Plenitude Arena, Paris Dion wiped away tears and belted out the notes, giving an astounding performance despite her diagnosis of stiff person syndrome
In 2022, when Céline Dion shared that she had been diagnosed with a rare incurable neurological disorder called stiff person syndrome (SPS), there was no guarantee that the 58-year-old would ever tour again. Her condition, which resulted in muscle spasms so strong that it left her with broken ribs, had made it impossible to perform, and in a 2024 documentary, I Am: Céline Dion, fans saw how the disease had constricted her once seemingly infallible voice. Through it all, though, Dion was resolute that she would one day return to the stage. “If I can’t run, I’ll walk. If I can’t walk, I’ll crawl,” she said in the film. “But I won’t stop.”
Thankfully at the opening night of her sold out five-week residency in Paris, her first full-length concerts in six years, no crawling is needed: Céline Dion is back. She glides on to the stage in a black dress, an enormous diamond necklace clasped around her throat, and launches into On ne change pas. There are tears almost immediately: she struggles through the second verse, her voice cracking as she begins to cry. By the time the strum of Destin has kicked in, though, that emotion is replaced with sheer elation. “I made a promise to be back on stage. Singing for you. Singing for me,” she says. “Singing for life.”
Zelenskyy says ‘Russia wants to kill the Ukrainian economy’ as Moscow steps up attacks on infrastructure. What we know on day 1,663
Russian airstrikes killed nine people, injured dozens and damaged buildings and infrastructure across Ukraine on Saturday, as Kyiv braces for a “very difficult” winter amid intensified attacks on the country. The civilian death toll has risen sharply in Ukraine over the past two months as Russia steps up attacks on power plants and other infrastructure. Ukraine has hit energy facilities and warehouses in distant parts of Russia, and both sides have targeted each other’s shipping.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, writing on Telegram, said Russia had deployed nearly 500 drones against Ukrainian targets since early morning. “Basically, the Russians have expanded the war away from the front, where they have no success, into the economy, and their tactics are as basic as it gets: destroying every site that could help people cope with the conditions of war,” he wrote. “Russia wants to kill the Ukrainian economy and break our resistance.”
The city council in Kramatorsk, one of Ukraine’s frontline “fortress cities” that Russia wants to capture, said Russian forces attacked private cars, killing three people in three incidents over a 90-minute period. Four people were injured. “These are not military targets,” the council said. “They are ordinary civilian cars. People were going about their business.”
The governor of Ukraine’s Zhytomyr region, Vitaliy Bunechko, said a Russian strike on a grocery store killed two people in the town of Zviahel, west of Kyiv. Bunechko said two petrol stations also came under attack.
Earlier, Zelenskyy reported attacks on the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia and Kryvyi Rih, his home town. The governor of Zaporizhzhia region, Ivan Fedorov, said two people were killed and 11 injured in assaults on Zaporizhzhia and other localities.
In Odesa region, governor Oleh Kiper said 37 people, including an infant, were injured in a series of overnight attacks, while two people were missing. Russia’s defence ministry said Russian forces have maintained their strikes on Ukrainian ports, hitting a cargo ship in Odesa that it said was carrying goods for military use.
Ukrainian officials said the country was bracing for a brutal winter as intensified Russian attacks on infrastructure and key export industries compound a deepening budget crisis. The economy minister, Oleksandr Kravchenko, said damage to infrastructure and fixed assets from Russian airstrikes was estimated at close to $10bn this year, while the broader economic costs of the attacks and the de facto blockage of its ports had cut 1.5 percentage points of GDP. “We anticipate a very difficult winter in terms of both critical infrastructure, which is being destroyed every day by Russian attacks, but also in terms of overall economic conditions in the country,” he said.
With fighting on the frontline largely stalled, Russia and Ukraine have increasingly targeted logistics networks and other economic assets in an effort to undermine each other’s war effort. For more than two weeks, Russia has carried out near constant attacks on Kyiv using faster jet-powered drones, disrupting life, business and government operations. Moscow has also effectively blocked Ukraine’s Black Sea ports by intensifying its air attacks on the country’s southern regions. Ukraine’s main exports – agricultural products and iron and steel – are shipped via these ports.
