A week before Election Day, living statues depicting a golden President Donald Trump in unflattering poses were on temporary display at the Lincoln Memorial and Trump International Hotel.

Living statues paint Trump as racist 'relic'

McDonald's Corp has been with a potentially multi-billion-dollar lawsuit by Black franchise owners who accused the fast-food giant of racial discrimination for steering them to underperforming stores.

McDonald's was Thursday accused of placing Black franchisees in undesirable inner-city locations with high security and insurance costs and below-average sales, and driving many away by failing to support them as debts rise and profits fall short.

The proposed class action led by James and Darrell Byrd, brothers with four McDonald's restaurants in Tennessee, was filed by the law firm representing 52 Black former franchisees who filed a similar lawsuit on August 31.

A lawyer for the plaintiffs estimated that McDonald's has 186 Black franchisees in the United States, down from a peak of 377 in 1998, who own "700-plus" stores.

The lawsuit seeks damages of $4 million to $5 million per store, potentially totaling more than $3 billion (2.3 billion pounds).

In a statement, McDonald's USA said it has an "obvious interest" in the franchisees' success, and invested significantly in the Byrds' franchises after they encountered difficulties. McDonald's said it will defend against the lawsuit.

McDonald's has taken steps this year to address concerns about its workplace culture, including updating its corporate values for the first time since 2008. It has also denied treating Black franchisees differently, while acknowledging it wants its franchisee ranks to become more diverse.

McDonald's has also denied racial discrimination claims in a lawsuit filed in January by two Black executives.

McDonald's sought last week to dismiss the lawsuit by the former franchisees, which seeks up to $1 billion in damages, saying it disclosed the risks of owning stores and did not set anyone up for failure. 
&nbsp;

McDonald's Corp has been with a potentially multi-billion-dollar lawsuit by Black franchise owners who accused the fast-food giant of racial discrimination for steering them to underperforming stores.

McDonald's Corp has been with a potentially multi-billion-dollar lawsuit by Black franchise owners who accused the fast-food giant of racial discrimination for steering them to underperforming stores. McDonald's was Thursday accused of placing Black franchisees in undesirable inner-city locations with high security and insurance costs and below-average sales, and driving many away by failing to support them as debts rise and profits fall short. The proposed class action led by James and Darrell Byrd, brothers with four McDonald's restaurants in Tennessee, was filed by the law firm representing 52 Black former franchisees who filed a similar lawsuit on August 31. A lawyer for the plaintiffs estimated that McDonald's has 186 Black franchisees in the United States, down from a peak of 377 in 1998, who own "700-plus" stores. The lawsuit seeks damages of $4 million to $5 million per store, potentially totaling more than $3 billion (2.3 billion pounds). In a statement, McDonald's USA said it has an "obvious interest" in the franchisees' success, and invested significantly in the Byrds' franchises after they encountered difficulties. McDonald's said it will defend against the lawsuit. McDonald's has taken steps this year to address concerns about its workplace culture, including updating its corporate values for the first time since 2008. It has also denied treating Black franchisees differently, while acknowledging it wants its franchisee ranks to become more diverse. McDonald's has also denied racial discrimination claims in a lawsuit filed in January by two Black executives. McDonald's sought last week to dismiss the lawsuit by the former franchisees, which seeks up to $1 billion in damages, saying it disclosed the risks of owning stores and did not set anyone up for failure.

Black franchise owners at McDonald's file new multi-billion-dollar lawsuit

Officials in the US city of Philadelphia announced a curfew Wednesday following two nights of unrest over the latest police killing of a Black man.

The citywide order will last from 9:00 pm to 06:00 am (0100 to 1000 GMT Thursday), according to a statement on the city government's website.

Thousands of people have taken to Philadelphia's streets, with looting and violence breaking out after police on Monday shot dead 27-year-old Walter Wallace, who was carrying a knife.

His family said he suffered from mental health issues and asked why officers did not taser him instead.

Wallace's death and the subsequent demonstrations have also revived a political clash between Republicans and Democrats less than a week before the election.

"It's a terrible thing, what I am witnessing is terrible and frankly that the mayor or whoever it is that's allowing people to riot and loot and not stop them is also just a horrible thing," President Donald Trump told reporters.

The US has seen a wave of protests and rioting since the police killing of George Floyd in May in Minnesota when an officer was filmed pressing his knee to handcuffed Floyd's neck until he went limp.

Many of the protests have accused the police of racism and brutality, but Trump has focused on the unrest to bolster his claims to be the "law-and-order" candidate in his election battle against Joe Biden.

On Tuesday, the Democratic challenger and his running mate Kamala Harris said in a statement that their "hearts are broken" for Wallace's family.

But they also called on demonstrators to protest peacefully.

"No amount of anger at the very real injustices in our society excuses violence," they said.

"Looting is not a protest, it is a crime. It draws attention away from the real tragedy of a life cut short," Biden and Harris added.

Two officers shot Wallace around 4:00 pm (2000 GMT) on Monday afternoon after he refused to drop the knife as his mother tried to restrain him.

Phone video of the killing posted on social media showed Wallace push his mother away and then walk towards the police.

"Put the knife down," one of the officers shouted in the video, which panned away as officers opened fire.

On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf's office announced the deployment of several hundred National Guard troops to the city "to protect the right to peacefully assemble and protest while keeping people safe."

Philadelphia's police commissioner has launched an investigation into the shooting.

Officials in the US city of Philadelphia announced a curfew Wednesday following two nights of unrest over the latest police killing of a Black man. The citywide order will last from 9:00 pm to 06:00 am (0100 to 1000 GMT Thursday), according to a statement on the city government's website.

Officials in the US city of Philadelphia announced a curfew Wednesday following two nights of unrest over the latest police killing of a Black man. The citywide order will last from 9:00 pm to 06:00 am (0100 to 1000 GMT Thursday), according to a statement on the city government's website. Thousands of people have taken to Philadelphia's streets, with looting and violence breaking out after police on Monday shot dead 27-year-old Walter Wallace, who was carrying a knife. His family said he suffered from mental health issues and asked why officers did not taser him instead. Wallace's death and the subsequent demonstrations have also revived a political clash between Republicans and Democrats less than a week before the election. "It's a terrible thing, what I am witnessing is terrible and frankly that the mayor or whoever it is that's allowing people to riot and loot and not stop them is also just a horrible thing," President Donald Trump told reporters. The US has seen a wave of protests and rioting since the police killing of George Floyd in May in Minnesota when an officer was filmed pressing his knee to handcuffed Floyd's neck until he went limp. Many of the protests have accused the police of racism and brutality, but Trump has focused on the unrest to bolster his claims to be the "law-and-order" candidate in his election battle against Joe Biden. On Tuesday, the Democratic challenger and his running mate Kamala Harris said in a statement that their "hearts are broken" for Wallace's family. But they also called on demonstrators to protest peacefully. "No amount of anger at the very real injustices in our society excuses violence," they said. "Looting is not a protest, it is a crime. It draws attention away from the real tragedy of a life cut short," Biden and Harris added. Two officers shot Wallace around 4:00 pm (2000 GMT) on Monday afternoon after he refused to drop the knife as his mother tried to restrain him. Phone video of the killing posted on social media showed Wallace push his mother away and then walk towards the police. "Put the knife down," one of the officers shouted in the video, which panned away as officers opened fire. On Tuesday, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf's office announced the deployment of several hundred National Guard troops to the city "to protect the right to peacefully assemble and protest while keeping people safe." Philadelphia's police commissioner has launched an investigation into the shooting.

Philadelphia imposes curfew amid unrest over black man's killing 

An African American woman who was injured by the local police has vowed to avenge the police brutality by challenging the involved officials after the shooting that resulted in the death of her boyfriend.

"I lost the love of my life and the father of my seven-month-old child" when an officer opened fire "while we had our hands raised in the air," said Tafara Williams.

The 20-yer-old was in her car with her 19-year-old boyfriend in the passenger seat when a police officer opened fire at their vehicle, injuring Williams and killing her boyfriend&nbsp;Marcellis Stinnette. The incident took place in Waukegan, a suburb north of Chicago on October 20.

The concerned officer in question is Hispanic and has not been named yet. He has been fired from his station since the incident was reported.&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/philadelphia-police-shooting-of-black-man-sparks-unrest-338312">Also read|&nbsp;Philadelphia police shooting of Black man sparks unrest</a>

The police department claims that the police officer was trying to investigate a "suspicious vehicle" calmly but the couple fled. However, a second officer intervened&nbsp;when the couple fled, and upon seeing the second officer the car allegedly backed towards him and thus the officer opened fire.

Williams, however, claims that she was smoking a cigarette in the car with her boyfriend with their car parked outside of their home, and claims she left quickly.&nbsp;"I drove off very slowly... The officer was not following me," she said. When she turned the corner, Williams was met with ä crash".

"I lost control, the officer was shooting at us... I kept shouting, I don't have a gun," she said.

She also claimed that she kept asking why was the officer shooting but received no answer, and she was unable to move due to her injuries.&nbsp;"When you're dealing with African Americans, it's almost as if you shoot first ask questions later," said Ben Crump, who is representing Williams.

The police department has said they will soon be releasing video footage of the whole incident.

An African American woman who was injured by the local police has vowed to avenge the police brutality by challenging the involved officials after the shooting that resulted in the death of her boyfriend.

An African American woman who was injured by the local police has vowed to avenge the police brutality by challenging the involved officials after the shooting that resulted in the death of her boyfriend. "I lost the love of my life and the father of my seven-month-old child" when an officer opened fire "while we had our hands raised in the air," said Tafara Williams. The 20-yer-old was in her car with her 19-year-old boyfriend in the passenger seat when a police officer opened fire at their vehicle, injuring Williams and killing her boyfriend Marcellis Stinnette. The incident took place in Waukegan, a suburb north of Chicago on October 20. The concerned officer in question is Hispanic and has not been named yet. He has been fired from his station since the incident was reported. Also read| Philadelphia police shooting of Black man sparks unrest The police department claims that the police officer was trying to investigate a "suspicious vehicle" calmly but the couple fled. However, a second officer intervened when the couple fled, and upon seeing the second officer the car allegedly backed towards him and thus the officer opened fire. Williams, however, claims that she was smoking a cigarette in the car with her boyfriend with their car parked outside of their home, and claims she left quickly. "I drove off very slowly... The officer was not following me," she said. When she turned the corner, Williams was met with ä crash". "I lost control, the officer was shooting at us... I kept shouting, I don't have a gun," she said. She also claimed that she kept asking why was the officer shooting but received no answer, and she was unable to move due to her injuries. "When you're dealing with African Americans, it's almost as if you shoot first ask questions later," said Ben Crump, who is representing Williams. The police department has said they will soon be releasing video footage of the whole incident.

Black woman to sue US police for killing her boyfriend

A recent report has drawn attention to how Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people in the UK are more likely to suffer from obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

Ethnic minorities in Britain are paying with their lives after years of government neglect left them uniquely vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic, the report says.

But pre-existing conditions cannot explain entirely why they have suffered disproportionately, the six-month review by Doreen Lawrence said.

"Black, Asian and minority ethnic people have been overexposed, under-protected, stigmatised and overlooked during this pandemic -– and this has been generations in the making," the report says, highlighting their often low-paid work and poor housing.

"The impact of Covid is not random, but foreseeable and inevitable -– the consequence of decades of structural injustice, inequality and discrimination that blights our society.

"We are in the middle of an avoidable crisis. And this report is a rallying cry to break that clear and tragic pattern."

Lawrence has become a respected figure in campaigns for racial justice in the years since her 18-year-old son Stephen was stabbed to death by a gang of white youths in 1993.

Her report builds on research by government statisticians who found that white Britons are at lower risk of dying from Covid-19 than any other ethnic group, except for people of Chinese heritage.

Black Britons are four times more likely to die than white people.

BAME people referenced in the report also complained of unsympathetic treatment by white NHS doctors who had little understanding of their specific medical or cultural needs.

The report also cites hostile public attitudes among the majority white population, including racist attacks on Chinese Britons who were blamed after the virus originated in China.

A recent report has drawn attention to how Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people in the UK are more likely to suffer from obesity, heart disease and diabetes.

