Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday apologised to Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, for what the Kremlin said was a “tragic incident” in Russian airspace involving the Azerbaijan Airlines plane that crashed in Kazakhstan on 25 December.
The Kremlin said as the aircraft attempted to land in Grozny, Ukrainian drones were attacking Russia and Russian air defence forces repelled the attacks.
“During this time, Grozny, (the town of) Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were being attacked by Ukrainian combat drones and Russian air defence was repelling these attacks,” the Kremlin said Putin told Aliyev, without saying that Russian air defence hit the plane.
Putin apologises for Azerbaijan plane crash without admitting Russia at fault
Kremlin says Russian president has spoken to Azerbaijan counterpart after crash in which 38 people died
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Vladimir Putin has apologised for a “tragic incident” in which an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed on Christmas Day, but stopped short of admitting Russia was responsible.
The Kremlin said in an official statement that Putin had spoken to Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, on Saturday by phone in his first comments since the crash, which killed 38 of the 67 people onboard.
“Vladimir Putin apologised for the tragic incident that occurred in Russian airspace and once again expressed his deep and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to the injured,” the statement said.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, said he had expressed condolences to President Aliyev and called on Russia for a clearer explanation of the crash.
“The key priority now is a thorough investigation to provide answers to all questions about what really happened,” he said. “Russia must provide clear explanations and stop spreading disinformation.”
On Friday, the White House spokesperson John Kirby said the US had seen “early indications” that Russia might have been responsible for the crash.
There has been speculation that the commercial airliner’s GPS systems may have been affected by electronic jamming and the plane may have been damaged by air defence missiles fired at Ukrainian drones. The head of Russia’s civil aviation agency said the situation in Chechnya was “very complicated” because of Ukrainian drone strikes on the region.
The Kremlin said: “At that time, Grozny, Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were being attacked by Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, and Russian air defence systems repelled these attacks.”
The statement stopped short of admitting Russia was responsible for downing the plane.
The plane, which was flying from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, to Grozny, in Chechnya, was hundreds of miles off its scheduled route on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea. It is not clear why the plane changed course but Russian news agencies initially blamed fog. It crash-landed in Kazakhstan.
Azerbaijan has not blamed Russia but the former Soviet republic’s transport minister claimed on Friday the plane was subjected to “external interference” and that it was damaged before it crashed. “All [the survivors] without exception stated they heard three blast sounds when the aircraft was above Grozny,” said Rashad Nabiyev.
Kirby said the US had offered assistance to investigators; Russia and Azerbaijan are investigating the crash.
The survivors of the crash are being treated in a nearby hospital. One passenger, Subhonkul Rakhimov, told the BBC: “I saw the fuselage shell was slightly damaged and then I got scared. I thought the plane would fall apart. I was very surprised that I was alive.”
Another survivor, Vafa Shabanova, told the broadcaster that about 20 or 30 minutes after takeoff she felt two explosions: “The plane was supposed to land but it didn’t. Something exploded inside twice … we panicked.”
After the crash, Aliyev announced a day of mourning in Azerbaijan. “It is with deep sadness that I express my condolences to the families of the victims and wish a speedy recovery to those injured,” he wrote on social media.
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Putin apologises for Azerbaijan plane crash without admitting Russia at fault
Kremlin says Russian president has spoken to Azerbaijan counterpart after crash in which 38 people died
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Vladimir Putin has apologised for a “tragic incident” in which an Azerbaijan Airlines plane crashed on Christmas Day, but stopped short of admitting Russia was responsible.
The Kremlin said in an official statement that Putin had spoken to Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, on Saturday by phone in his first comments since the crash, which killed 38 of the 67 people onboard.
“Vladimir Putin apologised for the tragic incident that occurred in Russian airspace and once again expressed his deep and sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wished a speedy recovery to the injured,” the statement said.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, said he had expressed condolences to President Aliyev and called on Russia for a clearer explanation of the crash.
“The key priority now is a thorough investigation to provide answers to all questions about what really happened,” he said. “Russia must provide clear explanations and stop spreading disinformation.”
On Friday, the White House spokesperson John Kirby said the US had seen “early indications” that Russia might have been responsible for the crash.
There has been speculation that the commercial airliner’s GPS systems may have been affected by electronic jamming and the plane may have been damaged by air defence missiles fired at Ukrainian drones. The head of Russia’s civil aviation agency said the situation in Chechnya was “very complicated” because of Ukrainian drone strikes on the region.
The Kremlin said: “At that time, Grozny, Mozdok and Vladikavkaz were being attacked by Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles, and Russian air defence systems repelled these attacks.”
