With 26,700 artworks, this £235m tilting tower is a mighty tribute to the tormented Norwegian artistHow fitting that a building dedicated to the life and work of Edvard Munch may make you want to scream.The £235m mega museum of the tormented Norwegian artist stands as an ominous grey tower on the Oslo waterfront, lurching out at the top like a military lookout post, keeping watch over the fjord. It is a location scout’s dream for the ultimate villain’s headquarters, an almost comically menacing structure, bent over the pristine white iceberg of the city’s beloved opera house with a thuggish hunch. It may seem like an apt container for the tortured soul of Munch, whose shadow looms large over the city – but the anxiety-inducing effect wasn’t wholly intentional.
Tributes pour in for ‘seventh friend’ who revealed he had stage 4 prostate cancer in 2021James Michael Tyler, most famous for playing Gunther, the manager of Central Perk in the hit sitcom Friends, has died aged 59.In an interview with NBC in June 2021, Tyler announced that he had stage 4 prostate cancer, which was diagnosed in 2018. Continue reading...
Friends and family pay tribute to the cinematographer as some attendees at vigil call for better safety protocolsSafety procedures on the New Mexico set of the movie Rust were under increasing scrutiny on Sunday as colleagues, friends and family paid tribute to the cinematographer shot dead by the actor Alec Baldwin in what appeared to be an accidental misfire.A vigil for Halyna Hutchins, the 42-year-old director of photography killed after Baldwin was handed a loaded revolver by the western’s production crew, took place in Albuquerque attended by industry professionals including a number of Hollywood actors including Jon Hamm and John Slattery, who are filming projects nearby. Continue reading...
Police appeal for witnesses after being called to address in Brentwood in early hours of Sunday morningEight people have been arrested on suspicion of murder after the deaths of two teenage boys in Essex.Essex police said officers were called to Regency Court in Brentwood at about 1.30am on Sunday and found that three people had been injured. Despite attempts to save them, two boys died. The third victim was treated for injuries, which police said were not life-threatening. Continue reading...
by Bethan McKernan in Istanbul and Patrick Wintour on (#5R31V)
Envoys from 10 countries – including US, Germany and France – to be declared persona non grataA decision by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, to declare 10 ambassadors – including those from seven Nato allies – as persona non grata threatens to open the biggest rift with the west during his two decades in power.Representatives from the US, Canada, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and New Zealand issued a joint statement earlier this week demanding the urgent release of Osman Kavala, a prominent businessman and philanthropist who has been held in pre-trial detention for more than four years on charges related to the 2013 Gezi park protests and the 2016 coup attempt. Continue reading...
by Robert Booth Social affairs correspondent on (#5R31S)
Inquest in Kenya in 2019 concluded that Agnes Wanjiru, 21, ‘was murdered by British soldiers’The UK defence secretary, Ben Wallace, is facing calls to launch an investigation into a possible cover-up after no one was held responsible for the alleged killing of a 21-year old Kenyan woman by one or more off-duty British soldiers.John Healey, the shadow defence secretary, described the 2012 killing of Agnes Wanjiru, a sex worker, as “dreadful” and called for Wallace to “take this more seriously”. Continue reading...
by Tom Phillips and Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá on (#5R31T)
Úsuga, one of South America’s most wanted men, arrested at rainforest hideout after massive manhuntColombia’s president, Iván Duque, has celebrated the downfall of “the most feared drug trafficker on Earth” after one of South America’s most wanted men was captured at his rainforest hideout following a massive manhunt involving hundreds of troops as well as US and British intelligence agencies.Dairo Antonio Úsuga, the 50-year-old head of the Clan del Golfo drug cartel, was arrested on Saturday afternoon after heavily armed operatives laid siege to the criminal’s jungle stomping ground in north-west Colombia. Continue reading...
Government says attacks carried out on training site and military manufacturing facilityEthiopia has carried out two airstrikes in Tigray as the government intensifies a nearly week-old campaign of aerial bombardment against the rebellious forces who control most of the region.One strike hit the western area of Mai Tsebri on Sunday, targeting a training site of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the government spokesperson Legesse Tulu said. The other hit a military manufacturing facility controlled by the TPLF in the northern town of Adwa, the government said in a statement. Continue reading...
