Paintings and sculptures from the collection of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen were auctioned off for a historic $1 billion Wednesday, Christie's auction house said, with records set for works by Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin, Seurat and Klimt.. At the end of the night Wednesday, five paintings entered the exclusive club of works of art sold for more than $100 million at auction, the New York auction house said.
Paris commuters were bracing for bedlam Thursday as metro workers called a major one-day pay strike, the latest industrial action across France seeking relief from inflation.. Unions have staged strikes across several sectors in recent weeks seeking pay hikes or increased hiring as spiralling energy costs feed into widespread inflation.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not attend the G20 leaders' summit on the Indonesian resort island of Bali next week, Moscow's embassy in Indonesia told AFP on Thursday.. The person said it was unclear if the Russian leader would attend virtually.
Chinese dissident Bao Tong, a top Communist Party official imprisoned in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests who became a vocal critic of Beijing, has died at 90 years old, his son said on Twitter.. "My late father... died peacefully at 07:08 on the 9th of November 2022," his son Bao Pu wrote Wednesday night on Twitter.
In Colombia's Amazon jungle, indigenous people of different nations, ethnicities and languages have come together to find a single voice in cinema to tell their own stories, rather than let outsiders do it.. After much laughter, applause and shared masato, Kata Matis reflected on the place of indigenous people in modern nation states.
US President Joe Biden said Wednesday he would ask Chinese President Xi Jinping about his "red lines" to reduce the potential for conflict after soaring tensions on Taiwan when they gather next week in Bali.. "What I want to do with him when we talk is lay out what kind of -- what each of our red lines are," Biden told a news conference following US midterm elections.
High-level talks on scaling up finance for developing countries to green their economies and prepare for global warming impacts began Wednesday at the COP27 climate conference with negotiators differing on the funding's size and providers.. "We have to think completely differently about how we can mobilise finance," he added, lamenting the failure of developed countries to deliver the "paltry sum" of $100 billion dollars.
A US Navy nuclear engineer and his wife were sentenced to long prison terms on Wednesday for plotting to sell submarine secrets to a foreign country.. Jonathan Toebbe was sentenced to 19 years and three months in prison while his wife, Diana Toebbe, 46, received a prison term of 21 years and eight months, the Justice Department said.
Republican gains in Congress will bring headaches to President Joe Biden as he shepherds aid to Ukraine and on climate, but with midterm election results unexpectedly close, Biden will still be firmly in command on the world stage.. But the Republican mainstream has joined Biden's Democrats in approving billions of dollars to Ukraine to fight Russian invaders and Tuesday's midterm election was no vindication of the party's right flank, with Democrats outperforming expectations for an incumbent party.
The family of Egypt's jailed dissident Alaa Abdel Fattah, who is refusing food and water, demanded information on his health Wednesday amid what they said were "rumours of force-feeding".. The dissident's aunt, novelist Ahdaf Soueif, tweeted that "we cannot explain two days without letters", and said that the family was concerned about "rumours of force-feeding and of sleep-inducing drugs".
