Tony Leung (Hong Kong, 63) enters the lobby of a Madrid hotel and brings with him an absolute sense of calm. The pace slows; you even get the impression the temperature has dropped slightly. Leung’s image in the film collective was sealed by his role in In the Mood for Love, Wong Kar-wai’s masterpiece that earned Leung the best actor award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. A man anchored in melancholy, unable to confront his unfaithful wife or to declare his love to his neighbor. That introspection turned Leung into one of the coolest men on the planet.
© FRANCIS TSANG (EL PAÍS)
NEW YORK, June 11 — The World Cup isn’t only about football: Fifa is drawing on music stars to elevate the competition into a global cultural event, broadening its reach beyond sports fans.
From world-famous artists performing at the opening ceremonies to an unprecedented Super Bowl-style halftime show during the final, here is what to expect.
A musical opening
The festivities begin on Wednesday, on the eve of the tournament, with concerts in Mexico City, Toronto, and Los Angeles that combine international superstars and major regional figures.
Big names include American pop singer Katy Perry, Canadian artist Alanis Morissette, US rapper Future, Brazilian urban pop figure Anitta, Thai K-pop icon Lisa, and Nigerian afrobeats star Rema.
They will perform alongside artists with strong home country followings, such as Mexican institution Los Angeles Azules Bollywood singer Nora Fatehi, and French rapper Vegedream.
“There’s a concerted effort around the Fifa World Cup and their marketing team to leverage music as a through line to connect different audiences from around the world,” said Clayton Durant, a music industry entrepreneur and New York University professor.
This initiative is not new: in 2021, the organisation launched its Fifa Sound programme, describing it as “a strategy to connect with audiences worldwide through shared passions of football and music.”
Grand finale
The most striking event will be the halftime of the final, on July 19 at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
For the first time, the show will feature a concert with three global headliners: American singer Madonna, Colombian star Shakira, and South Korean group BTS.
That lineup was conceived in the “spirit of trying to unite the whole world,” said Hugh Evans, head of the NGO Global Citizen, which is producing the show.
Imagined by Chris Martin, the frontman of Coldplay, the halftime performance is designed to highlight “the best of humanity” and “all the things that unite us,” Evans told AFP.
He said the amount spent on producing the event is comparable to the Super Bowl halftime show — the final of the American football championship. That is somewhere between US$10 and US$20 million (RM40 and RM80 million), according to sources.
The artists themselves will be performing for free.
The show is intended to support an education fund that Fifa — regularly accused of putting financial profits first — has set up with Global Citizen.
Hit single?
For the official World Cup song, Fifa turned to a safe bet: Shakira. She was behind Waka Waka, the 2010 World Cup anthem that became a global sensation.
Her new track Dai Dai, performed with Nigerian singer Burna Boy, blends Latin pop and afrobeats.
It appears on an official 18-track album that includes the electro group Major Lazer, reggaeton artist Daddy Yankee, and the Rolling Stones — once again heavily mixing genres.
Artist exposure
The artists featured in these globally broadcast concerts stand to gain a great deal in visibility.
Durant said those performing will see “fans who have maybe never heard of them and really start to gain a ton of new attention and fandom and consumption on their music and their intellectual property.”
The World Cup also creates opportunities for more seasoned musicians like Madonna, who at 67 has not had a major success since Confessions on a Dance Floor in 2005.
The July 19 concert represents a chance for her to rekindle the spark during the promotion of her new album Confessions II, scheduled for release on July 3. — AFP
Sony unveiled the Xperia VIII smartphone this week, boasting photographer-focused upgrades and improvements. American buyers, who are yet again missing out on the latest Xperia, may have felt a little left out. Looking at the phone's new AI Camera Assistant with Xperia Intelligence and its terrible results, perhaps U.S. buyers aren't missing out on much at all.
MUMBAI, June 11 — India’s aviation accident probe agency is facing renewed criticism from pilot groups ahead of the anniversary of the 2025 Air India Boeing-787 crash in Ahmedabad, which killed 260 people.
Families of the victims had expected a final report by Friday to explain the cause of the disaster—exactly a year after the Boeing 787-8 crashed in a fireball shortly after takeoff and smashed into a medical college.
But with investigations continuing, local media suggest India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) will only issue an interim report—frustrating those awaiting clear answers about why their relatives died.