A recent report has drawn attention to how Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) people in the UK are more likely to suffer from obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Ethnic minorities in Britain are paying with their lives after years of government neglect left them uniquely vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic, the report says. But pre-existing conditions cannot explain entirely why they have suffered disproportionately, the six-month review by Doreen Lawrence said. "Black, Asian and minority ethnic people have been overexposed, under-protected, stigmatised and overlooked during this pandemic -– and this has been generations in the making," the report says, highlighting their often low-paid work and poor housing. "The impact of Covid is not random, but foreseeable and inevitable -– the consequence of decades of structural injustice, inequality and discrimination that blights our society. "We are in the middle of an avoidable crisis. And this report is a rallying cry to break that clear and tragic pattern." Lawrence has become a respected figure in campaigns for racial justice in the years since her 18-year-old son Stephen was stabbed to death by a gang of white youths in 1993. Her report builds on research by government statisticians who found that white Britons are at lower risk of dying from Covid-19 than any other ethnic group, except for people of Chinese heritage. Black Britons are four times more likely to die than white people. BAME people referenced in the report also complained of unsympathetic treatment by white NHS doctors who had little understanding of their specific medical or cultural needs. The report also cites hostile public attitudes among the majority white population, including racist attacks on Chinese Britons who were blamed after the virus originated in China.

'Structural racism' killing minorities, UK report says

The superintendent of a top US military academy resigned from his post-Monday after the Virginia governor ordered an investigation into accusations of systemic racism at the school. 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/trump-says-black-lives-matter-is-a-symbol-of-hate-310187">Also read: Trump says Black Lives Matter is a 'symbol of hate'</a>

In a letter released by Virginia Military Institute (VMI), retired general JH Binford Peay III said Democratic Governor Ralph Northam had "lost confidence in my leadership" and "desired my resignation."

Peay, 80, had been the head of one of the oldest military universities in the country for 17 years.

Since the death of African American George Floyd during an arrest by police in May, the US military -- one of the country's institutions where minorities are most represented -- has opened up a major internal debate on race.

Black students and graduates of VMI shared on social media incidents where school officials were allegedly indifferent to racist insults from fellow cadets, undeserved punishment, even racist musings of teachers.

Last month, the magazine The Root published interviews with several black VMI students. One recounted how one teacher fondly mentioned her father, a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Another described how first-year cadets are ordered to salute a statue of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, a general that fought for the pro-slavery Confederacy during the US Civil War, every time they pass by.

Northam last week ordered a probe into "the clear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism at the Virginia Military Institute," which receives public funding.

Black cadets at VMI told The Root they had protested "the glorification of the Confederacy" but said the school's leadership would not acknowledge the racist nature of the institution's culture, instead of calling it "tradition."

The superintendent of a top US military academy resigned from his post-Monday after the Virginia governor ordered an investigation into accusations of systemic racism at the school.

The superintendent of a top US military academy resigned from his post-Monday after the Virginia governor ordered an investigation into accusations of systemic racism at the school. Also read: Trump says Black Lives Matter is a 'symbol of hate' In a letter released by Virginia Military Institute (VMI), retired general JH Binford Peay III said Democratic Governor Ralph Northam had "lost confidence in my leadership" and "desired my resignation." Peay, 80, had been the head of one of the oldest military universities in the country for 17 years. Since the death of African American George Floyd during an arrest by police in May, the US military -- one of the country's institutions where minorities are most represented -- has opened up a major internal debate on race. Black students and graduates of VMI shared on social media incidents where school officials were allegedly indifferent to racist insults from fellow cadets, undeserved punishment, even racist musings of teachers. Last month, the magazine The Root published interviews with several black VMI students. One recounted how one teacher fondly mentioned her father, a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Another described how first-year cadets are ordered to salute a statue of Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, a general that fought for the pro-slavery Confederacy during the US Civil War, every time they pass by. Northam last week ordered a probe into "the clear and appalling culture of ongoing structural racism at the Virginia Military Institute," which receives public funding. Black cadets at VMI told The Root they had protested "the glorification of the Confederacy" but said the school's leadership would not acknowledge the racist nature of the institution's culture, instead of calling it "tradition."

Head of US military academy resigns amid ‘systemic racism’ probe 

Another Black man was killed in the US, sparking violent protests that police said injured 30 officers and led to dozens of arrests.

Police on Monday shot and killed a 27-year-old Black man on a Philadelphia street after yelling at him to drop his knife.

Officers were called to the Cobbs Creek neighbourhood and encountered the man, later identified as Walter Wallace, who was holding a knife.

Wallace was hit in the shoulder and chest. One of the officers then put him in a police vehicle and drove him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later.

A video of the fatal confrontation was recorded by a bystander and posted on social media.

In the aftermath, hundreds of people took to the streets to protest the shooting late Monday into early Tuesday. Video showed many yelling at officers and crying.

Thirty officers were injured, most of them from being struck by projectiles such as bricks and rocks.

Another Black man was killed in the US, sparking violent protests that police said injured 30 officers and led to dozens of arrests. Police on Monday shot and killed a 27-year-old Black man on a Philadelphia street after yelling at him to drop his knife.

Another Black man was killed in the US, sparking violent protests that police said injured 30 officers and led to dozens of arrests. Police on Monday shot and killed a 27-year-old Black man on a Philadelphia street after yelling at him to drop his knife. Officers were called to the Cobbs Creek neighbourhood and encountered the man, later identified as Walter Wallace, who was holding a knife. Wallace was hit in the shoulder and chest. One of the officers then put him in a police vehicle and drove him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead a short time later. A video of the fatal confrontation was recorded by a bystander and posted on social media. In the aftermath, hundreds of people took to the streets to protest the shooting late Monday into early Tuesday. Video showed many yelling at officers and crying. Thirty officers were injured, most of them from being struck by projectiles such as bricks and rocks.

Philadelphia police shooting of Black man sparks unrest

Instagram will update its policy on nudity&nbsp;following a campaign by a Black British plus-sized model in order to help end discrimination and ensure all body types are treated fairly.

Instagram and its parent company Facebook made the announcement in an exclusive interview with 'The Observer' after&nbsp;Nyome Nicholas-Williams accused them of removing her images showing her covering her breasts with her arms betrayed "racial biases" in its algorithm.

&nbsp;

As campaigning victories go, forcing Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire to admit a discriminatory flaw in its policy is no small feat.

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/facebooks-zuckerberg-twitters-dorsey-to-testify-before-us-senate-panel-after-us-election-337677" hreflang="en">Facebook's Zuckerberg, Twitter's Dorsey to testify before US Senate panel after US election</a>

The companies&nbsp;said it would now allow pictures of women holding, cupping, or wrapping their arms around their breasts, adjusting previous guidelines that led to the removal of some such images on the grounds they were pornographic.

"It may take some time to ensure we're correctly enforcing these new updates, but we're committed to getting this right," an Instagram spokeswoman said, acknowledging that it had incorrectly removed pictures of Nyome Nicholas-Williams.

"Hearing her feedback helped us understand where this policy was falling short, and how we could refine it," the spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

Nicholas-Williams welcomed the company's decision and said she would continue to monitor the platform to make sure the new guidelines were implemented.

"Overall I'm very glad about the policy change and what this could mean for Black plus-size bodies," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, apologised last month to Nicholas-Williams and said it would update its policy, amid global concern over racism in technology following the global Black Lives Matter protests this year.

Instagram has not responded directly to charges of racial bias, but said: "Separate to this policy change, earlier this year we committed to broader equity work to help ensure we better support the Black community on our platform."

The platform said the prior ban on breast-squeezing images had been incorrectly applied when Nicholas-William's photos were first taken down in July, and that the policy overhaul aimed to ensure all body types were "treated fairly".

Gina Martin, a feminist activist who worked with photographer Alexandra Cameron and Nicholas-Williams on their #IWantToSeeNyome campaign, said they had met Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri and been consulted on the new policy.

"It's rare that communities that are marginalised and misrepresented on Instagram get to have this kind of literally direct and one-on-one consultation with the CEO... it's rare that you're this involved in a policy change."

"It's a really nice example of what happens when women get together," said Martin, who successfully campaigned for "upskirting" - covertly taking intimate photos of someone without their consent - to be criminalised in Britain.

Instagram will update its policy on nudity following a campaign by a Black British plus-sized model in order to help end discrimination and ensure all body types are treated fairly.

Instagram will update its policy on nudity following a campaign by a Black British plus-sized model in order to help end discrimination and ensure all body types are treated fairly. Instagram and its parent company Facebook made the announcement in an exclusive interview with 'The Observer' after Nyome Nicholas-Williams accused them of removing her images showing her covering her breasts with her arms betrayed "racial biases" in its algorithm. As campaigning victories go, forcing Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire to admit a discriminatory flaw in its policy is no small feat. Also read: Facebook's Zuckerberg, Twitter's Dorsey to testify before US Senate panel after US election The companies said it would now allow pictures of women holding, cupping, or wrapping their arms around their breasts, adjusting previous guidelines that led to the removal of some such images on the grounds they were pornographic. "It may take some time to ensure we're correctly enforcing these new updates, but we're committed to getting this right," an Instagram spokeswoman said, acknowledging that it had incorrectly removed pictures of Nyome Nicholas-Williams. "Hearing her feedback helped us understand where this policy was falling short, and how we could refine it," the spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. Nicholas-Williams welcomed the company's decision and said she would continue to monitor the platform to make sure the new guidelines were implemented. "Overall I'm very glad about the policy change and what this could mean for Black plus-size bodies," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, apologised last month to Nicholas-Williams and said it would update its policy, amid global concern over racism in technology following the global Black Lives Matter protests this year. Instagram has not responded directly to charges of racial bias, but said: "Separate to this policy change, earlier this year we committed to broader equity work to help ensure we better support the Black community on our platform." The platform said the prior ban on breast-squeezing images had been incorrectly applied when Nicholas-William's photos were first taken down in July, and that the policy overhaul aimed to ensure all body types were "treated fairly". Gina Martin, a feminist activist who worked with photographer Alexandra Cameron and Nicholas-Williams on their #IWantToSeeNyome campaign, said they had met Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri and been consulted on the new policy. "It's rare that communities that are marginalised and misrepresented on Instagram get to have this kind of literally direct and one-on-one consultation with the CEO... it's rare that you're this involved in a policy change." "It's a really nice example of what happens when women get together," said Martin, who successfully campaigned for "upskirting" - covertly taking intimate photos of someone without their consent - to be criminalised in Britain.

Campaign by plus-size model forces Instagram to alter nudity policy

Mumbai Indians' star all-rounder Hardik Pandya became the first player in the on-going Indian Premier League to take the knee and show solidarity to the Black Lives Matter movement.&nbsp;

Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/sports/ipl-2020-stokes-ton-keeps-royals-in-hunt-for-ipl-play-offs-chennai-out-337960" hreflang="en">IPL 2020: Stokes ton keeps Royals in hunt for IPL play-offs, Chennai out</a>

The Indian player made the gesture after scoring a quick-fire half-century against Rajasthan Royals. He scored an unbeaten 60 runs off 21 balls to power Mumbai to 195 runs by the end of innings. Pandya struck a six to reach his fifty and then he sat down on one knee and raised his right arm. Hardik then pointed towards MI dugout where their interim skipper Kieron Pollard responded with a raised right fist.

Pandya took to Twitter with a caption #BlackLivesMatter and a picture of him kneeling.

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<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BlackLivesMatter?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BlackLivesMatter</a> <a href="https://t.co/yzUS1bWh7F">pic.twitter.com/yzUS1bWh7F</a>
— hardik pandya (@hardikpandya7) <a href="https://twitter.com/hardikpandya7/status/1320439367811252224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 25, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Also read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/sports/ipl-2020-bcci-announces-schedule-timings-and-venue-for-playoffs-338033" hreflang="en">IPL 2020: BCCI announces schedule, timings, and venue for playoffs</a>

Hardik's knock went in vain as Rajasthan managed to chase the mammoth total with two overs to spare after Ben Stokes' century.&nbsp;

"I thought they batted well. Hardik brought us straight back in the game with that knock at the halfway stage. We could have got a couple of wickets more, but the wicket ended up becoming a little better. Their spinners got some help from the pitch, but our spinners couldn’t do that. At the end of the day, someone wins, someone loses," Pollard said after the match.

"We just have to come out and play good cricket. Our bowlers tried, but well played to the opposition. He (Hardik) went out and scored 60* off 21, an innings like that and we end up on the losing side, that’s just tough luck," he added.

