Opened in 1993 with hopes of rejuvenating one of Tel Aviv’s poorest neighbourhoods, the central bus station is now an eclectic mix of commerce and culture
Continue reading...Category Archives: Culture
Plácido Domingo: US opera houses respond to ‘concerning’ allegations
Domingo, who has been accused of sexual harassment by several women, has seen an invitation rescinded as internal investigations are mounted
The Philadelphia Orchestra rescinded an invitation to opera singer
Plácido Domingo on Tuesday afternoon, and the LA Opera promised an outside investigation, after the Associated Press published a report in which several women accuse him of sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior.
Eight singers and a dancer told the AP they were sexually harassed by the Spanish tenor in incidents that spanned three decades from the late 1980s. The alleged harassment took place at venues including opera companies where the musician held top positions.
Continue reading...Plácido Domingo accused of sexual harassment
Allegations ‘deeply troubling’ – I believed my relationships were consensual, says opera star
The opera singer Plácido Domingo has been accused by several women of sexual harassment.
Eight singers and a dancer said they were sexually harassed by the Spanish tenor in incidents that spanned three decades from the late 1980s, Associated Press reported.
Continue reading...One giant leap for Indian cinema: how Bollywood embraced sci-fi
As the country seeks to establish itself as a space power, audiences are developing an appetite for the extraterrestrial on the big screen
In 2014, India sent the Mars Orbiter Mission into space, and became the first country to send a satellite to orbit the planet at its first attempt – putting its much richer regional rival China in the shade as it became the first Asian nation to get to the red planet. The project was notable for being led by a team of female scientists; as is India’s second lunar probe, Chandrayaan-2 (from the Sanskrit for “moon craft”), which was launched last month and is due to land on the moon in early September. And as the country establishes itself as a space power, Indians have developed an appetite for sci-fi themes in its cinema.
The patriotic outburst that followed the Mars mission has fuelled the latest example of Indian space cinema: Mission Mangal (Sanskrit for Mars), a fictionalised account of the Orbiter Mission. Starring and produced by Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar, it is due for release on 15 August, India’s Independence Day. “I would follow the news about India’s space missions and feel proud of what we were achieving,” says Kumar. “But through Mission Mangal I guess you could say I have an insider’s perspective.”
Continue reading...Joy, despair and determination: photographs from Kibera
Despite its poverty, Kibera is a vibrant place where people survive in testing conditions, both physical and mental. These images by four photographers born and bred there capture the spirit of Africa’s largest slum.
An exhibition, ‘Kibera: Living in the slum’, is on show at the Guardian’s London offices until 31 August
Continue reading...Remembering the Berlin Wall – in pictures
The order for work to start on building the Berlin Wall was issued on 13 August 1961. East German guards sealed the border, preventing an exodus to the west. Barbed wire was gradually replaced with the concrete barrier, which remained until 9 November 1989
Continue reading...‘A brutal dinner’: celebrities talk about meeting Donald Trump
Woody Harrelson is the latest person to share his embarrassing story of meeting the reality TV star before he became president
If you think it’s bad enough sharing a planet with Donald Trump, spare a thought for poor Woody Harrelson. Because according to the man himself, Harrelson once shared a dinner table with the president, and it went just as well as you would expect. In a recent Esquire interview, Harrelson deployed a Trump anecdote for the ages.
In 2002, then Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura invited Harrelson to “a brutal dinner” at Trump Tower, because Trump was trying to convince Ventura to be his 2004 Democratic running mate. Over two and a half hours, Harrelson, Ventura, Trump and his fiancee, Melania Knauss, enjoyed each other’s company. Except Harrelson had a terrible time. Here’s how he described it:
Continue reading...Small is beautiful in Tokyo’s Golden Gai – in pictures
Nearly 300 bars and restaurants are squeezed into an area about the size of half a football pitch in the Golden Gai area of Tokyo. Everything is smaller and narrower in this warren of shacks, a sliver of old Tokyo in a modern metropolis
Continue reading...Behrouz Boochani wins National Biography award – and accepts via WhatsApp from Manus
Judges call Kurdish Iranian writer and refugee’s memoir an ‘astonishing act of witness’
The Kurdish Iranian writer Behrouz Boochani has continued his sweep of the Australian literary prize landscape, winning the $25,000 National Biography award on Monday – yet another award the refugee was unable to accept in person, as he enters his sixth year of detention on Manus Island.
Boochani’s autobiography No Friend but the Mountains tells of his journey from Indonesia to Australia by boat, and his subsequent imprisonment on Manus Island by the Australian government, which continues to refuse him entry.
Continue reading...For one night only: how Edinburgh’s standups spend their day off
For performers, the fringe is a delirium-inducing month of nonstop work. They get just one day off throughout August – so they have to use it wisely…
I love my show and when you have a day off, the next day is a bit lacklustre. But I do need it because I am a queen and I deserve a rest. I’m of the “living your best life” mantra and I don’t just talk it, I walk it. I’ll have a long spa day – massage, mani, pedi, eyebrows – go for the sexiest dinner in this nice hotel on the bridge with all my girls, then get cocktails. I’m single, but I’m like Lady Gaga – she doesn’t sleep with guys when she’s writing her album because men steal her creative energy. But on my day off, I’m allowed.
