Lewis helped Martin Luther King organise the March on Washington in 1963 and once suffered a fractured skull at the hands of state troopers
John Lewis, the civil rights leader and Democratic congressman, has died. He was 80.
Related: John Lewis obituary
Continue reading...Claim of miserliness as second day sees negotiations split over size of fund and seven-year budget
European Union leaders were locked in intense negotiations on Saturday evening in an attempt to save a summit on the terms of a €750bn (£682bn) pandemic recovery fund from an acrimonious end as the debate over the bloc’s financial future became “heated”.
A second day of talks in Brussels saw Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, publicly accuse the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark and Sweden of being “misers” while the Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, claimed the Dutch were trying to rewrite the EU’s rules.
Continue reading...Demonstrators call for new constitution, new elections and end to repressive laws
Several thousand anti-government protesters rallied in Thailand’s capital on Saturday to call for a new constitution, new elections and an end to repressive laws.
Chanting and waving placards, the demonstrators, comprising mainly young Thais, converged on Bangkok’s iconic Democracy Monument in the old part of the city.
Continue reading...Investigation opened after blaze destroys grand organ and shatters stained-glass windows
A fire that broke out in a cathedral in the western French city of Nantes blew out stained-glass windows and destroyed the grand organ in the 15th-century building, officials said.
A local prosecutor said three fires were started at the St Peter and St Paul Cathedral and authorities were treating the incident as a criminal act. An investigation has been opened.
Continue reading...Mahmoud Dicko has emerged as a key player in a country in crisis. But is he a zealot or a pragmatist?
A fragile calm has returned to Bamako. The debris has been cleared from the streets and the barricades around the Salam mosque in the neighbourhood of Badalabougou are gone. For the moment, a bloody confrontation between security forces and demonstrators in the capital of Mali appears to have been averted.
But the pause is likely to be temporary. Leaders of the landlocked west African nation’s protest movement have promised to go “right to the bitter end” to force through dramatic political change, after six weeks of rising unrest. “We will wage this battle until we bring in a new democratic era in Mali. We have lost too many killed to retreat now,” Mohamed Salia Touré, a prominent protest leader and young politician, told the Observer.
Continue reading...John Lewis, the civil rights hero and Democratic congressman, has died at the age of 80. In 1965 he headed a march across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, and was knocked to the ground and beaten by police. The incident, along with other beatings during peaceful protests, brought attention to racial oppression in the US south. 20 years later he recalled the events for the documentary series Eyes on the Prize for Washington University in St Louis
The civil rights leader John Lewis, known at the ‘conscience of America’, has died. Born the son of sharecroppers in Alabama on 21 February 1940, he attended segregated public schools and, inspired by the words of Martin Luther King Jr, became active in the civil rights movement. From university onwards he organised sit-ins at segregated lunch counters, took part in the Freedom Rides, was chair of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and was a key speaker at the historic March on Washington in 1963. He led one of the pivotal moments in the civil rights movement, a march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama that was brutally attacked by state troopers.
Continue reading...Unrest in Khabarovsk as Sergei Furgal is held in Moscow in connection with murders
Tens of thousands of people in the Russian city of Khabarovsk have turned out for a protest over the arrest of the region’s governor on charges of involvement in multiple murders.
Local media estimated that the rally on Saturday attracted between 15,000 and 50,000 people. Protests have taken place every day this week, typically drawing hundreds of people .
Continue reading...Graffiti spray-painted on a monument to Nazi soldiers in a small Canadian city is being investigated by police as a hate crime – a move that has prompted disbelief among human rights advocates.
Around 21 June, the words “Nazi war monument” were spray-painted on to a cenotaph commemorating soldiers in the 14th SS Division in an Ontario cemetery, the Ottawa Citizen reported.
Continue reading...Long lines form every morning in one of the Bolivian cities hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic as desperate people wait to buy small bottles of chlorine dioxide, a toxic bleaching agent that has been falsely touted as a cure for Covid-19 and myriad other diseases.
