Russia and US approach potential summit seeking China’s help to extricate them from wars of choice, as Putin hopes to find consensus on new global order
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is among those who have expressed concern that the world will witness a Yalta 2.0 moment if Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin meet trilaterally, as expected, on the sidelines of the Apec summit in China next week.
It is a truism in diplomacy that if you are not around the table, the risk is that you, or your values, are on the menu and about to be carved up. Many excluded from the summit in Shenzhen, principally Ukraine but also eastern Europe and Baltic countries, Taiwan and even Iran, have reason to be nervous that their sponsors might abandon them in a complex geopolitical trade-off that Putin envisions, and Trump seems to endorse.
Continue reading...In this week’s newsletter: The deluge of whizzy production logos shown before films is a necessary annoyance – but there’s no excuse for them looking so naff
The outstanding release at the cinemas this week is Fjord, Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner about the travails of a conservative Romanian Christian family in a liberal Norwegian community. Starring Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve, it’s the sort of chewy, divisive drama that seems precision-tooled to stir spirited post-cinema debates. I’d heartily recommend seeing it, but with one small warning: you’ll to have to sit through a possibly unprecedented number of production logos and idents – those whizzy graphics advertising the help of a studio, film board, or mysterious financier – before the film finally starts.
You know the ones: a CGI leaf slowly floats towards the ground over gently plink-plonking piano, and a logo for Autumn Breeze Productions or something flashes across the screen. There are 15 of these logos or idents before Fjord: I know this because the person sat across the aisle from me started counting them out loud, with increasing incredulity, after they reached the seven or eight mark. It’s the most I’ve ever seen before a film, but it’s also not a complete outlier: most independent films seem to have half a dozen or more.
Continue reading...From four-year-old Binkie Stuart to Peter the cat, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz
1 Peter the cat is the only animal with an obituary in which almanac?
2 Four-year-old Binkie Stuart was launched as Britain’s answer to which star?
3 Established in 1798, what is London’s oldest restaurant?
4 In what decade did French women vote for the first time?
5 Which comedian co-wrote Depression and How to Survive It?
6 Which wine is flavoured with resin from the Aleppo pine?
7 “It starts with a swipe” is a slogan advertising which app?
8 Who was measured at 2.72 metres tall in 1940?
What links:
9 Alleghania; Columbia; Fredonia; Usonia?
10 Baldwin (3); Truss, Churchill and Asquith (2); May, Blair and Brown et al (1)?
11 Bland boy; narcoleptic; presbyterians; twisty flora; worst dater?
12 Cleaver; Inner and Outer Dowsing; Haisborough; Scroby; Dogger?
13 Aelfgyva; Conan; Guy; Odo; Stigand; Turold; Vital; Wadard?
14 The Day of the Jackal film; Supertramp album; 1979 headline in the Sun?
15 Beau ’n’ Arrow; Cool Hand; Ice Cold; Nuke; Snakebite?
A historic single-track train line through the foothills of the Pyrenees opens up a pristine wilderness of forests, gorges and thundering rivers
Alighting at the train station of Santa Linya in northern Spain, I paused to wonder what the railway engineers were thinking. A rough halt hewn out of the mountainside, with no ticket office, no waiting room, no sign of human habitation – just a single platform in the wilderness. On the far side of the track, a shimmering turquoise lake flanked by pine forests. Ahead – the only way out – a rocky trail snaking up the limestone cliff.
My husband and I had first strayed into this western corner of Catalonia – Pallars Jussà – on our honeymoon road trip 21 years earlier. Seduced by its dramatic landscape of canyons, lakes, crumbling ruins and the formidable Noguera Pallaresa river thundering south from the Pyrenees, we had vowed to return one day. He loves mountains, I love water, we both love abandoned buildings; it was a geographical match made in heaven. Now those vows had come good – we were back, on a mission to go deeper into the hinterland.
