Toronto: The Toronto film festival, the largest in North America, kicked off in earnest Thursday with Ben Stiller’s family movie “Nutcrackers” as a handful of pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted the opening night screening.
The four demonstrators chanted slogans in the Princess of Wales Theatre against the Royal Bank of Canada, a festival sponsor that has faced criticism over its investment in firms with links to Israel, as the war in Gaza drags on.
Other audience members booed and festival CEO Cameron Bailey continued his introduction before security escorted the protesters out and the screening of the film, Stiller’s first in seven years, proceeded.
The brief protest provided a political jolt at the start of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), a 10-day extravaganza of Oscar bait movies and A-list glamor.
This year marks a return to normal for the event, after twin strikes by actors and writers kept top talent from promoting their work here last year. Though the 2023 lineup of films was starry, the red carpets were not, in line with union protocols.
This time around, Jennifer Lopez, Angelina Jolie, Elton John, Bruce Springsteen, Salma Hayek, Cate Blanchett and Nicole Kidman are just some of the boldfaced names expected in Canada’s biggest city to unveil new projects.
“Toronto is known for its audience excitement, and that excitement reaches a fever pitch when the biggest stars in the world are here,” Bailey told AFP.
“We’re glad that we are having a festival without some of the constraints of last year, although I do think we were able to do the very best we could given the circumstances.”
Moviegoers warmly greeted Stiller, who introduced “Nutcrackers” alongside director David Gordon Green.
The holiday-set comedy tells the story of a Chicago real estate developer who must care for his four orphaned nephews after the death of his sister and her husband.
The boys, who are brothers in real life, prove to be quite a handful for the city slicker, who must navigate awkward home schooling sessions, wild animals in the house and other quirks of farm life as he finds his nephews a forever home.
“When I read the script, which was so heartfelt and not cynical... I was like, I’m identifying with this guy and this guy is on a journey where he gets in touch with stuff and connects with his family,” Stiller said on the red carpet at the gala screening.
“I think that’s an important message, especially right now.”
Also on the festival’s packed schedule of world premieres is Ron Howard’s super-secret “Eden,” a survival film set in the Galapagos islands, and “The Wild Robot,” the latest from DreamWorks Animation.
Fresh off the Venice success of her portrayal of opera legend Maria Callas in “Maria,” Jolie comes to Toronto with her latest directorial effort — “Without Blood,” a tale of early 20th-century family and revenge starring Hayek.
In all, there are a whopping 278 films on the slate.
John and Springsteen will be in town with new documentaries about their epic careers — and they are just some of the recording industry royalty expected to hit the red carpet.
Andrea Bocelli, Robbie Williams, Paul Anka, and singer, producer and fashion designer Pharrell Williams are also due to appear at screenings of new films about their personal and professional lives.
And there is a crop of inspirational true-story sports dramas on the schedule, including “Unstoppable,” about a college wrestler (Jharrel Jerome) without a right leg who dreamed of going pro. Lopez co-stars as the boy’s mother.
TIFF — where screenings are open to ordinary moviegoers, not just media and industry insiders — is part of a fall flurry of film festivals, along with Venice and Telluride, that preview some of the movies expected to vie for Oscars glory.
The event runs from Thursday through September 15.
On the final day, the People’s Choice Award — voted for by audiences — is handed out. It has become something of an early Oscars bellwether, predicting eventual Academy Award best picture winners such as “Nomadland” and “Green Book.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupt opening of Toronto film fest
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Pro-Palestinian protesters disrupt opening of Toronto film fest
- The brief protest provided a political jolt at the start of the Toronto International Film Festival
Starmer and Meloni holding talks on curbing migrant boats reaching UK and Italy
- The center-left Labour Party prime minister is not a natural ally of Meloni, who heads the far-right Brothers of Italy party
Support for Ukraine is also on the agenda for the trip, part of Starmer’s effort to reset relations with European neighbors after Britain’s acrimonious 2020 departure from the European Union.
The center-left Labour Party prime minister isn’t a natural ally of Meloni, who heads the far-right Brothers of Italy party. But migration has climbed the UK political agenda, and Starmer hopes Italy’s tough approach can help him stop people fleeing war and poverty trying to cross the English Channel in flimsy, overcrowded boats.
More than 22,000 migrants have made the perilous crossing from France so far this year, a slight increase compared to the same period in 2023. Several dozen people have perished in attempt, including the eight killed when a boat carrying some 60 people ran aground on rocks late Saturday.
Starmer promised “a new era of international enforcement to dismantle these networks, protect our shores and bring order to the asylum system.”
“No more gimmicks,” he said before his trip to Rome — a reference to the previous Conservative government’s scuttled plan to send some asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda.
Meloni pledged a crackdown on migration after taking office in 2022, aiming to deter would-be refugees from paying smugglers to make the dangerous Mediterranean crossing to Italy. Her nationalist conservative government has signed deals with individual African countries to block departures, imposed limits on the work of humanitarian rescue ships, cracked down on traffickers and taken measures to deter people from setting off.
Italy also has signed a deal with Albania under which some adult male migrants rescued at sea while trying to reach Italy would be taken instead to Albania while their asylum claims are processed.
