Current Final

Author: AFP

  • Swedish parents told to keep toddlers off TV

    Swedish parents told to keep toddlers off TV

    Sweden’s Public Health Agency told parents on Monday that toddlers should not be allowed to watch screens at all. Children under the age of two should be kept away from digital media and television.

    Kids between the ages of two and five should be limited to a maximum of one hour of screen time a day, it said in new recommendations, while those aged six to 12 should spend no more than an hour or two a day in front of a screen.

    Teenagers aged 13 to 18 should be limited to two to three hours per day, the agency said. “For too long, smartphones and other screens have been allowed to enter every aspect of our children’s lives,” Public Health Minister Jakob Forssmed told reporters.

    The minister said that Swedish teens aged 13 to 16 spend six and a half hours a day on average in front of their screens, outside of school hours. Forssmed said that didn’t leave “a lot of time for communal activities, physical activity or adequate sleep”, and lamented a Swedish “sleep crisis” noting that more than half of 15-year-olds did not get enough sleep.

    The health agency also recommended that kids not use screens before going to bed and that phones and tablets be kept out of the bedroom at night.

    It cited research showing that excessive screen use can lead to poor sleep, depression and body dissatisfaction. Sweden’s government has previously said it is looking at a ban on smartphones in primary schools.

  • Frenchman on trial for recruiting 72 strangers to rape drugged wife over 10 years

    Frenchman on trial for recruiting 72 strangers to rape drugged wife over 10 years

    A French pensioner went on trial Monday on charges of allowing scores of strangers to rape his wife after he drugged her, in a case that has horrified the country.

    Fifty men, recruited online, are also being tried in the southern city of Avignon alongside the main suspect, a 71-year-old former employee at France’s state-owned power utility company EDF.

    Police counted a total of 92 rapes committed by 72 men, 51 of whom were identified. The men, aged between 26 and 74, are accused of raping the 72-year-old woman who, her lawyers say, was so heavily sedated she was not aware of the abuse that went on for a decade.

    Presiding judge Roger Arata announced that all hearings would be public, granting the woman her wish for “complete publicity until the end” of the court case, according to one of her lawyers, Stephane Babonneau.

    “She wants to raise awareness, as widely as possible, of what happened to her so that events like these never happen again,” Babonneau said.

    Another of her attorneys, Antoine Camus, said the trial would nonetheless be “a horrible ordeal” for her. “For the first time, she will have to live through the rapes that she endured over 10 years,” he told AFP, adding that his client had “no recollection” of the abuse that she discovered only in 2020.

    The woman, who arrived at the court supported by her three children, did not want a trial behind closed doors because “that’s what her attackers would have wanted”, Camus said.

    Some came back six times

    Police began to investigate the defendant, Dominique P, in September 2020 when he was caught by a security guard secretly filming under the skirts of three women in a shopping centre.

    Police said they found hundreds of pictures and videos of his wife on his computer, visibly unconscious and mostly in the foetal position.

    The images are alleged to show dozens of rapes in the couple’s home in Mazan, a village of 6,000 people around 33 kilometres from Avignon in Provence.

    Investigators also found chats on a site called coco.fr, since shut down by police, in which he recruited strangers to come to their home and have intercourse with his wife.

    Dominique P admitted to investigators that he gave his wife powerful tranquilisers, especially Temesta, an anxiety-reducing drug. The abuse started in 2011, when the couple was living near Paris and continued after they moved to Mazan two years later.

    The husband took part in the rapes, filmed them and encouraged the other men using degrading language, according to prosecutors.

    No money changed hands.

    The accused rapists include a forklift driver, a fire brigade officer, a company boss and a journalist. Some were single, others married or divorced, and some were family men.

    Most participated just once, but some took part up to six times.

    Murder probe

    Many have said they thought they were simply helping a libertine couple live out its fantasies, but Dominique P told investigators that all were aware that his wife had been drugged without her knowledge.

    An expert said her state “was closer to a coma than to sleep”.

    Her husband told prosecutors that only three men left the house quickly after arriving, while all others proceeded to have intercourse with his wife.

    Dominique P, who said he was raped by a male nurse when he was nine, was ready to face “his family and his wife”, his lawyer Beatrice Zavarro told AFP on Monday morning.

