PARIS – Alain Delon, the French actor, producer and writer whose cool, enigmatic beauty made him an international sex symbol, has died at the age of 88.

“He passed away peacefully in his home in Douchy, surrounded by his three children and his family,” a family statement released to the AFP news agency said. Delon had been battling poor health in recent years and suffered a stroke in 2019. French President Emmanuel Macron led tributes to the actor. “Melancholic, popular, secretive, he was more than a star: a French monument,” Macron said.

Delon will be remembered as an icon of French and European cinema, who worked with a host of celebrated directors. But he has been criticized for his controversial political views and attitude towards women. Feminists were aghast when he was awarded an honorary Palme d’Or late in his life. Born in Sceaux, a suburb south of Paris, Delon had a turbulent childhood marked by his parents’ divorce and frequent expulsions from school, before serving in the French Navy and later taking on odd jobs in Paris.

He made his first appearance on film in 1957, playing a hitman in the thriller Quand la femme s’en mêle titled Send a Woman When the Devil Fails in English. This was to be the first of many anti-hero roles for Delon, who went on to become a major figure in European film in the 1960s, working with such lauded directors as René Clément (Plein Soleil, 1960, titled Purple Noon in the United States), Luchino Visconti (Rocco and his Brothers, 1960, and The Leopard, 1963 and Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Samouraï, 1967).

In 1968, Delon was caught up in a sex, drug and murder scandal involving French high society, known as the Markovic affair. He was questioned but never charged. He also appeared in many English-language productions, including anthology movie The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964) and Westerns Texas Across the River (1966), and Red Sun (1971), but he failed to replicate the success he enjoyed in European cinema. Delon won a César Award, France’s equivalent of an Oscar, for best actor in 1985 for his role as an alcoholic in Bertrand Blier’s Our Story. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance as the passionate, penniless Tancredi in The Leopard. (CNN)…[+]

UK – The prison system in England is set to be thrown into a fresh crisis this week with scores of alleged criminals to be released on bail rather than taken to their court hearings.

The jailing of hundreds of rioters has pushed prisons towards full capacity forcing HM Prisons and Probation Service to prepare Operation Early Dawn, a contingency plan that prevents inmates being taken from police cells to courts, unless a prison place is available. Those who do go to court and are given jail sentences may find themselves sent to prison hundreds of miles away from home.

More than 300 people charged with offences linked to the disorder that broke out following the Southport attack have so far been remanded in custody, and the number is set to continue rising rapidly as police leaders vow to track down offenders for “as long as it takes”.

The Observer understands the prison operation is expected to start this week, having been used for several days in March when prison capacity previously hit critical levels. An internal document states that prison escort staff will make assessments throughout each day to check how many inmates being held by the police can be taken to scheduled court hearings, and how many will have to be released on bail and have their cases delayed because there is no space in jails.

Officials will triage the prisoners who are kept in police custody to prioritise as many as they can for court hearings according to the seriousness of their alleged crimes, and adjust plans according to new capacity information from across the prison estate. Sources say Operation Early Dawn is needed because a long-running contingency called Operation Safeguard, which sees prisoners held in up to 200 police cells for a night before they are moved into prison custody, is becoming exhausted. Mark Fairhurst, national chair of the Prison Officers’ Association, said there were only 340 spaces left in adult male prisons that are able to receive rioters. (The Guardian)…[+]

BRAZIL – Elon Musk announced on Saturday that the social media platform X would close its operations in Brazil “effective immediately” due to what it called “censorship orders” from the Brazilian judge Alexandre de Moraes.

X claims Moraes secretly threatened one of its legal representatives in the South American country with arrest if it did not comply with legal orders to take down some content from its platform. Brazil’s supreme court, where Moraes has a seat, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The X service remains available to the people of Brazil, the billionaire Elon Musk’s platform said on Saturday. Earlier this year, Moraes ordered X to block certain accounts, as he investigated so-called “digital militias” that have been accused of spreading fake news and hate messages during the government of the far-right former president Jair Bolsonaro.

Moraes opened an inquiry earlier this year into Musk after he said he would reactivate accounts on X that the judge had ordered blocked. Musk has called Moraes’s decisions regarding X “unconstitutional”. After Musk’s challenges, X representatives reversed course and told Brazil’s supreme court that the social media giant would comply with the legal rulings.

Lawyers representing X in Brazil in April told the supreme court that “operational faults” had allowed users who were ordered blocked to stay active on the social media platform, after Moraes had asked X to explain why it allegedly had not fully complied with his decisions. (The Guardian)…[+]

CARACAS – Opposition protesters are taking to the streets of Venezuela’s capital once more to denounce the results of a recent election that saw President Nicolas Maduro secure another term in power.

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado urged her supporters “to remain firm and united” in a social media post on Saturday, shortly after she called for people to demonstrate in hundreds of cities across the country and abroad.

“We won’t leave the streets,” Machado told the crowd in Caracas, where hundreds of demonstrators waved the national flag and printed copies of election records that the opposition says is proof of its election victory. “With intelligence, prudence, resilience, boldness … peaceful protest is our right,” she said.

The South American nation has seen weeks of unrest following the July 28 election, which opposition leaders said was marred by fraud. The National Electoral Council (CNE) formally declared Maduro the vote winner, saying in early August that he had secured 52 percent support compared with 43 percent for main opposition challenger Edmundo Gonzalez.

However, the opposition has said its tally of the votes showed Gonzalez had defeated the incumbent, spurring international calls for Maduro’s government to release the full breakdown of votes.  At least 25 people have been killed in post-election protests so far, with nearly 200 injured and more than 2,400 arrested — and the continued crisis has fuelled fears the Venezuelan authorities could launch a wider crackdown on opposition leaders and protesters. (Al Jazeera)…[+]

SOUTHERN AFRICA – Tens of millions of people in Southern Africa are suffering the effects of an El Nino-induced drought, a regional bloc has warned, with a drop in crop and livestock production causing food shortages in several countries.

Elias Magosi, executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), said on Saturday that 17 percent of the region’s population – some 68 million people – are in need of assistance.

“The 2024 rainy season has been a challenging one with most parts of the region experiencing negative effects of the El Nino phenomenon characterised by the late onset of rains,” Magosi said. His remarks come as the heads of state of the 16-nation SADC were meeting in Zimbabwe’s capital of Harare to discuss regional issues, including food security.

Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia are among the countries in Southern Africa most affected by malnutrition caused by the drought, which began in early 2024. Reporting from Harare on Saturday, Al Jazeera’s Haru Mutasa said the SADC nation leaders were likely to be discussing how to get more funding and food aid to affected countries. “Crops are dying, it’s a huge problem,” Mutasa said.

In early June, the United Nations World Food Programme highlighted the dire effects of the drought, particularly on communities already vulnerable to food shortages. “Rural communities we have met on the ground tell us they have never seen anything like this. They are extremely worried about their future,” said Reena Ghelani, the UN climate crisis coordinator for the El Nino response. (Al Jazeera)…[+]