The actor talks to his friend Edgar Wright about rooting for Roman, his ambition to move to London and why he’d like to have a crack at being Angela LansburyNew York-born actor Kieran Culkin, 39, made his film debut at the age of eight, alongside his elder brother Macaulay in Home Alone. While still a child he also had roles in Father of the Bride, The Mighty and The Cider House Rules. He later appeared in Music of the Heart, Igby Goes Down and Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs the World. He now stars as Roman Roy in HBO drama Succession, which returned to Sky Atlantic last week, a role for which he’s been Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated.One of the many reasons I love Succession is that I always think I’m watching “Evil Kieran”…
Vivacious, wealthy and charismatic, my mother threw an extravagant party for her 61st birthday. She then left her friends and 10 children and spent the rest of her life as a cloistered nunIt was like a beehive. A buzzing mass of 800 guests gathered around the queen, their larder of honey replaced by shrimp croquettes and caviar. It was 32 years ago when my mother, Ann Russell Miller, threw a combination 61st birthday and bon voyage party in the grand ballroom of a San Francisco hotel. Above her floated a balloon, tied to her wrist and emblazoned with the phrase: “Here I am.” She manoeuvred about, dressed elegantly in sparkling black. Her makeup was flawlessly applied, her hair expertly coiffed, her shoes chosen from hundreds of exquisite pairs. But this was her last formal outfit. She would never wear makeup again. The following day her hair would be shorn close to her scalp and forever hidden under a veil. For the next three decades she would wear the simple brown habit, with sandals or work shoes, befitting her new life as a cloistered nun.As the orchestra played the familiar strains of Happy Birthday, she could doubtless hear the echoes of birthdays past. The song played in Oregon and California during her youth. It was sung by her classmates at the Spence School on East 91st Street in New York. Her 21st birthday was spent newly married and five months pregnant. She would be in that condition more than 90 months of her life. By her 41st birthday she had completed her collection of five daughters and five sons. My father, who died when my mother was 55, was fond of saying that he had wanted 12 children and my mother wanted 10, so they compromised and had 10. She talked nearly nonstop on the telephone and in person. She had the exceedingly irritating ability to nap almost at will and wake up in such a manner as to make one doubt that she had been asleep at all. With charm and eccentricities to spare, she fairly skated through life with the benighted ease of the fabulously wealthy. Continue reading...
Allegations aired against senior figures include selective granting of citizenship and drug runningAllegations of systemic corruption, cronyism, jury intimidation and misuse of public funds are being aired in a courtroom in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) after the UK government set up a commission of inquiry into mis-governance in the British overseas territory.More than 50 lengthy public hearings, and voluminous written evidence, have revealed a dark underside to the BVI, one of the biggest tax havens in the world, as well as exposing a deep well of resentment among some of the Caribbean island’s politicians at the controls placed on them by London. Continue reading...
Rachael Stirling recalls her mother’s last months – and remembers her enormous sense of fun, whether pulling pranks on stage or dancing until dawn on her 80th birthdayWhen Ma found her cancer was malignant, all the theatres went dark.“Normally, when one gets bad news like this, one becomes the focus of attention, but in a pandemic, no one gives a fuck!” Continue reading...
Under Canada’s constitution, Indigenous groups have the right to self-govern – but there are fears that the recognition of NunatuKavut could weaken the authority of Inuit groupsFor centuries, Inuit in Canada have thrived in the sprawling territory known as Inuit Nunangat – the homeland – which stretches from a thin sliver of land in the Yukon territory to northern Labrador, a vast domain more than 3.3m sq km (1.2m sq miles) in size.“Inuit have long understood where our communities are, who belongs to our communities, and have fought over the last 50 years to create modern treaties that identify these specific homelands,” said Natan Obed, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, a group that represents the four main Inuit regions. Continue reading...
Former British embassy worker expresses gratitude but also fear for family left under Taliban ruleAn intricately handwoven rug is one of the few things British embassy worker Shukoor Sangar and his family were able to bring with them when they were hastily airlifted out of Kabul in August.It now covers the grey carpet in the living room of the family’s new flat, courtesy of the west London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, which has worked with the Home Office to offer permanent housing to four families among the 7,000 people brought to the UK under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap). Continue reading...
The women killed as witches centuries ago are starting to receive justice. But let’s not glamorise the murder of innocentsLilias Addie’s body was piled into a wooden box and buried beneath a half-tonne sandstone slab on the foreshore where a dark North Sea laps the Fife coast. More than a hundred years later, she was exhumed by opportunistic Victorian gravediggers and her bones – unusually large for a woman living in the early 18th century – were later put on show at the Empire exhibition in Glasgow. Her simple coffin was carved into a wooden walking stick – engraved “Lilias Addie, 1704” – which ended up in the collection of Andrew Carnegie, then the richest man in the world.It was no sort of burial, but from the perspective of the thousands of women accused of, and executed for, witchcraft in early modern Britain, Lilias’s fate had a degree of dignity. Continue reading...