    “He is ashamed of what he did, it’s unforgivable,” she said, adding the case was one of a “sort of addiction”.

    This trial may not be his last.

    He has also been charged with a 1991 murder and rape, which he denies, and an attempted rape in 1999, to which he admitted after DNA testing.

    Experts said the man does not appear to be mentally ill but in documents seen by AFP, they said he had a need to feel “all-powerful” over the female body.

    More than a dozen feminists dressed in black protested outside the courthouse.

    The trial is to last until December 20.

  • China school bus crashes into crowd, kills 11 including students

    China school bus crashes into crowd, kills 11 including students

    A school bus ploughed into a crowd of people outside a middle school in eastern China on Tuesday, killing 11 parents and students, state media reported.

    State broadcaster CCTV said that the driver had “lost control” of the vehicle as it approached the school in Shandong province’s Tai’an city at 7:27 am.

    The bus ran into a group of parents and children on the side of the road, according to CCTV.

    “As of now, (the incident) has caused the deaths of 11 people, of whom six were parents and five were students,” the broadcaster reported.

    It said that one other person was in a “critical” condition, while the vital signs of another 12 people were “stable”.

    Photos and videos circulating on social media showed people in blood-soaked clothes lying in the road near a hulking grey bus. Several adults knelt over children and sprawled unmoving on the ground while other people were heard screaming in the background.

    “They’re all dead, it’s so heartbreaking,” a woman’s voice was heard saying off-camera in one clip of the aftermath of the crash. “I’d have been killed too if I’d stood there, but luckily I ran away fast,” she said.

    AFP geolocated several of the social media photos and videos to the school in Shandong, where the crash took place.

    The driver was being held by the local police, and the cause of the incident was “under investigation,” CCTV said.

    Many public schools in China reopened for the new academic year this week.

    Deadly traffic accidents occur frequently in the country due to lax safety standards and widespread disorderly driving.

    In July, police said a vehicle crashed into pedestrians in the central city of Changsha, killing eight people and injuring five. A 55-year-old suspect living in the area was detained pending an investigation, but it was not clear if the incident was intentional or not.

  • India’s ‘Mollywood’ cinema rocked by MeToo abuse claims

    India’s ‘Mollywood’ cinema rocked by MeToo abuse claims

    Terrified for her safety, Indian actress Sreelekha Mitra remembers pushing chairs and a sofa against her hotel door after she said an award-winning veteran director sexually harassed her.

    Mitra waited 15 years to speak out about the incident, one of several cases exposing the dark underbelly of India’s Malayalam-language “Mollywood” film industry that has won awards at Cannes.

    Her revelation was spurred by an explosive government report documenting widespread sexual harassment in an industry dominated by powerful and wealthy men who believe that an actress willing to kiss on screen would do the same in real life.

    “That entire night I stayed awake,” Mitra, 51, told AFP.

    Mitra was invited to a gathering at the director’s house, where she said he lured her into his room for a phone call with a cinematographer.

    “He started playing with my hair and neck… I knew if I did not say anything then, his hand would roam around other parts of my body,” she said, describing events from 2009, when she was 36.

    She left and returned to her hotel.

    “The intentions behind his moves were pretty clear to me… I was petrified.”

    Her case and close to a dozen others have triggered a MeToo reckoning in the industry, with at least 10 prominent figures accused, according to Indian media.

    Kerala-based Mollywood is known for critically acclaimed movies with strong and progressive themes, a change from the big dance and song numbers of India’s giant Hindi-language Bollywood in Mumbai.

    The industry is prolific, producing up to 200 films a year, loved not only by southern India’s 37 million Malayalam speakers, but also dubbed and streamed across the rest of India — and abroad.

    Internationally, its films have won awards, including the 1999 satire Marana Simhasanam (“Throne of Death”), winner of the Camera d’Or at Cannes.

    This year’s “Manjummel Boys”, a survival thriller, took $29 million at the box office, the highest-grossing Malayalam movie ever and the fifth-most successful in India this year.

    – ‘Worst evil’ –

    The industry report, released August 19, said women actors faced the widespread “worst evil” of sexual harassment.

