Woman, 38, and man, 37, had been arrested on Wednesday in relation to theft of £76m worth of jewellery in Paris
Two more suspects, a man and a woman arrested this week over the jewel heist at the Louvre, have been charged and remanded in custody, prosecutors have said.
The charges on Saturday brought to four the number of people now charged over the spectacular robbery.
Continue reading...Abdulrahman al-Qaradawi has been imprisoned in the UAE for almost a year for criticising Emirati, Egyptian and Saudi governments
The UN special rapporteur on torture is being urged to investigate Lebanon’s role in the treatment of the Egyptian-Turkish poet and activist Abdulrahman al-Qaradawi, a dissident who has been imprisoned in the United Arab Emirates for more than 10 months over a post he made on social media.
Legal counsel representing Qaradawi filed a complaint to the UN rapporteur on Thursday, asking it to examine the situation.
Continue reading...Regional authority is investing €1.5m in the project but has stipulations about featuring ‘identifiable locations’ on screen and the film premiering at an international film festival
The Madrid regional government is hoping to harness the power of film tourism by investing €1.5m (£1.3m) in a new Woody Allen movie that will be shot in and around the Spanish capital and which will be contractually obliged to feature the word “Madrid” in its title.
Regional authorities are confident the 89-year-old film-maker’s next project could do for Madrid what Roman Holiday did for Rome tourism in the early 1950s, and what Sex and the City and Emily in Paris have more recently done to increase visitor numbers to New York and the French capital.
Continue reading...Grand Egyptian Museum next to pyramids of Giza billed as world’s largest archaeological facility for single civilisation
A vast $1bn museum billed as the world’s largest archaeological facility dedicated to a single civilisation will open outside Cairo on Saturday, after countless delays over the course of its two-decade construction.
The Grand Egyptian Museum, located a mile away from the pyramids of Giza, covers an area of 470,000 sq metres. The complex was announced in 1992 but it was not until 2005 that construction began. Some areas of the museum opened in a soft launch in 2024.
Continue reading...Miller urged firings of those who had investigated president to satisfy Trump’s desire for revenge, Injustice authors write
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, was the driving force behind a purge of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents who had investigated Donald Trump, a new book reveals.
Miller trampled the independence of the FBI by demanding firings that would satisfy the US president’s desire for retribution, journalists Carol Leonnig and Aaron Davis write in Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department.
Continue reading...Public prosecutor says arrests were made in and around Paris but suspects ‘did not help us find the stolen goods’
Five new suspects have been arrested in connection with the Louvre robbery in Paris, in which thieves stole crown jewels worth an estimated €88m (£76m), the city’s public prosecutor has said, but the gems remain missing.
Laure Beccuau told RTL radio on Thursday the arrests had been made on Wednesday night in the French capital and the surrounding area, particularly the neighbouring Seine-Saint-Denis department. But they “did not help us find the stolen goods”, she added.
Continue reading...Soyinka, 91, who recently compared US president to Idi Amin, says ‘I have no visa – I am banned’
The Trump administration has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been critical of Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka revealed on Tuesday.
“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a news conference.
Continue reading...Tilda Swinton’s performance marks 30 years since audiences last saw her tread the boards, meanwhile Gary Oldman will be in Krapp’s Last Tape
Tilda Swinton will return to the stage for the first time in more than 30 years as part of the Royal Court’s 70th anniversary programme in a reprisal of her 1988 one-woman performance in Manfred Karge’s Man to Man.
Swinton’s return to the role, in which she plays a widow who takes on the identity of her deceased husband, is one of two star turns in David Byrne’s third season as artistic director, which will also feature Gary Oldman in another revival: Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape that was first performed in 1958.
Continue reading...Noah Oppenheim responded to complaints from the Pentagon over the accuracy of the film’s depiction of the US’s defence systems
Warning: contains a spoiler for the plot of House of Dynamite
Noah Oppenheim, the writer of Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear-missile thriller House of Dynamite has responded to complaints from the Pentagon over the accuracy of its depiction of the US’s defence systems, saying he “respectfully disagree[s]”.
In an internal memo dated 16 October obtained by Bloomberg, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) said: “The fictional interceptors in the movie miss their target and we understand this is intended to be a compelling part of the drama intended for the entertainment of the audience,” but results from real-world testing “tell a vastly different story.”
Continue reading...Actor who also starred in Midsommar and became a musician was nicknamed ‘the most beautiful boy in the world’ – a title he struggled with all his life
Björn Andrésen, the Swedish actor best known for his breakout role in the 1971 film Death in Venice, has died aged 70.
At 15, Andrésen was cast in Italian director Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice, based on Thomas Mann’s novella, in which he played Tadzio, a beautiful boy with whom an older man, played by Dirk Bogarde, becomes obsessed.