Adrien Brody could have been a magician, and now he’s rediscovering his passion for painting. But with a dizzying array of major roles and a new Wes Anderson film coming out, the Oscar-winner explains why this is very much ‘a special time’Roughly a year after Adrien Brody became the youngest recipient of the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, he sat for an interview and a “glammed-up” photo shoot for the August 2004 issue of Details magazine, the now-defunct men’s publication. The cover shows Brody wearing a white T-shirt, “the perfect all-American look”, leaning backwards with both hands behind his head and meeting the camera with a gaze both remote and charged. Also on the cover, in all caps: “ADRIEN BRODY LOVES BEING FAMOUS.” Brody never said he loved being famous. It was not something he’d ever expressed. Not only was the coverline incongruous to who he was, but as an actor who’d only recently climbed into the industry’s highest level of visibility, he was still digesting the ways his life would change as a public figure. “I was so shocked by it,” he says now, over breakfast at the Whitby Hotel in New York. “It was so flippant. It just…” He hesitates, as if debating whether to complete the thought, because he is otherwise unfailingly polite. “It made me look like a dick.”Brody is once again sitting for a cover story. He’s come straight from Good Morning America, the popular breakfast TV show, and is still wearing “make-believe clothes” lent by a stylist: a white button-up and a smart black over-shirt. His appearance this morning had gone well: “Quick and painless. It was literally two minutes. I mean, it’s a whole to-do, and then you’re on, thinking ‘I hope I don’t blow it!’ And they’re, like, ‘Good morning!’ And I’m, like, ‘Hello!’ And then they’re like, ‘Goodbye’, and then I’m like, ‘I love you, thank you!’” Because the show had run smoothly, his publicist had texted me to say he’d be early for our appointment. I arrived early, too, and through the hotel window I could see him pacing the pavement in a leisurely manner with a phone pressed to his ear, enjoying a conversation. He was talking to his father. When he breezed in minutes later – 6ft tall, a spring in his step – he smiled in an avuncular sort of way, and told his dad he had to go, that he was headed into a meeting, and that he loved him. Continue reading...
After Observer report, families say the move would help heal country’s woundsSurvivors and descendants of those massacred in Indonesia’s anti-communist purge of 1965-1966 are urging the UK government to apologise for its role in what was described in a secret CIA report as “one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century”.Last week the Observer published evidence that Britain played a part in inciting the killings. It is estimated that at least 500,000 people were murdered between 1965 and 1966 by the Indonesian army, militias and vigilantes. Continue reading...
by Peter Walker Political correspondent on (#5R2SJ)
Labour criticises chancellor ahead of budget for ‘lots of announcements and not much delivery’Labour has criticised Rishi Sunak for “lots of announcements and not much delivery” on infrastructure projects, as the chancellor conceded that of £7bn in this week’s budget for expanding regional transport links, only £1.5bn is new money.Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, said that while she welcomed moves to improve transport in cities such as her own, Leeds, she was deeply sceptical about what would happen, citing long delays and uncertainty surrounding projects such as Northern Powerhouse Rail and HS2. Continue reading...
Trading suspended in South African healthcare firm’s shares after police arrest two over fraud allegationsBritain’s financial regulator faces criticism this weekend over the “shambolic” listing on the London Stock Exchange of a healthcare company facing allegations that some of its shares were traded fraudulently.The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) approved Umuthi Healthcare Solutions for admission to the London Stock Exchange (LSE) in March. The company has developed a smartphone app to help medicines reach doctors in remote rural areas. Continue reading...
The French-Canadian director of Blade Runner 2049 brings an astonishing visual sensibility to Frank Herbert’s ‘unfilmable’ sci-fi classicFor years, it seemed that the greatest film ever to come from Frank Herbert’s quasi-biblical 1960s sci-fi novel Dune would be a 2013 documentary about the failure to make a great film out of Herbert’s novel. In Jodorowsky’s Dune, director Frank Pavich documented the Chilean-French maverick’s unhinged (and ultimately abortive) effort to mount a screen adaptation with a projected 14-hour running time, featuring a starring role for Salvador Dalí and a burning giraffe. Really.Crucially, Pavich’s engrossing doc suggested that although Jodorowsky’s film never actually existed, it still cast a long creative shadow, with the pre-production work of the French graphic novelist Moebius and Swiss artist HR Giger influencing Star Wars, Alien and pretty much all subsequent screen sci-fi, a claim that cannot be made about David Lynch’s finished but fatally flawed 1984 version. Continue reading...
