Hanna Kozlowska

This post has been updated with comments from the artist.

A group of demonstrators greeted US president Barack Obama with Confederate flags yesterday as he arrived for a two-day trip to Oklahoma, where he is due to visit a federal prison as part of a larger effort to push for criminal justice reform.

After a day of strikes and protests in Athens, Greek lawmakers approved a set of unpopular austerity measures insisted upon by the country’s creditors. The tax hikes and spending cuts were required by lenders as a precondition for opening talks on a new multi-year bailout package worth up to €86 billion ($94 billion).

Violent clashes broke out at an Athens rally protesting austerity measures imposed by Greece’s European creditors.

Car service app Uber has tentatively settled a lawsuit with a San Francisco family whose 6-year-old daughter was killed in an accident involving an Uber driver, Reuters reports.

The Mexican government released CCTV footage of the drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman escaping his prison cell into a long underground tunnel that led him to freedom.

As many as 100 bodies have washed ashore in Libya, 10km (6 miles) miles from Tripoli, according to the Malta-based non-profit The Migrant Report. A local official told the organization that the bodies, found in the sea and on the shore, are believed to be migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, victims of a shipwreck off the city of Tajoura, a transit point for migrants on their way to Europe.

US president Barack Obama announced that he commuted 46 sentences for non-violent federal drug offenders, as part of the administration’s larger push to reduce the prison population and alleviate the effects of past harsh sentencing laws.

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, Mexico’s most notorious gangster and head of one of the world’s most powerful drug cartels, escaped Saturday night from a maximum security prison, just 17 months after he was captured following a 13-year manhunt.

Debates about the crisis in the American criminal justice system—the over-incarceration, the “warehousing” of the mentally ill, the harsh juvenile sentencing—tend to leave out perhaps the most vulnerable group within its confines: girls, and particularly girls of color.

Pope Francis is not known for mincing his words, but he truly unleashed his wrath against capitalism last night during an address to grassroots organizers in Bolivia, as part of his South American tour:

The Syrian conflict is now officially the world’s worst refugee crisis in 25 years, with the number of refugees surpassing 4 million, according to new figures from the United Nations. An additional 7.6 million people have been displaced within Syria by the chaotic civil war, which is now in its fifth year.

The South Carolina House of Representatives voted last night (July 8) to take the Confederate flag down from state grounds.

World poverty is on the decline, with less global hunger and more access to education and healthcare, the United Nations trumpted in a new report on its Millennium Development Goals. But progress on the targets established in 2000 is very slow for women, and especially those in developing regions.

This story is developing and will be updated with new information as it becomes available.

The UK-based bank HSBC fired an undisclosed number of its employees for staging a mock ISIL execution during a team-building exercise in Birmingham, England, that began at a go-cart track.

Misty Copeland, named as the first black principal ballerina at the prestigious American Ballet Theatre last week, is taking a side trip to Broadway, where she will star in the classic musical “On the Town.”

Among the victims in Chicago this July 4 weekend: 7-year-old Amari Brown, an accidental victim of a bullet that was likely meant for his father. At least 47 other people were wounded in shootings, which will do little to help Chicago’s reputation as a gun crime hotspot.

Militant group Boko Haram may have killed as many as 97 people in their latest attack, according to Associated Press and Reuters sources. The attack on the town of Kukawa in northeastern Nigeria last night targeted several mosques, and came when residents were praying before breaking fast for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

A report of a gunshots this morning in Washington DC’s Navy Yard, the location of a deadly shooting in 2013, put the US capital on high alert for what turned out to be a false alarm—called in by an employee who mistook a loud noise for gunfire.

Saudi investor Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal is donating his entire $32 billion fortune to charity, as the self-described “Buffett of Arabia” follows in Warren Buffett’s footsteps when it comes to all-in charitable giving.

What to watch for today

President Obama announced that the United States and Cuba will open embassies in their respective countries later this month in a historic step to restore relations between the two countries after 54 years.

The migrant crisis in Europe has reached a dire new milestone: in the first six months of 2015, 137,000 people crossed the Mediterranean searching for refuge from war, persecution and poverty, according to a new United Nations report—that’s an astounding 83% increase from the same period last year.