Party set to end 27 years of leftist rule and take its second regional presidency in elections
A candidate for the far-right Brothers of Italy looks set to end 27 years of leftwing rule in the eastern Marche region, and take the party’s second regional presidency.
The centre-left is likely to retain its stronghold of Tuscany, however, according to exit polls for key Italian regional elections.
Continue reading...The César-winning actor appeared in films by François Truffaut and Alain Resnais, and played religious figures in Of Gods and Men and The Name of the Rose
Michael Lonsdale, the French-British actor whose best known role was the villain Drax in Moonraker but who also appeared in a string of films by auteur directors such as François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette and Alain Resnais, has died aged 89. Lonsdale’s agent, Olivier Loiseau, confirmed to Agence France-Presse that the actor had died at his home in Paris.
Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson said in a statement: “He was an extraordinarily talented actor and a very dear friend. Our thoughts are with his family and friends at this sad time.”
Continue reading...Russian opposition leader demands in blogpost clothes be returned as evidence
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has said in his first blogpost since emerging from a coma that western laboratories had found traces of novichok in and on his body and demanded that Moscow return his clothes.
Navalny, who is recovering in Berlin’s Charité hospital, fell critically ill during a flight from Siberia to Moscow and spent two days in hospital in Russia before being airlifted to Germany.
Continue reading...Audience members clapped and shouted in protest over a lack of social distancing measures in Madrid on Sunday night causing an opera to be pulled at the last minute.
A performance of Verdi’s A Masked Ball at the Teatro Real was abandoned after two failed attempts to begin. The decision was made to bring down the curtain at about 9.10pm.
One member of the audience said there were rows of more than a dozen people without any gaps between them. In a statement, theatre management said the house had been operating at just 51.5% of its total capacity
Spectators at Teatro Real say they were crammed into seats without space between them
A performance of Verdi’s A Masked Ball was abandoned in Madrid on Sunday night after audience members protested over the lack of social distancing measures – especially for those in cheaper seats.
One member of the audience at the Teatro Real opera house said there were rows of more than a dozen people without any gaps between them.
Continue reading...Israeli protesters return despite lockdown; Australian state of Victoria reports fewest infections in three months; New Zealand eases restrictions
The US is nearing the stark milestone of 200,000 deaths, nine months after the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, as cases in the UK rose to a four-month high and Europe continued to see rising infections.
The number of deaths in the US, the highest in the world, stood at 199,509 on the Johns Hopkins University tracker on Monday morning, roughly a fifth of the global total. Nearly 6.8m of the world’s 30.1m infections are in the US.
Continue reading...Protesters call for regional president who blamed ‘way of life of immigrants’ for rise to resign
By midday on Sunday, the chants of “Unity!” and “Healthcare!” that echoed around a busy crossroads in north-east Madrid had given rise to a more specific demand: “Ayuso resign!”
On Friday, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the president of the Madrid region, announced that 850,000 people – many of them living in some of the poorest parts of the city and surrounding area – would be placed in partial lockdown from Monday in an attempt to arrest the second wave of the virus.
Continue reading...In Almería’s vast farms, migrants pick food destined for UK supermarkets. But these ‘essential workers’ live in shantytowns and lack PPE as Covid cases soar
Photographs and drone footage by Ofelia de Pablo and Javier Zurita
It is the end of another day for Hassan, a migrant worker from Morocco who has spent the past 12 hours under a sweltering late summer sun harvesting vegetables in one of the vast greenhouses of Almería, southern Spain.
The vegetables he has dug from the red dirt are destined for dinner plates all over Europe. UK supermarkets including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Lidl and Aldi all source fruit and vegetables from Almería. The tens of thousands of migrant workers working in the province are vital to the Spanish economy and pan-European food supply chains. Throughout the pandemic, they have held essential worker status, labouring in the fields while millions across the world sheltered inside.
Continue reading...India now has 5.4m cases; China fears winter infections; NZ records new cases
Covid-19 has spread around the planet, sending billions of people into lockdown as health services struggle to cope, Pablo Gutiérrez and Seán Clarke write. Find out where the virus has spread, and where it has been most deadly:
A clown juggled and acrobats launched themselves through the air above a stage in an open field in Seoul at the weekend as the audience watched from the safety of their cars, cocooned from the risk of coronavirus.
The annual circus – usually held in May – was pushed back twice this year because of the virus until organisers turned it into a drive-in event, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports. Cho Beong-hee, the manager of the Seoul Street Art Creation Centre, said:
The performing arts are very important even during a pandemic. So we came up with different ideas in trying to make this event happen and the drive-in option was chosen as it was deemed the safest idea.
I think watching performances in cars is great. I think it can be done in the future, with other performances like musicals.
Continue reading...Lockdowns brought temporary relief to some but, everywhere, test and trace is key
The first wave of coronavirus swept through a world unprepared. Authorities struggled to test for the disease, and didn’t know how to slow the spread of Covid-19.