    The report was released by the Hema Committee, headed by a former high court judge, set up after a leading Malayalam actress reported she was sexually assaulted in 2017.

    Gopalakrishnan Padmanabhan, a prominent Malayalam actor better known by his stage name Dileep, was arrested for allegedly orchestrating the assault.

    He was imprisoned for three months before being released on bail. The case continues.

    But the release of the report has opened discussion on the far wider issue of chronic violence against women, encouraging people like Mitra to speak out in public for the first time.

    It said that women who considered speaking out about sexual assault were silenced by threats to their life, and to their families.

    Award-winning actress Parvathy Thiruvothu, 36, called the investigation a “game changer” and a “historic moment”.

    “There was this idea that women working in the industry should feel grateful for having been given an opportunity by the men who were hiring them,” said Thiruvothu, a member of the campaign group Women in Cinema Collective.

    – ‘Shaking everything’ –

    Allegations of abuse in Indian cinema are not new.

    It witnessed a wave in 2018, shortly after the 2017 MeToo movement erupted in Hollywood against disgraced US movie producer Harvey Weinstein.

    But Thiruvothu called the latest allegations more than “MeToo Part Two.”

    “It’s shaking everything,” she told AFP.

    “It isn’t an individual-to-individual complaint anymore. It’s about a systemic structure that has continued to fail women.”

    Since the report, several top actors have been accused.

    The Association of Malayalam Movie Artists was dissolved following the resignation of its chief on “moral grounds” with some members among the accused.

    Ranjith Balakrishnan, 59, chairman of the state’s film academy, has also quit.

    Balakrishnan, who denies any wrongdoing, was the man Mitra accused of sexual harassment.

    Police have filed a case against him for outraging a woman’s modesty, a non-bailable offence.

    Mitra, who until the release of the report had only mentioned the incident to an industry colleague, told AFP that Balakrishnan had misused “his power”.

    Thiruvothu offered a message to all women in the film industry who have survived sexual assault.

    “You are a skilled artist… do not listen to anyone who tells you to find another job if it is so difficult for you,” she said.

    “This is your industry, as much as it is anybody else’s. Speak up, so that we are taking the space that is rightfully ours.”

  • Norwegian princess, who claims she speaks with angels, marries spiritual shaman

    Norwegian princess, who claims she speaks with angels, marries spiritual shaman

    Norwegian Princess Martha Louise is set to marry American self-proclaimed shaman Durek Verrett on Saturday, a union of two alternative therapy devotees that has raised eyebrows in Norway.

    Martha Louise, a 52-year-old divorcee, claims to be a clairvoyant who can speak with angels, a gift she has shared — and profited from — in books and courses.

    Verrett, 49 and from California, calls himself a “sixth-generation shaman” and sells pricey gold medallions that he says save lives.

    “I’m very spiritual, it’s just so nice to be with a person who embraces it,” Martha Louise said on Instagram after the couple announced their engagement in June 2022.

    The pair will tie the knot Saturday at 1:00 pm (1100 GMT) at a hotel in the hills of Geiranger, a picturesque village on the shores of a fjord on Norway’s west coast.

    Festivities kicked off Thursday with a meet-and-greet party for the more than 350 guests, including Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria and her husband, Prince Daniel.

    On Friday, guests were treated to a boat trip in the fjord and a pre-wedding salsa party in the evening.

    According to Verrett, the nuptials are actually a renewal of the couple’s vows.

    The spiritual guide, who counts Hollywood celebrities Gwyneth Paltrow and Antonio Banderas among his followers, claims he was a pharaoh in a previous life and Martha Louise was his wife.

    The couple’s eccentricity has ruffled feathers in no-nonsense Norway, as has their disregard for science and their use of their royal ties for commercial gain.

    To avoid confusion over her role, Martha Louise relinquished her royal duties in November 2022. She kept her title but agreed not to use it in her commercial endeavours.

    She has however violated the agreement several times since then, most recently when she and Verrett released a “wedding gin” for sale in Norway that bore her princess title on the label.

    “Seeing as the agreement has not been respected, it’s time to take away Martha Louise’s princess title before King Harald sees his life’s work destroyed even further,” historian and royal expert Trond Noren Isaksen wrote in an op-ed in July.