In Moldova on Ukraine’s western border, authorities closed national airspace for nearly an hour after a drone was detected near the border. Seven border crossings were temporarily closed.
Zelenskyy said he would be willing to meet Putin at the G20 summit in Miami for talks on ending the war, in a media interview released Saturday, but the Kremlin immediately ruled it out. “It is impossible,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told AFP in New Delhi on Saturday, repeating Moscow’s demand that a meeting can only take place in the Russian capital. The gathering of world leaders takes place on 14-15 December and there has been no confirmation yet as to whether Putin would attend. Putin has repeatedly rejected offers for a face-to-face meeting with Zelenskyy.
Governor believes Florida would ‘welcome’ juror if under harassment after alleged domestic violence incident in 2021
Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, has offered the unidentified holdout juror in the Lindsay Clancy trial “asylum” in the state if he comes under harassment after reports that he once faced a criminal charge for alleged domestic violence and is under an active restraining order.
DeSantis accused the media of launching a smear campaign against the juror. “If the juror is being harassed, Florida will provide asylum – I’m sure he’d be welcomed and appreciated,” DeSantis wrote on social media.
South Africa thrashed New Zealand 43-28 to complete a 3-1 victory in Baltimore in the fourth and final match of the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry Test series. The Springboks, who led the series 2-1 after the opening three Tests in South Africa, produced a devastating second-half display at the M+T Bank Stadium to seal victory.
Tries from Damian de Allende, Morne van den Berg, Malcolm Marx, Pieter-Steph du Toit, Kurt-Lee Arendse and Cameron Hanekom clinched a deserved win for the Springboks in front of a capacity 71,000 crowd.
Overcomes top seed and two-time defending champion
Even after she had won grand slam titles and conquered all surfaces, Elena Rybakina has always been considered lesser than the greatest players of her era. She has long been one of the most devastating shotmakers in the world, but there were always a couple more consistent and mentally tougher players above her.
She leaves New York, finally, as the undisputed best tennis player on the planet, the new standard bearer of the women’s game, after following up her snatching of the No 1 ranking from Aryna Sabalenka by succeeding her as the US Open champion. As she has done throughout this unforgettable week, the Kazakhstani showed her toughness in another spectacular tussle with her great rival, nervelessly closing out a 6-4, 5-7, 6-2 victory over Sabalenka, the top seed and two-time defending champion.
Arsenal manager angry: ‘This can never be a penalty’
‘It’s a judo roll from the opponent. Ezri does nothing’
Mikel Arteta’s delight at Arsenal’s latest win was tempered by his fury with the referee John Brooks as the champions triumphed 2-0 at Sunderland on Saturday night.
Before Bruno Guimarães gave Arsenal the lead in a tight match that Régis Le Bris’s team were arguably unlucky to lose, David Raya made a brilliant save to deny Enzo Le Fée from the penalty spot. Arteta, however, did not believe that Ezri Konsa had hauled Dan Ballard to the ground, instead blaming the Sunderland man for pulling down his opponent.
May el-Toukhy becomes eighth female director to take Golden Lion as Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love and Guardian-produced exposé of Israel’s Gaza killings also awarded
May el-Toukhy’s Woman Unknown has scooped the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival, at an awards ceremony that also saw the Gaza documentary NAZA win the jury prize.
Set in the immediate aftermath of Danish liberation from Nazi occupation, the Egyptian-Danish director’s film tells the story of a young housemaid, Marie (Mathilde Arcel), who is about to marry her widowed employer but anxious about him discovering a shameful secret in her past: during the war, Marie had an intimate relationship with a German soldier.
Did the Venice film festival just redeem itself on the sexism issue? It made a really good choice for the top prize, giving it to a female director, and it’s a good winners’ list all round.
Having been pilloried for failing to include enough women film-makers, the festival awarded the Golden Lion to Woman Unknown, by the Danish-Egyptian director May el-Toukhy, her gripping and stylish drama-thriller about sexual shame, political paranoia and the return of the repressed in Denmark after the second world war.
‘No wins, no goals scored … it is tough for the players’
Spurs in 17th place after 0-0 draw against Everton
Roberto De Zerbi says his Tottenham players continue to lack physical fitness and must “unblock” themselves in psychological terms after they drew their latest Premier League blank in a home 0-0 with Everton. It is now four games in the competition since the start of the season without a goal for Spurs; they sit 17th in the table with two points and were booed off by frustrated fans.
