Israeli settlers beat AFP photographer in occupied West Bank
Jaafar Ashtiyeh, a 58-year-old Palestinian photographer, suffered injuries to his head and torso and was taken to the hospital by ambulance, according to the international news agency. The agency's news director, Phil Chetwynd, condemned the incident as a 'serious' and 'unacceptable' attack.
Big Girls Don’t Cry review – a New Zealand teenager finds herself in tender coming-of-age tale
Writer-director Paloma Schneideman’s wonderful film follows a 14-year-old in 2006 who pretends to be someone else in a chat room, with real-world consequences * Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email All coming-of-age films face the challenge of how to convey that intermediary period between childhood and adulthood, with all the confusion, awkwardness and self-searching that entails. Writer-director Paloma Schneideman’s drama Big Girls Don’t Cry meets that challenge, resulting in a tenderly drawn story about the slow process of a 14-year-old in rural New Zealand finding herself. Schneideman’s film has a wonderfully unforced quality, unfolding in a deeply satisfying yet seemingly effortless way. It’s as if the cameras are simply recording events organically unfolding in front of them, which of course isn’t the case at all: a drama like this requires immense thought and preparation. (The film is the first to be produced under the auspices of the Jane Campion-led film-making course A Wave in the Ocean.) Continue reading...
Scientists identify ancient Sphinx-like Egyptian crocodile
A skull found nearly a century ago has helped Egyptian and European researchers revise part of the crocodile family tree, shedding light on the Mediterranean's prehistoric wildlife and revealing an unexpected connection to the Great Sphinx.
Ukraine war briefing: Zelenskyy condemns ‘vile’ attacks from Russia that killed 20 in one apartment
Death toll from latest attack wave on Ukraine climbs to 28; Moscow says it hit military cargo vessel and port infrastructure. What we know on day 1,688 The death toll from Russia’s latest attack on Ukraine has climbed to 28, its interior minister, Ivan Vyhivskyi, has said. Russia pounded Ukraine with waves of missiles and drones on Wednesday. The heaviest losses were in Pryluky, in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region, where a Russian missile obliterated a five-storey residential building. Twenty people died in the attack, including five children, said Pryluky’s regional governor, Vyacheslav Chaus. On Wednesday evening, prosecutors in Kyiv said falling debris from a drone killed two people in a suburb of the capital. In Pryluky, an excavator and dozens of rescuers with shovels sifted through rubble at the site where several sections of the apartment block had collapsed. Emergency workers used ladders to get to the upper floors of what remained of the building, and as they worked their way down brought out 15 survivors. About 55 people were wounded in the town, regional officials said. Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the Pryluky attack one of Russia’s “most vile”. “The Russians wanted to strike painfully and demonstratively,” the Ukrainian president said. “This was one of the most vile strikes.” Russia’s defence ministry has said its forces struck a vessel heading to the Ukrainian Black seaport of Odesa with cargo for the Ukrainian military. The statement on Telegram on Wednesday gave no further details of the strike. The ministry also said Russian drones had hit infrastructure in Ukrainian ports, without elaborating. Bulgarian president Iliana Yotova blamed Russia’s war in Ukraine for worsening security in the Black Sea on Wednesday. Early on Tuesday, two ships were hit in a drone attack in Bulgaria’s Black Sea exclusive economic zone, with one sinking and the other damaged. The crew of the damaged ship were rescued but the crew of the sunken one remain missing. Yotova did not directly blame Russia, but said on Wednesday that the war had led to “a significant deterioration” in security for commercial vessels in the region. Bulgaria has halted its search for the missing crew. European Union envoys approved 1,646 new designations under the bloc’s sanctions regime for Russia, with most focused on the country’s military industrial complex, three EU diplomats said on Wednesday. More than half of the newly added entities and individuals are involved in the chain of production of Russia’s ballistic missiles. Continue reading...
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