South Africa looting: Clean-up to mark Nelson Mandela Day

As South Africans mark Nelson Mandela Day, the president has urged people to honour the legacy of the anti-apartheid hero by helping to rebuild the country after days of riots that left 212 dead.

“The one positive thing I can say is that this incident has united us as never before,” Cyril Ramaphosa said.

People have been posting photos of themselves distributing food to areas most affected by the unrest.

The violence was sparked by the jailing of ex-President Jacob Zuma.

He handed himself in to police on 7 July to serve a 15-month sentence for contempt of court.

The 79-year-old was found guilty for failing to appear before an inquiry to answer questions about corruption during his presidency.

On Monday, Mr Zuma is due to attend – via video link – another corruption trial in relation to a $5bn (£3bn) arms deal from the 1990s.

He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and his lawyers are now calling for a postponement because of the violence.

Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first democratically elected president, died at the age of 95 in 2013, when Zuma was president.

Each year on what would be Mandela’s birthday – 18 July – people are urged to spend 67 minutes helping others, to mark his 67 years of public service.

Mr Ramaphosa has spent the day in Gauteng province touring Soweto, South Africa’s largest township and once home to Mr Mandela.

He has been taking part in the clean-up after mayhem which saw thousands of people ransacking malls.

Small businesses, warehouses, factories, clinics and schools in the two provinces of Kwazulu-Natal and Gauteng were also targeted – a level of violence unprecedented in post-apartheid South Africa.

Debris was strewn all over the streets and some communities have had to travel long distances to buy basics.

In Durban, the main city of KwaZulu-Natal, the authorities are also investigating a chemical spill possibly linked to a warehouse fire after dead fish were spotting washing ashore.

IMAGE COPYRIGHTAFP

image captionDead fish have been washing ashore in Durban

The unrest has now largely subsided and the deployment of 25,000 soldiers is expected to be completed by the end of the weekend.

Mr Ramaphosa, who says the violence was orchestrated, has faced criticism for acting too late.

Amid the chaos people armed themselves and formed vigilante groups to protect their property.

But during his tour of Soweto, the president said he was impressed by South Africans’ resilience – reflecting Mr Mandela’s spirit.

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‘Titane’ wins top Cannes honor, 2nd ever for female director

Julia Ducournau’s “Titane,” a wild body-horror thriller featuring sex with a car and a surprisingly tender heart, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, making Ducournau just the second female filmmaker to win the festival’s top honor in its 74 year history.

The win on Saturday was mistakenly announced by jury president Spike Lee at the top of the closing ceremony, broadcast in France on Canal+, unleashing a few moments of confusion. Ducournau, a French filmmaker, didn’t come to the stage to accept the award until the formal announcement at the end of the ceremony. But the early hint didn’t diminish from her emotional response.

Lee in the moments after his flub. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda)

“I’m sorry, I keep shaking my head,” said Decournau, catching her breath. “Is this real? I don’t know why I’m speaking English right now because I’m French. This evening has been so perfect because it was not perfect.”

After several false starts, Lee implored Sharon Stone to make the Palme d’Or announcement, explaining: “She’s not going to mess it up.” The problems started earlier when Lee was asked to say which prize would be awarded first. Instead, he announced the evening’s final prize, as fellow juror Mati Diop plunged her head into her hands and others rushed to stop him.

Lee, himself, spent several moments with his head in his hands before apologizing profusely for taking a lot of the suspense out of the evening.

“I have no excuses,” Lee told reporters afterward. “I messed up. I’m a big sports fan. It’s like the guy at the end of the game who misses the free throw or misses the kick.”

“I messed up,” he added. “As simple as that.”

Decournau’s win was a long-awaited triumph. The only previous female filmmaker to win Cannes’ top honor — among the most prestigious awards in cinema — was Jane Campion for “The Piano” in 1993. In recent years, frustration at Cannes’ gender parity has grown, including in 2018, when 82 women — including Agnes Varda, Cate Blanchett and Salma Hayek — protested gender inequality on the Cannes red carpet. Their number signified the movies by female directors selected to compete for the Palme d’Or — 82 compared to 1,645 films directed by men. This year, four out of 24 films up for the Palme were directed by women.

