In a statement on Wednesday, Brazil condemned what it said was a  “disproportionate use of force” by Israel in its Gaza Strip offensive by pulling out its ambassador from Tel Aviv for “consultation.” The country is the second country to recall its ambassador from Israel; Ecuador did so earlier in the week. At first, the official reaction from Israel appeared sanguine. “Brazil is a friend, but we think its position is not balanced,” Israel’s general consul in São Paulo, Yoel Barnea, said according to the Wall Street Journal, adding that Israel should have a right to defend itself from the thousands of missiles being fired at it by Hamas and other Palestinian groups.

Amid the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, the West Bank has risen. Tens of thousands of Palestinians marched with President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement from the West Bank city of Ramallah toward Jerusalem to protest Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza, which has claimed the lives of nearly 800 Palestinians, many of them civilians. The protest appears to be the largest mass demonstration since the 1980s. The uprising promises to be different from previous intifadas, partly because it comes in the wake of the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street and other mass pro...

The first archive dedicated to the culture and experiences of black people in Britain opened on Thursday, with the aim of shining a light on a long overlooked history. The o7-million ($11.9-million, 8.8-million euro) Black Cultural Archives houses books, diaries, newspapers, photographs and artefacts dating back almost 2,000 years, as well as an exhibition space and learning tools for schools. It is the culmination of three decades of campaigning and fundraising, and those behind the project hope it will increase awareness of the long history of people of African and Caribbean roots in Britain. “It’s very much a hidden history,” Paul Reid, the director of the archives, told AFP at a launch event filled with performances of music, poetry and dance.