Continue reading...Recalling the horror of Long Tan: ‘I was too bloody busy to be frightened’
The defining battle of the Vietnam war is now the subject of the film Danger Close. Harry Smith recalls the afternoon that changed his life
If he dwells on it, Lt Col Harry Smith can still see, vividly, the blood on the trees on the enemy’s escape path. There was so much blood. In the days after the three savage hours that was the battle of Long Tan, his soldiers were finding body parts, carnage and corpses spread across the battlefield. But it was that blood, “the blood of all the others that were dragged away, wounded, suffering”, that affects him the most. “That worries me more than a dead body.” In the eerie silence, in the pervasive gloom, among the smell of the dead in the Long Tan rubber plantation, latex ran down trees punctured by bullets and mingled with the blood.
Long Tan had been a battle fought against almost impossible odds. A ferocious battle, a defining action of the Vietnam war. On the afternoon of 18 August 1966, a single infantry company of 108 mostly inexperienced Australian and New Zealand soldiers engaged with a regiment of 2,500 battle-hardened Viet Cong and North Vietnam army troops. Almost surrounded, outnumbered 10 to one, they withstood Viet Cong attacks in cyclonic rain.
Continue reading...Berlin choir accused of gender discrimination by nine-year-old girl
German capital’s oldest musical institution violated constitution by refusing girl’s application, court to hear
A nine-year-old girl is taking Berlin’s oldest boys’ choir to court, claiming the state-run institution’s admissions criteria are gender-biased and violate Germany’s constitution.
Next week, Berlin’s administrative court will hear that the decision of the State and Cathedral Choir Berlin (SDB) to reject the girl after an audition in April this year was discriminatory because it infringed on her right to equal opportunities in state support.
Continue reading...Taylor Swift reveals why she took a stand for LGBTQ rights
Singer says facing her previous lack of advocacy had been ‘kind of devastating’
Taylor Swift says she felt compelled to publicly champion LGBTQ causes in recent months because rights are being “stripped from basically everyone who isn’t a straight white cisgender male” in the US today.
The singer, who has been criticised in the past for not speaking up on political issues, particularly during the 2016 US presidential election campaign, discussed her recent shift to advocacy in a rare interview with Vogue magazine.
Continue reading...Gaza review – heartfelt chronicle of life under political siege
This sombre, angry documentary captures a sense of ordinary life in the strip bordered by Egypt, Israel and the sea
Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell’s heartfelt film about the unending misery of Gaza – now effectively a blockaded strip of land bounded by the Egyptian and Israeli borders and the Mediterranean Sea – has had a complex reception in some quarters since it premiered at Sundance earlier this year. Some have found it manipulative and politically reticent, in that it only fleetingly mentions Hamas, and includes footage of an Israeli bombardment but shows only stone-throwing as the response. There may be something in this. For instance, eyebrows have to be raised at the moment when an immobile child is shown with her eyes closed, we are encouraged to think she is dead but in a later scene she opens her eyes.
Yet the film has real value as a compassionate human document, in showing ordinary people who courageously have to keep going somehow, in the grimmest of conditions, in a world where, as someone puts it, there is a “wall between the people of Gaza and life itself”. A young woman practises the cello, a young man records rap tracks, a theatre director rehearses a performance piece, a fisherman broods over the oppression of his industry – they are not allowed to fish more than three miles out, and the amount of fish that can be caught so close to shore is pitifully meagre. The sea is what the people of Gaza face: the one boundary that does not seem so brutal, something that should conceivably be a source of comfort, but is almost as unforgiving as the land barriers. A sombre, angry film about a people under political siege.
Continue reading...Toni Morrison: farewell to America’s greatest writer – we all owe her so much | Chigozie Obioma
Booker nominated author Chigozie Obioma reflects on losing a ‘literary mother’ and her encouragement for generations of black and African writers to come
It was with a heavy heart that I woke up, like many, to the news of the passing of the great African American writer Toni Morrison. As I have mourned and digested the news, my reaction has slowly gone from shock to dismay, then to a sense of inchoate peace.
Related: Toni Morrison: a life in pictures
Continue reading...Toni Morrison: a life in pictures
With novels including Beloved and The Bluest Eye, the acclaimed author who dramatised the African American experience with fierce passion for five decades, has died aged 88
Turkish government destroys more than 300,000 books
Regime says it is cracking down on anything linked to Fethullah Gülen, the Muslim cleric it blames for 2016’s attempted coup
More than 300,000 books have been removed from Turkish schools and libraries and destroyed since the attempted coup of 2016, according to Turkey’s ministry of education.
Turkey’s education minister Ziya Selçuk announced last week that 301,878 books had been destroyed as the government cracks down on anything linked to Fethullah Gülen, the US-based Muslim cleric who is accused by Turkey of instigating 2016’s failed military coup. Gülen has denied involvement.
Continue reading...Toni Morrison, author and Nobel laureate, dies aged 88
In novels including Beloved and The Bluest Eye, acclaimed author dramatised African-American experience with fierce passion
Toni Morrison, who chronicled the African American experience in fiction over five decades, has died aged 88.
In a statement on Tuesday, her family and publisher Knopf confirmed that the author died in Montefiore Medical Center in New York on Monday night after a short illness.
Continue reading...Big cats and exotic birds: Colombia’s rescued animals – in pictures
Most of the animals at the Santa Cruz Foundation in San Antonio, Colombia, have been rescued from traffickers and circuses. The multimillion-dollar illegal wildlife trade is the fourth-largest in the country after drugs, guns and human trafficking
The South African teenagers using radio to fight gun crime – in pictures
Every week a group of South African teenagers crowd into a studio to play hip-hop and discuss neighbourhood gun crime for their community radio show, Bigger Than Life, on Alex FM. They are determined to help stem the violence that blights their densely populated township of Alexandra in Johannesburg
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