A Russian missile strike on Odessa killed at least five people, including a three-month-old baby, according to a Ukrainian official. In Mariupol, Russia continued to attack a steel plant being used as a refuge for the city’s last remaining defenders. A planned civilian evacuation from the city was cancelled amid the violence. Meanwhile, Ukraine claimed to have killed two more Russian generals and wounded a third near Kherson.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said that Russia will not stop at invading Ukraine and intends to attack other countries. In his nightly address Mr Zelensky cited the comments of Russia’s Major General Rustam Minnekayev, who said that Russia aims to seize all of southern and eastern Ukraine and open a route to Transnistria, a separatist region of Moldova. Moldova’s foreign ministry expressed “deep concern” over the comments.
Canada’s finance minister said that the G20, a club of mostly rich countries, cannot function with Russia as a member. This week International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington have been marked by protests against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile, the United Nations secretary-general, António Guterres, announced that he will meet Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, in Moscow next Tuesday.
Officials in Beijing closed a school for a week after around nine students tested positive for covid-19. The cases raised fears of a wider outbreak, and potentially a lockdown, in China’s capital. Shanghai, which has been under a strict lockdown, reported 12 new covid-19 deaths on Friday, up from 11 the day before. Until recently the government had been claiming that no one had died from the virus in the city since March. Officials are censoring dissatisfaction expressed by Shanghai residents online.
New evidence suggested that Republican lawmakers were closely involved in trying to overturn Joe Biden’s election. According to a former White House aide, representatives Scott Perry, Louie Gohmert, Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz, among others, attended meetings in December 2020 to discuss how Donald Trump might hold on to power.
Reliance, an Indian conglomerate, called off a $3.4bn deal to buy shops from fellow conglomerate Future. Future’s creditors had blocked the deal. Amazon, which is trying to build its own retail presence in the country and wanted some of Future’s assets itself, had also sought to disrupt it. Future may now face bankruptcy proceedings.
The European Union agreed on new digital regulations that mean online giants like Google and Meta (previously Facebook) will have to do more to police illegal content on their platforms. If they don’t they risk fines of billions of dollars. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, called the Digital Services Act a “historic” piece of legislation.
Word of the week: wanghong, a Chinese word roughly meaning “viral” or “internet famous”, with a hint of tackiness. Read the full story.
The battle for Donbas
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
The next phase of Russia’s war in Ukraine began on April 18th, with heavy shelling and probing attacks along the frontlines in Donbas, a contested region in the country’s east. On Friday a Russian general said that the aim was not just to seize Donbas in its entirety, but to establish control over Ukraine’s southern coastline all the way to Moldova.
That looks like a stretch. According to American officials Ukraine now has more tanks in the country than Russia does, thanks to supplies of old T-72s from eastern European NATO countries. The battle for Donbas will play out on more open terrain than around Kyiv, the capital, meaning traditional artillery duels and armoured clashes. “The fighting will be very intense,” says a senior NATO official. “It will look a lot like world war two.”
A boxing scandal
PHOTO: REUTERS
In boxing, the build-up to the fight can be as breathless as the brawl itself. Yet the mood has been muted ahead of the World Boxing Council heavyweight clash between Tyson Fury and Dillian Whyte, two Britons, on Saturday at Wembley Stadium in London.
The explanation lies in America’s imposition of sanctions on Daniel Kinahan, the Irish co-founder of MTK Global, a boxing agency that represents more than 300 fighters, including Mr Fury. Mr Kinahan has been accused of overseeing a “murderous” drug cartel, a charge he denies. Mr Fury has said Mr Kinahan’s presence in boxing is none of his business.
Several other promoters have faced similar allegations. In fact, boxing has a long, sour history of association with crime. It does not help that the sport has four governing bodies, each pursuing its own interests. A single one would have more incentive to maintain the reputation of the sport as a whole.
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“The Northman” cometh
PHOTO: ALAMY
Robert Eggers specialises in stylishly weird, horror-tinged historic dramas. That might explain why the American writer-director’s first two films, “The Witch” (2015) and “The Lighthouse” (2019), were cult favourites rather than box-office smashes. His third, an action-packed, star-studded revenge epic is more of a crowd-pleaser.
