“The statuette will be a diamond butterfly”: Mikhalkov proposed to establish the Eurasian “Oscar”
According to the Russian director, the prize fund of the award will be three to five million dollars.
Chairman of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia Nikita Mikhalkov, during his speech in Bishkek at the first Eurasian Economic Forum, proposed establishing a Eurasian Oscar in the very near future. In addition, he wants to create the first Eurasian film academy.
“The figurine will be a diamond butterfly. But it should not be just a festival. To make it clear, I will say that it will be the Eurasian Oscar” – Nikita Mikhalkov
As Nikita Mikhalkov noted, in the future, the festival will be attended by films that will correspond to the ideals that he will form with other prospective participants. According to the director, the prize fund will be at the level of three or five million dollars, according to RIA Novosti.
Earlier in Russia, it was proposed to create an analogue of Eurovision. With such an initiative, in particular, was the producer Iosif Prigozhin and some other Russian show business figures.
The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo made a “Ukrainian” issue, including works by Ukrainian cartoonists, writes Figaro.
Under the title “Respond to Rockets with Laughter”, the magazine publishes works by Ukrainian cartoonists. The publication notes that the editorial board took this step “out of solidarity” with its Ukrainian colleagues, who “continue to do their job” despite the Russian invasion.
The Ukrainian cartoons are “obviously ruthless towards the Russians, showing humor that does not want to give up arbitrariness and terror,” the editorial team explained. Most of the published cartoons are taken from the exhibition “Russian warship, fuck you”, held in Odessa by a local association of cartoonists.
The publication notes that the money received from the sale of this issue will be transferred to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Territorial Defense of Odessa.
The world is full of amazing places for which tourists are ready to travel thousands of kilometers just to see them with their own eyes.
Natural wonders, ancient monuments, isolated islands and historical mysteries attract seekers of the extraordinary in different parts of the planet.
However, many of these places remain inaccessible. Some of them would suffer from the crowds of visitors, others keep centuries-old secrets, others are dangerous to health.
Sometimes one has to come to terms with the fact that there are places where one cannot set foot. However, nothing prevents him from being curious, reading their story and searching for the truth among the dozens of conspiracies.
Take a walk through some of the scariest, most amazing and fascinating places forbidden to tourists in the world:
Lascaux Cave in France
Lasko Cave became world famous for its amazing Paleolithic cave paintings, which are believed to be about 20,000 years old. The images on its walls are unusually realistic (cats, deer, bulls), and is part of the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The cave was discovered in 1940 by several boys walking with their dog in the woods. Suddenly, their dog falls into a hole, and the echo of it shows that this is not a simple crack in the rock. After its discovery, the cave has been open for visitors for several years, but the weather has led to a rapid deterioration in the quality of paintings, so since 1963 it is officially banned. Next to it is a copy of the original with a museum attached to it, where you can see replicas of the drawings and experience the excitement of the discovery.
Snake Island in Brazil
About 150 km off the coast of Sao Paulo in Brazil there is an island that not only you can not, but would not want to step on. Its name – Snake Island, is enough to straighten the hair of those who do not like reptiles.
According to scientists, here live between one and five snakes per square meter. The dominant species is the so-called golden snake, known for its venom so powerful that it literally eats the flesh around the bitten spot.
North Sentinel Island in India
North Sentinel is an island in the Andaman Archipelago, located in the Bay of Bengal near India. It is covered with forests, surrounded by coral reefs and in theory sounds like a place that has the potential to become a tropical paradise destination.
However, there is one small detail – the island is home to a local tribe that has refused to communicate with the outside world for centuries. Any attempt to moor a ship or land a helicopter on the North Sentinel was met with a torrent of arrows. In 1956, the Indian government issued a special law banning the approach of more than 5 nautical miles off the coast of the island. No one knows exactly how many people live on the island, and even official figures are only speculations (for between 15 and 400 people).
Ise Shrine in Japan
Shintoists in Japan have built more than 80,000 shrines across the country, but there is one that is not only the most expensive and exquisite, but also the most inaccessible.
Ise’s shrine is torn down and rebuilt every 20 years as a symbol of the Shinto philosophy of the death and rebirth of nature. The last time the building was erected was in 2013, and its price is said to have exceeded one million dollars. Only members of the Japanese imperial family have the right to enter.
