TORONTO: “Hotel Mumbai,” about the 2008 attack on a hotel in the Indian city, received a standing ovation at its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, and the cast and filmmakers said they believe that’s because of the human portrayal not only of the victims but also the perpetrators.`
The film, starring Dev Patel, Armie Hammer and Jason Isaacs, recounts the attack on Mumbai’s luxury Taj Mahal hotel, where dozens of guests and hotel workers were killed during a three-day siege carried out by Pakistan-based Islamist militants.
Most of the film is told from the point of view of those trapped in the hotel, and also from that of the gunmen.
“You had a whole lot of people from different backgrounds, racial, ethnic, from different socioeconomic groups who came together in the face of real adversity to survive,” Australian director Anthony Maras told a news conference on Saturday.
“As Dev (Patel) said yesterday, ‘it’s an anthem of resistance.’“
The cast said the film, which also uses television footage of the siege, brought some of them to tears when they watched the finished version for the first time. Hammer, who plays American hotel guest David, said that the script was “dripping in humanity.”
“You see the toll the attack has on the guests and the staff of the hotel, but you also see it, really for the first time that I can think of, on the actual perpetrators,” Hammer said.
The Hollywood Reporter praised the film’s “nail-biting detail and ... an impressive you-are-there quality,” while The Wrap said it “delivers a show-stopping account.”
The siege at the Taj Mahal Hotel was one of a coordinated series of attacks across Mumbai in which more than 160 people were killed and hundreds wounded.
“Hotel Mumbai” follows a 2013 Bollywood film, “The Attacks of 26/11,” that was told from the point of view of the Mumbai police.
‘Hotel Mumbai’ dubbed an ‘anthem of resistance’
‘Hotel Mumbai’ dubbed an ‘anthem of resistance’
- The film, which also uses television footage of the siege, brought some of them to tears when they watched the finished version for the first time
- The siege at the Taj Mahal Hotel was one of a coordinated series of attacks across Mumbai in which more than 160 people were killed
Child slips through fencing at White House and is intercepted by Secret Service
- Similar intrusions have happened at th White House before, including in April 2023 when a toddler squeezed through the metal fencing
WASHINGTON: A child slipped through fencing outside the White House on Wednesday and was intercepted by Secret Service officers.
Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said the young trespasser squeezed through the fence on the North Lawn around 6:30 p.m., about an hour after President Donald Trump announced planned auto tariffs from the Oval Office.
“Officers quickly reunited the child with their parents without incident,” Guglielmi said in a social media post.
Video posted on social media shows an armed officer carrying a young child wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt across the lawn before handing off the child to another officer.
Such intrusions have happened before. In April 2023, a toddler squeezed through the metal fencing, also on the North Lawn, and was later reunited with his parents, who were briefly questioned.
It was bacteria — not a miracle — on a communion wafer in US church
- The host, or bread, with red marks had fallen out of a Mass kit at St. Anthony Church in Morris, Indiana
- A biochemical analysis revealed only “fungus and three different species of bacteria, all of which are commonly found on human hands”
MORRIS, Indiana: A laboratory analysis turned up nothing miraculous about red marks found on a Communion wafer at a Catholic church in Indiana.
The discovery at St. Anthony of Padua Catholic Church in Morris was unusual enough for a formal inspection, the Archdiocese of Indianapolis said.
But a biochemical analysis revealed only “fungus and three different species of bacteria, all of which are commonly found on human hands,” the archdiocese said Monday, adding that no blood was found.
The Catholic faith teaches that wine and a bread wafer signify the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Typically, they’re consecrated by a priest at Mass.
The host, or bread, with red marks had fallen out of a Mass kit at St. Anthony Church.
“Throughout the history of the Catholic Church, there have been well-documented miracles and apparitions, and each has been thoroughly and carefully reviewed,” the archdiocese said.
Before the analysis, some members of St. Anthony Church were excited about what might be found.
“We have such a little town. You can drive through and blink and you’re through it,” Shari Strassell, a church member, told WKRC-TV. “It means the world, it does, and I think there is something special about our church up here.”
Japan awards longest-serving death row inmate $1.4 million
- Payout represents 12,500 yen ($83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention
- The former boxer was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others
TOKYO: A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded $1.4 million in compensation, an official said Tuesday.
The payout represents 12,500 yen ($83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last.
It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said.
The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others.
The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in Japan, where gaining a retrial is notoriously hard and death row inmates are often informed of their impending death just a few hours before they are hanged.
The Shizuoka District Court, in a decision dated Monday, said that “the claimant shall be granted 217,362,500 yen ($1.44 million),” a court spokesman told AFP.
The same court ruled in September that Hakamada was not guilty in a retrial and that police had tampered with evidence.
Hakamada had suffered “inhumane interrogations meant to force a statement (confession)” that he later withdrew, the court said at the time.
Hakamada’s legal team said the money falls short of the pain he suffered between his 1966 arrest and his release in 2014, when he was granted a retrial.
“I think the fact that he will receive it... compensates him a little bit for all the hardship,” lawyer Hideyo Ogawa told a press conference.
“But in light of the hardship and suffering of the past 47 or 48 years, and given his current situation, I think it shows that the state has made mistakes that cannot be atoned for with 200 million yen,” he said.
Decades of detention – with the threat of execution constantly looming – took a major toll on Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers have said, describing him as “living in a world of fantasy.”