Continue reading...Singer says he will not perform in Israel while Benjamin Netanyahu remains in power, eight years after Radiohead defied criticism to perform in Tel Aviv
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has said he would not now perform in Israel, eight years after the band defied pro-Palestinian activists to play a show in Tel Aviv.
“Absolutely not. I wouldn’t want to be 5,000 miles anywhere near the Netanyahu regime,” he told the Sunday Times magazine, referring to prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
Continue reading...Prime minister praises Scottish band Orange Juice and shares details about his family life in Radio 3 interview
Keir Starmer has said he is a fan of the Scottish post-punk band Orange Juice and northern soul, in a deep dive of his musical tastes and personal life.
On BBC Radio 3’s Private Passions, Starmer chose a selection of his favourite music including works by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Elgar, and reflected on his own musical journey, which included learning to play violin alongside Norman Cook, AKA Fatboy Slim, at school.
Continue reading...Lockhart started out on stage at age eight and appeared in scores of television series and feature films
June Lockhart, the popular actor known for her work in film and television, has passed away at the age of 100.
She died on Thursday night of natural causes, with daughter June Elizabeth and granddaughter Christianna by her side, according to People.
Continue reading...Film and TV stars are selling tickets, but director says reliance on famous names is ‘killing audiences’ intellects’
From Ncuti Gatwa in Born With Teeth to Alicia Vikander in The Lady From the Sea and Susan Sarandon in Mary Page Marlowe, there is no shortage of starry celebrities being cast for the West End right now.
It is a phenomenon happening in subsidised theatre too: Indhu Rubasingham’s inaugural season at the National Theatre features the likes of screen favourites Paul Mescal and Nicola Coughlan.
Continue reading...Footage showing two men appears to have been filmed from nearby window in museum
The slow-motion getaway of two thieves from the Louvre clutching €88m (£76m) of France’s crown jewels was captured on video, it has emerged – the latest dramatic twist to the country’s most spectacular heist in decades.
The 36-second clip, which Le Parisien newspaper said it had verified, shows two men dressed in black, one wearing a yellow hi-vis vest and the other a motorcycle helmet, slowly descending on a furniture lift from the museum’s Apollo gallery.
Continue reading...The hit Scottish comedy about suburban neighbours will move from screen to stage next year at Glasgow’s Hydro
Two Doors Down, the BBC comedy series about a suburban Scottish couple with constantly knocking neighbours, is to be brought to the stage.
Unusually, it will make that journey with the full cast from the hit TV show intact. Alex Norton and Arabella Weir will reprise their roles as Eric and Beth, whose house on Latimer Crescent is consistently besieged by the street’s residents, usually expecting a drink or two. Elaine C Smith will return as the oversharing Christine, and Doon Mackichan and Jonathan Watson are reuniting as a flashy couple, with an unhealthy interest in everyone’s intimate business. The younger couple on the street will again be played by Graeme Stevely and Joy McAvoy, while Jamie Quinn will be back as Eric and Beth’s son, Ian, with standup Kieran Hodgson once more playing his partner, Gordon.
Continue reading...Police continue to search for the criminal gang behind the brazen robbery targeting France’s crown jewels
The financial loss from France’s most dramatic heist in decades has been put at nearly €90m as the head of the Louvre prepared to face difficult questions over how thieves were able to steal priceless jewellery in broad daylight.
As police continued to search for the criminal gang behind the brazen robbery on Sunday, the Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told the broadcaster RTL that the museum’s curator had estimated the losses at about €88m (£76m).
Continue reading...Andrew hid behind Balmoral’s ‘guarded gates’ to escape court papers, accuser says in memoir Nobody’s Girl
Prince Andrew’s team tried to hire “internet trolls to hassle” his accuser, Virginia Giuffre, while he hid behind the “well-guarded gates” of Balmoral Castle to avoid being served court papers, according to allegations in her posthumous memoir.
Giuffre wrote of the 2022 confidential settlement of her sexual abuse civil claim against the royal, widely rumoured to be $12m (£9m), that her lawyers “were going to ask for the moon” and her team had agreed it “had to be more than mere money”.
Continue reading...Justice minister says ‘we have failed’ after thieves take seven minutes to steal priceless jewels from museum
The French government is under increasing pressure over museum security as police continued to search for thieves who took seven minutes to steal priceless jewels from the Louvre, the world’s most visited museum.
“What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of Paris, get people up it in several minutes to grab priceless jewels, and give France a terrible image,” the justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, told France Inter radio on Monday.
Continue reading...Director general says it is inappropriate for a journalist who may be covering that issue ‘to be campaigning in that way’
BBC journalists cannot wear T-shirts in the newsroom supporting the anti-racist movement Black Lives Matter, the corporation’s director general Tim Davie has said.
Davie said the BBC stood against racism but it was “not appropriate for a journalist who may be covering that issue to be campaigning in that way.
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