Julia Ducournau. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)

In 2019, another genre film — Boon Joon Ho’s “Parasite” — took the Palme before going on to win best picture at the Academy Awards, too. That choice was said to be unanimous by the jury led by Alejandro González Iñárritu, but the award for “Titane” — an extremely violent film — this year’s jury said came out of a democratic process of conversation and debate. Juror Maggie Gyllenhaal said they didn’t agree unanimously on anything.

“The world is passion,” said Lee. “Everyone was passionate about a particular film they wanted and we worked it out.”

In “Titane,” Agathe Rousselle plays a serial killer who flees home. As a child, a car accident leaves her with a titanium plate in her head and a strange bond with automobiles. In possibly the most-talked-about scene at the festival, she’s impregnated by a Cadillac. Lee called it a singular experience.

“This is the first film ever where a Cadillac impregnates a woman,” said Lee, who said he wanted to ask Decournau what year the car was. “That’s genius and craziness together. Those two things often match up.”

Sharon Stone (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)

Cannes’ closing ceremony capped 12 days of red-carpet premieres, regular COVID-19 testing for many attendees and the first major film festival to be held since the pandemic began in almost its usual form. With smaller crowds and mandated mask-wearing in theaters, Cannes pushed forward with an ambitious slate of global cinema. Last year’s Cannes was completely canceled by the pandemic.

The slate, assembled as a way to help stir movies after a year where movies shrank to smaller screens and red carpets grew cobwebs, was widely considered to be strong, and featured many leading international filmmakers. The awards were spread out widely.

The Grand Prix award was a joint honor split between Asghar Farhadi’s Iranian drama “A Hero” and Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen’s “Apartment No. 6.”

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Europe flood death toll tops 160, costly rebuilding ahead

BERLIN (AP) — Rescue workers labored to deal with damage laid bare by receding water Saturday as the death toll from disastrous flooding in Western Europe rose above 160 and thoughts turned to the lengthy job of rebuilding communities devastated in minutes.

The death toll in western Germany’s Rhineland-Palatinate state, home to the badly hit Ahrweiler county, rose to 98. Another 43 people were confirmed dead in neighboring North Rhine-Westphalia state. Belgium’s national crisis center said the country’s confirmed death toll rose to 27.

Days of heavy rain turned normally minor rivers and streets into raging torrents this week and caused the disastrous flooding that swept away cars, engulfed homes and trapped residents.

Immediately after the floods hit on Wednesday and Thursday, German authorities listed large numbers of people as missing — something apparently caused in large part by confusion, multiple reporting and communications difficulties in the affected areas, some of which lacked electricity and telephone service.

By Saturday, authorities still feared finding more people dead, but said numbers unaccounted for had dropped constantly, without offering specific figures. In Belgium, 103 people were listed as missing Saturday, but the crisis center said lost or uncharged cellphones and people taken to hospitals without identification who hadn’t had an opportunity to contact relatives were believed to be factors in the tally.

Meanwhile, the receding floodwaters eased access across much of the affected regions and revealed the extent of the damage.

“A lot of people have lost everything they spent their lives building up — their possessions, their home, the roof over their heads,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after meeting rescue workers and others in the town of Erftstadt.

“It may only be possible to clear up in weeks how much damage needs to be compensated,” he said.

Steinmeier said that people in the affected areas need continuing support.

“Many people here in these regions have nothing left but their hope, and we must not disappoint this hope,” he said.

In Erftstadt, a town southwest of Cologne, a harrowing rescue effort unfolded on Friday when the ground in a neighborhood gave way. At least three houses and part of a mansion in the town’s Blessem district collapsed.

The German military used armored vehicles to clear away cars and trucks overwhelmed by the floodwaters on a nearby road, some of which remained at least partly submerged. Officials feared that some people didn’t manage to escape in Erftstadt, but no casualties were confirmed by Saturday afternoon.

In the Ahrweiler area, police warned of a potential risk from downed power lines and urged curious visitors to stay away. They complained on Twitter that would-be sightseers were blocking some roads.

Around 700 people were evacuated from part of the German town of Wassenberg, on the Dutch border, after the breach of a dike on the Rur river.

Visiting Erftstadt with Steinmeier, North Rhine-Westphalia governor Armin Laschet promised to organize aid for those immediately affected “in the coming days.” He said regional and federal authorities would discuss in the coming days how to help rebuilding efforts. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet plans to discuss the issue on Wednesday.