    The couple has also angered Norwegian media by signing deals with Hello! magazine and Netflix for exclusive coverage of the wedding.

    Martha Louise has three daughters from her first marriage to Norwegian author Ari Behn, who killed himself three years after their 2016 divorce.

    She is fourth in line to the Norwegian throne; her younger brother Crown Prince Haakon is due one day to succeed King Harald.

    Norway’s royal family has been largely spared from scandal — until recently.

    The couple will tie the knot in a picturesque village on the shores of a fjordLise Åserud

    Martha Louise and Verrett have contributed to an erosion of public support for the monarchy, from 81 percent in 2017 to 68 percent, a poll by public broadcaster NRK showed this week.

    A recent scandal involving the 27-year-old son of Crown Princess Mette-Marit — from a relationship prior to her marriage to Crown Prince Haakon — has also contributed.

    Earlier this month, Marius Borg Hoiby admitted to a cocaine- and alcohol-fuelled assault on his girlfriend, and two ex-girlfriends have since come forward with similar claims.

    Four in 10 Norwegians said their view of the royal family had grown more negative in the past year, with many citing Martha Louise, Verrett or Hoiby as the reason, the poll showed.

    Martha Louise has accused the media of pursuing a witch hunt against her.

    But it is Verrett who has received the most criticism, labelled a “charlatan and a quack” in the press.

    In one of his books, he suggested that cancer was a choice, and recommended exercises to remove “imprints” from women’s vaginas left by previous sexual partners.

    On his website, he sells a $222 “Spirit Optimizer” medallion which he says helped him overcome Covid.

    While Verrett has acknowledged his beliefs may be unsettling for some, he claims he is a victim of racism — echoing fellow Meghan Markle’s complaints after she joined Britain’s royal family. She is biracial, with an African-American mother.

    “White people write all this hate and death threats to us… because… they don’t want to see a black man in the royal family,” he said on Instagram in June 2022.

    Meanwhile, 87-year-old King Harald — who fought for years to be allowed to marry Queen Sonja, a commoner — has said little about his future son-in-law, referring only to a “culture clash”.

    He has described him as “a great guy and very funny”.

    “We’ve agreed to disagree” on some things, the king said in November 2022.

  • Explosive Trump biopic to hit US theaters before election: reports

    Explosive Trump biopic to hit US theaters before election: reports

    A controversial biopic of Donald Trump that depicts the former president raping his wife and which has drawn legal threats from his attorneys will hit US theaters this October, it was reported Friday.

    Tiny indie studio Briarcliff Entertainment plans to release “The Apprentice” for US audiences less than a month before Trump takes on Kamala Harris in the country’s razor-tight presidential election, the Hollywood Reporter said.

    Representatives for Briarcliff did not immediately respond to AFP queries.

    The explosive film about Trump’s younger years caused shockwaves at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

    Its most talked about scene shows Trump raping his first wife, Ivana, after she belittles him for growing fat and bald.

    In real life, Ivana accused Trump of raping her during divorce proceedings but later rescinded the allegation. She died in 2022.

    The movie also shows Trump suffering erectile dysfunction, and undergoing liposuction and surgery for hair loss.

    Just hours after “The Apprentice” premiered in May, Trump’s lawyers vowed to sue the producers, calling the film “garbage” and “pure malicious defamation.”

    Further complicating the film’s prospects for US release is that one of its early financial backers was pro-Trump billionaire Dan Snyder, who was reportedly displeased with its depiction of Trump and sought to block the movie.

    He has now been bought out of his financial stake in the movie, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The film is set to be released in US theaters October 11, the Los Angeles Times said.

    Sebastian Stan’s lead performance as young New York property tycoon Trump received largely positive reviews at Cannes.

    The film’s screenplay was written by Gabriel Sherman, a journalist who covered real estate for the New York Observer and regularly spoke to Trump.

    Far from a simple hatchet job, the film depicts Trump as an ambitious but naive social climber desperately trying to navigate the cutthroat world of Manhattan property deals and politics.

    The Times of London argued it would “make you feel sympathy for Trump.”

    But Trump’s decency is gradually eroded as he learns the dark arts of dealmaking and power from his mentor Roy Cohn, played by “Succession” star Jeremy Strong.