De Zerbi gave a number of explanations for Spurs’ slow start, chief among them the injuries that a clutch of players sustained on the long-haul pre-season tour to New Zealand and Australia. He lamented the impact of the World Cup on the return dates of certain players and mentioned how Sávio and Omar Marmoush had signed late in the transfer window.
The Swedish electro-pop singer-songwriter on eloping to Vegas, checking cupboards for murderers and her spooky party trick
What’s been your most memorable interaction with a fan?
The one that comes to mind is a fan in Austin who I met on one of my first tours there. He ran up to me and said, “SIGN MY ARM!” I signed his arm and then when he came back to the show the next night he had it tattooed – there was plastic over it. I remember saying, “I would have done a better job if I knew you were going to get it tattooed.” Then we took a picture of us, with me pointing at the tattoo.
After his stroke in rough surf, Graham Russell embarked on an unexpected journey into fear. Three lessons helped him return to the joy of the ocean
Looking out over the ocean, I would watch the waves sparkling in the sunlight as they grew and spilled into a burst of froth. It was a fun way to relax, to breathe deep and enjoy an awesome display of energy. But lately it had become exhausting.
In winter last year I tore the lining of an artery in my neck during a rough ocean swim off the Central Coast of New South Wales. It caused a stroke while I was in the water, which saw me scrambling back to shore where a surfer noticed me and sounded the alarm. Six months later, the injury had healed, and my motor functions were all back to normal. But as I prepared for a dip in calm conditions on a sunny day in January, I paused. An unexpected journey into fear began.
Maleah Pearce wanted to end her relationship with high school ‘bad boy’ Dylan before they grew too attached. Then one lunchtime, he brought her a surprise
Dylan and I first started dating in high school when we were 16. He was a “bad boy” who got drunk at parties and occasionally spoke to other people with his fists.
One night, I was sitting at my computer, chatting with friends on MSN and Facebook and Dylan’s name popped up. I enjoyed playing online checkers with people from school, so I invited him to a game. During the game we chatted online, which led to flirting. The winner got to choose what they wanted. I lost and what did Dylan ask for? To date me. We agreed to one date at the movies and to declare to the school we were boyfriend and girlfriend. I thought this was hilarious, though I planned to break up with him after a few days.
In a social media post, Dario Amodei proposed a plan including third-party evaluations of AI systems
The CEO of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic issued a new appeal on Saturday for the AI industry to “slow down” and offered a three-part plan for doing so, saying that his company would “unilaterally” commit to the first of the steps.
In a post on social media, Dario Amodei shared a link to an essay titled We Must Pace the Frontier in which he laid out how Anthropic would provide “third-party evaluators with permanent, employee-level access to our systems, so that they can verify adherence to our safety measures, report on incidents, and assess models’ alignment during training”.
Toronto film festival: It’s Get Out meets the viral Shitty Media Men list in this hugely entertaining mix of dark comedy and stalker thriller with a brilliant alternating turn from Taron Egerton
Everyone knows an Adam. He’s not like those other guys, the ones who won’t take no for an answer and speak lasciviously about women to their mates. He’s doing the work, listening to and uplifting female voices, working at an all-female gallery while being constantly aware of his cis white male privilege. He has a Mubi tote bag, reads Edna O’Brien’s Country Girl in Hackney cafes, has a poster of Cléo from 5 to 7 in his apartment and has even named his dog after his favourite Haim sister. He is … a nice guy.
In first-time writer-director Jonathan Schey’s canny debut Everybody Wants to Fuck Me, Adam is also a fraud.
Everybody Wants to Fuck Me is premiering at the Toronto film festival and will be released at a later date
As he releases a tell-all book, the Punk magazine founder and self-described ‘fuck-up’ holds forth on 1970s excess, the American roots of punk and why the Beatles are ‘stupid’
Legs McNeil vividly remembers the reaction he got from the original CBGB bands in 1975 when they heard the name of the magazine he co-founded: Punk, the first publication ever dedicated to the form. “Absolutely no one wanted to be called a punk back then,” he said. “Not even the Ramones. Johnny Ramone demanded that we cross out every reference to punk in an article about them.”