Hakamada was convicted of robbing and killing his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children.
He initially denied the charges but police said Hakamada eventually confessed.
During his trial, Hakamada claimed innocence, saying that his confession was forced.
More than a year after the killings, investigators said they found blood-stained clothes – a key piece of evidence that the court later said was planted by investigators.
Hakamada now lives with his sister with help from supporters.
Hakamada was the fifth death row inmate granted a retrial in Japan’s post-war history. All four previous cases also resulted in exonerations.
Japan is the only major industrialized democracy other than the United States to retain capital punishment, a policy that has broad public support.
Japan’s justice minister said in October that abolishing the death penalty would be “inappropriate” even after Hakamada’s acquittal.
Stressed? Sick? Swiss town lets doctors prescribe free museum visits as art therapy for patients
- Dr. Marc-Olivier Sauvain, head of surgery at the Neuchatel Hospital Network, said he had already prescribed museum visits to two patients to help them get in better shape before a planned operation
NEUCHATEL, Switzerland: The world’s woes got you down? Feeling burnout at work? Need a little something extra to fight illness or prep for surgery? The Swiss town of Neuchâtel is offering its residents a novel medical option: Expose yourself to art and get a doctor’s note to do it for free.
Under a new two-year pilot project, local and regional authorities are covering the costs of “museum prescriptions” issued by doctors who believe their patients could benefit from visits to any of the town’s four museums as part of their treatment.
The project is based on a 2019 World Health Organization report that found the arts can boost mental health, reduce the impact of trauma and lower the risk of cognitive decline, frailty and “premature mortality,” among other upsides.
Art can help relax the mind — as a sort of preventative medicine — and visits to museums require getting up and out of the house with physical activity like walking and standing for long periods.
Neuchatel council member Julie Courcier Delafontaine said the COVID crisis also played a role in the program’s genesis. “With the closure of cultural sites (during coronavirus lockdowns), people realized just how much we need them to feel better.”
She said so far some 500 prescriptions have been distributed to doctors around town and the program costs “very little.” Ten thousand Swiss francs (about $11,300) have been budgeted for it.
If successful, local officials could expand the program to other artistic activities like theater or dance, Courcier Delafontaine said. The Swiss national health care system doesn’t cover “culture as a means of therapy,” but she hopes it might one day, if the results are positive enough.
Marianne de Reynier Nevsky, the cultural mediation manager in the town of 46,000 who helped devise the program, said it built on a similar idea rolled out at the Fine Arts Museum in Montreal, Canada, in 2019.
She said many types of patients could benefit.
“It could be a person with depression, a person who has trouble walking, a person with a chronic illness,” she said near a display of a feather headdress from Papua New Guinea at the Ethnographic Museum of Neuchatel, a converted former villa that overlooks Late Neuchatel.
Part of the idea is to get recalcitrant patients out of the house and walking more.
Dr. Marc-Olivier Sauvain, head of surgery at the Neuchatel Hospital Network, said he had already prescribed museum visits to two patients to help them get in better shape before a planned operation.
He said a wider rollout is planned once a control group is set up. For his practice, the focus will be on patients who admit that they’ve lost the habit of going out. He wants them to get moving.
“It’s wishful thinking to think that telling them to go walk or go for a stroll to improve their fitness level before surgery” will work, Sauvain said on a video call Saturday, wearing blue scrubs. “I think that these patients will fully benefit from museum prescriptions. We’ll give them a chance to get physical and intellectual exercise.”
“And as a doctor, it’s really nice to prescribe museum visits rather than medicines or tests that patients don’t enjoy,” he added. “To tell them ‘It’s a medical order that instructs you to go visit one of our nice city museums.’”
Some museum-goers see the upsides too.
“I think it’s a great idea,” said Carla Fragniere Filliger, a poet and retired teacher, during a visit to the ethnography museum. “There should be prescriptions for all the museums in the world!”
Paris residents vote in favor of making 500 more streets pedestrian
- The referendum will eliminate 10,000 more parking spots in Paris, adding to the 10,000 removed since 2020
- Last year, Parisians voted to triple parking charges for large SUVs. A 2023 vote approved a ban on e-scooters
PARIS: Parisians voted in a referendum on Sunday to pedestrianize a further 500 of the city’s streets, giving fresh momentum to efforts by the French capital’s left-leaning town hall to curb car usage and improve air quality.
Some 65.96 percent of Parisians voted in favor of the measure, while 34.04 percent rejected it, official results showed. Only 4.06 percent of voters turned out in the consultation, which was organized by the municipality.
This was the third such referendum in Paris in as many years, following a 2023 vote that approved a ban on e-scooters, and a decision last year to triple parking charges for large SUVs.
The referendum will eliminate 10,000 more parking spots in Paris, adding to the 10,000 removed since 2020. The city’s two million residents will be consulted on which streets will become pedestrian areas.
Paris town hall data shows car traffic in the city has more than halved since the Socialists took power in the capital at the turn of the century.
The 500 additional streets to be pedestrianized will bring the total number of these so-called “green lungs” to nearly 700, just over one-tenth of the capital’s streets.
Despite recent changes, Paris lags other European capitals in terms of green infrastructure — which include private gardens, parks, tree-lined streets, water and wetlands — making up only 26 percent of the city area versus a European capitals average of 41 percent, according to the European Environment Agency.
