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New York police have arrested a man in connection with the vandalism of a newly-unveiled statue of George Floyd earlier this month. The New York City Police Department Hate Crimes Task Force announced on Monday that it had charged 37-year-old Micah Beals of Manhattan with second-degree criminal mischief. Beals' attorney, Rebecca Heinsen of Legal Aid Society, declined to comment on the arrest or charge. Outlets including Newsweek and People report that Beals is an actor who goes by the stage name Micah Femia. He appeared in the 2013 movie Pop Star as well as one 2011 episode of NBC sitcom...

SACRAMENTO, California — More than a year after protesters toppled a statue of a Spanish missionary on the grounds of the California Capitol, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law on Friday to replace it with a memorial for the state’s Native Americans. A statue of Father Junipero Serra had stood in Capitol Park since 1967. He was a Catholic priest who established a string of missions from San Diego to San Francisco in the late 1700s and used them as centers to convert members of nearby tribes to Christianity. But many natives were forced to live and work at the...

RICHMOND, Va. — A towering statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, is set to come down on Wednesday, more than 130 years after it was built as a tribute to a Civil War hero who is now widely seen as a symbol of racial injustice, state officials said Monday. “Virginia’s largest monument to the Confederate insurrection will come down this week,” Gov. Ralph Northam said in news release on Monday. “This is an important step in showing who we are and what we value as a commonwealth.” The imposing, 21-foot (6.4-meter) tall bronze likeness of Lee...

Common Pleas Court Judge Paula Patrick ruled that Philadelphia's decision to remove a statue of Christopher Columbus was 'without any legal basis' The city's arts commission, historical commission and city council decided to remove the statue following last year's protests against police brutality Attorney George Bochetto, representing the Friends of Marconi Plaza, said his clients were 'ecstatic' - they now seeks to remove the box obscuring the statue

Kabul: The Taliban have blown up the statue of a Shiite militia leader who had fought against them during Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s, according to photos circulating on social media Wednesday. “So Taliban have blown up slain Hazara leader Abdul Ali Mazari’s statue in Bamiyan. Last time they executed him, blew up the giant statues of Buddha and all historical and archaeological sites. Too much of ‘general amnesty’,” tweeted Saleem Javed, a human rights activist. The statue depicted Abdul Ali Mazari, a militia leader killed by the Taliban in 1996, when the Islamic militants seized power from rival...

Spain's current left-wing government has launched moves to address the Franco era, in an approach it calls "democratic memory". It has included the exhumation of the dictator from the Valley of the Fallen mausoleum, where he was buried in 1975, and funding the opening of mass graves to identify victims of the dictatorship.

New Yorkers have a surprise gift to look forward to for this Independence Day: a second Statue of Liberty sent by France. This new bronze statue, nicknamed the "little sister," is one-sixteenth the size of the world-famous one that stands on Liberty Island. On Monday, during a special ceremony, the smaller sibling was lifted and loaded into a special container at the National Museum of Arts and Crafts (CNAM) in central Paris, where it has been installed since 2011 in the museum's garden. It will be erected on Ellis Island, just across the water from the original, from July 1...

In New York City, a recently installed sculpture of George Floyd was vandalized overnight Wednesday into Thursday. Detectives are looking for video from the area but at this point no arrests.

NEWARK, New Jersey (WABC) -- The city of Newark is paying tribute to George Floyd with a new statue in front of City Hall.Mayor Ras Baraka, actor and filmmaker Leon Pickney and artist Stanley Watts unveiled the 700-pound bronze statue on Wednesday afternoon.

WARNING: This story contains distressing details. (Scare Warning) Charlottetown city council voted unanimously Monday to remove the Sir John A. Macdonald statue permanently from Victoria Row in the downtown of Prince Edward Island's capital. The resolution came in light of the discovery that local Indigenous leaders in B.C. believe to be the remains of 215 children on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops. The downtown Charlottetown statue of Canada's first prime minister, which has been defaced several times in the past year, will go into storage and a decision on its future will be made later. His...

A flashing, pink unicorn on a rainbow foundation. This summer, it stands on Gustav Adolf's square and is part of the city's decoration for World Pride.

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A massive new bronze sculpture welcomes visitors to Rockefeller Center in the New York landmark’s first campus-wide show by a single artist. The 25-foot (7.6 m) tall black "Oracle" with a huge head joins murals, flags and videos at the venue, all created by Sanford Biggers, whose artwork also includes music and performance.

Photo: www.facebook.com/Orbán Balázs ------------------------------------------------------------ Yesterday, a rainbow-coloured statue in honour of the Black Lives Matter movement was inaugurated in Budapest. According to the plans, it would have stayed in the ninth district of the Hungarian capital for two weeks. However, the statue could not stand there for as long. It was revealed earlier that a work related to the BLM movement would be exhibited in Budapest. This was opposed by many, including the Our Homeland Movement, who said the statue was “an anti-European, anti-white, anti-heterosexual, and anti-Christian symbol”. However, the statue had been made, and it was inaugurated yesterday. It...

A statue of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was unveiled Friday morning in her native Brooklyn borough of New York City.The unveiling comes during Women's History Month and just days before Ginsburg would have turned 88 on March 15, which Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has declared Justice Ginsburg Day."RBG was clearly a symbol of what's great about this country and how, when we are inclusive, we can stop the level of exclusiveness that is pervasive throughout this country," he said.

A Chinese retailer’s promotion of a Buddha statue crafted in the likeness of former U.S. President Donald Trump has gone viral on Chinese social media platforms, the Chinese state-run Global Times reported Tuesday. “The statue, with Trump’s contemplative face lowered, and both hands resting in its lap, is labeled by the seller on Taobao as ‘Trump, who knows Buddhism better than anyone,'” according to the newspaper. Taobao is a Chinese online shopping site owned by the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. “Make your company great again” A ceramic figurine of former US president Donald Trump as Buddha is trending on China’s...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Dolly Parton is asking Tennessee lawmakers to withdraw a bill that would erect a statue of her on the Capitol grounds in Nashville. “Given all that is going on in the world, I don’t think putting me on a pedestal is appropriate at this time,” Parton said in a statement issued Thursday.

The original clay model used as the mold for the famous, "Il Cristo degli Abissi" statue, can be seen at the Ravenna "National Museum of the Underwater Activities" in Italy. The original statue is in the Mediterranean sea off San Fruttuoso, between Camogli and Portofino on the Italian Riviera. The statue was placed in the water on 22 August 1954 at approximately 17 meters depth, and stands 2.5 meters (8.5 feet) tall. Professor Guido Galletti cast the original from the inspiration of the first Italian to use SCUBA gear, swimmer/diver Duilo Merchant. Galletti wanted a symbol to inspire all who...

A veteran returned a sword he stole from a statue of a Revolutionary War general 40 years ago, telling the head of the Massachusetts town's historical commission that he regretted taking it. Cindy P. Gaylord, the chair of Westfield's Historical Commission, said a man contacted the city hall saying he had the sword stolen from the town's statue of Gen. William Shepard in 1980, the Springfield Republican reported on Sunday. Gaylord agreed to give the man anonymity if he returned the bronze sword and arranged for him and his wife to drop it off at her home, she said.

A statue of Abraham Lincoln with a freed slave appearing to kneel at his feet - optics that drew objections amid a national reckoning with racial injustice - has been removed from its perch in downtown Boston. Workers removed the Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Emancipation Group and the Freedman’s Memorial, early Tuesday from a park just off Boston Common where it had stood since 1879. City officials had agreed in late June to take down the memorial after complaints and a bitter debate over the design. Mayor Marty Walsh acknowledged at the time that the statue made residents...