The statement stopped short of admitting Russia was responsible for downing the plane.
The plane, which was flying from Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, to Grozny, in Chechnya, was hundreds of miles off its scheduled route on the opposite shore of the Caspian Sea. It is not clear why the plane changed course but Russian news agencies initially blamed fog. It crash-landed in Kazakhstan.
Azerbaijan has not blamed Russia but the former Soviet republic’s transport minister claimed on Friday the plane was subjected to “external interference” and that it was damaged before it crashed. “All [the survivors] without exception stated they heard three blast sounds when the aircraft was above Grozny,” said Rashad Nabiyev.
Kirby said the US had offered assistance to investigators; Russia and Azerbaijan are investigating the crash.
The survivors of the crash are being treated in a nearby hospital. One passenger, Subhonkul Rakhimov, told the BBC: “I saw the fuselage shell was slightly damaged and then I got scared. I thought the plane would fall apart. I was very surprised that I was alive.”
Another survivor, Vafa Shabanova, told the broadcaster that about 20 or 30 minutes after takeoff she felt two explosions: “The plane was supposed to land but it didn’t. Something exploded inside twice … we panicked.”
After the crash, Aliyev announced a day of mourning in Azerbaijan. “It is with deep sadness that I express my condolences to the families of the victims and wish a speedy recovery to those injured,” he wrote on social media.
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Elon Musk pens German newspaper opinion piece supporting far-right AfD party
Billionaire Trump adviser said his ‘significant investments’ in the country justified his wading into German politics
The tech entrepreneur and close adviser to Donald Trump Elon Musk has taken a stunning new public step in his support for the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), publishing a supportive guest opinion piece for the country’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper that has prompted the commentary editor to resign in protest.
The commentary piece in German was launched online on Saturday ahead of being published on Sunday in the flagship paper of the Axel Springer media group, which also owns the US politics news site Politico.
Musk uses populist and personal language to try to deny AfD’s extremist bent and the piece expands on his post on the social media platform X that he owns, on which he last week claimed that “only the AfD can save Germany”.
Translated, Musk’s piece said: “The portrayal of the AfD as rightwing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!”
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has classified the AfD at the national level as a suspected extremism case since 2021.
Shortly after the piece was published online, the editor of the opinion section, Eva Marie Kogel, used the US tech mogul’s own platform to post on X that she had submitted her resignation.
“I always enjoyed heading the opinion department at Welt and Wams. Today a text by Elon Musk appeared in Welt am Sonntag. Yesterday I submitted my resignation after printing,” she posted.
She included a link to the Musk commentary article.
The AfD has a strong anti-immigration stance and, like incoming president Donald Trump in relation to the US, is calling for mass deportations from Germany. Earlier in December, Musk not only posted in favor of AfD but the party’s hard line on immigration appeared to resonate with the incoming US vice-president, JD Vance, MSNBC reported.
Senior Welt Group figures weighed in on Saturday.
“Democracy and journalism thrive on freedom of expression. This includes dealing with polarising positions and classifying them journalistically,” the newspaper’s editor-in-chief designate, Jan Philipp Burgard, and Ulf Poschardt, who takes over as publisher on 1 January, told Reuters.
They said discussion about Musk’s piece, which had about 340 comments several hours after it was published, was “very revealing”.
Underneath Musk’s commentary, the newspaper published a response by Burgard.
“Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally false,” he wrote, referencing the AfD’s desire to leave the European Union and seek rapprochement with Russia as well as appease China.
The AfD backing from Musk, who also defended his right to weigh in on German politics due to his “significant investments”, comes as Germans are set to vote on 23 February after a coalition government led by the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, collapsed late this fall.
The AfD is running second in opinion polls and might be able to thwart either a centre-right or centre-left majority, but Germany’s mainstream, more centrist parties have pledged to shun any support from the AfD at the national level.
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At least 15 men in Gisèle Pelicot rape and assault trial appeal against convictions
Court found 51 men guilty including Dominique Pelicot, who was given a 20-year prison sentence
At least 15 of the men found guilty of raping or sexually abusing Gisèle Pelicot have appealed against their convictions and will be given a second trial.
All 51 men, including her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, were convicted and given prison sentences of between three and 20 years before Christmas after a trial lasting three and a half months. Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years.
The court found 47 men guilty of rape, two of attempted rape and two of sexual assault. The men have until midnight on Monday to lodge an appeal. Apart from Pelicot’s jail term, all the sentences were below that requested by the public prosecutors, who also have until the same deadline to appeal.
