Her shocking performances and stunning images made Mendieta the talk of the art world in the 1970s and 80s. Then she fell from a New York apartment block in 1985 – and her husband was charged with murder. As a major exhibition comes to London, her friends discuss her genius and their search for answers

In the summer of 1985, Ana Mendieta was playing with gunpowder and a chainsaw. Just 5ft tall, the Cuban American artist worked outside her studio in Rome, trying to figure out the scale of a new commission for MacArthur Park, Los Angeles. Her idea was to cut up trees and burn the gunpowder directly into them, creating a totem “grove” inspired by her recent trips to neolithic sites. It was a breakthrough of sorts – permanent, monumental work that built on her performance art – and in a photograph of her standing next to a test piece, Mendieta looks proud, excited.

She had arrived in Italy two years earlier, after winning the prestigious Prix de Rome and a residency at its American Academy. She alienated half the staff, but fell in love with the city, driving like a local (right hand on the wheel, left middle finger out the window). Mendieta admired Roman women, mailing her friend, the film critic B Ruby Rich, a newspaper clipping of a pro-choice demonstration. “She said, ‘Look, they’re not like American women,’” remembers Rich. “‘They’re showing women butchered and dead from botched abortions. Look how much fiercer they are.’”

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Although trekking is unusual for young women in Kashmir, I find strength and enjoy independence when I’m out in nature with my friends

Before sunrise, my two closest friends and I pack water bottles, food and biscuits into our backpacks. We put on whatever shoes we have, pull our hijabs tightly against the cold wind, and leave for the mountains above our village in Kargil, in Ladakh – part of Indian-administered Kashmir.

The things we usually hear on the trail are birdsong, flowing water and our own laughter echoing through the mountains.

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With her popularity flagging and a general election looming, the Italian PM sees a strategic advantage in the rupture

If Giorgia Meloni thought that she could put her April spat with Donald Trump over the pope’s criticism of the US war on Iran behind her, she had not banked on the US president’s capacity to bear a grudge.

Trump reignited tensions by telling an Italian TV journalist that the Italian PM had “begged” him for a picture at the recent G7 meeting in France. The Spanish newspaper El País suggested that Trump’s feathers had been ruffled by a video at the same meeting, showing Meloni appearing to scold him. In any case he doubled down on his tale in a Truth Social post, adding that Meloni wanted the photo to boost her flagging approval ratings, which he blamed on her failure to support the US in the Iran war.

Riccardo Alcaro is head of research at IAI, Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome

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Birds of War is an award-winning docudrama in which its own directors fall in love while reporting the horrors in Syria. They explain why they needed a psychotherapist to complete it

The air is thick with smoke and dust, the ground littered with the twisted remains of burning vehicles. Children scream and sirens blare as activist and videographer Abd Alkader Habak rushes to help the injured after the bombing of an evacuee convoy in Aleppo at the height of Syria’s civil war in 2017. A voice note bubble pops up on Habak’s phone screen. “My bird are you OK?” says BBC journalist Janay Boulos. “Get away from there, run.”

For more than a year, Habak and Boulos have been working to document Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s atrocities against his own people, their connection deepening all the time despite the physical distance. But this exchange represents the moment the pair’s relationship shifts from colleagues to something more. “I don’t want footage,” Boulos says, fear clearly detectable in her voice as she tries to follow things from her desk in London. “I don’t want anything, just please take care. I am here whenever you want to talk.”

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Drie gevluchte Syrische archeologen werken nu bij het Rijksmuseum voor Oudheden in Leiden. Daar catalogiseren ze Mesopotamische vondsten uit hun vaderland.