“We will do everything so that what needs to be rebuilt can be rebuilt,” Laschet said.

In eastern Belgium, many train lines and roads remained blocked.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo visited flood-damaged towns Saturday.

A resident of the Belgian town of Herk-de-Stad said she put off sleeping to try to empty her house of water.

“We have been pumping all night long trying to get the water out of the house,” Elke Lenaerts told broadcaster VTM.

Parts of the southern Netherlands also experienced heavy flooding, though thousands of residents were allowed to return home after being evacuated on Thursday and Friday.

Caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who visited the region on Friday, said that “first, there was corona, now these floods, and soon people will have to work on cleanup and recovery.”

“It is disaster after disaster after disaster. But we will not abandon Limburg,” the southern province hit by the floods, he added. His government has declared the flooding a state of emergency, opening up national funds for those affected.

Among other efforts to help the flood victims, the Hertog Jan brewery, which is based in the affected area, handed out 3,000 beer crates so locals could raise their belongings off the ground to protect them from the flooding.

An emergency dike in the town of Horn didn’t hold and some houses were inundated. Authorities issued a warning to stay off the Maas River because of debris. Rescuers worked to save a cow stuck neck-deep in muddy water.

At the other end of Germany, there was flooding Saturday evening following torrential rain in the Saechsische Schweiz area near Dresden and across the border in the Czech Republic.

Roads, basements and railroad tracks flooded, disrupting train service between the Czech town of Decin and Bad Schandau, Germany. A summer camp for children on the Czech side had to evacuated.

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Sajid Javid has Covid – Several top ministers face self-isolation after health sec tests positive with ‘mild symptoms’

SEVERAL top ministers could be forced to self-isolate after Sajid Javid’s positive Covid test.

The Health Secretary today said he had returned a positive lateral flow test for the bug – but his symptoms are “mild” as he has been double-vaccinated.

Officials are scrambling to work out precisely who has been in close contact with Javid in the past few days.

The Sun understands that several top ministers and civil servants could be forced into self-isolation should Javid return a positive PCR test to back-up his earlier result.

Yesterday, Javid was seen leaving Downing Street – fuelling speculation that Boris Johnson and other cabinet ministers will be required to isolate if contacted by NHS Test and Trace.

He also met with staff at Aashna House care home in Streatham, South London on Tuesday as part of a busy ministerial schedule.

Earlier that day, Javid mixed with fellow ministers and MPs in Westminster.

It marks a fresh setback for the minister, who will likely be required to isolate on ‘Freedom Day’ – when all restrictions are lifted.

In a video message posted to his Twitter, Javid said: “This morning I tested positive for Covid.

 

“I’m waiting for my PCR result, but thankfully I have had my jabs and symptoms are mild.

 

“Please make sure you come forward for your vaccine if you haven’t already.”

 

He added that he had returned the positive result after taking a lateral flow test, which he took after feeling a “bit groggy”.

‘MILD SYMPTOMS’

Javid continued: “I’m now self-isolating at home with my family until I get the results of a PCR test.”

 

Javid tweeted on March 17 that he had received a first shot of the Astrazeneca jab, posting a picture of him getting a second dose on May 16.

It comes just three days before the government prepares to lift all Covid restrictions as part of ‘Freedom Day’.

Tom O’Connor dead aged 81 – Name That Tune and Gambit comedian dies

Biden, Harris: Protect voting rights to honor John Lewis

ATLANTA (AP) — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday both marked the one-year anniversary of U.S. Rep. John Lewis’ death by urging Congress to honor the legacy of the civil rights icon by enacting laws to protect voting rights.

Biden said he often reflects on the last conversation he and his wife, Jill, had with Lewis, days before the Georgia congressman died.

“Instead of answering our concerns for him, he asked us to remain focused on the unfinished work — his life’s work — of healing and uniting this nation,” Biden said in a statement.

The president said the unfinished work includes “building an economy that respects the dignity of working people with good jobs and good wages” and “ensuring equal justice under law is real in practice and not just a promise etched in stone.”

“Perhaps most of all, it means continuing the cause that John was willing to give his life for: protecting the sacred right to vote,” Biden said. “Not since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s have we seen such unrelenting attacks on voting rights and the integrity of our elections.”