An appeal hearing, which will go over all the evidence again, will be held in Nîmes and heard by an ordinary jury, unlike the Avignon trial that was overseen by a panel of professional judges.
After the marathon hearing in Avignon, Béatrice Zavarro, lawyer for Dominique Pelicot, 72, a former electrician who had admitted drugging and raping his wife and inviting at least 50 and possibly more than 80 men into the couple’s Provençal home to rape her, said she would discuss with her client whether to appeal against the verdict.
Pelicot’s now ex-wife Gisèle, 72, believes she could have been raped by him and strangers more than 200 times between 2011 and 2020. Pelicot was only caught after police arrested him for filming up the skirts of female shoppers in a local supermarket and found tens of thousands of photographs and videos of the abuse.
Among those who have appealed against their verdicts is Charly Arbo, 30, a vineyard worker, who went to the Pelicot’s home in the town of Mazan six times and was given a 13-year jail term. On the first occasion he was 22 and Gisèle Pelicot was 64. He was also accused of raping her on the night of her 66th birthday. Video evidence showed Arbo discussing drugging and raping his own mother with Dominique Pelicot.
Redouan El Farihi, 55, a former hospital anaesthesia nurse, who was sentenced to eight years, has also appealed against his verdict. He denied rape, saying Dominique Pelicot had “tricked” him and insisted he had not known Gisèle had been drugged, despite videos showing her unconscious and inert.
Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, who said the trial represented a level of depravity he had never before experienced, told the Observer last weekend she was willing to attend any new trial. “She has told us she will be there,” he said. “Maybe not every day, but she says she will go.”
After the verdicts were given on 19 December, Babonneau said: “She is relieved, really relieved, that all the accused were convicted for what they did to her and she was relieved she managed to reach the end of this very long and painful process.”
Gisèle Pelicot, a retired logistics manager, became an international feminist figurehead after insisting the trial be open to the press and public and the videos of her abuse be shown in open court so that “shame changes sides”. Since the high-profile trial there have been calls to tighten French rape laws, including introducing the concept of “consent”, which is absent. The trial also threw a spotlight on attitudes towards the rape and sexual abuse of women in France.
“From Gisèle Pelicot’s point of view, there is no sentence that will give her back what she has lost. She will never feel comforted or somehow compensated by the fact that 50 families have been broken up for Christmas. There can be no satisfaction for her in that,” Babonneau said.
“All Gisèle Pelicot wanted is to have the accused convicted for what they did to her. As for the personal sentences, she respects the decision of the court and finds no solace in them.”
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‘Ludicrous’: bitter row erupts over plan to replace original Notre Dame windows
Fury as President Macron reveals the new ‘contemporary gesture’ for cathedral devastated by 2019 fire
In the wake of the April 2019 fire that devastated Notre Dame cathedral, the French president Emmanuel Macron promised the monument would be rebuilt with a “contemporary gesture”.
There followed all manner of madcap ideas: a glass spire; a 300ft carbon-fibre flame, a swimming pool on the roof and a covered garden. In the end, Notre Dame was restored to its original former glory and reopened in a ceremony this month.
Now, however, the planned “contemporary gesture” has been revealed – and has sparked a bitter row.
French artist Claire Tabouret has been chosen to design new stained glass windows depicting Pentecostal scenes to be installed in the chapels on the south side of the medieval church. Tabouret was among 100 artists who took part in a competition to replace the existing six windows installed by architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in 1844. The original windows were not damaged in the 2019 fire.
Designs submitted by Tabouret, 43, a figurative artist whose work featured in the Vatican pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year and who now lives in Los Angeles, show scenes of people in prayer in shades of red, turquoise, yellow and pink. She will work with master glassmakers at the Atelier Simon-Marq, a glass workshop founded in Reims in 1640, to recreate the drawings in glass.
The plan to replace the 19th century chapel windows, which feature geometric designs on translucent glass described as having more historic than aesthetic value, has enraged critics.
The 1964 Venice Charter, which codifies guidelines for preserving French buildings, states: “Items of sculpture, painting or decoration which form an integral part of a monument may only be removed if this is the sole means of ensuring their preservation,” and that “the valid contributions of all periods to the building of a monument must be respected”.
In July, the national committee for heritage and architecture at France’s ministry of culture unanimously opposed the plan to remove Viollet-le-Duc’s windows, prompting one artist to withdraw his designs from the competition.
However, the plan, expected to cost more than €4m, has the approval of the president, the archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, and the church authorities.