The number of migrants arriving in Italy by boat in the first half of this year was down 60 percent from 2023, according to the country’s Interior Ministry.
Starmer wants to learn from Italy’s mix of tough enforcement and international cooperation, though Italy’s approach has been criticized by refugee groups and others alarmed by Europe’s increasingly strict asylum rules, growing xenophobia and hostile treatment of migrants.
The leader of Italy’s right-wing League, Matteo Salvin i, who is deputy prime minister in Meloni’s government, has been accused by prosecutors of alleged kidnapping for for his decision to prevent a rescue ship carrying more than 100 migrants from landing in Italy when he was interior minister in 2019.
Starmer will tour Italy’s national immigration crime coordination center with newly appointed UK Border Security Commander Martin Hewitt. The government says Hewitt, a former head of Britain’s National Police Chiefs’ Council, will work with law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the UK and across Europe to tackle-people smuggling networks.
Soon after being elected in July, Starmer scrapped the Conservatives’ contentious plan to send asylum-seekers who cross the Channel to Rwanda, about 4,000 miles (6,400 kilometers) away, with no chance of returning to the UK even if their refugee claims were successful.
The Conservatives said the deportation plan would act as a deterrent, but refugee and human rights groups called it unethical, judges ruled it illegal and Starmer dismissed it as an expensive gimmick. He has, though, expressed an interest in striking agreements like the one Italy has with Albania that would see asylum-seekers sent temporarily to another country.
The Rome trip follows visits to Paris, Berlin and Dublin during Starmer’s first weeks in office — all part of efforts to restore ties with EU neighbors that have been frayed by Brexit. Starmer has ruled out rejoining the now 27-nation bloc, but is keen for a closer relationship on security and other issues.
Ukraine will also feature in his talks with the Italian government, which holds the presidency of the Group of Seven leading industrialized nations this year.
Unlike some politicians on the European right, Meloni is a staunch supporter of Ukraine. Starmer meets her after returning from Washington, where he and US President Joe Biden discussed Ukraine’s plea to use Western-supplied missiles to strike targets deep inside Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pressing allies to allow his forces to use Western weapons to target air bases and launch sites inside Russia as Moscow steps up assaults on Ukraine’s electricity grid and utilities before winter. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that would mean NATO countries “are at war with Russia.”
So far, the US hasn’t announced a change to its policy of allowing Kyiv to use American-provided weapons only in a limited area inside Russia’s border with Ukraine.
Indian police detain 100 Samsung workers, union leaders
NEW DELHI: Indian police have detained around 100 striking workers and union leaders protesting low wages at a Samsung Electronics plant in southern India, as they were planning a march on Monday without permission, police officials said.
The detention marks an escalation of a strike by workers at a Samsung home appliance plant near Chennai city in the state of Tamil Nadu. Workers want higher wages and have boycotted work for seven days, disrupting production that contributes roughly a third of Samsung’s annual India revenue of $12 billion.
A senior police official of Kancheepuram district, Sankar Ganesh, told Reuters by telephone that around 100 workers were under “preventive arrest,” without elaborating.
’Disappeared completely’: melting glaciers worry Central Asia
Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of grey rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago.
At an altitude of 4,000 meters, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change.
A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future.
She hiked six hours to get to the modest triangular-shaped hut that serves as a science station — almost up in the clouds.
“Eight to 10 years ago you could see the glacier with snow,” Omorova told AFP.
“But in the last three-to-four years, it has disappeared completely. There is no snow, no glacier,” she said.
The effects of a warming planet have been particularly visible in Central Asia, which has seen a wave of extreme weather disasters.
The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a shortage of water.
Acting as water towers, glaciers are crucial to the region’s food security and vital freshwater reserves are now dwindling fast.
Equipped with a measuring device, Omorova kneeled over a torrent of melted water, standing on grey-covered ice shimmering in strong sunshine.
“We are measuring everything,” she said. “The glaciers cannot regenerate because of rising temperatures.”
A little further on, she points to the shrinking Adygene glacier, saying it has retreated by “around 16 centimeters (six inches)” every year.
“That’s more than 900 meters since the 1960s,” she said.
The once majestic glacier is only one of thousands in the area that are slowly disappearing.
Between 14 and 30 percent of glaciers in the Tian-Shan and Pamir — the two main mountain ranges in Central Asia — have melted over the last 60 years, according to a report by the Eurasian Development Bank.
Omorova warned that things are only becoming worse.
“The melting is much more intense than in previous years,” she said.
With scientists warning that 2024 is likely to be the hottest year on record, professions like hers have hugely grown in importance.
But resources are scarce in Kyrgyzstan — one of the poorest countries in former Soviet Central Asia.
“We lack measuring equipment and there is not enough money to transport things to our observation station, where we don’t even have electricity,” Omorova said.
She hopes the Kyrygz government will draw up a law to protect the ice-covered giants.
The shrinking glaciers have also created a new threat for Kyrgyz towns and cities, with meltwater forming new lakes before tumbling down mountains in dangerous torrents, including toward the capital Bishkek.
