Statues of Confederate leaders and the explorer Christopher Columbus have been torn down in the US, as pressure grows on authorities to remove monuments connected to slavery and colonialism. A statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis was toppled in Richmond, Virginia, on Wednesday night. Statues of Columbus in Boston, Miami and Virginia have been vandalised. The movement has been sparked by the death in police custody of African American George Floyd. His death in Minneapolis has led to protests in the US and internationally against police brutality and racial inequality.

Memorials to the Confederacy, a group of southern states that fought to keep black people as slaves in the American Civil War of 1861-65, have been among those targeted. A number of Confederate statues on Monument Avenue in Richmond have been marked with graffiti during the protests. Richmond also saw a statue of Italian explorer Columbus pulled down, set alight and thrown into a lake earlier this week,. A three-metre tall (10ft) bronze statue of Columbus was toppled in Saint Paul,  Minnesota, on Wednesday. The Columbus statue in Boston, which stands on a plinth at the heart of town, was beheaded.(BBC)…[+]