesticides, after a report published last week on the website of the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University suggested otherwise.

"A thousand pairs of ears cannot match a pair of eyes," the spokesman said, accusing the US government of spreading wild rumours about the North's biological weapons programme.

"Come here right now, with all the 535 members of the House of Representatives and the Senate as well as the imbecile secretaries and deputy secretaries of the government who have made their voices hoarse screaming for new sanctions," the spokesman said.

"Then they can behold the awe-inspiring sight of the Pyongyang Bio-technical Institute," he added.

The spokesman's remarks, carried by the North's official KCNA news agency on Monday, were not included in the English-language version of the same report.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un inspected the institute last week, and pictures of his visit published by state media were analysed by Mellisa Hanham, a senior researcher at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington.

Hanham said the photographs showed Pyongyang had been importing dual-use equipment.

"It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the institute is intended to produce military-size batches of anthrax," she said. "The bottom line is that regardless of whether the equipment is being used to produce anthrax today, it could in the near future."

The Defence Commission dismissed the allegations as another example of the United States' "hysteric rage" and its repeated efforts to "tarnish the sublime image" of the country.

According to North Korean defectors and assessments by the US and South Korean governments, Pyongyang began to acquire a biological weapons capability as early as the 1960s under the orders of then leader Kim Il Sung.

In a 2012 white paper, the South Korean defence ministry estimated that the North was able to indigenously produce a number of biological agents, including anthrax and smallpox.