Further down the valley — in a grass-covered part of the mountain at 2,200 meters — two scientists, brothers Sergei and Pavel Yerokhin, worked on the banks of the fast-flowing water.
The elder brother, 72-year-old Sergei, warned of the dangers of the torrents.
“This water mass takes rocks with it, flows down the valley and can reach towns,” he told AFP.
He said their task was to monitor and predict the water flow and to “draw up maps to ensure people and infrastructure don’t end up in these dangerous areas.”
His brother Pavel had a sensor installed about 50 centimeters above the water that would send radio signals in case of flooding.
For the Kyrgyz government, the melting glaciers threaten more than infrastructure damage.
Water distribution in the region — devised in the Soviet era — remains a thorny issue and is a frequent source of tension between neighbors.
Mountainous Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan — home to around 10,000 glaciers each, according to Omorova — are the main water providers for Central Asia.
“We share water with our neighbors downstream,” Omorova said, referring to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, home to most of Central Asia’s population.
Aside from rising temperatures, the glaciers also face another threat: a growing appetite for immense natural resources in the region, including for gold, whose extraction with chemicals accelerates the melting of ice.
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan have stepped up efforts to draw attention to a looming catastrophe.
Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov warned last year that forecasts show Central Asian glaciers “will halve by 2050 and disappear completely by 2100.”
Philippines says ‘we have not lost’ South China Sea reef after pullout
- Beijing claims most of the South China Sea, including Sabina Shoal, despite an international tribunal ruling that its assertions have no merit
MANILA: The Philippines insisted on Monday that it had not given up a South China Sea reef, two days after it pulled out a ship stationed there following a months-long standoff with rival claimant China.
Manila had deployed the coast guard flagship BRP Teresa Magbanua to Sabina Shoal in April to stop Beijing from building an artificial island there, as it has atop several other disputed features in the strategic waterway.
But the ship was abruptly called back to the western Philippine island of Palawan, with Manila citing damage from an earlier clash with Chinese ships, ailing crew members, dwindling food and bad weather.
“We have not lost anything. We did not abandon anything. Escoda Shoal is still part of our exclusive economic zone,” Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela told a news conference Monday, using the Filipino name for Sabina Shoal.
Beijing claims most of the South China Sea, including Sabina Shoal, despite an international tribunal ruling that its assertions have no merit.
It has acted aggressively toward Philippine government vessels at Sabina and other disputed features in recent months, ramming, blocking, water-cannoning and even boarding them, causing damage and injuries.
The confrontations have sparked concern that the United States, a military ally of Manila, could be drawn into armed conflict with China.
With the Chinese harassing resupply missions, Tarriela said it came to a point that the BRP Teresa Magbanua’s water desalinator broke down, forcing the crew to rely on rainwater for drinking “for more than one month now.”
He said the crew were also reduced to “eating porridge for three weeks,” which “obviously is not nutritious.”
Following the ship’s pullout, China’s coast guard insisted on Sunday that Beijing “has indisputable sovereignty” over Sabina.
It warned the Philippines to “stop inciting propaganda and risking infringements,” adding Beijing would “continue to carry out rights protection and law enforcement activities” there.
But Tarriela on Monday maintained the withdrawal from Sabina was “not a defeat,” rejecting comparisons to the Scarborough Shoal, which Manila lost to Beijing after a similar months-long standoff in 2012.
He said it would be “impossible” for China to totally stop the Philippines from sending its ships around the 137-square-kilometer (53-square-mile) Sabina Shoal.
“The coast guard can carry out whatever it takes for us to make sure that China will not be able to occupy and even reclaim Escoda Shoal,” he said.
“We have other coast guard vessels that, as we speak right now, may have been or may already be proceeding to Escoda Shoal,” Tarriela said without providing details, citing operational security considerations.
Sabina is located 140 kilometers (86 miles) west of Palawan and about 1,200 kilometers from Hainan island, the nearest major Chinese landmass.
North Korea’s foreign minister leaves for Russia, embassy in Pyongyang says
- Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, said in June that delegations from almost a hundred countries were expected at the forum
MOSCOW: North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui has flown to Russia to attend the fourth Eurasian Women’s Forum and the BRICS Women’s Forum in Saint Petersburg, Russia’s embassy in North Korea said on Monday.
“Russian Ambassador (Alexander Ivanovich) Matsegora saw off North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui at the Pyongyang International Airport,” the embassy said in a post on its Vkontakte social network.
The embassy said that the minister’s speeches and participation in discussions are planned at the forum, which will take place Sept. 18 to 20.
Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, said in June that delegations from almost a hundred countries were expected at the forum.
“We will strive to ensure a record foreign representation in the entire history of the Forum,” Matviyenko said in June, according to a transcript provided on the Council’s website.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has attended previous meetings of the forum, but the Kremlin is yet to announce his participation in this year’s forum.
Warming ties between the countries reached a new high this year when Putin signed a deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that included a mutual defense pledge during a visit to Pyongyang.
The United States and its allies have accused North Korea of helping Russia by supplying weapons for its war in Ukraine in return for economic and other military assistance. Moscow and Pyongyang have denied this.