Mumbai Indians' star all-rounder Hardik Pandya became the first player in the on-going Indian Premier League to take the knee and show solidarity to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Mumbai Indians' star all-rounder Hardik Pandya became the first player in the on-going Indian Premier League to take the knee and show solidarity to the Black Lives Matter movement. Also read: IPL 2020: Stokes ton keeps Royals in hunt for IPL play-offs, Chennai out The Indian player made the gesture after scoring a quick-fire half-century against Rajasthan Royals. He scored an unbeaten 60 runs off 21 balls to power Mumbai to 195 runs by the end of innings. Pandya struck a six to reach his fifty and then he sat down on one knee and raised his right arm. Hardik then pointed towards MI dugout where their interim skipper Kieron Pollard responded with a raised right fist. Pandya took to Twitter with a caption #BlackLivesMatter and a picture of him kneeling. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/yzUS1bWh7F — hardik pandya (@hardikpandya7) October 25, 2020 × Also read: IPL 2020: BCCI announces schedule, timings, and venue for playoffs Hardik's knock went in vain as Rajasthan managed to chase the mammoth total with two overs to spare after Ben Stokes' century. "I thought they batted well. Hardik brought us straight back in the game with that knock at the halfway stage. We could have got a couple of wickets more, but the wicket ended up becoming a little better. Their spinners got some help from the pitch, but our spinners couldn’t do that. At the end of the day, someone wins, someone loses," Pollard said after the match. "We just have to come out and play good cricket. Our bowlers tried, but well played to the opposition. He (Hardik) went out and scored 60* off 21, an innings like that and we end up on the losing side, that’s just tough luck," he added.

Hardik Pandya becomes first player in IPL 2020 to support #BlackLivesMatter

Instagram has refused to take down an image that has caused a stir and sparked heated reactions on the platform. The graphic has been posted by an account named 'supportblackart'. The image shows two apparently African-American women holding severed heads of white men.&nbsp;

The graphic has been made by an artist named 'sugarygarbage' and is named 'No Place I’d Rather Be Than Here With You'. The graphic was posted several days ago. It has got more than 13,000 likes.

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<a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CGaX7ZAhvNE/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">“No Place I’d Rather Be Than Here With You” by @sugarygarbage 🔥 Alcohol marker, ink, and gouache on archival cotton. 22”x30” (2020) #SupportBlackArt #KeziaHarrell</a>

<p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/supportblackart/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> SUPPORT BLACK ART</a> (@supportblackart) on <time datetime="2020-10-16T17:03:10+00:00" style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;">Oct 16, 2020 at 10:03am PDT</time>
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Given the sentiments&nbsp;stirred by death of George Floyd in US, a fierce debate has erupted over the Instagram graphic.

"This is giving the stereotype that black women are violent and the fact that they made the women look like a giant and holding white people's head is not okay. The women looks like she is not in the right head space and ripping them apart is very violent and that type of violence black women don’t have," commented one user.

The image found supporters too

"It’s art, bunch of snowflakes!" commented a user.

However, it appears that people reported this image to Instagram. But as per Instagram's response posted by writer Luke Rudkowski, the platform declined to take down the post.

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It's really nice when extremely powerful multi-national corporations decide what is for the greater good for everyone to consume. 
 
And hold on..... doesn't Instagram institute a titty ban!? <a href="https://t.co/ooetmukxJd">pic.twitter.com/ooetmukxJd</a>
— Luke Rudkowski (@Lukewearechange) <a href="https://twitter.com/Lukewearechange/status/1318604824049520646?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 20, 2020</a></blockquote>
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&nbsp;

In its response, Instagram has said that "people may express differently" and that the photo "likely doesn't go against" Instagram's community guidelines.

Instagram has refused to take down an image that has caused a stir and sparked heated reactions on the platform. The graphic has been posted by an account named 'supportblackart'.

Instagram has refused to take down an image that has caused a stir and sparked heated reactions on the platform. The graphic has been posted by an account named 'supportblackart'. The image shows two apparently African-American women holding severed heads of white men. The graphic has been made by an artist named 'sugarygarbage' and is named 'No Place I’d Rather Be Than Here With You'. The graphic was posted several days ago. It has got more than 13,000 likes. View this post on Instagram “No Place I’d Rather Be Than Here With You” by @sugarygarbage 🔥 Alcohol marker, ink, and gouache on archival cotton. 22”x30” (2020) #SupportBlackArt #KeziaHarrell A post shared by SUPPORT BLACK ART (@supportblackart) on Oct 16, 2020 at 10:03am PDT × Given the sentiments stirred by death of George Floyd in US, a fierce debate has erupted over the Instagram graphic. "This is giving the stereotype that black women are violent and the fact that they made the women look like a giant and holding white people's head is not okay. The women looks like she is not in the right head space and ripping them apart is very violent and that type of violence black women don’t have," commented one user. The image found supporters too "It’s art, bunch of snowflakes!" commented a user. However, it appears that people reported this image to Instagram. But as per Instagram's response posted by writer Luke Rudkowski, the platform declined to take down the post. It's really nice when extremely powerful multi-national corporations decide what is for the greater good for everyone to consume. And hold on..... doesn't Instagram institute a titty ban!? pic.twitter.com/ooetmukxJd — Luke Rudkowski (@Lukewearechange) October 20, 2020 × In its response, Instagram has said that "people may express differently" and that the photo "likely doesn't go against" Instagram's community guidelines.

Instagram refuses to remove 'black art' image that shows severed heads of whites

Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, a Louisville police officer who was involved in the controversial shooting of the African-American healthcare worker&nbsp;Breonna Taylor has claimed that the shooting had&nbsp;"nothing to do with race."

Speaking to the media for the first time since the shooting, Mattingly denied the accusations of the raid and&nbsp;shooting being racially-motivated.&nbsp;"This is not relatable to George Floyd. This is nothing like that," he said in an interview with the ABC news and&nbsp;the Louisville Courier Journal.

He has been accused of raiding Taylor's house in the guise of a narcotics investigation. The officers claimed that they were executing a late-night 'no-knock' raid. Mattingly said he was shot at by Taylor's boyfriend, after which the police opened fire which resulted in Taylor's death.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/breonna-taylor-grand-jury-audio-reveals-conflicting-accounts-of-fatal-raid-332157">Also read|&nbsp;Breonna Taylor grand jury audio reveals conflicting accounts of fatal raid</a>

The police officers were accused of shooting Taylor due to her race. However, Mattingly has now declined these accusations. "It's not Ahmaud Arbery. It's nothing like it. These are two totally different types of incidences," he said.

There were several nation-wide protests that took place after the news broke out, especially after the death of George Floyd.&nbsp;

These policemen have since then been blamed and subjected to several critical comments for being 'racists'. Talking about the same, he said, "It's been excruciating," Mattingly said.

"When you have the truth right there in your hands and everything else is getting crammed around you, it's frustrating," he continued.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/ban-no-knock-warrant-biden-harris-react-to-breonna-taylors-unjust-ruling-329887">Also read|&nbsp;'Ban no-knock warrant': Biden-Harris react to Breonna Taylor's unjust ruling</a>

None of the police officers have been charged with the death of Breonna Taylor, and the&nbsp;Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron faced a lot of criticism for that.

"It's not a race thing like people wanna try to make it to be. It's not. This is a point where we were doing our job, we gave too much time when we go in, I get shot, we returned fire," Mattingly said in the interview.

"This is not us going, hunting somebody down. This is not kneeling on a neck. It's nothing like that." he added.

Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, a Louisville police officer who was involved in the controversial shooting of the African-American healthcare worker Breonna Taylor has claimed that the shooting had "nothing to do with race.

Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, a Louisville police officer who was involved in the controversial shooting of the African-American healthcare worker Breonna Taylor has claimed that the shooting had "nothing to do with race." Speaking to the media for the first time since the shooting, Mattingly denied the accusations of the raid and shooting being racially-motivated. "This is not relatable to George Floyd. This is nothing like that," he said in an interview with the ABC news and the Louisville Courier Journal. He has been accused of raiding Taylor's house in the guise of a narcotics investigation. The officers claimed that they were executing a late-night 'no-knock' raid. Mattingly said he was shot at by Taylor's boyfriend, after which the police opened fire which resulted in Taylor's death. Also read| Breonna Taylor grand jury audio reveals conflicting accounts of fatal raid The police officers were accused of shooting Taylor due to her race. However, Mattingly has now declined these accusations. "It's not Ahmaud Arbery. It's nothing like it. These are two totally different types of incidences," he said. There were several nation-wide protests that took place after the news broke out, especially after the death of George Floyd. These policemen have since then been blamed and subjected to several critical comments for being 'racists'. Talking about the same, he said, "It's been excruciating," Mattingly said. "When you have the truth right there in your hands and everything else is getting crammed around you, it's frustrating," he continued. Also read| 'Ban no-knock warrant': Biden-Harris react to Breonna Taylor's unjust ruling None of the police officers have been charged with the death of Breonna Taylor, and the Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron faced a lot of criticism for that. "It's not a race thing like people wanna try to make it to be. It's not. This is a point where we were doing our job, we gave too much time when we go in, I get shot, we returned fire," Mattingly said in the interview. "This is not us going, hunting somebody down. This is not kneeling on a neck. It's nothing like that." he added.

Policeman involved in Breonna Taylor's shooting says it was 'not about race'

Reports said a man was seen dangling from the <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-2020-key-states-that-will-likely-decide-fate-of-donald-trump-and-joe-biden-336311">Trump</a> Tower in Chicago while threatening to jump unless he was allowed to talk to President Trump.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-election-donald-trump-claims-his-campaign-is-doing-very-very-well-336290">Also Read:&nbsp;Donald Trump claims his campaign is doing 'very, very well'&nbsp;</a>

Authorities have launched an investigation after the man was seen hanging from the balcony for over two hours on Sunday night. 
Reports said a negotiator was finally able to get the person to climb down. The man was said to be in his 20s.&nbsp;

Media reports claimed the man allegedly belonged to the Black Lives Matter movement, although it could not be confirmed.

The man was seen hanging from the side of the riverfront skyscraper at 5:30pm local time on Sunday.

Media reports said the man allegedly said: “I have a knife. If someone will try to pull [the rope], I will cut it and I will probably die. But I don’t want to die.”

“Everyone who knows me. They know I am not crazy. I am not crazy. I am well-educated guy. But … Mr. Trump, if you think I am crazy, I am not crazy. And if you will not talk with me, I will cut, I will die,” he allegedly said, adding, “If Mr. Trump, he promise something, he should do before the election.” 
&nbsp;

Reports said a man was seen dangling from the Trump Tower in Chicago while threatening to jump unless he was allowed to talk to President Trump. Also Read: Donald Trump claims his campaign is doing 'very, very well' Authorities have launched an investigation after the man was seen hanging from the balcony for over two hours on Sunday night.

Reports said a man was seen dangling from the Trump Tower in Chicago while threatening to jump unless he was allowed to talk to President Trump. Also Read: Donald Trump claims his campaign is doing 'very, very well' Authorities have launched an investigation after the man was seen hanging from the balcony for over two hours on Sunday night. Reports said a negotiator was finally able to get the person to climb down. The man was said to be in his 20s. Media reports claimed the man allegedly belonged to the Black Lives Matter movement, although it could not be confirmed. The man was seen hanging from the side of the riverfront skyscraper at 5:30pm local time on Sunday. Media reports said the man allegedly said: “I have a knife. If someone will try to pull [the rope], I will cut it and I will probably die. But I don’t want to die.” “Everyone who knows me. They know I am not crazy. I am not crazy. I am well-educated guy. But … Mr. Trump, if you think I am crazy, I am not crazy. And if you will not talk with me, I will cut, I will die,” he allegedly said, adding, “If Mr. Trump, he promise something, he should do before the election.”

Man threatens to jump from Trump tower 'unless allowed to speak with President'

Less than 20 days. It has been a long, hard road to this election. I see fearful faces, those of tormented migrants at the Mexican border, and hate-filled faces, those of the white nationalists in Charlottesville chanting, “Jews will not replace us.”

Donald Trump has been all about the fear of replacement, or as it’s sometimes called, “the great replacement.” His has been the stand — I am tempted to say the last stand — of whites against nonwhites.

