One of the foremost poets of the Black arts movement died on Monday but continues to inspire her literary children

“We are the culture bearers of planet Earth,” Nikki Giovanni said in 1978 on American Black Journal, a Detroit TV program. Viewers watched the young poet, then just 36, establishing herself as part of Black American literary royalty in real time. She fielded a series of somewhat maudlin questions about creativity, Black identity, gender and politics with aplomb, her answers demonstrating her nascent wisdom and embrace of her role as a Black female writer in post-civil rights era United States.

Giovanni, who died Monday at 81 after her third battle with cancer, was one of the foremost poets who emerged from the Black arts movement of the mid-1960s. Even from her beginnings as a new artist in the movement that signified radical Black American consciousness, Giovanni always seemed aware of her singular power. Her uncanny and ferocious mind made her one of the most prolific and accomplished poets in American literature.

Campaigners condemn watchdog ruling and say the incident in Hackney, east London, ‘traumatised’ the boy

The actions of armed police who surrounded and arrested a 13-year-old boy after an officer mistook his water pistol for a real gun were “reasonable in the circumstances”, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said.

The boy suffered soft-tissue injuries after he was rammed off his bike by a police van and handcuffed as he was confronted by marksmen in Hackney, east London, in July last year.

A group of young adults born during or just after the 1994 genocide against Rwanda's Tutsi people gather to find the courage to break a powerful taboo. Rwanda is one of the few nations in the world providing specialist counselling for children conceived through rape, who number 10,000 across the country. Here, course leader Emilienne, a mother, therapist and genocide survivor, helps the group to imagine a future free from family secrets and societal stigma. In a circle of supportive peers, they tell their individual stories and face their struggles together, in the hope their participation will advocate for others facing similar trauma

An event at the European parliament featuring the French academic Maboula Soumahoro was axed after French MEPs objected

Maboula Soumahoro is a renowned French scholar and public intellectual. The holder of a PhD earned through studies both in France and at Columbia University in the US, she is an associate professor at the University of Tours, a specialist on the African diaspora, and one of France’s foremost academics when it comes to race relations.

So when the European parliament decided to invite her to an internal event last month as part of a dialogue to discuss ways to “promote equality and inclusion in the workplace”, it made perfect sense.

Rokhaya Diallo is a Guardian Europe columnist

Court said five women were victims of ‘systematic kidnapping’ by state over forced removal from mothers as small children

The Belgian state has been found guilty of crimes against humanity for the forced removal of five mixed-race children from their mothers in colonial Congo.

In a long-awaited ruling issued on Monday, Belgium’s court of appeal said that five women, born in the Belgian Congo and now in their 70s, had been victims of “systematic kidnapping” by the state when they were removed from their mothers as small children and sent to Catholic institutions because of their mixed-race origins.

Over 70 years ago, thousands of mixed-race boys and girls were torn from their mothers by order of the state. This week five survivors hope a court will censure Belgium for crimes against humanity

Monique was three years old when a white man from the government came to her village and changed everything. Everyone came out to see him, including Monique, who, as always, was with her “little auntie”, a girl of nine who was also her best friend. Monique cannot recall what the man looked like, but she remembers how sad everyone was after he had gone. Her mother had tears in her eyes that night. Monique would not see her for a long time.

The next day, Monique set off early with her uncle, aunt and grandmother on a three-day journey. Travelling on foot and by boat, with Monique in their arms, they went more than 100 miles from her birth village, Babadi, in the southern central Kasaï province in the Belgian Congo, to her new lodgings, the Catholic mission of the sisters of Saint-Vincent-de Paul in Katende. It was 1953 – the year Joseph Stalin died and Queen Elizabeth II was crowned – and Belgium still ruled the Congo, a vast African territory 75 times its size.

Officials acknowledge prisoners have harmed themselves but say they did not set themselves on fire or self-immolate

Several incarcerated people in Virginia’s high-security Red Onion state prison have intentionally burned themselves in a protest against harsh conditions at the facility.

A written statement from Virginia’s department of corrections acknowledged that men imprisoned there had harmed themselves, although the authorities confirmed six incidents while others reported that 12 men were injured.

Share of children’s books featuring characters who fall into this category fell from 30% in 2022 to 17% in 2023, CLPE survey finds

There has been a “significant” drop in the presence of racially minoritised characters in children’s books, according to a new report.

A Centre for Literacy in Primary Education (CLPE) survey found that the share of children’s books featuring characters who are racially minoritised fell from 30% in 2022 to 17% in 2023. “Racially minoritised” is a term CLPE uses to refer to individuals who “have been actively minoritised through social processes of power and domination, rather than just existing in distinct statistical minorities.”

Campaigners welcome IOPC’s recognition of adultification as racial bias but say guidelines to address it do not go far enough

The police watchdog for England and Wales has called for urgent measures to stop the “adultification” of black children by officers, but campaigners have said the revised guidelines do not go far enough.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct identified adultification as a racial bias that primarily affects black children as well as other minority ethnic children, where they are seen as more “streetwise”, more “grown up”, less innocent and less vulnerable.