Flash forward a few years and, “suddenly everybody wanted to be called a punk!” McNeil said. “The Ramones started running around telling everyone, ‘you know, we were the first punk band!’”
Toronto film festival: the actor turned writer-director’s ode to girl groups is a shoddily made and embarrassingly unfunny catastrophe
There were plentiful on-paper delights for certain music fans of a certain generation promised at Toronto’s splashy Friday-night premiere of pop comedy Girl Group. Posed as a tribute to the Spice Girls and the fizzy boom of girl power-fuelled music that came in their wake, its cast includes OG member Mel C, All Saints’ Shaznay Lewis, and Pussycat Dolls’ Ashley Roberts and Nicole Scherzinger while its soundtrack includes Glee-like covers of Destiny’s Child, En Vogue and Fifth Harmony, a feast for those who have recently felt famished. At a time when such music is still sadly rather thin on the ground, save for the manufactured kids pop of Katseye and the often effective yet more boutiquey throwback R&B of Flo, it seemed to be a reminder of how thrilling it all used to be back when such girl-pop supremacy felt impossibly never-ending, a form of nostalgia-bait that many of us could fully get behind.
But there are not enough pandering nods to the past that will get even the most dedicated pop girlie through the five-alarm catastrophe that unfolded for those of us who bravely decided to stay awake (someone in front of me wisely chose the release of sleep within the first 30 minutes). Hailing from Live Nation Studios, also behind the Weeknd’s roundly ridiculed vanity project Hurry Up Tomorrow, but lit and shot like a pharmaceutical commercial, it barely even feels like a real movie let alone one that should be premiering at such a prestigious festival. It’s the clumsy handiwork of Rebel Wilson, a once in-demand comedy star who has been trying to chase her career highs in the years since. In a theoretically admirable move, she’s moved behind the camera to take control and reintroduce the kind of broad comedies she used to be a part of before they faded from the mainstream. Her directorial debut, a cheap and cheerful adaptation of Australian stage musical The Deb, was ultimately best known for being the subject of a nasty and prolonged court case, but it showed us how Wilson saw herself as a film-maker and which of her films she was most eager to relive *coughs* Pitch Perfect *ends cough*. Girl Group sees her return once again to that territory – female friendship, musical numbers, unfriendly competition – but with even lesser results.
Girl Group is premiering at the Toronto film festival and is seeking distribution
Georgia O’Keeffe inspires the latest Calvin Klein while Michael Kors feels indebted to Alexander Calder
Calvin Klein has taken a highbrow turn in the two years since Veronica Leoni took charge. The Italian designer, a philosophy graduate who was schooled in the chic design studios of Jil Sander and Celine, has shifted away from jeans, boxer shorts and logos, stripping the brand to its minimalist bones: slip dresses and simple coats, slim skirts and crisp T-shirts.
Leoni called this the “discipline of removal”. Her muse this season was Georgia O’Keeffe, an artist who the brand’s namesake founder admired. Klein bought O’Keeffe’s painting Summer Days in 1983 for $1m, subsequently donating it to the Whitney Museum. A checked pattern taken from O’Keeffe’s distinctive capsule wardrobe of utilitarian chic appeared on this catwalk as a wrap coat, hardware-free with a fabric belt and no buttons.
Those who have encountered the interim president paint her in starkly different ways, but all agree she is likely to remain in power
It was April 2002 and Delcy Rodríguez was a woman on a mission.
Venezuela’s then president, Hugo Chávez, had been temporarily toppled by a bungled coup and Rodríguez, a junior diplomat who had been studying at Birkbeck, University of London, decided to act.
As trust in institutions wavers, experts say local, collective action is more effective in driving change
Wildfires, excess deaths, hosepipe bans, school closures: this summer many British people have experienced the often devastating effects of the climate crisis in ways they had not before. In that sense, policymakers and climate experts have a unique opportunity to engage with the public about what needs to happen to better prepare the country for the years ahead. But as trust in institutions wavers – and yellowed, drought-stricken grass begins to recover – can the messaging cut through?
This week, reflecting on a summer as “hot as hell”, the UN’s head of climate, Simon Stiell, said: “Climate is sometimes seen as a partisan issue, as territory in the culture wars. That is palpably false.”
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