Of America-first nationalists against migrants; of straight people against LGBTQ people; of the gunned-up against the unarmed. Of Trump against all those he believes would replace&nbsp;the likes of him.

All means have been used — lies, brutality, incitement. But fear has been Trump’s main weapon. Fear, which depends on pitting one group against another, is the currency of the Trump presidency. It is therefore no surprise that the America that is about to vote is probably more fractured than at any time since the Vietnam War.

“The great replacement” is a phrase generally attributed to a French writer, Renaud Camus, who said: “The great replacement is very simple. You have one people, and in the space of a generation, you have a different people.”

That, of course, is a good definition of America.

Of its vitality, its churn, its reinvention, its essential openness. The America that Trump would deny. He wants to freeze a white America. Some strange blend of Norman Rockwell and “Mad Men,” in an imaginary United States strutting across a world pliant to its will. Behind “America first” lurks a very un-American credo.

Change can be frightening, which is what the great replacement conspiracy theory hinges on. Camus warns grotesquely of a “genocide by substitution,” the replacement of a white French and European order by Muslim hordes in a plot orchestrated by cosmopolitan elites. In Trump’s case, read a white American order replaced by brown Mexican rapists and Black pillagers.

France is worried about Muslims from North Africa. Germans were once so worried about Jews replacing them that they killed 6 million of them. In a world of mass migration, fear rages: Some idea of the nation will be diluted or lost!

America is particularly susceptible to fear today because the world has changed in unsettling ways. Power has migrated eastward to Asia. America’s recent wars have been unwon. By midcentury, non-Hispanic whites will constitute less than 50% of the population.

It is frightening to see an industry disappear, like coal in Kentucky. Trump understood that he could be the voice of that fear. He would build a wall to keep those brown people out!

He is an impostor. He puffs out his chest, Mussolini-style, but he is a bone-spur coward. A narrow ramp makes his limbs tremble. He is good at getting the blood up. He is good at undoing. He is not good at getting anything constructive done.

Less than 20 days.

America will decide whether to opt for the future or burrow self-destructively into some warped fantasy of the past. It will decide whether to reinvent itself again or turn mean and further inward.

As Edward R. Murrow remarked, “We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.”

That was in 1954, at the height of McCarthyism. For Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the danger to the Republic came from Communist infiltration of American life. The real danger came from his obsessions. From the purges and blacklists that branded countless Americans as un-American.

Murrow, a great journalist, stood up to McCarthy.

Donald Trump does business the McCarthy way. He deals in specters: immigrants, and Muslims, and brown people, and Black people, and LGBTQ people.

As with McCarthy, however, the real danger comes from Trump’s obsessions, not from these imagined enemies.

American freedom is in decline. The freedom to think, because thought depends on truth. The freedom to dissent, because Trump believes he has “the right to do whatever I want as president.” The freedom to breathe because Trumpism — its nepotism, its cozying to dictators, its incessant volume&nbsp;— is suffocating.

The freedom inextricable from the American idea that I, a naturalized American, hold sacred with an unreasonable ardor.

No, we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. We can only defend those who trample human dignity and human rights. As Trump has done with cavalier abandon.

Is it unreasonable to see renewal in a 77-year-old man, Joe Biden? No. We live in the real world, where the perfect cannot be the enemy of the good. Indecency demands the restoration of decency. That’s ground zero of this election. The choice was starkly evident in the televised town hall events Thursday as Trump spouted wild far-right conspiracy theories while Biden had the self-deprecating honesty to say that if he lost, it could suggest he’s “a lousy candidate.” Biden is not a lousy candidate; he is a good man, a brave man. I doff my hat to any parent who survives with such dignity the loss of two of his four children.

Of McCarthy, Murrow observed: “He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’ ”

The fault is in ourselves. Time for Americans to look in the mirror — and realize their America is irreplaceable if it is lost.

Less than 20 days. It has been a long, hard road to this election. I see fearful faces, those of tormented migrants at the Mexican border, and hate-filled faces, those of the white nationalists in Charlottesville chanting, “Jews will not replace us.

Less than 20 days. It has been a long, hard road to this election. I see fearful faces, those of tormented migrants at the Mexican border, and hate-filled faces, those of the white nationalists in Charlottesville chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” Donald Trump has been all about the fear of replacement, or as it’s sometimes called, “the great replacement.” His has been the stand — I am tempted to say the last stand — of whites against nonwhites. Of America-first nationalists against migrants; of straight people against LGBTQ people; of the gunned-up against the unarmed. Of Trump against all those he believes would replace the likes of him. All means have been used — lies, brutality, incitement. But fear has been Trump’s main weapon. Fear, which depends on pitting one group against another, is the currency of the Trump presidency. It is therefore no surprise that the America that is about to vote is probably more fractured than at any time since the Vietnam War. “The great replacement” is a phrase generally attributed to a French writer, Renaud Camus, who said: “The great replacement is very simple. You have one people, and in the space of a generation, you have a different people.” That, of course, is a good definition of America. Of its vitality, its churn, its reinvention, its essential openness. The America that Trump would deny. He wants to freeze a white America. Some strange blend of Norman Rockwell and “Mad Men,” in an imaginary United States strutting across a world pliant to its will. Behind “America first” lurks a very un-American credo. Change can be frightening, which is what the great replacement conspiracy theory hinges on. Camus warns grotesquely of a “genocide by substitution,” the replacement of a white French and European order by Muslim hordes in a plot orchestrated by cosmopolitan elites. In Trump’s case, read a white American order replaced by brown Mexican rapists and Black pillagers. France is worried about Muslims from North Africa. Germans were once so worried about Jews replacing them that they killed 6 million of them. In a world of mass migration, fear rages: Some idea of the nation will be diluted or lost! America is particularly susceptible to fear today because the world has changed in unsettling ways. Power has migrated eastward to Asia. America’s recent wars have been unwon. By midcentury, non-Hispanic whites will constitute less than 50% of the population. It is frightening to see an industry disappear, like coal in Kentucky. Trump understood that he could be the voice of that fear. He would build a wall to keep those brown people out! He is an impostor. He puffs out his chest, Mussolini-style, but he is a bone-spur coward. A narrow ramp makes his limbs tremble. He is good at getting the blood up. He is good at undoing. He is not good at getting anything constructive done. Less than 20 days. America will decide whether to opt for the future or burrow self-destructively into some warped fantasy of the past. It will decide whether to reinvent itself again or turn mean and further inward. As Edward R. Murrow remarked, “We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.” That was in 1954, at the height of McCarthyism. For Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the danger to the Republic came from Communist infiltration of American life. The real danger came from his obsessions. From the purges and blacklists that branded countless Americans as un-American. Murrow, a great journalist, stood up to McCarthy. Donald Trump does business the McCarthy way. He deals in specters: immigrants, and Muslims, and brown people, and Black people, and LGBTQ people. As with McCarthy, however, the real danger comes from Trump’s obsessions, not from these imagined enemies. American freedom is in decline. The freedom to think, because thought depends on truth. The freedom to dissent, because Trump believes he has “the right to do whatever I want as president.” The freedom to breathe because Trumpism — its nepotism, its cozying to dictators, its incessant volume — is suffocating. The freedom inextricable from the American idea that I, a naturalized American, hold sacred with an unreasonable ardor. No, we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. We can only defend those who trample human dignity and human rights. As Trump has done with cavalier abandon. Is it unreasonable to see renewal in a 77-year-old man, Joe Biden? No. We live in the real world, where the perfect cannot be the enemy of the good. Indecency demands the restoration of decency. That’s ground zero of this election. The choice was starkly evident in the televised town hall events Thursday as Trump spouted wild far-right conspiracy theories while Biden had the self-deprecating honesty to say that if he lost, it could suggest he’s “a lousy candidate.” Biden is not a lousy candidate; he is a good man, a brave man. I doff my hat to any parent who survives with such dignity the loss of two of his four children. Of McCarthy, Murrow observed: “He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it — and rather successfully. Cassius was right. ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.’ ” The fault is in ourselves. Time for Americans to look in the mirror — and realize their America is irreplaceable if it is lost.

Trump, or the last stand of White America

A US woman,&nbsp;Amy Cooper,&nbsp;has been charged&nbsp;for filing false police reports and falsely accusing an African American birdwatcher of assaulting her.

Cooper had accused a birdwatcher in&nbsp;New York’s Central Park and had made two emergency 911 calls that day, it was revealed on Wednesday. The said incident was reportedly videotaped.

However, a&nbsp;Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance called Cooper's complaints and accusations to be a hoax and said it was sheer luck that nobody got injured due to this chaotic incident.

The prosecutors are hoping that Cooper's case can be resolved only by making her participate in an educational program where she can be taught the effect and harms such actions can have over her and the community.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/dont-know-if-her-life-needed-to-be-torn-apart-what-mr-cooper-thinks-of-his-now-famous-racist-encounter-with-a-white-lady-301647">Also read|&nbsp;'Don’t know if her life needed to be torn apart': What Mr Cooper thinks of his now-famous racist encounter with a white lady</a>

The video, also shown in the court, reveals the man asking Cooper to follow the park rules and put her dog on a leash. After which, Cooper started accusing the man of assaulting her. On the 911 call, she was heard saying, "There’s an African American man, I’m in Central Park, he is recording me and threatening myself and my dog. Please send the cops immediately!"

Her actions have been studied as racially and moraly incorrect. “Using the police in a way that was both racially offensive and designed to intimidate is something that can’t be ignored. Therefore we charged her,” said assistant district attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon. He also said he hopes the process of the man getting justice can be "an opportunity for introspection and education" for Cooper.

Vance Jr has said his office "will pursue a resolution of this case which holds Ms Cooper accountable while healing our community, restoring justice, and deterring others from perpetuating this racist practice."

A US woman, Amy Cooper, has been charged for filing false police reports and falsely accusing an African American birdwatcher of assaulting her. Cooper had accused a birdwatcher in New York’s Central Park and had made two emergency 911 calls that day, it was revealed on Wednesday.

A US woman, Amy Cooper, has been charged for filing false police reports and falsely accusing an African American birdwatcher of assaulting her. Cooper had accused a birdwatcher in New York’s Central Park and had made two emergency 911 calls that day, it was revealed on Wednesday. The said incident was reportedly videotaped. However, a Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance called Cooper's complaints and accusations to be a hoax and said it was sheer luck that nobody got injured due to this chaotic incident. The prosecutors are hoping that Cooper's case can be resolved only by making her participate in an educational program where she can be taught the effect and harms such actions can have over her and the community. Also read| 'Don’t know if her life needed to be torn apart': What Mr Cooper thinks of his now-famous racist encounter with a white lady The video, also shown in the court, reveals the man asking Cooper to follow the park rules and put her dog on a leash. After which, Cooper started accusing the man of assaulting her. On the 911 call, she was heard saying, "There’s an African American man, I’m in Central Park, he is recording me and threatening myself and my dog. Please send the cops immediately!" Her actions have been studied as racially and moraly incorrect. “Using the police in a way that was both racially offensive and designed to intimidate is something that can’t be ignored. Therefore we charged her,” said assistant district attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon. He also said he hopes the process of the man getting justice can be "an opportunity for introspection and education" for Cooper. Vance Jr has said his office "will pursue a resolution of this case which holds Ms Cooper accountable while healing our community, restoring justice, and deterring others from perpetuating this racist practice."

Amy Cooper charged with falsely accusing Black man of assaulting

An African-American man who was arrested and led by a rope by two white Texas police officers has sued the US city of Galveston for $1 million in damages, his lawyer told AFP Monday.

Donald Neely was detained for trespassing in August 2019 by two mounted police officers, who handcuffed him, tied a rope to his restraints and led him away.

The image caused outrage, serving as a painful reminder of some of the bleakest moments in America's brutally racist past, including the chaining of enslaved people and lynching of Black people in the Jim Crow South in the years after emancipation.

Neely was led on foot several blocks through the center of the small seaside town in&nbsp;southeast Texas, passing a number of people, some of whom photographed the incident.&nbsp;

One photo in particular quickly went viral on social media and sparked anger and indignation at the degrading treatment of the detained man.&nbsp;

In a suit filed on October 7, Neely called his treatment by police "extreme and outrageous."

"Neely felt as though he was put on display as slaves once were," the lawsuit said, saying the plaintiff suffered humiliation and fear through the police officers' actions.

