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      Tory donor’s knighthood is sign Sunak ‘believes he’s on way out’, Labour says

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 09:20

    Anneliese Dodds says the honour for Mohamed Mansour appears clearly tied to his £5m donation to the Tories

    Rishi Sunak’s decision to hand a knighthood to a businessman and former Egyptian government minister who donated £5m to the Conservative party is the sign of a prime minister who “simply believes he’s on the way out”, Labour has said.

    Mohamed Mansour, a senior treasurer of the Tory party for just over a year, was among surprise recipients of honours unexpectedly announced late on Thursday , who also included a series of Conservative MPs.

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      ‘Ecocide in Gaza’: does scale of environmental destruction amount to a war crime?

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 09:00

    Exclusive: Satellite analysis revealed to the Guardian shows farms devastated and nearly half of the territory’s trees razed. Alongside mounting air and water pollution, experts says Israel’s onslaught on Gaza’s ecosystems has made the area unlivable

    In a dilapidated warehouse in Rafah, Soha Abu Diab is living with her three young daughters and more than 20 other family members. They have no running water, no fuel and are surrounded by running sewage and waste piling up.

    Like the rest of Gaza’s residents, they fear the air they breathe is heavy with pollutants and that the water carries disease. Beyond the city streets lie razed orchards and olive groves, and farmland destroyed by bombs and bulldozers.

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      While She Sleeps: Self Hell review – exploding out of metalcore with a scream

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 09:00

    (Sleeps Brothers)
    On their sixth album, the hardcore Sheffield quintet bring furious riffs, howling, swearing and … acoustic guitars?

    Formed by school friends in former mining villages near Sheffield, While She Sleeps were briefly on a major label but have gone an independent route to build a passionate fanbase large enough for them to headline London’s 10,000 capacity Alexandra Palace. Meanwhile, over 17 years the quintet’s music has developed beyond metalcore to reflect wider influences from Radiohead to Kendrick Lamar.

    This sixth album attempts the sort of genre-busting metamorphosis Linkin Park went for with A Thousand Suns. Riffola and guttural, screamed vocals still abound (singer Loz Taylor has had three throat operations). Where 2021’s Sleeps Society album featured guests from Enter Shikari, Biffy Clyro and Sum 41, here Malevolence’s Alex Taylor pops in for the brutally anthemic Down.

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      If life is one giant computer simulation, God is a rubbish player | Dominik Diamond

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 09:00 · 1 minute

    While religion doesn’t feature much in video games, I find the theory that we are all characters in a huge sim ever more believable – and appealing

    It’s Easter weekend, when Catholics like me spend hours in church listening to the extended editor’s cut of a story whose ending we already know. Sitting there for the millionth performance of the Passion recently, I got to thinking about how few religious video game characters I’ve ever encountered. It’s interesting that in a world where so many people’s lives are dictated by religious beliefs, there is such a scarcity of religion in games. I mean, you could argue that all games are Jesus homages, with their respawns and extra lives, but even I admit that’s a stretch.

    The Peggies in Far Cry 5 are a mind-controlling violent cult; those Founders in BioShock Infinite use religion to elevate and justify hatred of foreigners; and you have those wackadoodles in Fallout worshipping atomic bombs. Religion is almost exclusively used as means for leaders to get minions to do bad things. (Admittedly, they may be on to something here.) I guess that when so many video games are structured so as to set you up as a lone protagonist, up against a huge force, religion is a fairly obvious go-to villain.

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      Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar review – an antihero in search of meaning

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 09:00 · 1 minute

    The Iranian-American poet’s debut novel tells the tale of a bereaved writer – but struggles with too much angst

    In Martyr!, the debut novel by Iranian-American poet Kaveh Akbar, a troubled young man is searching for a reason to live. Cyrus, the son of an Iranian migrant factory worker in Indiana, lost his mother in an infamous 1988 air disaster, when a US missile cruiser mistakenly shot down an Iranian civilian airliner in the final months of the Iran-Iraq war. This formative trauma has left a terrible legacy: when we meet him, in his late 20s, he’s a recovering alcoholic, struggling with fragile mental health and an unhealthy dependency on pharmaceutical sedatives; he “often wept for no reason, bit his thumbs till they bled”.

    An aspiring but unproductive writer, Cyrus has a fixation with martyrdom, and is researching a book on the subject. “It’s not an Islam thing,” he clarifies, “[it’s] about secular, pacifist martyrs. People who gave their lives to something larger than themselves.” To this end he travels to New York and interviews an older, terminally ill Iranian artist, Orkideh, who is exhibiting herself in a Marina Abramović-style exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. They strike up a tender rapport, and Cyrus gradually begins to work through his issues.