Povelia Island in Italy
Given how close it is to Venice, it is unusual that the island of Povelia is off-limits. However, when you dig through its history, you will probably lose the desire to go through the complicated procedure for issuing an access permit.
In the 18th century, the island was turned into a quarantine zone for those infected with bubonic plague. At the beginning of the 20th century, the mentally ill from the area began to be sent to Povelya, and according to urban legends, they were cared for by a doctor who conducted sinister experiments. Today the island is abandoned – unless you count the rumors about the hundreds of ghosts that roam it.
The Apostolic Archives of the Vatican
Known as the Vatican’s Secret Archives, this set of documents is one of the most closely guarded secrets of centuries. The collection keeps government documents, letters, accounting documents and … few are chosen who know what else. According to conspiracy theories, there is evidence of aliens, the Vatican’s contribution to fascism and evidence of demons.
Today, only the highest-ranking scientists have access to some of the documents, after a thorough examination. Those who just want to peek out of pure curiosity have no right of access.
The tomb of Qin Shihuang in China
There is hardly a person who has not heard of the amazing terracotta army – thousands of incredibly realistic figures with unique facial features that fill the underground halls of the burial complex of the first Chinese emperor – Qing Shuhuang.
However, the emperor’s tomb itself is sealed and will probably remain so for a long time to come. It was discovered only in 1974 and a large amount of mercury was detected in it, which would be deadly for anyone who entered without precautions.
The United States has condemned Russia’s decision to introduce a simplified procedure for issuing Russian passports to Russian-controlled residents of southern Ukraine. Washington described it as an attempt to subjugate the population, AFP reported. The plan is “Russia’s tactic of subjugating the Ukrainian people – to impose its will by force,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price, adding that the United States “strongly rejects” such plans.
Russian President Vladimir Putin today signed a decree facilitating the granting of Russian citizenship and obtaining Russian passports from residents of Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporizhia regions occupied by Russia. This is another step towards “Russification” of the two regions, DPA notes. By bringing these two Ukrainian regions under its control, Moscow has established a land link between the pro-Russian separatist republics in eastern Ukraine and the Crimean peninsula, which it annexed in 2014.
At the same time, Ukraine is considering the introduction of visas for Russian citizens. President Volodymyr Zelensky “supported the need to tighten the control regime for the entry of citizens of the Russian Federation into Ukraine” and instructed the Prime Minister to develop the issue of introducing visas for Russians. This is stated in the response of the head of state to a petition of citizens who signed online, BGNES reports. “Against the background of full-scale Russian aggression, this issue is important and urgent, so I support the need to tighten the control regime for the entry of Russian citizens into Ukraine. In view of the above, a corresponding letter was sent to the Prime Minister of Ukraine D. Shmihal with a request to work on this issue, “said the President.
The petition was registered on February 11 by Mazura Nikita Viktorovich. The document speaks of the need to “introduce a visa regime for Russian citizens trying to enter the territory of Ukraine.” After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv cut off diplomatic relations with Russia.
Russia has a special program to take compatriots abroad
Recall that in 2016 a record number of Ukrainians asked for Russian passports.
Ukrainians are visibly easier to obtain Russian citizenship than other CIS citizens, according to information from the press service of the Russian Interior Ministry, quoted by RT. At the same time, they are moving not only from the war-torn Donbass, but also from the central parts of Ukraine – Kyiv, Vinnytsia and Kharkiv region.
In Russia, this is a state policy, where a state program has been adopted to assist in the voluntary resettlement in Russia of compatriots living abroad.
According to statistics, in 2016 more than 100 thousand Ukrainians acquired a Russian passport, which is almost 50% more than in 2015.
In second place is Kazakhstan with 38 thousand people. There, a quarter of the population is ethnic Russian, and Russian is the official language in business. Graduates of Russian universities remain in Russia.
In 2016, 23,000 Uzbeks and 22,000 Armenians became Russian citizens.
The Swiss government has confiscated assets worth more than 100 million Swiss francs (82 million British pounds) from an aide to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych – Yuri Ivanyushchenko. The seizure affects assets of Ivanyushchenko and his family frozen after Ukraine’s 2014 revolution. The move has nothing to do with Berne’s sanctions against Russians following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Yanukovych was ousted in 2014, in events known as the “Maidan Revolution”, which moved Ukraine to a more pro-Western path and far from Russia’s sphere of influence. Many experts say the ouster of Yanukovych was key to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and ultimately led to the invasion.
