MORE than 300 Black actors and filmmakers, including Idris Elba, Queen Latifah and Billy Porter, on Tuesday asked Hollywood to divest in the police and invest in anti-racist content. Queen Latifah. Illustrastion: Stephano Achugwo An open letter addressed to "Our Allies in Hollywood" attacked what it called the industry's "legacy of white supremacy" and said Hollywood "encourages the epidemic of police violence and culture of anti-Blackness." The letter, organized by the group Hollywood 4 Black Lives, was written in the midst of a cultural and political reckoning in the United States about systemic racism and mass protests about the killing…

ALICE DRIVER ASYLUM seekers at the US-Mexico border are caught in limbo, suffering from turmoil caused by the US government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and now a spiralling outbreak in Mexico, with those staying in overcrowded shelters and makeshift camps particularly vulnerable.  Since the US government enacted the Migrant Protection Protocols in January 2019 – a policy also known as “Remain in Mexico” – asylum seekers have been forced to wait an average of two to three months in violent towns across the border until their US asylum hearing date. Shelters in northern Mexico soon filled up, and people…

DOINA CHIACU and RICHARD COWAN US PRESIDENT Donald Trump came under attack from both sides of the American political spectrum as liberal Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi and former White House aide and conservative hawk John Bolton both declared him unfit to lead the country. "President Trump is clearly ethically unfit and intellectually unprepared to be the president of the United States," Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, told a news briefing. In a new book, Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, has accused the Republican president of sweeping misdeeds, including explicitly seeking Chinese President Xi Jinping's aid…

OSCAR LOPEZ AND MATTHEW LAVIETES THE U.S. Supreme Court decision that gay and trans people are legally protected from discrimination will have "enormous" implications for LGBT+ rights cases, experts said, possibly helping to end a ban on trans soldiers serving in the military. In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects workers from discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin and religion, applies to LGBT+ people. "Today's decision is enormous," said Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, an advocacy group. "For…