At a press conference after the announcement of her selection, Tabouret, a graduate of Paris’s prestigious École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, said she was “excited” by the challenge but aware of the controversy.
“I’ve read about the different opinions of people because I want to understand their arguments and also to take an approach that is open and two-way. I find it a fascinating debate,” she said.
She added she wanted to create stained glass windows that would have “the right presence … without imposing themselves on visitors”.
Didier Rykner, a French journalist, art historian and founder of La Tribune de l’Art, a magazine dedicated to preserving France’s heritage, has described the idea of replacing the windows as “totally ludicrous”. He has launched a petition against the plan that has almost 250,000 signatures.
“The president of the republic has decided on his own, without any regard for the heritage law or Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, to replace the stained glass windows in six out of the seven chapels on the south aisle with contemporary creations, after organising a competition,” it reads.
“The stained glass windows in Notre Dame designed by Viollet-le-Duc were created as a coherent whole. It is a genuine creation that the architect wanted to be faithful to the cathedral’s gothic origins.
“Who gave the head of state a mandate to alter a cathedral that does not belong to him, but to everyone? Emmanuel Macron wants to put the stamp of the 21st century on Notre Dame de Paris. Perhaps a little modesty would be preferable.”
The French heritage association Sites & Monuments has threatened legal action if the plan to remove Viollet-le-Duc’s windows goes ahead.
Rykner told the Observer: “To remove windows that survived the fire undamaged and replace them with others is just absurd. I am not against contemporary windows per se but there is just no reason to replace these windows. Besides, money donated by people to renovate Notre Dame has already been spent on cleaning them.
“It’s absolutely ridiculous. We’ve been told they will put the Viollet-le-Duc windows on display in a museum. They don’t belong in a museum – they belong in Notre Dame. It makes no sense for them to be on display anywhere other than the cathedral. Their only interest is in situ.”
He added: “I don’t see why Macron has such a say over what happens to a heritage building. This is just a vanity project.
“As for the church authorities approving this; we should remember the greatest vandalism done to French churches and religious buildings in the 60s and 70s was carried out … by the church. They have no taste.”
The Académie des beaux-arts has also opposed the replacing of the windows. In a statement last year, it wrote: “[The members of the academy] are concerned that the announcement of a competition for the creation of contemporary stained glass windows, which they support in principle, involves replacing the non-figurative windows … The fire spared these windows.
“The Académie des beaux-arts hopes that other locations, starting with the North Tower, will be considered for this commission for contemporary stained glass.”
Stéphane Bern, Macron’s former heritage tsar, voiced his opposition to the plan in an interview with Ouest France newspaper. “I have nothing against Claire Tabouret or contemporary stained glass … But I am in favour of them when the old ones are destroyed or damaged. You can’t remove stained glass windows that are listed as historic monuments,” Bern said.
“Why does the state set itself free from the rules it imposes on others? Just because the president wants it that way?” Glassmaker Simon-Marq will make tThe six new windows, which will reach 7m high and cover a total surface area of 121m², are expected to be installed in 2026.
Tabouret said she would be incorporating motifs from Viollet-le-Duc’s windows in the stained glass.
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‘Godfather of AI’ shortens odds of the technology wiping out humanity over next 30 years
Geoffrey Hinton says there is 10% to 20% chance AI will lead to human extinction in three decades, as change moves fast
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The British-Canadian computer scientist often touted as a “godfather” of artificial intelligence has shortened the odds of AI wiping out humanity over the next three decades, warning the pace of change in the technology is “much faster” than expected.
Prof Geoffrey Hinton, who this year was awarded the Nobel prize in physics for his work in AI, said there was a “10% to 20%” chance that AI would lead to human extinction within the next three decades.
Previously Hinton had said there was a 10% chance of the technology triggering a catastrophic outcome for humanity.
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme if he had changed his analysis of a potential AI apocalypse and the one in 10 chance of it happening, he said: “Not really, 10% to 20%.”
Hinton’s estimate prompted Today’s guest editor, the former chancellor Sajid Javid, to say “you’re going up”, to which Hinton replied: “If anything. You see, we’ve never had to deal with things more intelligent than ourselves before.”
He added: “And how many examples do you know of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing? There are very few examples. There’s a mother and baby. Evolution put a lot of work into allowing the baby to control the mother, but that’s about the only example I know of.”
London-born Hinton, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, said humans would be like toddlers compared with the intelligence of highly powerful AI systems.
“I like to think of it as: imagine yourself and a three-year-old. We’ll be the three-year-olds,” he said.
AI can be loosely defined as computer systems performing tasks that typically require human intelligence.