by James Tapper, Robin McKie, Michael Savage and Donn on (#5R2RK)
These were the words of the health secretary last week, as it became clear that vaccination alone will not keep the virus in check. But experts in health and education fear that Plan B will come too late
The leader of the powerful Clan del Golfo, who had a $5m bounty on his head, was seized in a raid by military and policeDairo Antonio Úsuga, known as Otoniel, Colombia’s most sought after drug trafficker and leader of the Clan del Golfo, has been captured at his jungle hideout by the country’s armed forces.Colombia had offered a reward of up to 3bn pesos (about $800,000) for information concerning Otoniel’s whereabouts, while the United States government had put up a reward of $5m for help locating him. Continue reading...
by Jess Purkiss, Mirren Gidda, Aaron Walawalkar and M on (#5R2PR)
Government accused of downplaying toll after requests from charities reveal discrepanciesNinety-five people have died in asylum accommodation since April 2016, almost double the figure recently admitted by the government, raising suspicions the Home Office has deliberately downplayed the death toll.And the data reveals that in the past two years there has been a particularly sharp increase in the number of deaths of those housed under asylum support provisions, such as in hotels. Continue reading...
You are in that scary place of not knowing how to be. But have faith, says Philippa PerryThe question I seem to have lost all momentum in my life and I don’t know what to do. Until a couple of years ago, I had a stressful but rewarding life working abroad and travelling. I had a long-distance relationship and friends around the world. Then my relationship broke up, my father died and Covid happened. Because of the pandemic my company limited my job to a desk-only role, and they are happy with that despite me doing almost nothing. My family struggled at first without my dad, so I spent time supporting them, but now they’re in a good place, so I’m not needed.A lot of my friends settled during this time. They’ve now got dogs, marriages and kids and, although I’m happy for them, it means they are less available. Covid stopped my dating life, except online where the women all seem to be looking for someone to settle down with. Continue reading...
The works collected by the Bellagio’s former owner Steve Wynn had made the hotel an unlikely destination for art loversEleven Picasso paintings and other works that helped turn Las Vegas into an unlikely destination for art have been sold at auction for more than $100m.The Sotheby’s auction was held on Saturday at the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas, where the works had been on display for years, and took place two days before the 140th birthday of the Spanish artist on 25 October. Continue reading...
US and Taiwanese officials hold talks ahead of 50th anniversary of PRC replacing Taiwan as China’s representative in the UNTaiwanese and US officials have discussed how Taiwan can “meaningfully” participate at the United Nations just days before Chinese president Xi Jinping will give a speech to mark his country’s half century since accession to the global body.Taiwan, using its formal name the Republic of China, held the Chinese seat at the UN until 25 October 1971, when it was voted out as representative of the country in favour of the People’s Republic of China, whose communist forces had won a civil war in 1949 and forced the republican government to flee to the island. Continue reading...
The six people were in a horse-drawn vehicle when it hit a landmine left over from an earlier conflict in the Casamance regionSix young people were killed when their horse-drawn vehicle hit an old landmine unearthed by rain in Senegal’s southern Casamance region, according to the local mayor.Casamance is home to one of Africa’s oldest ongoing conflicts, which has claimed thousands of lives since 1982, and the mine was believed to be a remnant from earlier fighting. Continue reading...
Housing secretary’s intervention follows speculation that the building would be demolished because of structural fearsMichael Gove has signalled he will explore “retention” options to preserve Grenfell Tower as a memorial to the 72 people killed in the 2017 fire, a move that has been welcomed by relatives of the dead.The new housing secretary’s intervention, weeks into his latest post, follows speculation that Grenfell would be demolished because of safety concerns. It is understood his predecessor, Robert Jenrick, had been briefed that the tower posed a risk to the local west London community with government-appointed structural engineers indicating it should be razed. Continue reading...
by Michael Savage, Robin McKie and James Tapper on (#5R2HB)
Councils consulted over support for measures such as vaccine passports amid warnings by senior doctors that NHS faces winter illness ‘triple whammy’• Coronavirus – latest updates• See all our coronavirus coverageNew evidence has emerged that the government is paving the way to implement “plan B” measures in England to combat the spread of Covid-19, amid warnings from health chiefs that a “vortex of pressures” is encircling the NHS.In the clearest sign to date that Whitehall is actively considering additional measures, the Observer has learnt that the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) contacted local authorities on Friday to canvass their level of support for the “immediate rollout of the winter plan – plan B”. Continue reading...
Text message warning of ‘super-unsafe’ conditions was later followed by a walkout by camera operatorsA picture of chaos and concern on the set of Alec Baldwin’s new western, Rust, has emerged from fresh accounts of the lead-up to the fatal shooting during filming on Thursday.Only days into the three-week production schedule, new reports suggest that a worker had been so worried about weapon safety he had sent a text message to his manager warning of “super-unsafe” conditions. Continue reading...