    Film director Ali Abbasi told AFP he included the rape scene to show how Trump distanced himself from “human relationships that define him and that hold him in check as a human being.”

    Stan, best known from the Marvel superhero movies, added that Trump’s early behavior “is much more relatable than we want to admit.”

    Briarcliff Entertainment launched in the late 2010s. Its founder Tom Ortenberg previously helped steer Oscar campaigns for best picture winners “Spotlight” and “Crash.”

    He is expected to promote “The Apprentice” in Hollywood’s upcoming award season.

    The news comes on the same day “Reagan,” another biopic of a former Republican president, Ronald Reagan, hits US theaters

  • Brazil block on X comes into effect after judge’s order

    Brazil block on X comes into effect after judge’s order

    A block on Elon Musk’s X social network in Brazil started to take effect early Saturday after a Supreme Court judge ordered its suspension, according to AFP.

    Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes on Friday ordered the platform’s suspension following a months-long standoff with the tech billionaire over disinformation in South America’s largest nation.

    Moraes handed down the ruling after Musk failed to comply with an order to name a new legal representative for the company.

    Early Saturday access to X, formerly known as Twitter, was no longer possible for some users in the South American country. They were presented with a message asking them to reload the browser if they were unable to log in successfully.

    Musk, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX, reacted with fury to the judge’s order, branding Moraes an “evil dictator cosplaying as a judge” and accusing him of “trying to destroy democracy in Brazil.”

    “Free speech is the bedrock of democracy, and an unelected pseudo-judge in Brazil is destroying it for political purposes,” the billionaire, who has become increasingly aligned with right-wing politics, wrote on X.

    The two have been locked in an ongoing, high-profile feud for months as Moraes leads a battle against disinformation in Brazil.

    Elon Musk has been locked in a months-long feud with the judge, Alexandre de Moraes, who is leading a battle against disinformation in South America’s largest nation. 

    Musk has previously declared himself a “free speech absolutist,” but since he took over the platform formerly known as Twitter in 2022 he has been accused of turning it into a megaphone for right-wing conspiracy theories.

    He is a vocal supporter of former US president Donald Trump’s bid to regain the White House.

    Moraes ordered the “immediate, complete and comprehensive suspension of the operation of” X in the country, telling the national communications agency to take “all necessary measures” to implement the order within 24 hours.

    He threatened a fine of 50,000 reais ($8,900) to anyone who used “technological subterfuges”, such as a VPN, to circumvent the block.

    The judge also demanded that Google, Apple, and internet providers “introduce technological obstacles capable of preventing the use of the X application” and access to the website, though he later rescinded that order.

    The social media platform has more than 22 million users in Brazil.

    Musk shut X’s business operations in Brazil earlier this month, claiming Moraes had threatened the company’s previous legal representative with arrest to force compliance with “censorship orders.”

    On Wednesday, Moraes told Musk he had 24 hours to find a new representative, or he would face suspension.

    Shortly after the deadline passed, X said in a statement that it expected Moraes to shut it down “simply because we would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents.”

    – ‘Who does Musk think he is?’-

    The standoff with Musk began when Moraes ordered the suspension of several X accounts belonging to supporters of Brazil’s former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who tried to discredit the voting system in the 2022 election, which he lost.

    Brazilian authorities are investigating whether Bolsonaro plotted a coup attempt to prevent current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from assuming office in January 2023.

    Online users blocked by Moraes include figures such as far-right ex-congressman Daniel Silveira, who was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2022 on charges of leading a movement to overthrow the Supreme Court.

    In April, Moraes ordered an investigation of Musk, accusing him of reactivating some of the banned accounts.

    On Thursday, Musk’s satellite internet operator Starlink said it had received an order from Moraes that froze its accounts and prevented it from conducting financial transactions in Brazil.

    Starlink alleged that the order “is based on an unfounded determination that Starlink should be responsible for the fines levied — unconstitutionally — against X.”

    The company said on X that it intended “to address the matter legally.”

    Musk is also the subject of a separate judicial investigation into an alleged scheme where public money was used to orchestrate disinformation campaigns in favor of Bolsonaro and those close to him.