An Indonesian corruption court has sentenced the nation’s former education minister Nadiem Makarim, who is also a hero of the nation’s tech startup scene, to ten years in jail for his role in buying a stack of Chromebooks. Nadiem is a co-founder of Gojek, a so-called superapp that offers ride share, food delivery, digital payments, and even logistics services. In 2021, Gojek merged with its rival Tokopedia. The combined entity became a ubiquitous part of daily life in Indonesia and other southeast Asian nations. In 2019, Gojek’s success and prominence saw then-Indonesian-president Joko Widodo ask Nadiem to become Education Minister, with a remit to improve the nation’s schools. Nadiem took the job but kept a minority stake in Gojek during his time in government. During his time as minister, Nadiem oversaw a $600 million program to acquire laptops for use in schools. Departmental officials compared Chromebooks to Windows laptops and found the latter performed better, because Google’s machines need constant internet access which isn’t available in much of the sprawling Indonesian archipelago. The Ministry nonetheless decided to order Chromebooks because they are cheaper than Windows machines. As the laptop program rolled out, observers noted that Google has invested in Gojek, and that the two companies had collaborated on various projects. Some saw that as suggesting a possibility that the decision to acquire Chromebooks might not have been motivated by technical merit and cost factors alone. Prosecutors eventually decided to pursue a case on the basis that the decision to acquire Chromebooks cost Indonesia over $100 million in avoidable costs. The matter went to trial and was decided on Tuesday, when a majority of judges found Nadiem guilty of improper conduct as minister – but not of personally profiting from the Chromebook procurement. The former minister has vowed to appeal and described the judgement as deeply flawed given that the decision to purchase Chromebooks was made at arm’s length and because he did not personally benefit from the program. Some see the affair as an example of established power brokers in Indonesia flexing their muscle against an emerging bloc of technocratic reformers. That bloc has lost influence since Widodo’s term as President ended. Under that interpretation, prosecuting the Singapore-born, Harvard-educated Nadiem is a significant exercise of old guard power. Another view is that the affair is so tawdry, it shows Indonesia remains a very difficult nation in which to do business and that if even a local hero can be brought low, foreign tech companies may struggle to make inroads. ®

Former potato farm given new life as bird sanctuary. Once drained for farm irrigation, this former potato farm now attracts birds from as far away as Siberia. (Australia)

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WASHINGTON (ANP/BLOOMBERG/AFP) - De Amerikaanse regering heeft de buitenlandse beperkingen voor de krachtigste AI-modellen van Anthropic geschrapt. Dat meldt het AI-bedrijf in de nacht van dinsdag op woensdag. De regering van president Donald Trump had het gebruik van de applicaties voor buitenlandse gebruikers eerder verboden, omdat dat de nationale veiligheid in gevaar zou brengen.

Het ministerie van Handel had Anthropic op 12 juni een exportbeperking opgelegd. Het Amerikaanse AI-bedrijf moest toestemming krijgen voordat buitenlandse overheden, bedrijven en personen de onlangs verschenen modellen Mythos 5 en Fable 5 konden gebruiken. Door de beslissing haalde het bedrijf de twee AI-modellen offline. Vorige week keerde Mythos 5 al beperkt terug.

Anthropic zou de zorgen van het Witte Huis hebben weggenomen door toe te zeggen "beveiligingsrisico's bij de modellen proactief te voorkomen en aan te pakken", zo schreef handelsminister Howard Lutnick in een brief die persbureau Bloomberg heeft ingezien.

"We hebben melding gekregen dat het ministerie van Handel de exportbeperkingen voor Claude Fable 5 en Mythos 5 heeft opgeheven", schrijft Anthropic in een korte verklaring op X. "Morgen beginnen we de toegang te herstellen en we geven binnenkort een update."

WASHINGTON (ANP/BLOOMBERG) - De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump heeft in 2025 naar eigen zeggen minstens 1,2 miljard dollar (1,05 miljard euro) verdiend met activiteiten rond crypto en memecoins. Dit blijkt uit zijn recentste jaarlijkse opgave van financiële belangen.

Trump meldde een opbrengst van meer dan 588 miljoen dollar uit de verkoop door World Liberty Financial, het cryptobedrijf waarvan hijzelf, zijn zonen en Steven Witkoff - een topdiplomaat in zijn regering - medeoprichter zijn. Zach Witkoff, de zoon van de speciale gezant, fungeert als CEO. Daarnaast gaf Trump aan 636 miljoen dollar aan royalty's te hebben ontvangen van Celebration Coins.

Trump verdiende ook bijna 197 miljoen dollar met de verkoop van aandelen in Stablecoin Holdco. Sommige media, waaronder The New York Times en The Washington Post, namen ook die aandelentransactie mee in hun berekeningen van Trumps inkomsten uit crypto-activiteiten. Die komen zo op ongeveer 1,4 miljard dollar uit.

Het 927 pagina's tellende document, dat dinsdag werd vrijgegeven door het Amerikaanse Office of Government Ethics, biedt inzicht in Trumps omvangrijke imperium, waaronder inkomsten uit zijn hotels, golfresorts en cryptocurrency-ondernemingen. In totaal rapporteerde Trump zo'n 2,2 miljard dollar aan inkomsten in 2025.