Neely is seeking $1 million in compensation.

"What happened to Donald was simply wrong," his lawyer, Julie Ketterman, told AFP. "He wants to do what he can to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else."&nbsp;

"Donald wants people to know that this lawsuit isn't just about money," she said. "It's about what is right and wrong for all people -- whether they are black or white or whether they suffer from mental illness or whether they are homeless or not."

At the time of his detention, Neely -- who suffers from mental health issues -- was homeless. He was found asleep on the forecourt of a building by the two officers from the mounted patrol unit.&nbsp;

Local media reported at the time that he had been charged with trespassing on several previous occasions.

The Galveston police chief, Vernon Hale, who is himself Black, said that the technique deployed by the mounted police was one that was taught to officers, but that he had decided to discontinue its use.

He apologized to Neely and said he should have been transported in a police vehicle, but that none were available at the time.

Hale's statement sparked frustration, with some activist groups saying his response was "weak."&nbsp;

An African-American man who was arrested and led by a rope by two white Texas police officers has sued the US city of Galveston for $1 million in damages, his lawyer told AFP Monday.

An African-American man who was arrested and led by a rope by two white Texas police officers has sued the US city of Galveston for $1 million in damages, his lawyer told AFP Monday. Donald Neely was detained for trespassing in August 2019 by two mounted police officers, who handcuffed him, tied a rope to his restraints and led him away. The image caused outrage, serving as a painful reminder of some of the bleakest moments in America's brutally racist past, including the chaining of enslaved people and lynching of Black people in the Jim Crow South in the years after emancipation. Neely was led on foot several blocks through the center of the small seaside town in southeast Texas, passing a number of people, some of whom photographed the incident. One photo in particular quickly went viral on social media and sparked anger and indignation at the degrading treatment of the detained man. In a suit filed on October 7, Neely called his treatment by police "extreme and outrageous." "Neely felt as though he was put on display as slaves once were," the lawsuit said, saying the plaintiff suffered humiliation and fear through the police officers' actions. Neely is seeking $1 million in compensation. "What happened to Donald was simply wrong," his lawyer, Julie Ketterman, told AFP. "He wants to do what he can to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else." "Donald wants people to know that this lawsuit isn't just about money," she said. "It's about what is right and wrong for all people -- whether they are black or white or whether they suffer from mental illness or whether they are homeless or not." At the time of his detention, Neely -- who suffers from mental health issues -- was homeless. He was found asleep on the forecourt of a building by the two officers from the mounted patrol unit. Local media reported at the time that he had been charged with trespassing on several previous occasions. The Galveston police chief, Vernon Hale, who is himself Black, said that the technique deployed by the mounted police was one that was taught to officers, but that he had decided to discontinue its use. He apologized to Neely and said he should have been transported in a police vehicle, but that none were available at the time. Hale's statement sparked frustration, with some activist groups saying his response was "weak."

Black man led on a rope by police sues US city for $1 million

A man was fatally shot on Saturday during dueling protests by left-wing and right-wing groups in downtown Denver.

The police, in consequence, arrested a suspect they said was working as a private security guard.

An NBC News affiliate, KUSA-TV, said on its website that the man taken arrested for the shooting was a security guard hired by the television station to provide protection to its crew.

The shooting took place in a courtyard at the Denver Art Museum during a “Patriot Rally” that was met by counter-protests by groups who dubbed their rally a “BLM-Antifa Soup Drive.”

Neither the victim nor the suspected shooter has been identified by authorities. There were no other arrests during the competing rallies.

A man was fatally shot on Saturday during dueling protests by left-wing and right-wing groups in downtown Denver. The police, in consequence, arrested a suspect they said was working as a private security guard.

A man was fatally shot on Saturday during dueling protests by left-wing and right-wing groups in downtown Denver. The police, in consequence, arrested a suspect they said was working as a private security guard. An NBC News affiliate, KUSA-TV, said on its website that the man taken arrested for the shooting was a security guard hired by the television station to provide protection to its crew. The shooting took place in a courtyard at the Denver Art Museum during a “Patriot Rally” that was met by counter-protests by groups who dubbed their rally a “BLM-Antifa Soup Drive.” Neither the victim nor the suspected shooter has been identified by authorities. There were no other arrests during the competing rallies.

Man shot dead at dueling Denver protests, suspect in custody

Police used tear gas on demonstrators and arrested 28 people on Saturday following protests over the lack of charges against a suburban Milwaukee police officer who fatally shot a Black teen.

About 100 people gathered outside City Hall on Friday past Wauwatosa's 7 pm curfew and refused multiple orders to disperse during a third straight night of protests.

Police said they used tear gas on the crowd, after bottles were thrown at officers.

On Saturday, the Wauwatosa Police Department posted on Twitter that people have been asking valid questions about the police response over three nights of protests.

"Over the past three nights, we have seen an escalation in force by the protesters. Our law enforcement response is in reaction to this escalation," police tweeted.

Protesters have gathered every day since prosecutors announced Wednesday that they would not charge Officer Joseph Mensah in 17-year-old Alvin Cole's death.&nbsp;

Mensah, who is Black, shot Cole after a foot chase outside a Wauwatosa mall in February.

Police said two of Friday's 28 arrests were for felonies, one was for a misdemeanour and 25 were for municipal citations.

The protests in Wauwatosa are the latest in a series of demonstrations against police racism and brutality that have erupted across the country since George Floyd's death.

Floyd, who was Black, died in May after a white police officer in Minneapolis pressed his knee into his neck as Floyd gasped that he couldn't breathe.

Police used tear gas on demonstrators and arrested 28 people on Saturday following protests over the lack of charges against a suburban Milwaukee police officer who fatally shot a Black teen.

Police used tear gas on demonstrators and arrested 28 people on Saturday following protests over the lack of charges against a suburban Milwaukee police officer who fatally shot a Black teen. About 100 people gathered outside City Hall on Friday past Wauwatosa's 7 pm curfew and refused multiple orders to disperse during a third straight night of protests. Police said they used tear gas on the crowd, after bottles were thrown at officers. On Saturday, the Wauwatosa Police Department posted on Twitter that people have been asking valid questions about the police response over three nights of protests. "Over the past three nights, we have seen an escalation in force by the protesters. Our law enforcement response is in reaction to this escalation," police tweeted. Protesters have gathered every day since prosecutors announced Wednesday that they would not charge Officer Joseph Mensah in 17-year-old Alvin Cole's death. Mensah, who is Black, shot Cole after a foot chase outside a Wauwatosa mall in February. Police said two of Friday's 28 arrests were for felonies, one was for a misdemeanour and 25 were for municipal citations. The protests in Wauwatosa are the latest in a series of demonstrations against police racism and brutality that have erupted across the country since George Floyd's death. Floyd, who was Black, died in May after a white police officer in Minneapolis pressed his knee into his neck as Floyd gasped that he couldn't breathe.

Tear gas used, 28 arrested in protests in US

WASHINGTON — One day in September, Elizabeth Leiba opened the LinkedIn app and saw a post by Aaisha Joseph, a diversity consultant with nearly 16,000 followers on the platform.

“Ima need #companies to stop sending their dedicated House Negros to ‘deal with the Blacks’ they deem out of control,” read the item. “It’s really not a good look — it’s actually a very #whitesupremacist and #racist one.”

The post was exactly the sort of thing Leiba, an instructional design manager at City College in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was looking for. These days, when she pulls out her phone in search of boisterous conversation, hot takes and the latest tea, she finds herself tapping LinkedIn, which since the killing of George Floyd has become a thriving forum for Black expression.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-announces-charges-against-chinese-malaysians-involved-in-worldwide-hacking-racket-328011">Also read|&nbsp;US announces charges against Chinese, Malaysians involved in worldwide hacking racket</a>

“I go onto Twitter and I get bored,” Leiba, 46, said. “Then I go right back to LinkedIn because it’s on fire. I don’t even have to go on any other social media now.”

It’s an unexpected development for what has long been the most polite and perhaps the dullest of the major social networks. LinkedIn was founded in 2003 as a place to network and post résumés — essentially, a directory of white-collar professionals. A few years ago, LinkedIn added a Facebook-like news feed that encouraged users to post links and updates, but it has never been a rollicking space. A team of editors helped enforce a mood best described as corporate.

“You talk on LinkedIn the same way you talk in the office,” Dan Roth, LinkedIn’s editor-in-chief, told The New York Times in August 2019. “There are certain boundaries around what is acceptable.”

Two staggering events have changed that. In early 2020, the pandemic hit, forcing millions to work from home and miss out on break-room chitchat — boosting LinkedIn as a place to vent. Then, the killing of Floyd in police custody in May put workers over the edge. Black grief went on display, uninhibited, at corporate America’s virtual water cooler.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/business-economy/microsoft-to-buy-linkedin-for-262-billion-in-its-biggest-ever-deal-418">Also read|&nbsp;Microsoft to buy LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in its biggest-ever deal</a>

“I was just 43 years tired,” said Future Cain, a social- and emotional-learning director at a middle and high school in Wisconsin. “I was using LinkedIn to post positive things and uplift people during the pandemic, and I decided I can’t sit here quietly anymore.”

As protesters took to the streets to demand police reform, Leiba and Cain were among those who discovered that LinkedIn was a place to speak to the executive class on something like their home turf. Black users have taken to the site to call out racial discrimination in the workplace and share their stories of alienation on the job.

Not that it’s all serious: Much of the posting is exuberant — full of memes, Black cultural references and linguistic panache. This summer, Leiba shared a video about code-switching, in which a Black employee transforms while greeting colleagues of color (“Oh, hey, Black queen!”) and a white one (empty-headed hiking talk). “I’ve watched it at least fifty eleven times,” Leiba wrote.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/business-economy/what-after-linkedin-will-twitter-get-bought-next-or-is-the-social-network-bubble-about-to-burst-472">Also read|&nbsp;What after LinkedIn: Will Twitter get bought next or is the social network bubble about to burst?</a>

These are the kinds of conversations, and ways of speaking, that cubicle-dwelling Black workers have typically held out of earshot of their white colleagues. As unusually charismatic posts appeared in my own feed this summer, it seemed clear that Black LinkedIn was emerging as a professional cousin to Black Twitter — the unapologetically Black digital space where people expose long-ignored injustices and pump their experience into the mainstream.

What’s less clear is how comfortable LinkedIn is with the development, having placed its content moderators in the incendiary position of determining what manner of race-related speech is appropriate for its virtual workplace of 706 million users.

Black users who post in forceful tones, and some of their allies, say they feel LinkedIn has silenced them — erasing their posts and even freezing their accounts for violating vague rules of decorum.

For example, the “House Negros” post that Joseph wrote in September vanished from the platform. Joseph, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, was able to see it when she viewed her own page, but no other users could — a practice known as shadow banning. (Later, LinkedIn added an unsigned note in red, saying the post had been removed for violating the site’s Professional Community Policies, which instruct users to “be civil and respectful in every single interaction.”) Joseph began a new item: “Let me say it louder since LinkedIn wanted to delete my post the first time.” The company removed that post, too, saying it included “harassment, defamation or disparagement of others.”

Theresa M. Robinson, a corporate training consultant in Houston, said LinkedIn had deleted a post she wrote about racism, then reinstated it after she complained. She said she never received an explanation. Two others, Cain and Madison Butler, who works in Austin, Texas, also said LinkedIn had restricted their commentary on race.

In the absence of clear communication from the company, these users are left guessing as to what the rules are — and feeling that the company is not just policing their tone but stifling their opportunity to force change in corporate America.

Nicole Leverich, a LinkedIn spokeswoman, wrote in an email: “We are not censoring content and have not made any changes to our algorithm to reduce the distribution of content about these important topics.” She added in an interview that LinkedIn was introducing a new process for notifying users when their posts were flagged for violating platform rules, and that some people hadn’t been phased in by the end of September.

The company acknowledged that it had erred in taking action against some users and restored content that was found, on appeal, not to violate its policies.

“If we make a mistake, we will own it,” said Paul Rockwell, head of LinkedIn’s trust and safety division. “We will be very clear — this is a learning opportunity for us. We’re going to continue to use that in our journey to get better and better. And we do want to nail this thing.”