Nairobi (Kenya), 30 May 2022 – By 2030, demographers project that the number of people using drugs will rise by 11 per cent around the world, and as much as 40 per cent in Africa alone. As further evidence of the sheer scale of the growing problem on the continent, about 60 million of the 269 million (22 per cent) of the people estimated in 2018 to have used a drug the previous year were in Africa.
The challenge is compounded by population growth, as Africa is forecast to have the largest rise in population of any region between 2018-2030, which could result in an increase of 38 per cent in the number of people who use drugs on the continent. Moreover, increased development and urbanization is another potential driver for elevated drug use in the region.
The ramifications of such a ballooning use of drugs in the region could be dire: “Drugs cost lives,” declared Ms. Ghada Waly, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in the preface to the 2021 World Drug Report, adding that drug use killed almost half a million people in 2019. “The illicit drug trade also continues to hold back economic and social development, while disproportionately impacting the most vulnerable and marginalized, and it constitutes a fundamental threat to security and stability in some parts of the world.”
But how do all these drugs reach Africa? Part of this surge in drugs reaching the continent comes from the production and trafficking of opiates in Afghanistan, which accounts for the majority of global heroin production. Opiates produced by Afghanistan then travel – by sea and by air – the ‘Southern Route’, a diverse network of trafficking circuits leading to consumer markets in Africa, South and South-East Asia and the Middle East. Traffickers also use African countries as transit points to bring Afghan-manufactured heroin to India and Europe.
To better understand the threat posed by opiate trafficking in Africa, UNODC held a two-day Expert Working Group Meeting on Opiate Trafficking along the Southern Route in Nairobi, Kenya, on 16-17 May 2022.
The meeting gathered representatives from Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Seychelles, and Nigeria. Experts from the multinational Combined Maritime Forces, the United States’ Drug Enforcement Administration, the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency and the UNODC’s Global Maritime Crime Programme, Container Control Programme, and Airport Communication Project also attended. Participants discussed current trends and challenges related to opiate trafficking to, within, and from Africa.
The event, made possible with financial support from the United States, was organized by UNODC’s Afghan Opiate Trade Project (AOTP) in cooperation with UNODC’s Regional Office for Eastern Africa and Global Programme against Money Laundering, Proceeds of Crime and the financing of Terrorism (GPML).
Key outcomes from the meeting included calls from African participants for more frequent Expert Working Groups, and the suggestion of an Early Warning Centre to monitor drug trafficking and drug use trends in Africa. The findings from the event will be incorporated into a research report on opiate trafficking to Africa.
To explain to the inhabitant of ancient Vindolanda Sekundin what a bad person he is, someone spared no time for stone carving.
Employees of the British archaeological foundation Vindolanda Charitable Trust reported a unique find: project volunteer Dylan Herbert found in a pile of garbage (this often happens) a stone with an image of a phallus carved on it and some letters.
After the archaeologists had already taken up the find and cleaned the stone of dirt, it became clear: this is not an architectural element of something that is related to the phallic cult. On a stone measuring 40 by 15 centimeters, in addition to the picture, there was an inscription: SECVNDINVS CACOR.
Experts in Roman epigraphy (those who study inscriptions carved in hard materials) came to the conclusion that the first word – Secundinus – is a name, and the second is a distortion of the word “cacator”, which is translated into Russian as “asshole” and in the Roman tradition was serious insult. And the image next to these words enhances the power of the written insult.
Dr. Andrew Birley, director of excavation and general manager of the foundation, commented: “Finding an inscription, a direct message from the past, is always a big deal at Roman excavations, but this inscription really surprised us. When we deciphered the message, we realized that its author clearly had big problems with Sekundin and was confident enough in himself to publicly state his thoughts on stone. I have no doubt that Secundin would not have been very pleased to see this when he roamed here over 1700 years ago.”
The Roman phallus is often regarded as a good luck charm or a symbol of fertility, in other words, a completely positive sign.
In general, the largest number of ancient Roman images (reliefs and sculptures) of phalluses have already been found in Vindolanda – more than in any other Roman settlement near Hadrian’s Wall. Most likely, this is due to the fact that excavations have been going on there for more than a hundred years.
