Man, 37, said to be killed by falling decor in set change during Rimsky-Korsakov opera
A performer at Moscow’s renowned Bolshoi theatre was killed on Saturday in an accident on stage during an opera, the theatre said.
The Bolshoi, one of Russia’s most prestigious theatres, said the incident occurred during a set change in Sadko, an opera by Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Continue reading...Coalition partner, the Green party, demanded Kurz go after prosecutors announced investigation
The Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, said on Saturday that he plans to step down in an effort to defuse a government crisis triggered by prosecutors’ announcement that he is a target of a corruption investigation.
Kurz, 35, said he has proposed that the foreign minister, Alexander Schallenberg, be his replacement. Kurz himself plans to become the head of his Austrian People’s party’s parliamentary group.
Continue reading...The prime minister has enjoyed huge support during the pandemic – but the country’s new course may force unpopular trade-offs
This week, New Zealand’s locked-down cities woke to a brave new world of lifted restrictions: state-sanctioned picnics in parks, the prospect of reopening schools, a chance to reunite with friends and family. Infusing the visions of grass-stained blankets and beachside beers, however, is a strong dose of Covid anxiety. Cases continue to circulate in the community, and the country’s long-held commitment to elimination is being been cast off.
As New Zealand steps into the unknown with its Covid approach, so does its prime minister, Jacinda Ardern. Having brought the country through the pandemic largely unscathed so far, she was richly rewarded with political popularity and trust. Now the prime minister faces the difficult task of guiding it through a new era of Covid suppression – and it could be the most significant political challenge she has faced yet.
Continue reading...In 1940, thousands of the dictator’s opponents were summarily shot and thrown into mass graves. Now these are being opened
Trowel-heap by trowel-heap, brushstroke by brushstroke, a skull rises from a pillow of ochre earth. Its empty eye sockets stare up at the October sky and its jaw gapes, as if still screaming, gasping for air or remembering what happened on the other side of this bullet-bitten cemetery wall a year after the Spanish civil war had ended.
Between 16 March and 3 May 1940, 26 Republican soldiers, workers, communists and trade unionists were summarily tried and shot dead in the central Spanish city of Guadalajara.
Continue reading...Brazil’s death toll passes 600,000; study finds cases of anxiety and depression increased dramatically in 2020
Russia reported 968 coronavirus-related deaths on Saturday, its highest single-day death toll since the start of the pandemic.
There were 29,362 new cases recorded in the last 24 hours, the government coronavirus task force said.
Singapore’s transport minister has said the country will allow quarantine-free entry to vaccinated travellers from Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, Canada and the US.
Continue reading...Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, sought to fight his way out of a corner on Friday by releasing an angry letter in which he blamed Democrats for the impasse over the debt ceiling he broke by ending a refusal to co-operate he had said was absolute.
In the letter to Joe Biden, McConnell complained about a speech in which the Democratic majority leader, Chuck Schumer, attacked Republicans for their behaviour.
Continue reading...First president after 1979 Islamic revolution clashed with clerics and fled to exile in France a year later
Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who became Iran’s first president after the 1979 Islamic revolution before fleeing into exile in France, died on Saturday aged 88.
He died at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris following a long illness, his wife and children said on Bani-Sadr’s official website.
Continue reading...When the state fell, Ypi went from party Pioneer to traitor - in this extract from her acclaimed memoir she reveals the trauma of discovering the truth about her family and her country
• Read an interview with Lea Ypi
Every year on 1 May, portraits of Stalin were carried by the workers through the streets of Tirana to celebrate socialism and the advance towards communism. On Workers’ Day, TV programmes started earlier: you could follow the parade, then watch a puppet show, then a children’s film, then head out for a walk wearing new clothes, buy ice-cream and, finally, have a picture taken by the only photographer in town, who usually stood by the fountain near the Palace of Culture.
The first of May 1990, the last May Day we ever celebrated, was the happiest. Or perhaps it just seems that way. Objectively, it could not have been the happiest. The queues for basic necessities were getting longer and the shelves in the shops looked increasingly empty. But I did not mind. Now that I was growing up I was no longer fussy about eating cheap feta cheese or old jam rather than honey. “First comes morality, then comes food,” my grandmother cheerfully said, and I had learned to agree.
Continue reading...A sandstorm made by powerful winds whipping up dust from the ground has engulfed Barretos and surrounding towns north of the city of São Paulo. The storms were triggered by the worst drought to hit Brazil in nine decades, which depleted hydroelectric reservoirs, forcing the grid operator to fire up more expensive thermoelectric plants and the government to implement a 'water scarcity' power rate.
Continue reading...The Chinese president, Xi Jinping, said on Saturday that reunification with Taiwan must happen and that it would happen peacefully, despite a week of tensions. Xi spoke at an official celebration in Beijing's Great Hall of the People that focused largely on the ruling Communist party continuing to lead China as the country rises in power and influence
Continue reading...Press groups and rights activists hail peace prize won by vocal critic of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte
Veteran Philippine journalist Maria Ressa has said her Nobel peace prize was for “all journalists around the world” as she vowed to continue her battle for press freedom.
