Foreign News
Oppenheimer sweeps Golden Globes taking best drama, actor and director
Oppenheimer, one of the biggest box office hits of 2023, has won multiple Golden Globes, as Hollywood kicked off its annual awards season.
Irish actor Cillian Murphy took home best male actor for his portrayal of scientist J Robert Oppenheimer in the film about the development of the atomic bomb.
The film was named best drama, Christopher Nolan the best director and Robert Downey Jr the best male supporting actor.
“I was in the hands of a visionary director, a master,” Murphy said as he accepted the Golden Globe on Sunday night.
Indigenous actor Lily Gladstone, a firm favourite, won best actress in a drama film for her role in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.
The gothic comedy-drama Poor Things, from celebrated Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, was named best film comedy or musical, and its star, Emma Stone, best actress in a film comedy or musical.
The Globes ceremony marks the start of Hollywood’s annual awards season, which culminates with the Oscars on March 10. Overhauled after a diversity and ethics scandal in 2021, the Globes recognise the best in film and television and brought the stars together for the first time after six months of strikes by actors and writers in 2023.
In television, the drama series Succession was named best television drama and took the top acting awards for its final season about the high-stakes battle for control of a global media empire. Kieran Culkin, who played the wayward son Roman Roy, landed the award for best actor, while Australian Sarah Snook won best actress. British actor Matthew Macfadyen took home best supporting actor for his role as her fictional husband, Tom Wambsgans.
Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri, meanwhile, were recognised for their leading roles in the television comedy The Bear, while road-rage saga Beef picked up best actor and actress limited series awards for Ali Wong and Steven Yeun.
Several Hollywood legends, from Meryl Streep to Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster, all Globe nominees vying for Oscars this year, were among those on the red carpet for the revamped awards.
Pop superstar Taylor Swift was also at the ceremony where she was nominated for best song. That award went to Billie Eilish for What Was I Made For? which she wrote for Barbie.
The satire on misogvny and female empowerment made more than $1bn in ticket sales and was nominated for nine awards including best comedy and best director for Greta Gerwig.
It went home with the newly created trophy for box office achievement.
Among the other winners were the French courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, which won best screenplay and best film not in English, and The Boy and the Heron, which won best animated film for Japanese director Havao Miyazaki.
(Aljazeera)
United States President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to demand control of the Panama Canal after accusing Panama of charging excessive rates on US ships passing through one of the busiest waterways in the world.
“Our Navy and Commerce have been treated in a very unfair and injudicious way. The fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
He later doubled down during a speech in Arizona on Sunday, saying the US was “being ripped off at the Panama Canal like we’re being ripped off everywhere else”.
The US largely built the canal in 1914 and administrated territory surrounding the passage for decades. But Washington fully handed control of the canal to Panama in 1999 after a period of joint administration.
Trump also hinted at China’s growing influence around the canal, which connects the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.
“It was solely for Panama to manage, not China, or anyone else,” he said in the original post. “We would and will NEVER let it fall into the wrong hands!”
“It was not given for the benefit of others, but merely as a token of cooperation with us and Panama. If the moral and legal principles of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to us, in full, and without question,” Trump said.
Panama’s President Jose Raul Mulino firmly responded to Trump on Sunday.
“Every square meter of the Panama canal and the surrounding area belongs to Panama and will continue belonging so,” Mulino said in a recorded message posted on social media.
He further denied that China or any other country has direct or indirect influence over the canal. He added that fees were not decided on a “whim”.
The canal is key to Panama’s economy and generates about one-fifth of the government’s annual revenue.
[Aljazeera]
At least 13 people, including four children, have been killed in two incidents in Nigeria as large crowds gathered to collect food and clothing distributed at annual Christmas events, police say.
In the capital, Abuja, at least 10 people died on Saturday and many more were injured in a scramble to receive gifts of charity being distributed by the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Maitama district.
“This unfortunate event, which took place around 6:30am [05:30 GMT], resulted in a stampede that claimed the lives of 10 individuals, including four children, and left eight others with varying degrees of injuries,” said Josephine Adeh, a police spokesperson.
In a separate incident in Okija in Anambra State in southern Nigeria, three people were killed in a crush at a charity event organised by a philanthropist, state police said.
“The event had not even started when the rush began,” police spokesman Tochukwu Ikenga said. There could be more deaths recorded as officers investigate, he said.
In both incidents, the victims were mostly women and children who were trampled as crowds tried to reach the provisions being offered.
[Aljazeera]
A nine-year-old child and four adults have been killed, and more than 200 injured after a car drove into a crowd at a Christmas market in the eastern German city of Magdeburg on Friday, officials say.
At least 41 people were critically injured after the incident which lasted around three minutes, police said.
The arrested suspect has been named in local media as Taleb al-Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi citizen who arrived in Germany in 2006 and had worked as a doctor.
Reiner Haseloff, the premier of Saxony-Anhalt state, said a preliminary investigation suggested the alleged attacker was acting alone.
He added that he could not rule out more deaths due to the number of injured.
The suspect is currently being questioned and prosecutors expect to charge him with murder and attempted murder in due course, the head of the local prosecutor’s office said on Saturday.
Prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens added that the investigation was ongoing but suggested the background to the crime “could have been disgruntlement with the way Saudi Arabian refugees are treated in Germany”.
The suspected attacker has no known links to Islamist extremism – social media and posts online appear to suggest he had been critical of Islam.
Footage from the scene showed numerous emergency services vehicles attending while people lay on the ground.
Further footage then emerged of armed police confronting and arresting a man who can be seen lying on the ground by a stationary vehicle.
Unverified video on social media purports to show a car ploughing into the crowd at the market.
City officials said around 100 police, medics and firefighters, as well as 50 rescue service personnel rushed to the scene.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who travelled to the city on Saturday, described the attack as a “dreadful tragedy” as “so many people were injured and killed with such brutality” in a place that is supposed to be “joyful”.
He told reporters that there were serious concerns for those who had been critically injured – which German media reports is in the dozens – and that “all resources” will be allocated to investigating the suspect behind the attack.
There would be a memorial service for the victims at the Magdeburg Cathedral later on Saturday, he added.
[BBC]
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