Last year, Hinton made headlines after resigning from his job at Google in order to speak more openly about the risks posed by unconstrained AI development, citing concerns that“bad actors” would use the technology to harm others. A key concern of AI safety campaigners is that the creation of artificial general intelligence, or systems that are smarter than humans, could lead to the technology posing an existential threat by evading human control.
Reflecting on where he thought the development of AI would have reached when he first started his work on the technology, Hinton said: “I didn’t think it would be where we [are] now. I thought at some point in the future we would get here.”
He added: “Because the situation we’re in now is that most of the experts in the field think that sometime, within probably the next 20 years, we’re going to develop AIs that are smarter than people. And that’s a very scary thought.”
Hinton said the pace of development was “very, very fast, much faster than I expected” and called for government regulation of the technology.
“My worry is that the invisible hand is not going to keep us safe. So just leaving it to the profit motive of large companies is not going to be sufficient to make sure they develop it safely,” he said. “The only thing that can force those big companies to do more research on safety is government regulation.”
Hinton is one of the three “godfathers of AI” who have won the ACM AM Turing award – the computer science equivalent of the Nobel prize – for their work. However, one of the trio, Yann LeCun, the chief AI scientist at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, has played down the existential threat and has said AI “could actually save humanity from extinction”.
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Geoffrey Hinton says there is 10% to 20% chance AI will lead to human extinction in three decades, as change moves fast
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The British-Canadian computer scientist often touted as a “godfather” of artificial intelligence has shortened the odds of AI wiping out humanity over the next three decades, warning the pace of change in the technology is “much faster” than expected.
Prof Geoffrey Hinton, who this year was awarded the Nobel prize in physics for his work in AI, said there was a “10% to 20%” chance that AI would lead to human extinction within the next three decades.
Previously Hinton had said there was a 10% chance of the technology triggering a catastrophic outcome for humanity.
Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme if he had changed his analysis of a potential AI apocalypse and the one in 10 chance of it happening, he said: “Not really, 10% to 20%.”
Hinton’s estimate prompted Today’s guest editor, the former chancellor Sajid Javid, to say “you’re going up”, to which Hinton replied: “If anything. You see, we’ve never had to deal with things more intelligent than ourselves before.”
He added: “And how many examples do you know of a more intelligent thing being controlled by a less intelligent thing? There are very few examples. There’s a mother and baby. Evolution put a lot of work into allowing the baby to control the mother, but that’s about the only example I know of.”
London-born Hinton, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, said humans would be like toddlers compared with the intelligence of highly powerful AI systems.
“I like to think of it as: imagine yourself and a three-year-old. We’ll be the three-year-olds,” he said.
AI can be loosely defined as computer systems performing tasks that typically require human intelligence.
Last year, Hinton made headlines after resigning from his job at Google in order to speak more openly about the risks posed by unconstrained AI development, citing concerns that“bad actors” would use the technology to harm others. A key concern of AI safety campaigners is that the creation of artificial general intelligence, or systems that are smarter than humans, could lead to the technology posing an existential threat by evading human control.
Reflecting on where he thought the development of AI would have reached when he first started his work on the technology, Hinton said: “I didn’t think it would be where we [are] now. I thought at some point in the future we would get here.”
He added: “Because the situation we’re in now is that most of the experts in the field think that sometime, within probably the next 20 years, we’re going to develop AIs that are smarter than people. And that’s a very scary thought.”
Hinton said the pace of development was “very, very fast, much faster than I expected” and called for government regulation of the technology.
“My worry is that the invisible hand is not going to keep us safe. So just leaving it to the profit motive of large companies is not going to be sufficient to make sure they develop it safely,” he said. “The only thing that can force those big companies to do more research on safety is government regulation.”
Hinton is one of the three “godfathers of AI” who have won the ACM AM Turing award – the computer science equivalent of the Nobel prize – for their work. However, one of the trio, Yann LeCun, the chief AI scientist at Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, has played down the existential threat and has said AI “could actually save humanity from extinction”.
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Olivia Hussey, star of 1968 Romeo and Juliet film, dies aged 73
Golden Globe-winning actor ‘lived a life full of passion, love and dedication to the arts’, says family in statement
Olivia Hussey, who starred as a teenage Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film Romeo and Juliet, garnering her a Golden Globe, died peacefully at her home on Friday at age 73, her family has announced.
“Olivia was a remarkable person whose warmth, wisdom, and pure kindness touched the lives of all who knew her,” her family said in a statement posted to her Instagram account. “Olivia lived a life full of passion, love, and dedication to the arts, spirituality, and kindness towards animals.