Ressa, co-founder of news website Rappler, and Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov were awarded the prize on Friday for their efforts to “safeguard freedom of expression”.
Continue reading...Thin characterisation and a superficial critique of wealth inequality post-apartheid keep Uga Carlini’s fiction in first gear
The colourful opening of Uga Carlini’s Angeliena suggests a giddy ride awaits: the camera follows a suitcase plastered with travel stickers moving along a conveyor belt at an airport. But such vibrant detail only points up the film’s lack of emotional substance. A parking attendant for a posh hospital in South Africa, Angeliena (Euodia Samson) dreams of travelling the world, she adorns her little shack with tourist posters from faraway lands. At work, Angeliena brings a glow to the austere parking lot, pinning red roses that she grows herself to the windscreen wipers of fancy SUVs.
Such sweet-natured actions are presumably intended to endear Angeliena to us, yet reduce her to a unidimensional worker with a heart of gold. The thinness of the characterisation is made more pronounced by the cartoonishly evil Dr Mitchell (Colin Moss), the hospital owner and Angeliena’s antagonist, a spewer of Trumpian one-liners. Ludicrously, the film takes a tone-deaf turn when Angeliena is revealed to be suffering from an unnamed muscular atrophy that motivates her to finally embark on her world trip. Out of the blue, she develops facial tics. The only affecting sequences are the few-and-far-between gatherings between Angeliena and her eccentric female friends.
Continue reading...Focus of talks in Qatar will be allowing foreigners and at-risk Afghans to leave Afghanistan, says US official
US officials will meet senior Taliban figures this weekend for talks aimed at easing the evacuation of foreign citizens and at-risk Afghans from Afghanistan, a US official has said.
The focus of talks on Saturday and Sunday in Doha, Qatar, would be holding Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders to commitments that they would allow Americans and other foreign nationals to leave, along with Afghans who once worked for the US military or government and other Afghan allies, the official said.
Continue reading...A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Kenya to France
Continue reading...Estimated 76m extra cases of anxiety and 53m extra cases of depression during pandemic, say researchers
Cases of anxiety and depression around the world increased dramatically in 2020, researchers have found, with an estimated 76m extra cases of anxiety and 53m extra cases of major depressive disorder than would have been expected had Covid not struck.
The study is the latest to suggest the pandemic has taken a serious toll on mental health, and that women and young people are more likely to be affected than men or older people.
Continue reading...Police have been investigating possible cases of ‘Havana Syndrome’ associated with the diplomatic mission since August
German police are investigating an “alleged sonic weapon attack” against staff of the US embassy in Berlin, in the latest in a growing number of incidents of “Havana syndrome” around the world.
The police statement, which said the investigation had been under way since August, was issued on Friday in response to a report in Der Spiegel, which said the inquiry into at least two cases had been opened on the basis of evidence handed over by the US embassy.
Continue reading...Discovery is one of biggest of US-bound migrants, with 90% Guatemalans and nearly 200 unaccompanied minors
Police in northern Mexico have discovered more than 600 Central American migrants hiding in three long cargo trucks headed to the United States, in one of the biggest roundups of US-bound migrants by Mexican authorities in years.
Video released by police showed officers prying off a lock from a truck’s rear door late on Thursday, and opening it to find migrants in heavy coats and hoods huddled close together on the floor, nearly all of them wearing face masks.
Continue reading...Saud al-Qahtani, aide to Mohammed bin Salman, hailed as patriot on pro-government social media
Three years after the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi royal court adviser accused of directing the murder is being quietly reintroduced by pro-government influencers as a patriotic figure who has served his country well.
Social media accounts that back the Saudi leadership have in recent months been posting tributes to Saud al-Qahtani, a chief aide to crown prince and Saudi Arabia’s effective leader, Mohammed bin Salman, in a move that is seen as marking his gradual return to the seat of Saudi power. Qahtani vanished from public view in the aftermath of the gruesome killing in Istanbul that shocked the world and almost derailed his boss’s path to the throne.
Continue reading...Cuthbert Mutukwa fears disastrous consequences for home country if UK cuts go ahead as it nears ‘mine-free’ status
A Zimbabwean man who helped clear hundreds of landmines from the Falkland Islands has urged Britain not to go ahead with cuts that would see the government pull funding from his home country just as it nears “mine-free” status.
Cuthbert Mutukwa, 42, left his family in Zimbabwe to work for two years de-mining the Falkland Islands, the British overseas territory that was peppered with about 13,000 mines by Argentinian forces during the 1982 war.
Continue reading...Steve Bannon has informed the House committee investigating the 6 January attack on the US Capitol that he will not be cooperating with their subpoena to provide related documents.
This comes after Politico reported yesterday that Donald Trump has directed Bannon and three other former aides - former social media czar Dan Scavino, former defense department official Kash Patel and former chief of staff Mark Meadows - to ignore the subpoena, likely because he will attempt to block their testimony in court.
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