    “Any citizen from anywhere in the world who has investments in Brazil is subject to the Brazilian Constitution and laws,” Lula told a local radio station on Friday.

    “Who does (Musk) think he is?”

    Read more: X to close its operations in Brazil

  • Angelina Jolie as the tormented ‘Divina’ Callas at Venice

    Angelina Jolie as the tormented ‘Divina’ Callas at Venice

    Angelina Jolie returns to the limelight at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday as Maria Callas, “La Divina”, whose rich voice, glamourous persona, and tragic love affair mesmerised audiences around the world.

    In “Maria”, the modern-day movie star will strive to capture the transcendent dramatic presence and tormented life of one of opera’s most resplendent divas in a biopic from Chilean director Pablo Larrain.

    The film that premieres on the Lido Thursday evening, on the festival’s second day, is the last in Larrain’s trilogy of movies about iconic real-life women — after 2021’s “Spencer” about Lady Di and 2016’s “Jackie” about Jacqueline Kennedy.

    The director has said only a larger-than-life star in her own right could play the role of the American-born Greek singer.

    Enter Jolie.

    “This is the greatest diva of the 20th century, and who could play that?” Larrain told Vanity Fair last week.

    “I didn’t want to work with someone that didn’t have that already. I needed an actress who would naturally and organically be that diva, carry that weight, be that presence. Angelina was there.”

    Absent from the screen since 2021, the 49-year-old American actress and director has kept a relatively low profile even as her lengthy, acrimonious divorce from Brad Pitt continues to make headlines.

    The public’s fascination with Jolie’s private life has parallels with Callas’s, whose stormy life and loves — including her relationship with the Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who left her for Jacqueline Kennedy — were similarly fodder for the tabloids.

    But while the paparazzi will be out in full force Thursday, Jolie — who was spotted in the Venice heat Tuesday cloaked in a Christian Dior trench coat — will not cross paths with Pitt during her visit.

    Pitt’s action comedy “Wolfs”, in which he and George Clooney play rival professional fixers, is playing out of competition on the Lido on Sunday, as purposely planned by festival organisers to avoid awkward encounters.

    – ‘Very scary’ –

    One of 21 films in competition for Venice’s prestigious Golden Lion prize, “Maria” centres on Callas’s final, isolated years in Paris in the 1970s, as she looks back at her life and career before her death at age 53 from a heart attack.

    Jolie reportedly studied six months for the role, training herself to mimic the singer’s cadences and tones as the film mixes in her own voice with that of the celebrated soprano.

    “You can’t make a movie like this with an actress that is not actually singing it,” Larrain told Vanity Fair.

    “This is the real thing — it was very scary for her, but she did it.”

    While some critics found flaws with Callas’s voice, it was nevertheless deeply expressive, able to impart dramatic intensity to any role, which combined with her beauty and majestic stage presence prompting frenzied standing ovations.

    A towering talent with a tireless work ethic, Callas was often portrayed as a “temperamental” star, a label she rejected, defending herself as a disciplined perfectionist with high standards.

    She single-handedly revived the 19th-century bel canto operas of Donizetti, Rossini and Bellini — whose “Norma” was one of Callas’s signature roles.

    Callas died in 1977.

  • Indonesia arrests man for selling Rhino Horn via social media

    Indonesia arrests man for selling Rhino Horn via social media

    Indonesian authorities arrested a man trying to sell elephant tusks and the horns of critically endangered rhinos via social media.

    The illegal wildlife trade remains rampant in Indonesia, where law enforcement is lax, but the arrested man could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted, the environmental ministry said in a statement late Wednesday.

    South Sumatra police began an investigation after seeing posts on Facebook earlier this year offering parts of protected wildlife for sale.

    A 60-year-old man, identified only by the initials “ZA”, was arrested last week during a transaction while trying to sell a rhino horn and a pipe made of an elephant tusk in Palembang, South Sumatra.

    Police found seven more rhino horns and at least four elephant tusks at his house.

    “It seems like he’s very experienced in wildlife trading,” the environmental ministry said.

    In June police arrested a gang of poachers suspected of killing 26 critically endangered Javan rhinos in Ujung Kulon National Park since 2018.