“As we grieve this immense loss, we also celebrate Olivia’s enduring impact on our lives and the industry.”
Buenos Aires-born Hussey was 15 when she and her co-lead Leonard Whiting starred in the Oscar-winning adaptation of William Shakespeare’s tragedy.
In 2023, the two actors filed a lawsuit against the studio alleging child abuse over a controversial nude scene featuring Hussey and Whiting, who were 15 and 16 respectively at the time.
A judge dismissed the lawsuit later that year, saying there had been no persuasive argument as to the film being “sufficiently sexually suggestive as a matter of law to be held conclusively illegal”.
Romeo and Juliet was a box office hit at the time and received four Oscar nominations, winning two, for best cinematography and best costume design.
Hussey, who received a “new star of the year” Golden Globe for her performance, would later star in the 1974 slasher film Black Christmas and the 1978 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, among other projects.
She is survived by her husband, David Eisley, their three children and a grandchild.
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‘Dubious’ use of the Freedom of Information act stopping access to files on Prince Andrew, researchers say
Biographer says government departments give contradictory refusals to requests and accuses them of ‘cover up’
Researchers have called for greater transparency from the Foreign Office over the files it holds on the Duke of York. Officials responding to freedom of information requests have given a variety of reasons why the files cannot be released.
Andrew Lownie, an author who is researching a biography of Prince Andrew, was told that the files could not be made public until 2065, and implied there was a general rule that papers relating to members of the royal family must remain closed until 105 years after their birth.
Last week, a spokesperson for the UK Information Commissioner’s Office said: “There’s nothing in the Freedom of Information Act about that”, adding that they were not aware of anything preventing the files’ release under any other legislation.
A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said: “We take our obligations under the Freedom of Information Act very seriously, and all timeframes are clearly set out in the legislation.”
“The government’s covering up for Andrew,” said Lownie, who has described trying to get information on the prince from government departments as like “whack-a-mole” and has called for a register of royal interests.
The author, whose book on Andrew comes out next year, has been trying to get access to papers detailing who accompanied the prince on his trade trips, after accusations that he used his position and his publicly funded trips abroad for private business deals.
Earlier this month, an alleged Chinese spy was revealed to be an associate of the prince and had “an unusual degree of trust” with him. Buckingham Palace also confirmed that Andrew would not join the royal family for their Christmas celebrations at Sandringham last week.
Other royal files, including those on Andrew previously open for decades, have been reclosed by the National Archives after an internal review.
Dr Alison McClean, a researcher at the Centre for Academic Language and Development at Bristol University, is one of a number of academics who have been warning that files once open to the public for years are being reclosed. Her expertise is in court and crime records but she has also found papers relating to the royal family, including the prince’s Royal Navy training, have been reclosed.
“This is a rather dubious process, in that the National Archives relies on retrospective application of the exemptions to the FoI Act to justify these reclosures,” she said. She believes the National Archives had ignored parliament’s intention for the law to allow journalists and academic researchers to override exemptions. “It’s all internal at the National Archives. There’s no external scrutiny. I don’t think it would withstand a judicial review.”
Government papers are normally released after 20 years under the Public Records Act but there are exemptions for some royals, such as those covering discussions with the monarch, the heir, and second in line to the throne, as well as exemptions for national security prejudice to the conduct of public affairs, or personal information.
The National Archives releases documents every year containing letters or other information about the late Queen, her sister Princess Margaret, or other members of the royal family, within 105 years of their birth.
Lownie said government departments give contradictory responses to his requests for documents about Andrew, including saying that they do not exist, and then that there are so many that it will be too expensive to search through them. A government department can refuse an FoI request if getting the information will cost too much money or take too much time.
In a response to one of his FoI requests, an official at the Department for Business and Trade wrote: “If selected as records of historical importance the files will be transferred to the National Archives. If not selected, they will be destroyed in line with the department’s policy.”
The department declined to go into detail but said it had complied with its legal obligations.
A spokesperson for the National Archives said: “When we become aware that open records may contain information that comes under one or more of the exemptions within the FoI Act, eg personal information, those records have their access status amended to ‘Access Under Review’ to allow for their review under the FoI Act.”
She added that the legal framework for access to information had changed over time. “This can mean that in a collection of over 15m records, there may be instances where information has been opened under an earlier access regime – for example the Open Government Initiative in the 1990s – but if it were to be considered now, since the introduction of legislation such as the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Data Protection Act 2018, it would not be released.”
