YOU may not be familiar with the name Krzystof Penderecki, but you’ve almost certainly heard his musical compositions which have featured on the big and small screen for decades. Mr Pendrecki died at the weekend aged 86 after a long illness. The Pole wrote music for up-market horror movies such as “The Shining” and “The Exorcist” as well as for TV series ranging from Twin Peaks to the recent...
THE zebra crossing on London’s Abbey Road has undoubtedly become the most famous street crossing in the world thanks to the Beatles iconic album of the same name which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary last year. However, due to the combination of day to day footfall and the huge amount of tourists who use it just for a photo opportunity, it has started to look a bit worn in recent years. Due to the...
ALBERT Uderzo, cartoonist and creator of the iconic Asterix the Gaul character has died at his home in France aged 92. Mr Uderzo met writer Rene Gosciny in 1951 and they drew on their combined drawing and writing skills to create Asterix and his band of Gaulish warriors, a sort of Robin Hood character for France and mainland Europe. When Gosciny died in 1977 Uderzo also took over the writing duties until...
AFTER what has been seen by many as a long period of dithering, Boris Johnson announced on Monday evening that the UK would be one of the last European countries to go into some form of lockdown. Compared to here in Spain it may seem slightly watered down, with people allowed out once a day for “exercise” (with parks remaining open) and no clear news on travel restrictions. However, in a special...
THE British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, stated this week that as many as a million British citizens that would like to return to the UK are still abroad – and many may have to stay there for the foreseeable future. This figure doesn’t include UK residents of other countries but people travelling for leisure, work or other reasons. He confessed that the exact number is not known as the number of...
THE announcement by President Trump on Wednesday that almost all flights from Europe to the US would be suspended for a month in an effort to contain the coronavirus is set to hit the Spanish economy. About three and a half million Americans visited Spain in 2019, the sixth largest amount of visitors from one country. Although people will still be allowed to travel here it is not apparent how they will be...
BUDGET airline Ryanair has fallen foul of the Spanish courts for the second time in four months over charging passengers for taking hand luggage on a flight. In October, the carrier was told by a judge that it could not charge for hand luggage in Spain, but Ryanair said that its policy would not be changed. The latest case goes back to before the company introduced a new series of rules, as an Elche court...
INFRA-RED cameras in China have snapped images of a white panda in the wild, the first ever captured on film. Researchers now believe that the bear is an albino, something almost unknown among the elusive creatures as both parents need to carry the rare gene to pass on the condition. The panda was filmed in the huge Wolong National Nature Reserve in Sichuan province and shows the bear walking through the...
DESPITE search and rescue efforts continuing, everyone involved secretly feared the worse for a young female hiker who had been missing for two and a half weeks in dense Hawaiian forests. However, this story had a happy and somewhat miraculous ending after Amanda Eller was found alive at the end of last week, battered and hungry but nothing that she will not make a full recovery from. Amanda set off on...
THE man who set upon a group of schoolchildren in Japan armed with two knives, killing two people and injuring several others has been identified as 51-year-old Ryuichi Iwasaki. The children were waiting for a bus to take them to school in the city of Kawasaki on Tuesday when the man attacked them, killing an 11-year-old girl and her father and injuring 17 others, 16 of them children. He then took his own...