The rush in the city of Cochabamba to buy a disinfectant known to cause harm to those who ingest it comes even after the Bolivian health ministry warned of its dangers and said at least five people had been poisoned after taking chlorine dioxide in La Paz, the capital.
Continue reading...Luis Esteban Kyburg, who allegedly oversaw deaths of at least 150 during dictatorship, escaped to Germany in 2013
A former naval officer, charged with human rights crimes during Argentina’s bloody 1976-83 dictatorship, has been discovered living in Berlin – despite being the subject of an international arrest warrant.
Luis Esteban Kyburg, the alleged commander of an elite navy unit believed responsible for the deaths of at least 150 people, was filmed by the Bild tabloidwalking down the streets of Berlin’s trendy Friedrichshain district .
Continue reading...Yves Rausch had been on run after allegedly pulling gun on police last Sunday
German police have captured a heavily armed suspect accused of stealing officers’ weapons, after a six-day manhunt for the “Black Forest Rambo”.
The man, named by police as Yves Rausch, had been on the run since last Sunday morning after holding up four officers and stealing their firearms in what his mother claims was a moment of “panic”.
Continue reading...At least two victims have blamed the mobile phone infiltration on a ‘dirty war’ by the Spanish state
In spring last year, Sergi Miquel Gutiérrez realised something odd was going on with his mobile.
“I remember some issues, for example losing some information on WhatsApp, and losing emails and having them appear in places I didn’t put them,” he said.
Continue reading...Bloodletting contributed to worsening health of painter, who probably had pneumonia
A medical error contributed to killing the Italian painter Raphael, according to the latest reconstruction of the circumstances surrounding the Renaissance master’s untimely death.
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino is believed to have been aged 37 when he died in Rome on 6 April 1520, eight days after contracting a fever. Several museums in Italy are holding exhibitions to commemorate the 500th anniversary of his death.
Continue reading...Country becomes third in world to reach figure; alarming peak in French region of Brittany
India has become the third country to record more than 1m coronavirus infections, following the US and Brazil, as it reported 34,956 new cases in the past 24 hours, taking the national total to 1,003,832.
New peaks continue to appear around the world, including an alarming rise in the Brittany region of France.
Continue reading...The leaders of EU27 countries wore face masks as they greeted each other with elbow bumps, nods, bows and some variations at a summit to thrash out a deal on a multibillion coronavirus recovery fund for the bloc's economies.
There were birthday gifts for the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who turned 66, and the Portuguese prime minister, António Costa, who turned 59
Continue reading...The Guardian’s picture editors select highlights from around the world
Continue reading...Marriage to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi followed social distancing guidelines, says palace
The Queen’s granddaughter Princess Beatrice has married the property tycoon Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi in a secret ceremony attended by the Queen and close family.
In what is believed to be the first family gathering that the Queen and Prince Philip have attended since lockdown, the wedding of Beatrice and Mapelli Mozzi took place at the Royal Chapel of All Saints at Royal Lodge in Windsor, after being initially delayed from 29 May due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Continue reading...Trump’s campaign has lurched from bad to worse, but will demoting Brad Parscale save it?
Brad Parscale once memorably compared the Donald Trump re-election campaign to the planet-smashing Death Star from the Star Wars films. “In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time,” he tweeted on 7 May.
Now, Parscale resembles one of those hapless imperial officers, usually played by a British actor, lifted off his feet and choked by Darth Vader’s distant but deadly grip as retribution for letting rebels escape.
Continue reading...Jordi Pujol, his wife Marta Ferrusola, his seven children and 18 other individuals linked to the family will be charged
A Spanish judge plans to charge the former Catalan president Jordi Pujol, along with his wife Marta Ferrusola, his seven children and 18 other individuals linked to the family, with forming a criminal organisation that used its political influence to amass “a disproportionate fortune”.
Pujol was the first democratically elected president of Catalonia after the end of the Franco dictatorship at the end of the 1970s, a position he held for 23 years, during which time his Convergència i Unió party dominated the Catalan political scene.
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