- Prince Andrew
- The Observer
- Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
- National Archives
- Freedom of information
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Russia warns of severe environmental damage from Black Sea oil spill
Two tankers were hit by storm in Kerch strait on 15 December, causing one to sink and another to run aground
Russia has warned of severe environmental damage from a huge oil spill in the Black Sea caused when two tankers were hit by a storm near Crimea, which has declared a state of emergency.
One tanker sank and another ran aground on 15 December in the Kerch strait between Russia and the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula.
Thousands of volunteers have been mobilised for clean-up operations that have been criticised as insufficient by some Russian scientists.
The tankers were carrying 9,200 tonnes of fuel oil, about 40% of which may have spilled into the sea, according to authorities.
“The situation is truly critical,” said the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, as quoted by Russian press agencies.
“It is unfortunately impossible to calculate for the moment the extent of the environmental damage, but specialists are working regularly on it,” he said.
The Moscow-installed governor of Crimea, Sergei Aksionov, said on Telegram he had declared a state of emergency “because of the oil products spill in the Kerch strait”.
Russia’s transport ministry said on Saturday that “all polluted aquatic areas that have been identified have been cleaned” and “no recurring pollution has been detected”.
But the emergency situations minister, Alexander Kurenkov, was more cautious. He said: “The threat of a new fuel oil leak in the Black Sea from the tankers and spills on the coast persists.”
Vladimir Putin earlier this month called the oil spill an “ecological disaster”.
- Russia
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- Pollution
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Maga v Musk: Trump camp divided in bitter fight over immigration policy
Feud flared up when president-elect chose Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-born entrepreneur, as his AI adviser
Bitter in-fighting has broken out between the tech billionaire Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s hardline Make America great again (Maga) base after the US president-elect chose an Indian-born entrepreneur to be his adviser on artificial intelligence.
The row has pitted Musk and his fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy against diehard supporters including the far-right activist Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz, the former Congress member and abortive nominee for attorney general. The spat threatens to open up a chasm among Trump’s supporters over immigration, a key issue in his election victory.
Presaging what has been called a “Maga civil war”, Musk went on the offensive after Loomer attacked the choice of Sriram Krishnan, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, as the nascent administration’s AI policy adviser as “deeply disturbing”.
Loomer, a renowned anti-immigration provocateur widely credited for persuading Trump to highlight false rumors about Haitian immigrants eating pets in last September’s presidential debate with Kamala Harris, criticised Krishnan on social media for supporting the extension of visas and green cards for skilled workers. She said it was in “direct opposition” to Trump’s agenda.
Her comments provoked a riposte from Musk, the Space X and Tesla billionaire who is Trump’s most influential supporter and himself an immigrant from South Africa.
“There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley,” Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns, on Christmas Day.
In a later post, he wrote: “It comes down to this: do you want America to WIN or do you want America to LOSE. If you force the world’s best talent to play for the other side, America will LOSE. End of story.”
Musk’s stance was supported by Ramaswamy, his partner in the fledgling “department of government efficiency” (Doge), an informal agency Trump claims he will create, under which the two men will be charged with the task of cutting government spending.
In a lengthy social media post, Ramaswamy – the son of immigrants from India – argued that the US was doomed to decline without high-skilled foreign workers and suggested American culture had become geared towards “mediocrity”.
“The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over ‘native’ Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit,” he wrote.
“A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture.
“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long. That doesn’t start in college, it starts YOUNG.
“A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers. ‘Normalcy’ doesn’t cut it in a hyper-competitive global market for technical talent. And if we pretend like it does, we’ll have our asses handed to us by China.”
The arguments were met by a fierce backlash from Maga exponents, led by Loomer, who delved into racist arguments.
“@VivekGRamaswamy knows that the Great Replacement is real,” she wrote. “It’s not racist against Indians to want the original MAGA policies I voted for. I voted for a reduction in H1B visas. Not an extension.
“The tech billionaires don’t get to just walk inside Mar-a-Lago and stroke their massive checkbooks and rewrite our immigration policy so they can have unlimited slave laborers from India and China who never assimilate.
“You don’t even know what MAGA immigration policy is.”
Ramaswamy’s argument also came under fire from the pro-Trump podcaster Brenden Dilley, who posted: “I always love when these tech bros flat out tell you that they have zero understanding of American culture and then have the gall to tell you that YOU are the problem with America.”
And even Nikki Haley, the former Republican presidential contender and Trump critic whose parents were also Indian immigrants, posted: “There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers.”
The arguments appeared to portend a battle for the ear of Trump, who has based his political appeal on an anti-immigration message and who, during his first presidency, restricted access to the H-1B visas, arguing they were open to abuse.