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      Steve! (Martin) to Emily the Criminal: the seven best films to watch on TV this week

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 09:00


    A thrilling documentary about the wild life of Steve Martin, the first comic ever to sell out stadiums – and Aubrey Plaza is electric as always playing a food delivery driver turned fraudster

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      Michelle Moeller: Late Morning review – sparkling, ethereal sound manipulations

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 08:30 · 1 minute

    (AKP Recordings)
    The US artist’s debut album mixes prepared piano with programmed synth effects in woozy harmonic compositions that soar and thrill

    It’s often difficult for pianists to avoid playing a synthesiser keyboard like a piano. Michelle Moeller studied classical piano to a high level, but while completing a degree in composition at Mills College in Oakland, California, she came under the spell of two electronically inclined mentors, Zeena Parkins and John Bischoff, and became obsessed with synth technology. In order to “turn off her piano-player brain” and concentrate on timbre, Moeller started to use Max/MSP interfaces rather than keyboards to generate synth sounds. The results are startling. Artificial noises sparkle and flutter in the higher register and toll like church bells in the lower register. She creates warped, ethereal, space-age noises that are complex of timbre and harmony.

    Late Morning, her debut album, features some piano-dominated tracks: Nest is a superb, jazzy meditation, using Erik Satie-like parallel harmonies, while Corridor is a pulsating piece of clockwork minimalism in 5/4, where Moeller’s piano is accompanied by the low-key textural percussion of Willie Winant and Wesley Powell. But the most sonically adventurous moments here pair Moeller’s pianistic virtuosity with her interest in synth technology and manipulated sounds. On the wonderfully woozy Leafless, her prepared piano – presumably treated with paperclips and bolts to create muffled harmonics – is further mutilated until it sounds like the instrument is melting. Sift’s bell-like chorus is topped by tightly harmonised shakuhachi-style improvisations by Mitch Stahlmann (reminiscent of André 3000 ’s recent flute album). On Slate, her creaky prepared piano takes its place among a symphony of distorted electronic glitches and chirrups. A thrilling and disorientating LP.

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      Russia-Ukraine war live: Russian fighter jet crashes into sea off Sevastopol, Crimea

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 08:23 · 2 minutes

    Online footage show jet on fire as Ukrainian security expert claims it was shot down

    Russian missile and drone attacks overnight damaged Ukrainian thermal and hydro power plants , electricity grid operator Ukrenergo said on Friday. There were emergency shutdowns in the south-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region. The Dnipropetrovsk governor, Serhii Lysak , said “critical infrastructure” was bombed and a man taken to hospital. Explosions were heard in Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk and Khmelnytskyi regions and the city of Dnipro after Russian cruise missiles were spotted, national media outlet Suspilne reported.

    Poland scrambled planes as Ukraine came under missile attack on Friday morning, the Polish defence force said. The operational command said Polish and allied aircraft were activated due to “intense activity of long-range aviation of the Russian Federation” related to missile strikes against targets in Ukraine .

    A Russian SU-35 Flanker fighter jet has crashed into the sea off Sevastopol, Crimea . Footage online showed a jet on fire, spiralling into the ocean and exploding. The Russian-installed governor of the illegally occupied region, Mikhail Razvozhayev, said on Thursday the pilot ejected and was picked up by rescuers but gave no details as to the cause of the crash.

    Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, told the speaker of the US House of Representatives during a phone call on Thursday that it was vital for Congress to pass a new military aid package for Ukraine . Mike Johnson, the speaker, has held up a bill for months that would supply $60bn in military and financial aid .
    “We recognise that there are differing views in the House of Representatives on how to proceed, but the key is to keep the issue of aid to Ukraine as a unifying factor,” Zelenskiy said.

    Zelenskiy said he briefed Johnson about the situation on the battlefield and also spoke about “the dramatic increase in Russia’s air terror” . The Ukrainian military later said that its top commander, Oleksander Syrskyi, spoke to the US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Charles Brown, about battlefield issues .

    Zelenskiy, in a CBS interview, has warned that Vladimir Putin will push Russia’s war “very quickly” on to Nato soil unless he is stopped in Ukraine. Zelenskiy acknowledged that his troops are not prepared to defend against another imminent major Russian offensive, and highlighted the urgency for American Patriot missile defence systems and more artillery .

    The US is telling American companies making and selling parts that can be used in missiles and drones to stop shipping their goods to more than 600 foreign parties who might divert them to Russia . The parts have been found in Russian munitions recovered in Ukraine.

    A Russian court on Thursday sentenced journalist Mikhail Feldman to two years in prison for denouncing Moscow’s full-scale military offensive on Ukraine .

    Against the backdrop of war in Ukraine, several central and eastern European countries began marking on Thursday the 20th anniversary of the largest expansion of Nato when formerly socialist countries became members.

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      Grigor Dimitrov stuns Carlos Alcaraz in straight sets to reach Miami Open semis

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 08:19

    • Top seed and Indian Wells champion shocked in last eight
    • ‘Sometimes simplicity is genius,’ says Bulgarian victor

    Carlos Alcaraz’s hopes for a Sunshine Double came undone in spectacular fashion after the top seed lost 6-2, 6-4 on Thursday to Grigor Dimitrov, who will move on to face Alexander Zverev in the Miami Open semi-finals.

    Dimitrov, the 11th seed, won 77% of his first-serve points compared to just 56% for Alcaraz. He also won four of the five break points he faced and broke the Spaniard four times during the 92-minute encounter.

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