However, in this case, the author of the drawing of the phallus took advantage of the literal meaning and altered it for his own purposes. Each letter is carved very carefully: that is, a person spent a lot of time on the inscription and drawing. Apparently, Sekundin greatly annoyed the author of the inscription with something, since he showed such perseverance and depth of feelings.
Cutting a stone, of course, is not easy, but such an insult cannot be erased or painted over – like an inscription on the wall of a modern entrance. Centuries before the advent of print newspapers or social media, this was one of the best ways to get a lot of people to see your point of view.
Vindolanda was founded by the Romans in the north of modern Northumberland in 85 AD – then it was a very small fort. He was part of a system of forts located behind Hadrian’s Wall and designed to repel the attacks of the Picts from the north.
Usually, the Romans, occupying any area, immediately rebuilt it for themselves: they laid roads, built baths, arenas, and other public places. On the northern border, all this was, of course, not in such quantity and quality as, for example, in Londinium. But still, the settlement gradually increased at the expense of local residents, who also did not like the raids and who wanted to live in peace under the protection of the legions.
Even after the Romans left Britain, Vindolanda was inhabited: the Picts had not gone away, and it was more convenient to defend against them in a fortress. The settlement was empty only at the beginning of the 10th century.
Vindolanda, with its fort and settlement, is a treasure trove of information about daily life during the Roman Empire. For example, they found a handwritten invitation in which a woman politely asks her “dear sister” to join her to celebrate her birthday. As we can see, the person whom Sekundin annoyed with something decided not to exchange for manuscripts (otherwise they would still burn) – and immediately immortalized his dislike in stone.
From mid-July, tourists wishing to start their journey in Egypt from the Great Pyramids of Giza will be facilitated by flying to them. Right next to the Pyramids of Giza, Egypt’s new Sphinx International Airport (SPX) is scheduled to start operating in mid-July 2022, according to local media. The air harbor will operate at full capacity by the high season.
Sphinx International Airport will serve both domestic and international flights, offering incoming tourists a significant advantage: it is located just a short drive from the Pyramids and the Great Egyptian Museum, much closer than Cairo International Airport. Also, domestic flights are planned from the airport, including to the resorts of the Red Sea.
Civil Aviation Minister Mohammed Manar said during a cabinet meeting that the airport is now 90% complete and will start operating in accordance with Egypt’s summer schedule. Manar added that the new airport will also provide one-day travel programs. It should be noted that the first attempt to open the airport took place in 2018, since then the total area of the Sphinx International Airport has increased to 24 thousand square meters. It is expected that he will be able to take up to 900 passengers per hour.
There has been a sharp decline in the lark population in Western Europe
Authorities in the southwestern German city of Waldorf have ordered some cat owners to keep their pets at home until the end of August to protect hooded larks during their breeding season, the Associated Press reported.
The ordinance aims to help save rare birds that shrink their nests on the ground, so they can easily become prey for cats. In recent decades, the population of birds of this species in Western Europe has declined sharply.
Authorities in Waldorf say that “among other things, the survival of the species depends on each rescued chick.”
The order, which applies to all cats in the southern part of the city and will be renewed over the next three years, has caused sadness among pet owners.
The regional daily Rhine-Neckar Zeitung reported that the head of the local animal protection association plans to take legal steps to challenge the order.
“Please keep calm. I can assure you that we will do everything possible to stop this disproportionate measure, “he said.
The 300,000-inhabitants’ archipelago has been hit by two powerful cyclones and a devastating drought in the last decade.
The Vanuatu archipelago in the Pacific has declared a climate emergency and a $ 1.2 billion plan to mitigate the effects of climate change on the island nation, AFP reported.
In a speech to parliament, Prime Minister Bob Loughman acknowledged that the Pacific region is already affected by the phenomenon of rising water levels and extreme weather events. The 300,000-inhabitants archipelago has been hit by two powerful cyclones and a devastating drought in the last decade. “The country is already too hot and a little secure,” he told lawmakers, stressing that Vanuatu was now in danger.
A similar declaration was adopted by a dozen other countries around the world, including Fiji, Canada and the United Kingdom, recalls AFP.
The $ 1.2 billion plan will come from donor countries. Earlier this week, during a trip to Fiji, Australia’s new Foreign Minister Penny Wong promised that her country would soon set more ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and would be a candidate to host a meeting with the Pacific Islands. on top of the climate.