    They once numbered in the thousands across Southeast Asia, but have been hard hit by rampant poaching and human encroachment on their habitat, and the environment ministry says there are only around 80 of the beasts left in the wild.

    Sumatran rhinos have also been declared critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature or IUCN with fewer than 50 remaining.

  • Oasis announce 2025 worldwide reunion tour kicking off in UK

    Oasis announce 2025 worldwide reunion tour kicking off in UK

    British rock legends Oasis announced Tuesday they will reunite for a worldwide tour, as brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher ended an infamous 15-year feud.

    The band behind hit songs including “Wonderwall”, “Don’t Look Back In Anger” and “Champagne Supernova”, will play an initial 14 gigs next year in Cardiff, Manchester, London, Edinburgh and the Irish capital, Dublin, starting in July.

    Oasis also plan to play in “continents outside of Europe later next year,” according to a statement posted on their website.

    Formed in Manchester, northwest England, in 1991 and credited with helping create the Britpop era of that decade, Oasis’ reunion tour will be the Gallagher brothers’ first performances since 2009 after they fell out.

    “The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised,” Oasis said, as it announced the reunion alongside the first details of the tour.

    The announcement capped days of hints and heightened speculation the band was set to play again.

    However, there was no announcement regarding the release of any new music, while Oasis will reportedly not play next year’s Glastonbury festival despite widespread speculation.

    “Oasis today end years of feverish speculation with the confirmation of a long-awaited run of UK and Ireland shows forming the domestic leg of their Oasis Live ’25 world tour,” the online statement added.

    – ‘Hottest tickets’ –

    The tour will begin over two nights at the Principality Stadium in the Welsh capital Cardiff from July 4, 2025, followed a week later by four gigs at Heaton Park in their hometown, Manchester.

    Oasis will then play London’s Wembley Stadium — on July 25 and 26 as well as August 2 and 3 — before taking to the stage over two nights at Murrayfield Stadium in the Scottish capital Edinburgh.

    The UK and Ireland gigs will conclude with two performances at Dublin’s Croke Park in mid-August.

    “Their only shows in Europe next year, this will be one of the biggest live moments and hottest tickets of the decade,” the statement said.

    A press release said there had been “no great revelatory moment that has ignited the reunion — just the gradual realisation that the time is right”.

    It promised “a set full of wall-to-wall classics,” hailing the “charisma, spark and intensity that only comes when Liam and Noel Gallagher are on-stage together”.

    Tickets for the UK dates will go on sale from 9:00 am (0800 GMT) on Saturday, with Dublin tickets available from 8am (0700 GMT) the same day.

    Social media was abuzz with the news, with the band’s post racking up hundreds of thousands of likes and fans sharing their excitement.

    Manchester teaching assistant Michelle Locke, 45, told AFP she was “well excited” after hearing the “great news”.

    “We’ll be up early… trying to get tickets,” she said, posing in front of a mural to the Gallaghers in south Manchester.

    – ‘Best news’ –

    In Camden, the north London neighbourhood famous for live music and where Oasis were fixtures in the mid-’90s, others were equally enthused.

    “It’s the best news in the world… it’s what we need!” said Pauline Weir, 50, manager of the Modfather clothing store.

    Oasis has long been synonymous with Britpop music, when it enjoyed a fierce rivalry with London band Blur, co-founded by Damon Albarn.

    The Manchester outfit was also notorious for public fights between Liam and Noel.

    The sibling tensions came to a head during a spat at a 2009 Paris festival, when Liam broke one of Noel’s guitars.

    The brothers have not played together since — but both have still regularly played the band’s hits to sold-out crowds.

    Until now, they had largely communicated in public through taking swipes at each other on social media.

    The brothers have teased at a reconciliation before, with Noel last year saying “never say never”.

    The hints became firmer more recently, with social media accounts for the brothers and Oasis all trailing Tuesday’s much-anticipated announcement.

    The now-confirmed reunion will take place 30 years after Oasis’s 1995 album “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?”, which received international critical and commercial acclaim.

    Meanwhile, tracks from the first recording session for its debut album “Definitely Maybe”, released a year earlier, will be put out Friday — a day after its 30th birthday — Britain’s Press Association (PA) news agency said.