Alexander Skarsgard plays Amleth, a brooding Viking prince who plots retribution after his uncle (Claes Bangs) murders the king (Ethan Hawke) and marries the queen (Nicole Kidman). The plot, and the hero’s name, may ring a bell: Mr Eggers and his co-writer, Sjón, an Icelandic poet, borrowed their story from the same Norse legend that inspired “Hamlet”. Indeed, “The Northman” has Shakespearean elements, including a soothsaying witch (Björk) and the skull of a jester (played by Willem Dafoe). But be warned: not even “Titus Andronicus” contains as many graphic, grisly murders.
Weekend profile: Cecilia Alemani, curator of the Venice Biennale
PHOTO: ANDREA AVEZZU
She may be the first Italian woman to curate the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale, but Cecilia Alemani’s tastes range far beyond her own country. Her show, which opens on Saturday, takes its title—“The Milk of Dreams”—from a children’s book by Leonora Carrington, a British surrealist painter who lived in Mexico City. The exhibition features well over 200 artists from 58 countries, ranging from Brazil to Zimbabwe. Most have never been seen in Venice before.
Ms Alemani, the grand-daughter of an art-history teacher, grew up wanting to be an archaeologist. But at 17, working on a dig, she discovered that it was “less Indiana Jones and more forced labour”. Instead she studied philosophy and aesthetics in Milan, and went on to work at a gallery there. But finding the Italian art world hidebound and hierarchical, in 2003 she moved to New York and completed a degree in curatorial studies at Bard College.
Ms Alemani soon caught the eye of museum directors. In 2008, still in her early 30s, she was tapped to run an exhibition space in the former Dia Centre, in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighbourhood. She later worked for the Frieze Art Fair. Since 2011 she has organised exhibitions at the High Line in New York, featuring artists as diverse as El Anatsui, Faith Ringgold and Ed Ruscha. Rather than navigate an institution, Ms Alemani likes working as an independent curator. This, she told an interviewer, offers a “sense of freedom…coupled with a rigid self-discipline and a good dose of independence.”
Her Biennale explores the relationship between humans, technology and nature, and foregrounds women artists, who make up 80-90% of those on display. Ms Alemani won the Venice job in January 2020, just before covid-19 hit. The pandemic delayed the Biennale by a year. Rather than constrain her, though, it offered new questions to interrogate. What, Ms Alemani asks, is our responsibility towards each other and the planet? What would life look like without us? Her show is steeped in history, even as it scours the world in search of what artists are thinking about humanity’s future.
The winners of this week’s quiz
Thank you to everyone who took part in this week’s quiz. The winners, chosen at random from each continent, were:
Asia: Lena Bodewein, Singapore
North America: Tania Lopez, Veracruz, Mexico
Central and South America: Martin Whittle, São Paulo, Brazil
Europe: Arvid Skaugen, Hamburg, Germany
Africa: Ailsa Green, Choma, Zambia
Oceania: Virstine Yazdanparast, Lane Cove, Australia
They all gave the correct answers of mulled, Neil Patrick Harris, rum, “Vanilla Sky” and Lewis Hamilton. The theme is Hebridean islands: Mull, Harris, Rum, Skye and Lewis.
Mexico’s president on the back foot
PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
Handing back control of Mexico’s electricity sector to a state-owned company was meant to be part of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s legacy. But on April 17th he failed to secure the legislative supermajority he needed to amend the constitution and prioritise power generated by the state. Though he may still get some piecemeal energy reforms enacted, the defeat was a big blow.
The setback also throws into doubt two other constitutional amendments that Mr López Obrador wants to make in the last two years of his six-year term, both of which require supermajorities. One is to put the National Guard, a militarised police force he created, under the control of the defence ministry. Enough opposition lawmakers may yet be won over for that. But Mr López Obrador’s hopes of changing Mexico’s electoral system, and the body that presides over it, now seem unlikely to pass. Like Mexico’s energy sector, Mr López Obrador’s agenda now faces great uncertainty.