Continue reading...Eurotunnel owner Getlink wants to replicate ‘airport experience’ at Folkestone and Calais, without making people get out of cars
Airport-style passport and fingerprinting controls are to be introduced at Eurotunnel in an attempt to prevent “short-term and long-term chaos” in Folkestone and Calais.
In a breakthrough for travellers, the European Commission has agreed to a new system in which an “eagle eye” camera system, already used in Rome and Paris airports to supervise fingerprinting and facial imaging, will be used at the border between the UK and France.
Continue reading...Five-year project will create wildlife corridors by building wetlands and increase access to green and blue spaces
Bristol could become home to the UK’s first “wetland city” thanks to a charity’s efforts to create vast wildlife corridors that will reduce flood risk and give people more access to green and blue spaces.
The Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) said the five-year initiative would include more than 200 projects to restore and create wetlands across the city. These will range from small household rainwater ponds and street-level rain gardens to restoring river habitats, reconnecting rivers with their floodplains, and creating new wetlands.
Continue reading...The amazing Ann Skelly plays Eve’s spy-handler Carolyn in a steamy, camp cold war thriller set in east Germany. Tagline: ‘everyone is watching – look hot!’
I always found it odd that spy stories are the quintessential interest of middle-aged men. Isn’t spying all about relationships, listening and choosing outfits? Is there something you’d like to tell us, men? Ironically, we don’t seem to have many ways of making you talk.
A female-forward spy story was the highlight of my week. Honey (Saturday 14 November, 9pm, BBC One) is a prequel to Killing Eve, and an origin story for one of its most intriguing characters: Fiona Shaw’s spy-handler Carolyn Martens. A title page lets us know that this is a period piece, while establishing a very un-period tone. We are in East Berlin, 1982, where the East German government run an army of citizen informants. “Everyone is watching … look hot!”
Continue reading...COLUMN - Ik zag laatst de Graham Norton Show (met opeens muziek erdoorheen, heel irritant, maar de gesprekken zijn nog wel te verstaan) en dat ging onder andere over een bijzonder hoopvol onderwerp. Daarom had hij ook een heel bijzondere gast; Prins William! Die is verbazingwekkend leuk, echt heel sympathiek, en oh cliché: heel gewoon gebleven. In het koetjes en kalfjes gedeelte vertelde hij bijvoorbeeld dat hij vroeger politieman wilde worden, en later DJ, tot grote hilariteit van het publiek natuurlijk.
Maar er was natuurlijk een speciale reden voor zijn bezoek; de Earthshot prize, een award die jaarlijks wordt uitgereikt aan projecten die iets goeds voor het milieu en de planeet hebben gedaan, die op 16&17 november wordt uitgereikt in Mumbai. De winnaar krijgt daarbij ook het niet lullige bedrag van £1.000.000.
Voorbeelden van finalisten: Kazachstan, waar een antilopesoort bijna was uitgestorven maar die nu weer een gezonde populatie heeft. Of het Deense bedrijf Ørsted, dat was volledig fossiel, is getransformeerd naar volledig (offshore) wind energie. Het levert 7% van de Britse elektriciteit – dat zijn 6 miljoen huishoudens – en is wereldleider.
In Nederland hebben we ook zoiets: de Nationale Klimaatprijs. Waarbij het (dan wel weer vrij lullige) bedrag van €25.000 hoort. Jammer genoeg kan het publiek ook hier niet mee stemmen. Ook jammer; in de jury zitten alleen mij totaal onbekende mensen. Bij Earthshot zitten behalve William bv. ook Cate Blanchett en David Attenborough, en de koningin van Jordanië.
Anyway, de uitreiking is op 14 januari van 15:00 tot 18:00 uur, in De Groene Afslag te Bussum. Vanaf 14:30 ben je welkom voor de inloop met koffie.
Maar ik hoop van harte dat het ook op tv wordt uitgezonden. Zo’n belangrijk onderwerp kan geen aandacht genoeg krijgen.