22 May 2013 Last updated at 08:28 GMT
The actors are in Grozny to talk about their new movie – and nothing else. Shaun Walker joins the roadshow
The dream of harnessing the DRC's mighty Congo River has moved closer, and South Africa has pledged to buy half of the power it generates.
Oklahoma tornado: Search for survivors nears end
Rescue workers are combing the ruins left by the gigantic tornado that killed two dozen people in Oklahoma on Monday.
Officials say the search for survivors is nearly over as efforts turn towards recovery.
Fire chief Gary Bird said he was "98% sure" there were no more survivors or bodies to recover from the rubble.
The storm, which also killed nine children, has meanwhile been upgraded to the most powerful level of twister.
Packing winds of at least 200mph (320km/h), the tornado razed a swathe of the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore.
Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin said the death toll may rise above 24 as some bodies could have been taken directly to funeral homes.
The body count was revised down from 51 after the state medical examiner said some victims may have been counted twice in the confusion.
Don’t mention the human rights abuses! When Gérard Depardieu and Liz Hurley went to Chechnya
The actors are in Grozny to talk about their new movie – and nothing else. Shaun Walker joins the roadshow
In Russia, Gerard Depardieu is treated as something of a prince these days. Yesterday morning, he was delivered to the airport in the provincial city of Saransk in a limousine bedecked with flashing blue lights, enabling him to ignore all traffic regulations. There, the “Russian actor of French origin” as he is now sometimes referred to in local media, stepped on to a private jet bound for Grozny.
Once he touched down in the capital of Chechnya, rebuilt from the rubble of war with Kremlin money under the rule of controversial leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Depardieu was whisked to the city’s first five-star hotel. Breezing into the lobby, he glanced disparagingly at The Independent’s journalist.
SYRIA
A Kurdish Spring in Syria
Much has changed for the Kurds, Syria's biggest ethnic minority, since the start of the revolution. Oppressed under President Assad, they're now more confident than ever - politically, militarily, and culturally.
It's a mild Thursday evening in Al-Malikiyah, a predominantly Kurdish town on the Syrian border with both Turkey and Iraq. Several hundred people have come to the local cultural center - and politics is on the agenda.
Political awakening
Asya Muhammed Abdullah is standing at the speaker's desk, full of energy as she speaks. She is vice-chairwoman of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the Syrian arm of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers Party. Her eyes glow as she calls on the spectators to fight for their rights.
'Death By a Thousand Cuts': Coal Boom Could Destroy Great Barrier Reef
By Samiha Shafy
Australia's Great Barrier Reef is rapidly losing its coral, to the point that UNESCO may soon place the natural wonder on its "in danger" list. Climate change is one culprit, but so is the country's booming extraction industry. Environmentalists warn that time is running out for the reef.
The man whose job it should be to protect the Great Barrier Reef is actually afraid of water. The vast ocean, with all the creatures it contains, makes him uneasy. Only once has he visited the reef, the world's largest and most beautiful. Just thinking about the visit makes his skin crawl.
Andrew Powell, 40, the environment minister of the Australian state of Queensland, is a stocky man with a boyish face. Sitting in the neon-lit cafeteria of the parliament building in the state capital Brisbane, he smiles at the memory of his ill-fated expedition to the reef. "I get seasick very quickly," Powell explains, "and I don't do sharks very well."
World's two largest countries grow closer
May 22, 2013 - 10:07AM
Ben Doherty
South Asia correspondent for Fairfax Media
NEW DELHI: "A distant relative may not be as useful as a near neighbour," Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said on Tuesday in New Delhi, borrowing, he said, an old Chinese proverb.
"A few clouds in the sky cannot shut out the brilliant sun rays of our friendship," he continued, warming to his metaphorical tone.
Premier Li might have reached, instead, for the more straightforward shibboleth: "free trade stops wars", because this was the underlying message.
Robust free trade, particularly on the scale that China and India are capable of, is smoothing out the roughs of an historically tetchy relationship.
DRC waits on funding for world's largest hydropower project
The dream of harnessing the DRC's mighty Congo River has moved closer, and South Africa has pledged to buy half of the power it generates.
The World Bank and other financial institutions are expected to offer finance and South Africa has agreed to buy half of the power generated.
French, Belgian, Chinese, Brazilian and African engineers have, over 60 years, all hoped to dam the Congo. But decades of civil war, corruption, and the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) reputation as a failed state have limited the hydropower developments at Inga Falls to two relatively small dams, built in 1972 and 1982. These, dubbed Inga 1 and 2, have a theoretical capacity of 1 400MW but produce only about half that.
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