Hard conversations about race

Few people think LinkedIn should look anything like the wilds of Reddit or Twitter, which have a certain amount of anonymity and even anarchy built into their DNA. Much of LinkedIn’s value — Microsoft acquired it in 2016 for $26 billion — is tied to its sense of professionalism and respectful conduct. Users must share their real names and credentials, and it’s understood that their current or prospective employers might well scan anything they post.

For Black people in the corporate realm, however, words like “professional” and “respectful” are red flags. Like the natural Black hairstyles that were once widely considered unprofessional, certain behaviors — being too Black, speaking too Black or talking too much about Black topics — have long limited advancement in companies with white cultures.

That’s what has changed on LinkedIn in the last few months. Black people are being, to use a technical term, Blackity-Black Black on LinkedIn. Much of the behavior is not so different from Black Twitter; users pepper their posts with clap emojis to emphasize every syllable, and GIFs celebrate cultural touchstones like Issa Rae’s “Insecure” and Jordan Peele’s “Get Out.” The difference is that it is all happening on a social network that mirrors the business world — a place that is predominantly white.

“It is liberating. It feels like it’s about time,” Joseph said. “We are taking back what was stolen from us — and that’s our voice. I’m talking specifically to my people in the way that we talk to each other in other spaces, and without regard for any outside audience. No longer having to stifle that has been freeing.”

Part of what Black LinkedIn has done is brought together Black professionals to be their authentic selves in front of their white colleagues. For many, it has been an existential relief, and may provide a blueprint for how Black employees choose to conduct themselves once the physical workplace reopens.

“The days of hiding and masking who you are and dealing with the BS — I just can’t even go back to that,” said Jessica Pharm, 33, who works in human resources at a manufacturing firm near Milwaukee. “Any company that gets me next is getting the full-on Jessica.”

Leiba posted on Sept. 17: “It means code-switching is OUT. It means the AFRO is coming at you on a daily basis. It means you’re getting these bangle earrings and the poppin’ lip gloss.”

Inevitably, not everyone accepts this kind of exuberance. Posts about Black Lives Matter and racial justice often attract the same kind of dismissive, and sometimes bigoted, responses found on other platforms: rejoinders that “all lives matter” or claims about Black-on-Black crime. But because the activity takes place on LinkedIn, these comments typically come with the user’s headshot, place of employment and entire work history attached.

“You start to see these people who are absolutely not OK with this focus on Blackness popping up in commentary, with their name and their company fully on display, giving zero deference to the moment,” said John Graham Jr., 39, a digital marketer and strategist at a California biotechnology company. “I find it telling that people would put their careers in jeopardy and their unconscious biases on full display.”

LinkedIn has also struggled internally with how to respond to the Black Lives Matter movement. In June, chief executive Ryan Roslansky publicly apologized for “appalling” racial comments some employees had made at a companywide staff meeting.

Rosanna Durruthy, LinkedIn’s head of diversity, inclusion and belonging, said in an interview that the company was engaging in hard conversations about race, both inside the company and out.

“We’re really beginning to focus very consistently on how we begin to address this externally” on the platform, she said.

‘Break down the status quo’

One of the most vociferous presences on Black LinkedIn is Butler, a human resources consultant and vice president at a startup. She has posted on LinkedIn since 2018 and with increasing frequency and fervor this year. The potential to speak truth to capital, she said, makes the resulting rounds of death threats worth it.

“There is something to be said about the access LinkedIn gives you to powerful CEOs and VCs to help change their outlook and how they support Black employees and founders,” said Butler, 29, referring to venture capitalists. “The conversation that has to happen in order to break down the status quo in corporate America isn’t happening on Instagram.”

Butler, who has about 40,000 followers, posts on LinkedIn daily. Her style is to be prescriptive, assail corporate norms and call out whitesplainers and trolls; she tends to close each missive with the hashtags #isaidwhatisaid, #thatsthetea and #blackgirlmagic. One recent post scolded companies that make a show of cheering on the Black Lives Matter movement but haven’t done right by their employees.

“Do the Black people in your organization feel like they matter, or do they feel like the Black stock photos you used to enhance your ‘wokeness’ footprint in the marketplace. If you can’t make the Black lives under your own roof matter, do not use Black Lives Matter as a brand strategy,” Butler wrote recently. “Don’t talk about it, be about it. Period.”

Other stars of Black LinkedIn target specific companies. Joseph, for example, has recently called out Wells Fargo, DoorDash, Microsoft and Google.

There has also been no shortage of criticism of LinkedIn itself. Users are holding the company to a standard it set for itself in June, when Melissa Selcher, chief marketing and communications officer, wrote an open letter on the platform.

“We have a responsibility to use our platform and resources to intentionally address the systemic barriers to economic opportunity,” she wrote. “We also believe we play a critical role in amplifying Black voices.”

Also in June, with Black Lives Matter protests spreading across the country, LinkedIn highlighted “Black Voices to Follow and Amplify,” a curated list of chief executives, media personalities and other influencers, including the Rev. Bernice King and Karamo Brown from the Netflix show “Queer Eye.” For the most part, members of the list post content that is general, motivational and safe.

Joseph and others took to LinkedIn to say the group contained too many establishment names and not enough activists. “Where are the Tamika Mallorys of LinkedIn on that list?” Joseph wrote, referring to a co-founder of the 2017 Women’s March.

“Black voices aren’t just corporate C-Suite ones,” wrote Patricia S. Gatlin, a talent sourcing specialist in Las Vegas.

“All Black voices need to be heard in this moment,” added Scott Taylor, a recruiter in Los Angeles. “Not just the ones your team of analysts think we should hear from.”

Leverich, the LinkedIn spokeswoman, said by email: “We use a number of factors in our selection, including members who have self-identified as Black, people from a variety of industries and with an interesting perspective to share. We’re constantly adding new voices and sorting through requests to join this program.”

In September, LinkedIn used its own company page to pose a question to its 13 million followers: “What are the best ways to normalize having conversations about race and anti-racism in the workplace? #ConversationsForChange”

The responses quickly turned sour. “LinkedIn, you can facilitate that objective by normalizing those conversations on your platform,” wrote Lenzy Ruffin, a communications strategist in Washington, D.C.

“The irony that you should post this!” wrote Abi Adamson, a diversity and inclusion consultant in London. “Kindly stop censoring Black content around racism. People like me have had our engagement go down astronomically when highlighting racism or how to be anti-racist. Help amplify our voices and stop silencing us.”

Sabrina McClimans, a graduate student in Seattle, asked the platform to “stop ‘accidentally’ disappearing the posts of Black women on your platform when they talk about race and anti-racism.”

Phil Molé, who works at a software company in Chicago, added: “I have seen cases in which individuals who harass Black women on this platform have maintained their accounts while those who speak out against racism and prejudice have had accounts suspended. It’s time for a thorough review of the way the issues are handled.”

LinkedIn did not respond to those comments. Philip Mix, a consultant in London, added to the thread after a day and a half, when there were 344 comments, saying he had gone through them “three times to make sure I wasn’t mistaken.” By his count, LinkedIn had replied to five users — four times to say “Thank you for sharing” and once with “Nicely put.”

Mix concluded: “Not sure if I’m more shocked or depressed by this miserably inadequate show from LinkedIn.”

WASHINGTON — One day in September, Elizabeth Leiba opened the LinkedIn app and saw a post by Aaisha Joseph, a diversity consultant with nearly 16,000 followers on the platform.