But in his recent presidential campaign, the president-elect indicated that he was open to the legal immigration of educated workers, saying he wanted to grant permanent residence status to foreign nationals who graduate from university in the US.
“If you graduate or you get a doctorate degree from a college, you should be able to stay in this country,” he told the All In podcast last June.
Samuel Hammond, a senior economist at the Foundation for American Innovation, said the row flagged up the likelihood of future conflict within Trump’s administration. “It’s a sign of future conflicts,” he told the Washington Post. “This is like the pregame.”
- Donald Trump
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‘We have to change our attitude’: wildlife expert says rhino horn trade must be legalised
Call for illicit market to be taken out of hands of criminals as numbers continue to fall drastically due to poaching
International trade in rhino horns should be legalised, a leading wildlife expert has urged.
Writing in the research journal Science, Martin Wikelski argues only carefully monitored, legitimate transactions in horns can save the world’s remaining species of rhinoceros.
“A few years ago, I was very much against this idea but now looking at the grim situation we are in I believe we have to change our attitude to the issue of trade in rhino horn,” said Wikelski, of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour in Germany.
“International crime syndicates have overcome every countermeasure that conservationists have mounted to defend rhinos from poachers. The result has been a drastic drop in numbers of animals. By legalising trade in rhino horn we can take back control of the market and halt the loss.”
Wikelski’s idea would be to remove the horn and allow a new one to grow while selling the horn to make money. This could be used to fund protection for the rhino. At present, removed horn is stored in secure vaults.
However, the proposal to use stocks to create a legitimate trade in rhino horn has triggered worried responses from many conservationists, who reject the idea that such a scheme would save the rhino from the attention of poachers. Current demand for illegal rhino horn already far exceeds the potential legal supply and is projected to grow as wealth increases in consumer countries, they argue.
“In addition, a legal rhino horn market could increase demand, provide opportunities for money laundering, and complicate law enforcement’s ability to distinguish legal sources from illegal sources,” Rascha Nuijten, director of Future For Nature Foundation, wrote in a response to Wikelski’s arguments that was also published in Science.
Rhino horn is made of keratin, a protein from which hair and fingernails are made and it is said to have curative properties according to traditional Chinese medicine, despite there being no scientific evidence to support such claims.
“It was traditionally prescribed in Asian medicine in the belief that it can reduce heat and toxins from the body,” said Jo Shaw, chief executive officer of Save the Rhino International. “More recently, demand has been more status driven and rhino horn is now embedded in serious organised, transnational crime networks.”
The impact of this criminal interest has been devastating. At the beginning of the 20th century, half a million rhinos roamed Africa and Asia. By 1970, numbers had dropped to 70,000, and today there are about 27,000 left on the planet, made up of five species: two from Africa, the black and the white rhino, and three in Asia; the Javan, Sumatran and the greater one-horned rhino.
There are more than 6,000 black rhinos in Africa and more than 17,000 white, while there are an estimated 4,000 one-horned rhinos in India and Nepal. By contrast, it is thought there are fewer than 70 Javan rhinos and between 34 and 47 Sumatrans, which are both found only in Indonesia. The latter two species, along with black rhinos, are rated as being critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature .
Today, about half of the world’s white rhino population is privately managed. However, since the late 2000s, demand for white rhino horn and large-scale poaching activities have increased dramatically. “As a result these estate owners who act as guardians for the species are giving up their custodianship because of the costs of protecting them against determined poachers and because of threats to their own personal safety,” Wikelski told the Observer last week.
He added that at state rhino sanctuaries, such as the Kruger national park in South Africa, authorities have decided to continue to dehorn rhinos to deter poaching, with limited success. Deaths continue to be high and have destroyed rhinos’ social systems, changing their behaviour. “The answer is to create a controllable, traceable trade,” Wikelski said.
But this claim was questioned by Shaw. “Numbers of white rhinos have actually increased last year and they are not the ones that are threatened with extinction. It is the black, Java and Sumatran rhino that we really have to worry about and there is no certainty that legalising trade in white rhino horn will benefit their conservation.”
Shaw said that rather than take polarising positions promoting or opposing legalisation of international trade, it would be more helpful to tease out the practicalities of exactly how such a trade could be assured to benefit all five species of rhinos. “We would need to see the necessary level of detail and control to provide confidence that such a gamble wouldn’t end up doing more harm than good.”
- Conservation
- The Observer
- Wildlife
- Endangered species
- Animals
- Africa
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