The president of Madrid’s regional government has resigned after video footage emerged of her apparently being caught stealing two tubs of face cream seven years ago. Cristina Cifuentes, one of the most high-profile figures in the conservative People’s party (PP) led by the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, had been under pressure to quit over allegations that she faked her master’s degree.

She said on Wednesday she was stepping down to spare her colleagues and her family any further embarrassment and discomfort. Cifuentes had managed to cling on for weeks and had attempted to shift responsibility for the degree on to the university that awarded it to her, but the release of the video to the news site OKdiario appears to have sealed her fate. Speaking at a hastily convened press conference, Cifuentes said the footage showed nothing more than an “involuntary mistake” she had made in 2011. She said she had become the subject of a very public and very personal “lynching” over recent days and weeks.(theguardian)…[+]

A Canadian police officer is being hailed for the restraint and professionalism he showed in arresting the suspect in the Toronto van attack without firing a single shot.

On Monday afternoon, a white van ploughed into pedestrians along one of Toronto’s busiest streets, killing 10 people and injuring more than a dozen others in what one official described as “pure carnage.” Soon after, the alleged driver of the van was arrested by a lone police officer in an incident lasting less than a minute and caught on video by bystanders. “Get down,” the officer shouts.“Kill me,” the man tells the police officer. “I have a gun in my pocket.”

The officer’s voice remains calm as he again orders the man to get down, warning that he will shoot if the man does not cooperate. “Shoot me in the head,” the suspect replies. Weapon drawn, the officer advances towards the suspect. The suspect steps backwards, dropping what he was holding and raising his hands in the air. The officer proceeded to single-handedly arrest the suspect. The arrest came as police forces across North America – including in Toronto – have been criticised for using excessive force to subdue mentally ill or unarmed suspects. Police identified Alek Minassian, a 25-year-old from the nearby town of Richmond Hill, as the man who had been arrested. He is expected to appear in court on Tuesday.(theguardian)…[+]

A Peruvian judge has ordered the arrests of two men accused of lynching a Canadian man last week in a remote Amazonian village. The Canadian, 41-year-old Sebastian Woodroffe, had been accused by villagers of murdering an indigenous medicine woman in the region of Ucayali and was killed in revenge by a mob, according to Peru’s interior ministry.

A minute-and-a-half-long mobile phone recording of the lynching, which was posted on Facebook, showed two men dragging Woodroffe by a noose around his neck as others looked on. His body was later found buried nearby. Prosecutors have identified the two men and are working to determine who else took part in the lynching, according to the judicial ruling that ordered their arrests.Less is known about the killing of Olivia Arevalo, 81, a revered shaman of the Shipibo-Conibo tribe who was shot dead near her home on Thursday.

Ricardo Jimenez, the head of a group of prosecutors in Ucayali, said no one witnessed Arevalo’s shooting, the murder weapon has not been found and a test for gunshot residue on Woodroffe’s body was expected to take 15 to 20 days. Woodroffe had been Arevalo’s patient and her family claims he killed her because she refused to conduct a ritual in which the hallucinogenic Amazonian plant brew ayahuasca is used for healing and spiritual growth, said Jimenez.(theguardian)…[+]

Hillary Clinton unleashed a “fuck-laced fusillade” on aides in a 2016 debate prep session, according to a new book about the presidential campaign by New York Times journalist Amy Chozick.

The candidate was squirming with frustration over lingering concerns about her “authenticity” and racked with loathing for Donald Trump she was determined not to vent in public. “Aides understood that in order to keep it all together onstage, Hillary sometimes needed to unleash on them in private,” Chozick writes in Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns and One Intact Glass Ceiling. “‘You want authentic, here it is!’ she’d yelled in one prep session, followed by a fuck-laced fusillade about what a ‘disgusting’ human being Trump was and how he didn’t deserve to even be in the arena.”

Rife with such anecdotes, Chozick’s book, a copy of which the Guardian obtained from a bookseller in New York, is released on Tuesday. It comes hard on the heels of the current politics blockbuster, A Higher Loyalty by James Comey. The former FBI director devotes a chapter of his book to his handling of the Clinton emails investigation, which the candidate and her team still blame for her loss. Chozick captures the reaction in the campaign’s Brooklyn headquarters to what they saw as Comey’s reckless and misguided behavior.(theguardian)…[+]