WASHINGTON — One day in September, Elizabeth Leiba opened the LinkedIn app and saw a post by Aaisha Joseph, a diversity consultant with nearly 16,000 followers on the platform. “Ima need #companies to stop sending their dedicated House Negros to ‘deal with the Blacks’ they deem out of control,” read the item. “It’s really not a good look — it’s actually a very #whitesupremacist and #racist one.” The post was exactly the sort of thing Leiba, an instructional design manager at City College in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was looking for. These days, when she pulls out her phone in search of boisterous conversation, hot takes and the latest tea, she finds herself tapping LinkedIn, which since the killing of George Floyd has become a thriving forum for Black expression. Also read| US announces charges against Chinese, Malaysians involved in worldwide hacking racket “I go onto Twitter and I get bored,” Leiba, 46, said. “Then I go right back to LinkedIn because it’s on fire. I don’t even have to go on any other social media now.” It’s an unexpected development for what has long been the most polite and perhaps the dullest of the major social networks. LinkedIn was founded in 2003 as a place to network and post résumés — essentially, a directory of white-collar professionals. A few years ago, LinkedIn added a Facebook-like news feed that encouraged users to post links and updates, but it has never been a rollicking space. A team of editors helped enforce a mood best described as corporate. “You talk on LinkedIn the same way you talk in the office,” Dan Roth, LinkedIn’s editor-in-chief, told The New York Times in August 2019. “There are certain boundaries around what is acceptable.” Two staggering events have changed that. In early 2020, the pandemic hit, forcing millions to work from home and miss out on break-room chitchat — boosting LinkedIn as a place to vent. Then, the killing of Floyd in police custody in May put workers over the edge. Black grief went on display, uninhibited, at corporate America’s virtual water cooler. Also read| Microsoft to buy LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in its biggest-ever deal “I was just 43 years tired,” said Future Cain, a social- and emotional-learning director at a middle and high school in Wisconsin. “I was using LinkedIn to post positive things and uplift people during the pandemic, and I decided I can’t sit here quietly anymore.” As protesters took to the streets to demand police reform, Leiba and Cain were among those who discovered that LinkedIn was a place to speak to the executive class on something like their home turf. Black users have taken to the site to call out racial discrimination in the workplace and share their stories of alienation on the job. Not that it’s all serious: Much of the posting is exuberant — full of memes, Black cultural references and linguistic panache. This summer, Leiba shared a video about code-switching, in which a Black employee transforms while greeting colleagues of color (“Oh, hey, Black queen!”) and a white one (empty-headed hiking talk). “I’ve watched it at least fifty eleven times,” Leiba wrote. Also read| What after LinkedIn: Will Twitter get bought next or is the social network bubble about to burst? These are the kinds of conversations, and ways of speaking, that cubicle-dwelling Black workers have typically held out of earshot of their white colleagues. As unusually charismatic posts appeared in my own feed this summer, it seemed clear that Black LinkedIn was emerging as a professional cousin to Black Twitter — the unapologetically Black digital space where people expose long-ignored injustices and pump their experience into the mainstream. What’s less clear is how comfortable LinkedIn is with the development, having placed its content moderators in the incendiary position of determining what manner of race-related speech is appropriate for its virtual workplace of 706 million users. Black users who post in forceful tones, and some of their allies, say they feel LinkedIn has silenced them — erasing their posts and even freezing their accounts for violating vague rules of decorum. For example, the “House Negros” post that Joseph wrote in September vanished from the platform. Joseph, who lives in Brooklyn, New York, was able to see it when she viewed her own page, but no other users could — a practice known as shadow banning. (Later, LinkedIn added an unsigned note in red, saying the post had been removed for violating the site’s Professional Community Policies, which instruct users to “be civil and respectful in every single interaction.”) Joseph began a new item: “Let me say it louder since LinkedIn wanted to delete my post the first time.” The company removed that post, too, saying it included “harassment, defamation or disparagement of others.” Theresa M. Robinson, a corporate training consultant in Houston, said LinkedIn had deleted a post she wrote about racism, then reinstated it after she complained. She said she never received an explanation. Two others, Cain and Madison Butler, who works in Austin, Texas, also said LinkedIn had restricted their commentary on race. In the absence of clear communication from the company, these users are left guessing as to what the rules are — and feeling that the company is not just policing their tone but stifling their opportunity to force change in corporate America. Nicole Leverich, a LinkedIn spokeswoman, wrote in an email: “We are not censoring content and have not made any changes to our algorithm to reduce the distribution of content about these important topics.” She added in an interview that LinkedIn was introducing a new process for notifying users when their posts were flagged for violating platform rules, and that some people hadn’t been phased in by the end of September. The company acknowledged that it had erred in taking action against some users and restored content that was found, on appeal, not to violate its policies. “If we make a mistake, we will own it,” said Paul Rockwell, head of LinkedIn’s trust and safety division. “We will be very clear — this is a learning opportunity for us. We’re going to continue to use that in our journey to get better and better. And we do want to nail this thing.” Hard conversations about race Few people think LinkedIn should look anything like the wilds of Reddit or Twitter, which have a certain amount of anonymity and even anarchy built into their DNA. Much of LinkedIn’s value — Microsoft acquired it in 2016 for $26 billion — is tied to its sense of professionalism and respectful conduct. Users must share their real names and credentials, and it’s understood that their current or prospective employers might well scan anything they post. For Black people in the corporate realm, however, words like “professional” and “respectful” are red flags. Like the natural Black hairstyles that were once widely considered unprofessional, certain behaviors — being too Black, speaking too Black or talking too much about Black topics — have long limited advancement in companies with white cultures. That’s what has changed on LinkedIn in the last few months. Black people are being, to use a technical term, Blackity-Black Black on LinkedIn. Much of the behavior is not so different from Black Twitter; users pepper their posts with clap emojis to emphasize every syllable, and GIFs celebrate cultural touchstones like Issa Rae’s “Insecure” and Jordan Peele’s “Get Out.” The difference is that it is all happening on a social network that mirrors the business world — a place that is predominantly white. “It is liberating. It feels like it’s about time,” Joseph said. “We are taking back what was stolen from us — and that’s our voice. I’m talking specifically to my people in the way that we talk to each other in other spaces, and without regard for any outside audience. No longer having to stifle that has been freeing.” Part of what Black LinkedIn has done is brought together Black professionals to be their authentic selves in front of their white colleagues. For many, it has been an existential relief, and may provide a blueprint for how Black employees choose to conduct themselves once the physical workplace reopens. “The days of hiding and masking who you are and dealing with the BS — I just can’t even go back to that,” said Jessica Pharm, 33, who works in human resources at a manufacturing firm near Milwaukee. “Any company that gets me next is getting the full-on Jessica.” Leiba posted on Sept. 17: “It means code-switching is OUT. It means the AFRO is coming at you on a daily basis. It means you’re getting these bangle earrings and the poppin’ lip gloss.” Inevitably, not everyone accepts this kind of exuberance. Posts about Black Lives Matter and racial justice often attract the same kind of dismissive, and sometimes bigoted, responses found on other platforms: rejoinders that “all lives matter” or claims about Black-on-Black crime. But because the activity takes place on LinkedIn, these comments typically come with the user’s headshot, place of employment and entire work history attached. “You start to see these people who are absolutely not OK with this focus on Blackness popping up in commentary, with their name and their company fully on display, giving zero deference to the moment,” said John Graham Jr., 39, a digital marketer and strategist at a California biotechnology company. “I find it telling that people would put their careers in jeopardy and their unconscious biases on full display.” LinkedIn has also struggled internally with how to respond to the Black Lives Matter movement. In June, chief executive Ryan Roslansky publicly apologized for “appalling” racial comments some employees had made at a companywide staff meeting. Rosanna Durruthy, LinkedIn’s head of diversity, inclusion and belonging, said in an interview that the company was engaging in hard conversations about race, both inside the company and out. “We’re really beginning to focus very consistently on how we begin to address this externally” on the platform, she said. ‘Break down the status quo’ One of the most vociferous presences on Black LinkedIn is Butler, a human resources consultant and vice president at a startup. She has posted on LinkedIn since 2018 and with increasing frequency and fervor this year. The potential to speak truth to capital, she said, makes the resulting rounds of death threats worth it. “There is something to be said about the access LinkedIn gives you to powerful CEOs and VCs to help change their outlook and how they support Black employees and founders,” said Butler, 29, referring to venture capitalists. “The conversation that has to happen in order to break down the status quo in corporate America isn’t happening on Instagram.” Butler, who has about 40,000 followers, posts on LinkedIn daily. Her style is to be prescriptive, assail corporate norms and call out whitesplainers and trolls; she tends to close each missive with the hashtags #isaidwhatisaid, #thatsthetea and #blackgirlmagic. One recent post scolded companies that make a show of cheering on the Black Lives Matter movement but haven’t done right by their employees. “Do the Black people in your organization feel like they matter, or do they feel like the Black stock photos you used to enhance your ‘wokeness’ footprint in the marketplace. If you can’t make the Black lives under your own roof matter, do not use Black Lives Matter as a brand strategy,” Butler wrote recently. “Don’t talk about it, be about it. Period.” Other stars of Black LinkedIn target specific companies. Joseph, for example, has recently called out Wells Fargo, DoorDash, Microsoft and Google. There has also been no shortage of criticism of LinkedIn itself. Users are holding the company to a standard it set for itself in June, when Melissa Selcher, chief marketing and communications officer, wrote an open letter on the platform. “We have a responsibility to use our platform and resources to intentionally address the systemic barriers to economic opportunity,” she wrote. “We also believe we play a critical role in amplifying Black voices.” Also in June, with Black Lives Matter protests spreading across the country, LinkedIn highlighted “Black Voices to Follow and Amplify,” a curated list of chief executives, media personalities and other influencers, including the Rev. Bernice King and Karamo Brown from the Netflix show “Queer Eye.” For the most part, members of the list post content that is general, motivational and safe. Joseph and others took to LinkedIn to say the group contained too many establishment names and not enough activists. “Where are the Tamika Mallorys of LinkedIn on that list?” Joseph wrote, referring to a co-founder of the 2017 Women’s March. “Black voices aren’t just corporate C-Suite ones,” wrote Patricia S. Gatlin, a talent sourcing specialist in Las Vegas. “All Black voices need to be heard in this moment,” added Scott Taylor, a recruiter in Los Angeles. “Not just the ones your team of analysts think we should hear from.” Leverich, the LinkedIn spokeswoman, said by email: “We use a number of factors in our selection, including members who have self-identified as Black, people from a variety of industries and with an interesting perspective to share. We’re constantly adding new voices and sorting through requests to join this program.” In September, LinkedIn used its own company page to pose a question to its 13 million followers: “What are the best ways to normalize having conversations about race and anti-racism in the workplace? #ConversationsForChange” The responses quickly turned sour. “LinkedIn, you can facilitate that objective by normalizing those conversations on your platform,” wrote Lenzy Ruffin, a communications strategist in Washington, D.C. “The irony that you should post this!” wrote Abi Adamson, a diversity and inclusion consultant in London. “Kindly stop censoring Black content around racism. People like me have had our engagement go down astronomically when highlighting racism or how to be anti-racist. Help amplify our voices and stop silencing us.” Sabrina McClimans, a graduate student in Seattle, asked the platform to “stop ‘accidentally’ disappearing the posts of Black women on your platform when they talk about race and anti-racism.” Phil Molé, who works at a software company in Chicago, added: “I have seen cases in which individuals who harass Black women on this platform have maintained their accounts while those who speak out against racism and prejudice have had accounts suspended. It’s time for a thorough review of the way the issues are handled.” LinkedIn did not respond to those comments. Philip Mix, a consultant in London, added to the thread after a day and a half, when there were 344 comments, saying he had gone through them “three times to make sure I wasn’t mistaken.” By his count, LinkedIn had replied to five users — four times to say “Thank you for sharing” and once with “Nicely put.” Mix concluded: “Not sure if I’m more shocked or depressed by this miserably inadequate show from LinkedIn.”

Black LinkedIn is thriving. Does LinkedIn have a problem with that?

Protesters upset by social media videos of Kansas City police arresting a pregnant Black woman continued their agitation for the seventh day on Thursday.

The woman arrested is 25-year-old Deja Stallings, who is nine months pregnant. The said footage shows an officer kneeling on the back of the pregnant woman during an arrest after a gathering at a gas station.

The Kansas City Police Department said in a statement that police were called to the location on September 30 at 10:49 pm by a security officer at the gas station and convenience store who said there were "15-20 individuals fighting on the business's property."

A man then physically interfered with the officers' investigation and refused to leave. Officers attempted to arrest him but he tripped.

"At that time, a woman (seen in the video) and man tried to pull the suspect away from officers," the statement said.

The security video shows Stallings briefly step between an officer and the man he was moving to arrest, but the officer quickly pushes past her to chase after the suspect, catching up with him just a few feet later.

Police said one of the officers then tried to arrest Stallings while she was standing, but "she continued to physically resist arrest, at which point he placed her on the ground to effect the arrest."

Their arrests occurred out of view of the security camera video.

The police said that "the officer who arrested the woman stated he took care not to apply pressure with his legs."

Police called an ambulance and said Stallings was evaluated at a hospital and released.

Stallings has been charged with interfering with an arrest.

To this end, protesters plan to remain at City Hall until their demands are met or someone comes to remove them by force. They are demanding the police chief resign and want the officer involved to be fired. They are also calling for the city to redistribute 50 per cent of the department’s budget to social services to help the Black community, according to The Associated Press.&nbsp;

Stallings now reportedly has "nerve issues with her back" as well as a large bruise. She went to the hospital twice, once immediately after her arrest, but the baby appears to be uninjured by the incident.

Protesters upset by social media videos of Kansas City police arresting a pregnant Black woman continued their agitation for the seventh day on Thursday. The woman arrested is 25-year-old Deja Stallings, who is nine months pregnant.

Protesters upset by social media videos of Kansas City police arresting a pregnant Black woman continued their agitation for the seventh day on Thursday. The woman arrested is 25-year-old Deja Stallings, who is nine months pregnant. The said footage shows an officer kneeling on the back of the pregnant woman during an arrest after a gathering at a gas station. The Kansas City Police Department said in a statement that police were called to the location on September 30 at 10:49 pm by a security officer at the gas station and convenience store who said there were "15-20 individuals fighting on the business's property." A man then physically interfered with the officers' investigation and refused to leave. Officers attempted to arrest him but he tripped. "At that time, a woman (seen in the video) and man tried to pull the suspect away from officers," the statement said. The security video shows Stallings briefly step between an officer and the man he was moving to arrest, but the officer quickly pushes past her to chase after the suspect, catching up with him just a few feet later. Police said one of the officers then tried to arrest Stallings while she was standing, but "she continued to physically resist arrest, at which point he placed her on the ground to effect the arrest." Their arrests occurred out of view of the security camera video. The police said that "the officer who arrested the woman stated he took care not to apply pressure with his legs." Police called an ambulance and said Stallings was evaluated at a hospital and released. Stallings has been charged with interfering with an arrest. To this end, protesters plan to remain at City Hall until their demands are met or someone comes to remove them by force. They are demanding the police chief resign and want the officer involved to be fired. They are also calling for the city to redistribute 50 per cent of the department’s budget to social services to help the Black community, according to The Associated Press. Stallings now reportedly has "nerve issues with her back" as well as a large bruise. She went to the hospital twice, once immediately after her arrest, but the baby appears to be uninjured by the incident.

Kansas City protest over arrest of pregnant Black woman enters seventh day

Toronto lawyer Annamie Paul was Saturday named head of the Green Party, becoming the first Black woman to lead a national political party in Canada.

The 47-year-old mother of two, the daughter of immigrants from the Caribbean, described herself as a "descendant of slaves."

Paul hailed her victory as a "historic moment" during her speech after the announcement of the results of the internal ballot in Ottawa.

"We have done something that has never been done before in Canadian politics," said the Jewish lawyer, who has reported being the victim of anti-Semitic attacks on social media.

"Colonialism has robbed me of my original identity," Paul added in her speech, saying she was ready to support indigenous peoples in particular in their fight against systemic racism within the police.

She succeeds Elizabeth May, who led the Greens for 13 years before stepping down at the end of 2019, following a federal legislative election where her party won only three seats in the House of Commons.

Paul said that under her leadership the party would have two priorities: building a social security net for all Canadians and tackling "the existential crisis of our time, which is the climate emergency."

"This is the chance of a lifetime for us to move towards a more just, a more resilient society," she said. "We believe it can be done."

To repair the economic ravages of the coronavirus pandemic, Paul said the government needed to invest in a "green transition" for a path to the future.

"The choice is yours, if we want different outcomes then we need to make different choices," said Paul, who previously worked at the International Criminal Court.

The new leader of the Greens said she will run in a legislative by-election in Toronto at the end of October, in the constituency vacated after the surprise resignation of former Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau.

Toronto lawyer Annamie Paul was Saturday named head of the Green Party, becoming the first Black woman to lead a national political party in Canada. The 47-year-old mother of two, the daughter of immigrants from the Caribbean, described herself as a "descendant of slaves.