Lockdowns brought the virus under temporary control in some places, including the UK, buying a window for the revival of education and the economy, and time to prepare for future waves that epidemiologists said were almost inevitable.
Continue reading...Attacks against the Muslim minority in Myanmar have gone unchecked as regional players focus on their own interests
The persecution, ethnic cleansing, and attempted genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine state is an affront to the rule of law, a well-documented atrocity and, according to a top international lawyer, a moral stain on “our collective conscience and humanity”. So why are the killings and other horrors continuing while known perpetrators go unpunished?
It’s a question with several possible answers. Maybe poor, isolated Myanmar, formerly Burma, is not important enough a state to warrant sustained international attention. Perhaps, in the western subconscious, the lives of a largely unseen, unknown, brown-skinned Muslim minority do not matter so much at a time of multiple racial, ethnic and refugee crises.
Continue reading...Huge clan is believed to have originated from a pair of cats taken in three years ago
Animal charities in southern Spain were urgently seeking homes for 110 cats on Saturday after they and their owner were evicted from a flat in the Valencia region.
Spama Safor, an animal shelter in the south-eastern seaside town of Gandia, had initially thought there were only 96 cats in the flat. But by Saturday evening, the charity said it had removed a total of 110 cats and urgently needed help to shelter them “at least until they are vaccinated or sterilised”.
Continue reading...Two dead, one missing and nearly a thousand rescued as floods damage Thessaly
After pounding parts of western and central Greece meteorologists have predicted a rare Mediterranean hurricane is headed south towards the island of Crete.
Authorities struggling to contain the impact of the cyclone – a so-called medicane, named Ianos – said two people had died and at least one was missing as torrential rain and gale-force winds wielded a trail of destruction.
Continue reading...Protesters dragged into police vans at rally to demand removal of Alexander Lukashenko
Riot police detained hundreds of women as opposition protesters marched through the Belarusian capital, Minsk, demanding an end to President Alexander Lukashenko’s rule.
About 2,000 women took part in the “Sparkly March”, wearing shiny accessories and carrying the red-and-white flags of the protest movement.
Continue reading...Footage shows woman tossing liquid in white cup over tánaiste’s face in Merrion Park
A woman wearing a face mask was filmed throwing a drink over Leo Varadkar as he gave an interview in Dublin.
Footage shared on social media shows the woman, who was carrying a skateboard, walking over to where the tánaiste and a camera crew were standing in Merrion Park at about 3pm on Friday.
Continue reading...Russian opposition leader describes ‘clear path’ to recovery and praises Berlin doctors
The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been pictured walking down stairs, five days after a Berlin hospital said he had been taken off a ventilator and could breathe independently.
Navalny, the leading opponent of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, fell ill in Siberia last month and was airlifted to Berlin. Germany said laboratory tests in three countries determined he was poisoned with a novichok nerve agent, and western governments have demanded an explanation from Russia.
Continue reading...Covid has forced many people out of workplaces. Some have saved money by moving overseas
When the coronavirus lockdown forced Mason Palmer, 26, to start working from home, the digital content creator had a rethink about where that home was and in July he moved from Bristol to Milan. “I’ve always loved travelling to Italy,” he says. “I was always going over there; it was like an expensive hobby.”
He did not expect his boss to necessarily be on board with his plans and suggested that he move to working for the company, Working Word, on a freelance basis. But the firm was open to the idea and his boss kept him on staff. “Now I’m like the unofficial Milan branch,” he laughs.
Continue reading...Brad Downey says first lady shows contradiction between US’s position on race in 2020
The American artist behind a controversial statue of the US First Lady Melania Trump, unveiled this week in bronze in her native Slovenia, has defended the work as a representation of the contradictions of her husband’s presidency.
Brad Downey, a conceptual artist from Kentucky based in Berlin, said the statue that replaced an earlier wooden carving destroyed in an arson attack in July, was motivated by his “frustrations with the policies of my birth country.”
Continue reading...Dozens of people made a perilous jump from the Proactiva Open Arms in an attempt to reach Sicily, in the largest known incident of its kind this year.
The Spanish NGO said 124 of the 273 people on the boat jumped into the water between Thursday and Friday in an attempt to swim to Palermo's port.
They were rescued by the Italian coastguard and brought to safety after Proactiva's crew waited 10 days for authorisation to disembark their passengers
Continue reading...Italian coastguard rescues 124 people, who had been waiting 10 days to disembark
Dozens of people have jumped from an NGO migrant rescue ship in an attempt to reach Sicily, after the crew waited 10 days for authorisation to disembark their passengers.
The Spanish NGO Open Arms said 124 of the 273 refugees and migrants on its Proactiva Open Arms boat, leaped into the water during the largest-known incident of its kind.
Continue reading...