Biden said the attacks include the Jan. 6 insurrection and lies about the 2020 election.

Lewis was a high-profile civil rights activist before he won a Georgia congressional seat as a Democrat in 1986. Harris said in her own statement Saturday that he was “an American hero.”

“Congressman Lewis fought tirelessly for our country’s highest ideals: freedom and justice for all, and for the right of every American to make their voice heard at the ballot box,” Harris said.

Lewis was 80 when he died months after announcing he had advanced pancreatic cancer. He was the youngest and last survivor of the Big Six civil rights activists, a group led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. that had the greatest impact on the movement.

Lewis was best known for leading some 600 protesters in the Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. Alabama state troopers beat Lewis and other activists who were marching for voting rights that day.

As a college student at American Baptist College and then Fisk University, Lewis helped desegregate public spaces in Nashville and pushed for racial justice across the South.

Nashville celebrated with events Friday and Saturday, renaming a large portion of Fifth Ave. to Rep. John Lewis Way. Among establishments lining the street is the Woolworth downtown building, where Lewis and other Black civil rights leaders defiantly sat at the segregated lunch counter that wouldn’t serve them in 1960. Lewis was punched in the ribs and saw someone put out a cigarette on the back of another protester.

Hundreds marched down the street before arriving at Ryman Auditorium, for a celebration ceremony that included the Rev. James Lawson, author Jon Meacham and musicians Rodney Crowell and Darius Rucker.

In San Diego, senior U.S. lawmakers and members of Lewis’ family gathered Saturday for the christening of a Navy ship named after Lewis.

“This ship will be a beacon to the world reminding all who see it of the persistence and courage of John Lewis,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Ca., said at the christening of the USNS John Lewis.

Lewis’ nephew, Marcus Tyner, said the family was grateful for the honor, but said “what would please my uncle most” is if Congress passed the voting rights bill named after him.

The ship will be the first in the Navy’s fleet of oilers designed to transfer fuel and water to vessels carrying out missions in the Western Pacific, Indian Ocean and beyond.

In her statement Saturday, Harris recalled crossing Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge with Lewis during a commemoration in 2020.

“The right to vote remains under attack in states across our nation,” Harris said. “And the best way to honor Congressman Lewis’ legacy is to carry on the fight — by passing the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act as well as the For the People Act, and by helping eligible voters no matter where they live get registered and vote, and have their vote counted.”

Democrats on Capitol Hill are pushing for a sweeping federal voting and elections bill that Senate Republicans have united to block, saying they think it intrudes on states’ ability to conduct elections. Most Republicans have also dismissed a separate bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore sections of the Voting Rights Act that were weakened by the Supreme Court.

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Happy Nelson Mandela International Day 18 July

Dear all,

Nelson Mandela once famously said, “As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.”

This Mandela Day, we call on young leaders, like yourself, to honor the legacy of Nelson Mandela’s commitment to serving others by either planning, or committing to plan, a small act of service within their community.

Nelson Mandela International Day is an opportunity to reflect on the life and legacy of a legendary global advocate for dignity, equality, justice and human rights.

Each year, on this day, Nelson’s Mandela’s birthday, we pay tribute to this extraordinary man who embodied the highest aspirations of the United Nations and the human family.

Madiba’s calls for solidarity and an end to racism are particularly relevant today, as social cohesion around the world is threatened by division.

Societies are becoming more polarized, with hate speech on the rise and misinformation blurring the truth, questioning science and undermining democratic institutions.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has made these ills more acute and rolled back years of progress in the global fight against poverty.

As always in times of crises, it is the marginalized and discriminated against who suffer the most, often while being blamed for problems they did not cause.

The pandemic has shown the vital importance of human solidarity and unity, values championed and exemplified by Nelson Mandela in his lifelong fight for justice.

No one is safe until all are safe. And each of us has a part to play.

Let us be inspired by Madiba’s message that each of us can make a difference in promoting peace, human rights, harmony with nature and dignity for all.

Let us all honour Madiba’s call to action and be empowered by his legacy.

António Guterres 

Use the infographic to gain inspiration for your small act of service. Share the small, and large, ways that you’ve enacted positive change in your community and share them on our Facebook page.

Best,