Toronto lawyer Annamie Paul was Saturday named head of the Green Party, becoming the first Black woman to lead a national political party in Canada. The 47-year-old mother of two, the daughter of immigrants from the Caribbean, described herself as a "descendant of slaves." Paul hailed her victory as a "historic moment" during her speech after the announcement of the results of the internal ballot in Ottawa. "We have done something that has never been done before in Canadian politics," said the Jewish lawyer, who has reported being the victim of anti-Semitic attacks on social media. "Colonialism has robbed me of my original identity," Paul added in her speech, saying she was ready to support indigenous peoples in particular in their fight against systemic racism within the police. She succeeds Elizabeth May, who led the Greens for 13 years before stepping down at the end of 2019, following a federal legislative election where her party won only three seats in the House of Commons. Paul said that under her leadership the party would have two priorities: building a social security net for all Canadians and tackling "the existential crisis of our time, which is the climate emergency." "This is the chance of a lifetime for us to move towards a more just, a more resilient society," she said. "We believe it can be done." To repair the economic ravages of the coronavirus pandemic, Paul said the government needed to invest in a "green transition" for a path to the future. "The choice is yours, if we want different outcomes then we need to make different choices," said Paul, who previously worked at the International Criminal Court. The new leader of the Greens said she will run in a legislative by-election in Toronto at the end of October, in the constituency vacated after the surprise resignation of former Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau.

Lawyer named as first Black woman to lead national party in Canada

Twitter has reacted to the recent media reports and cleared the air regarding the service that monitors tweets for police.

The service in question is Dataminr, which is a customer of Twitter's API that taps into the public tweets to alert the police about any possible danger to the lives of people.

Many accused Dataminr of defying the rules of the&nbsp;surveillance ban. However, Twitter has slammed back and rubbished all these accusations claiming the service is not used for surveillance.

"Twitter prohibits the use of our developer services for surveillance purposes. Period,"&nbsp;Twitter's spokesperson said.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/tiktok-launches-guide-on-fighting-misinformation-during-us-elections-331332">Also read:&nbsp;TikTok launches guide on fighting misinformation during US elections</a>

"We are committed to protecting the people who use Twitter from abuse, both on our service and through our APIs. We see a societal benefit in public Twitter data being used for news alerting, first responder support, and disaster relief," company added.

Twitter claimed that the monitoring service is used to observe the flow of the public tweets related to any threat being posed to civilians and civil movements. This is done through the use of artificial intelligence that looks out for specific assigned keywords.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/twitter-erupts-over-a-questionable-chai-latte-recipe-take-a-look-at-these-hilarious-takes-331121">Also read:&nbsp;Twitter erupts over a questionable 'Chai Latte' recipe. Take a look at these hilarious takes!</a>

As per the company, the service&nbsp;"notifies first responders about critical events as they're happening, minimizing response time and enabling them to act quickly and confidently."

The First Alert is based purely on the tweets collected from the public domain and has been coded to strictly follow the&nbsp;Twitter policy against surveillance.

This, as per the company, helps in curbing attacks near sensitive areas such as schools — which have often been a target of shooting.

The issue was raised by the American daily newspaper Wall Street Journal that issued a report citing an email&nbsp;in which Dataminr had supplied information related to upcoming protests, related to Black Lives Matter, from various Twitter handles of general public. The claim has not been proved.

Twitter, however, has claimed that they conduct regular audits related to the safety issue and "proactively enforce our policies to ensure customers are in compliance and will continue to do so," the Twitter spokesman said.

"We consistently hold ourselves accountable to rigorous standards, including third-party audits of key products and services like Dataminr."

Twitter has also clarified that the data being observed is strictly limited to tweets, and no personal information is extracted in any case. For the locked accounts, "nothing is viewable".

The spokesperson has also clarified that an extensive audit was conducted through independent auditors and no evidence that&nbsp;corroborates the claim made in the WSJ’s article were found.

Twitter has reacted to the recent media reports and cleared the air regarding the service that monitors tweets for police. The service in question is Dataminr, which is a customer of Twitter's API that taps into the public tweets to alert the police about any possible danger to the lives of people.

Twitter has reacted to the recent media reports and cleared the air regarding the service that monitors tweets for police. The service in question is Dataminr, which is a customer of Twitter's API that taps into the public tweets to alert the police about any possible danger to the lives of people. Many accused Dataminr of defying the rules of the surveillance ban. However, Twitter has slammed back and rubbished all these accusations claiming the service is not used for surveillance. "Twitter prohibits the use of our developer services for surveillance purposes. Period," Twitter's spokesperson said. Also read: TikTok launches guide on fighting misinformation during US elections "We are committed to protecting the people who use Twitter from abuse, both on our service and through our APIs. We see a societal benefit in public Twitter data being used for news alerting, first responder support, and disaster relief," company added. Twitter claimed that the monitoring service is used to observe the flow of the public tweets related to any threat being posed to civilians and civil movements. This is done through the use of artificial intelligence that looks out for specific assigned keywords. Also read: Twitter erupts over a questionable 'Chai Latte' recipe. Take a look at these hilarious takes! As per the company, the service "notifies first responders about critical events as they're happening, minimizing response time and enabling them to act quickly and confidently." The First Alert is based purely on the tweets collected from the public domain and has been coded to strictly follow the Twitter policy against surveillance. This, as per the company, helps in curbing attacks near sensitive areas such as schools — which have often been a target of shooting. The issue was raised by the American daily newspaper Wall Street Journal that issued a report citing an email in which Dataminr had supplied information related to upcoming protests, related to Black Lives Matter, from various Twitter handles of general public. The claim has not been proved. Twitter, however, has claimed that they conduct regular audits related to the safety issue and "proactively enforce our policies to ensure customers are in compliance and will continue to do so," the Twitter spokesman said. "We consistently hold ourselves accountable to rigorous standards, including third-party audits of key products and services like Dataminr." Twitter has also clarified that the data being observed is strictly limited to tweets, and no personal information is extracted in any case. For the locked accounts, "nothing is viewable". The spokesperson has also clarified that an extensive audit was conducted through independent auditors and no evidence that corroborates the claim made in the WSJ’s article were found.

Twitter claims monitoring service not for 'surveillance purposes'; no personal data collected

The UK is trying out a distinct way to honour its Black population in view of Black History Month - it is repainting a few of its signature red postboxes!

The red pillar post boxes are considered symbolic of Britain and can be seen on an array of items including postcards.

Earlier, the Royal Mail had decided to choose a postbox each in all constituent territories of the United Kingdom - England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.&nbsp;

<h6><img alt="A pedestrian films a Royal Mail postbox, painted black instead of traditional red, to honour Black Britons, as part of the forthcoming Black History Month, in Brixton, London, Britain, September 30, 2020." data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="e034de18-d92e-4d3a-b868-4eeaec015df9" src="//cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Untitled%20design%20%282%29_109.jpg" />A pedestrian films a Royal Mail postbox, painted black instead of traditional red, to honour Black Britons, as part of the forthcoming Black History Month, in Brixton, London, Britain, September 30, 2020 | Reuters 
&nbsp;</h6>

As visible in the pictures, the top of all postboxes are painted black with a gold rim. These shall remain this way for all of October which is marked as Black History Month.

The postbox in Britain which has been repainted is stationed nearby the Black Cultural Archives heritage centre in South London, which is a hub for the Caribbean community and other Black groups.

In Britain, the postbox features an image of “Queuing at the RA”, a painting by British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, who is known for art grappling with cultural identity and the remnants of colonialism.

<h6><img alt="A pedestrian films a Royal Mail postbox, painted black instead of traditional red, to honour Black Britons, as part of the forthcoming Black History Month, in Brixton, London, Britain, September 30, 2020" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="323b16e2-3440-4ddf-8111-34d42cbcadd7" src="//cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Untitled%20design%20%283%29_77.jpg" />A pedestrian films a Royal Mail postbox, painted black instead of traditional red, to honour Black Britons, as part of the forthcoming Black History Month, in Brixton, London, Britain, September 30, 2020 | Reuters</h6>

&nbsp;

Scotland’s black postbox in Glasgow carries the image of Walter Tull, the first Black player to be signed in the city’s soccer team - the Rangers. He was later killed during the First World War.

Cardiff in Wales spots the image of Jamaican nurse Mary Seattle, who cared for soldiers during the Crimean War between 1853-1856.

The postbox in Northern Ireland features the picture of comedian Lenny Henry. The Royal Mail claimed that he was “instrumental in helping a multi-cultural society to embrace multi-cultural comedy".

The UK is trying out a distinct way to honour its Black population in view of Black History Month - it is repainting a few of its signature red postboxes! The red pillar post boxes are considered symbolic of Britain and can be seen on an array of items including postcards.

The UK is trying out a distinct way to honour its Black population in view of Black History Month - it is repainting a few of its signature red postboxes! The red pillar post boxes are considered symbolic of Britain and can be seen on an array of items including postcards. Earlier, the Royal Mail had decided to choose a postbox each in all constituent territories of the United Kingdom - England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. A pedestrian films a Royal Mail postbox, painted black instead of traditional red, to honour Black Britons, as part of the forthcoming Black History Month, in Brixton, London, Britain, September 30, 2020 | Reuters As visible in the pictures, the top of all postboxes are painted black with a gold rim. These shall remain this way for all of October which is marked as Black History Month. The postbox in Britain which has been repainted is stationed nearby the Black Cultural Archives heritage centre in South London, which is a hub for the Caribbean community and other Black groups. In Britain, the postbox features an image of “Queuing at the RA”, a painting by British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, who is known for art grappling with cultural identity and the remnants of colonialism. A pedestrian films a Royal Mail postbox, painted black instead of traditional red, to honour Black Britons, as part of the forthcoming Black History Month, in Brixton, London, Britain, September 30, 2020 | Reuters Scotland’s black postbox in Glasgow carries the image of Walter Tull, the first Black player to be signed in the city’s soccer team - the Rangers. He was later killed during the First World War. Cardiff in Wales spots the image of Jamaican nurse Mary Seattle, who cared for soldiers during the Crimean War between 1853-1856. The postbox in Northern Ireland features the picture of comedian Lenny Henry. The Royal Mail claimed that he was “instrumental in helping a multi-cultural society to embrace multi-cultural comedy".

UK paints its signature postboxes black in honour of Black History Month

The Black lives matter (BLM) protests sparked removal of federal statues. We bring you one such incident from California's City of Venture, watch the report.

BLM protests sparked removal of federal statues in US

A public garden, honouring a Black woman who fought for the liberation of slaves on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, was inaugurated in Paris.

Mayor Anne Hidalgo also announced plans to erect a statue of the woman, Solitude, at the site in northeastern Paris. It will be the city’s first statue honouring a Black woman.

Amid global protests against racism, French leaders have resisted taking down statues but pushed instead to design new monuments to honour more of lesser-known historical figures.

Solitude was born around 1772 to an African slave who was raped by a white sailor on the ship bringing her to the Antilles, according to newspaper Le Monde.

Solitude later joined Guadeloupe's resistance movement, according to city hall. Napoleon's forces arrested a then-pregnant Solitude, and sentenced her to death.

She gave birth on November 28, 1802, and was hanged the next day.

France abolished slavery again in 1848. Guadeloupe, a part of France, saw protests earlier this year against racial injustice in the wake of George Floyd's death in the US.

A public garden, honouring a Black woman who fought for the liberation of slaves on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, was inaugurated in Paris. Mayor Anne Hidalgo also announced plans to erect a statue of the woman, Solitude, at the site in northeastern Paris.

A public garden, honouring a Black woman who fought for the liberation of slaves on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, was inaugurated in Paris. Mayor Anne Hidalgo also announced plans to erect a statue of the woman, Solitude, at the site in northeastern Paris. It will be the city’s first statue honouring a Black woman. Amid global protests against racism, French leaders have resisted taking down statues but pushed instead to design new monuments to honour more of lesser-known historical figures. Solitude was born around 1772 to an African slave who was raped by a white sailor on the ship bringing her to the Antilles, according to newspaper Le Monde. Solitude later joined Guadeloupe's resistance movement, according to city hall. Napoleon's forces arrested a then-pregnant Solitude, and sentenced her to death. She gave birth on November 28, 1802, and was hanged the next day. France abolished slavery again in 1848. Guadeloupe, a part of France, saw protests earlier this year against racial injustice in the wake of George Floyd's death in the US.

Paris inaugurates city’s first park honouring a Black woman