Attack on Brig Gen Abedin Khorram in East Azerbaijan province an unusual breach of security in Islamic RepublicThe new governor of a north-western Iranian province was slapped in the face by an angry man during his inauguration on Saturday in an unusual breach of security in the Islamic Republic.A motive for the attack in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province remained unclear, though it targeted a new provincial governor who once served in the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and reportedly had been kidnapped at one point by rebel forces in Syria. One report referred to it as a personal dispute. Continue reading...
President Erdoğan says ambassadors from US, Europe and elsewhere are not welcome after call for freeing of Osman KavalaThe Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said he has ordered the foreign ministry to declare 10 ambassadors from western countries persona non grata for calling for the release of philanthropist Osman Kavala.Kavala has been in prison for four years, charged with financing nationwide protests in 2013 and with involvement in a failed coup in 2016. He denies the charges. Continue reading...
The actor’s turbulent life has rarely been out of the headlines. Now he faces a new crisis after a tragic accident on setAlec Baldwin was the tough screen face of blue-collar America in the 1990s. And it suited him. His best early roles were gritty ones in brutal films such as Miami Blues, or the screen adaptation of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, where he gave a showstopping performance that won him many fans. Baldwin had the manner and look of an ordinary man who wanted to survive at all costs.Now, in the saddest of media storms, following the accidental shooting of a colleague on the set of his latest movie, the actor will need every ounce of the self-preserving grit he once accessed so easily on film. Continue reading...
Chair of the UK’s Climate Change Committee condemns New Zealand and Australia agreements as unworkableThe chairman of the government’s climate change advisory board has condemned trade deals with Australia and New Zealand as “totally offensive” as he warned they would undermine attempts to tackle emissions.Lord Deben, the former Tory cabinet minister who chairs the Climate Change Committee, said that the agreements were “entirely unacceptable for climate change purposes”. He warned they would damage efforts to ask UK farmers to help consumers shift to eating less meat, but of higher quality. Continue reading...
ASMR, the euphoric tingling certain sounds provoke, has created online superstars with millions of followers. Is it just a weird fad, or could it help people with anxiety and depression?When I was five years old something strange happened. After a busy afternoon finger-painting and running around, we were gathered by our teacher on the classroom carpet to listen to a story. I can’t remember which book she read – only that she began to do so in a soft voice, pitched somewherejust above a whisper.Suddenly, a euphoric, tingling sensation started at the crown of my head and then travelled down my neck and back in waves. The more she read, the stronger the feeling became. I glanced at my friends, expecting to see them in a similar state of rapture, but they weren’t. So I kept the feeling a secret and soon forgot all about it. Continue reading...
The American debut novelist on the lessons she learned from teaching art, her mixed feelings about Virginia and her experience of white supremacistsBorn and raised in Virginia, Jocelyn Nicole Johnson was an art teacher for 20 years before she published her debut novella, My Monticello, aged 50. Set in the near future as American society is unravelling, it tells the story of a young black student and her neighbours fleeing Charlottesville, Virginia, pursued by violent white supremacists and taking refuge in Monticello, home of US president Thomas Jefferson. The book, which the New York Times called “a masterly feat”, is now being turned into a film for Netflix. Johnson lives in Charlottesville with her husband and son.The apocalyptic scenario you create in the book has clear roots in the American present – there are terrible storms, power failures and racial violence. Was it hard to imagine or unnervingly easy?
Police body says figure is ‘very concerning’ amid calls for ‘Girls Night In’ nightclub boycottsAlmost 200 drink spiking incidents have been reported to police forces across the UK over the past two months, the National Police Chiefs’ Council said on Friday.The NPCC said there have been 198 confirmed reports of drink spiking in September and October across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, plus 24 reports of some form of injection. Continue reading...
Rescue centres say they are seeing more and more pets their owners are now too busy to look afterPeople are pretending that dogs they acquired during lockdown are strays so that rescue centres take them in, after failing to sell them online, animal rescue charities and shelters have warned.Figures from March revealed that more than 3.2m pets were bought by UK households during lockdown. Since Covid restrictions were lifted and people have started to return to the office, charities have reported a growing trend of people abandoning their pandemic pets as they no longer have as much time for them. Continue reading...
Unconfirmed reports say nearly 1,000 inmates escaped from correctional facility in south-west of countryGunmen have attacked a prison in south-west Nigeria, freeing about 575 inmates, officials said.The third jailbreak in Africa’s most populous country this year raises more concerns about how safe detention facilities are in the west African country where authorities have struggled to stem rising violence. Continue reading...
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