Hello, this is Anna bringing you today's top stories.
‘Racist’ ad - An advert that shows a bottle of Heineken sliding along a bar past black people with ‘sometimes, lighter is better’ as a slogan has been slammed as racist. Chance the Rapper called out the advert over the weekend saying: ‘I think companies are purposely putting out noticeably racist ads so they can get more views. And that shit racist/bogus so I guess I shouldn’t help by posting about it. But I just gotta say tho. The “sometimes lighter is better” Heineken commercial is terribly racist omg.’ The company has since pulled the advert following a huge backlash.
Dirty politics - The whistleblower making a series of explosive allegations against the official Vote Leave Brexit campaign broke down in tears on Monday as he spoke about how a statement from the PM Theresa May’s political secretary had forced him to come out as gay to his mother. Shahmir Sanni accused senior Number 10 aide Stephen Parkinson of knowing he was not openly gay with his family when he released a statement saying he was once in a relationship with him. ‘It was fucking shit,’ Sanni told the audience at London’s Frontline Club. ‘I had to come out to my mum the day before yesterday… You know what, he knew, he knew that I wasn’t out to my mum.’ Sanni is of Pakistani heritage where being gay is illegal and taboo.
Harsh measures - Russia will respond harshly to a US decision to expel 60 Russian diplomats, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, has said. However, he also added that Moscow was still open to stability talks with Washington. The US said on Monday it would expel 60 Russian diplomats, joining governments across Europe in punishing the Kremlin for a nerve agent attack on a former Russian spy in Britain that they have blamed on Moscow.
Speculation mounting - A green and yellow train has prompted speculation over whether North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is in China on his first trip abroad. The trip, which would be Kim’s first to China since taking power in 2011, comes before historic meetings with South Korea and the United States. According to footage captured by Japan’s Nippon TV, the train looks similar to the one used by Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, when he visited China in 2011, shortly before his death.
Prince’s tragic death - A toxicology report from Prince’s autopsy, obtained by the Associated Press, shows he had an ‘exceedingly high’ concentration of fentanyl in his body when he died, experts say. Prince was 57 when he was found dead in an elevator at his Paisley Park estate on 21 April, 2016. Public data released six weeks after his death showed he died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid 50 times more powerful than heroin.
A legend dies - Linda Brown, who changed the face of US civil rights, has died at 76. As an African-American child, Brown was not allowed to attend an elementary school in Topeka, Kansas in 1951. Her father became the lead plaintiff in a case by families that argued that the idea of ‘separate but equal’ violated African-American civil rights. The 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling struck down legal segregation in US schools.