“I don’t have much trust,” said Charanvir Randhawa, president of the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP), which has more than 5,000 members.
“I will be very honest; they are not transparent at all,” Randhawa told AFP.
His organisation has criticised the composition of the initial investigation team, and its decision to question the family of one of the deceased pilots.
Path toward answers
Tomorrow relatives of the victims will meet in Ahmedabad at a conference organised by lawyers, along with aviation and air safety experts, to “discuss the path toward answers and safer skies”.
It also plans to hold a candlelight vigil in memory of those who died — 241 of the 242 people on board, and 19 on the ground.
Among the dead were 200 Indians, 52 British citizens, seven Portuguese and one Canadian.
Only one passenger survived, Briton Vishwash Kumar Ramesh, who told the Press Association news agency that he continued to “live with the significant psychological scars” following the crash, in which his brother died, and “the constant unanswered questions” about why it took place.
“Those questions are not just on my mind—they are on the minds of every affected family,” he said.
“Nothing will ever change what happened, but families deserve clarity.”
As required by international law, the AAIB published a preliminary report on July 12, 2025, a month after the disaster.
That 15-page document said the fuel supply to the jet’s engines was cut off moments before impact, raising questions about possible pilot error.
‘Flawed’ report
It also published a conversation between the captain and his co-pilot about the fuel supply being cut off—two brief sentences that sparked theories of pilot suicide.
The report was met with strong criticism.
It did not say why the fuel switches were turned off—whether that was the fault of a pilot or a result of a malfunction.
Pushkaraj Sabharwal, 91, father of pilot Sumeet Sabharwal, called that report “profoundly flawed” and filed a petition at India’s Supreme Court.
He argued it focused on the dead pilots “while failing to examine or eliminate other more plausible technical and procedural causes of the crash”.
Randhawa worries another inconclusive finding could result in “far more speculations” rather than understanding the disaster.
“You have to give an indication. Why did the crash occur?”
In May, the FIP pilot group submitted a letter to the aviation ministry calling for further investigation to rule out electrical failure.
“Even if they are going to take more than one year, they should say: ‘We are still investigating’,” he said.
“They should publish the full investigation report.” — AFP
The Hong Kong government has denied any link to the high-profile UK court case after its trade officer was convicted of spying on overseas activists.
“From the outset, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government has been clearly stating that the allegations in this case are absolutely not related to the HKSAR Government and the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London (London ETO), nor are we party to the case,” a government statement sent to the media on Friday morning read.
“We firmly oppose any unfounded allegations against the HKSAR Government and the London ETO.”
The statement was issued shortly after Bill Yuen, an office manager at the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London, and former UK Border Force official Peter Wai were found guilty under Britain’s national security laws of assisting a foreign intelligence service.
Yuen and Wai – both British-Chinese dual nationals – were accused of spying on Hong Kong pro-democracy activists living in Britain.
Among those the pair were said to have surveilled was Nathan Law, who is wanted by national security police in Hong Kong with a bounty of HK$1,000,000.
Yuen and Wai were charged in May 2024 alongside a third person, UK immigration officer Matthew Trickett. A week after Trickett was charged, he was found dead in a suspected suicide.
In full: Explainer: Why UK authorities arrested 3 men linked to Hong Kong’s trade office
According to a statement by UK counter-terrorism police, published after the guilty verdict on Thursday, Yuen had been receiving tasks from Hong Kong authorities and delegating them to Wai and Trickett.
Yuen and Wai were found guilty by a 10-2 jury verdict on Thursday. Wai was also found guilty of misconduct in public office in relation to abusing Home Office systems while working as a border control officer.
Yuen and Wai will be sentenced on a date yet to be determined. They face up to 14 years in jail.
According to the Friday statement, Hong Kong has 15 overseas ETOs in different cities, including the UK capital.
The London office maintains “close liaison with interlocutors in government, business, think tanks and various sectors to enhance the bilateral ties between Hong Kong and the UK in areas including trade, investment, and arts and culture,” it said.
After the guilty verdict, the UK said that it would summon the Chinese ambassador.
“We will continue to hold China to account and challenge them directly for actions which put the safety of people in our country at risk,” UK Security Minister Dan Jarvis said on Thursday. “That is why the Foreign Office will summon the Chinese Ambassador to make it clear activity like this was, and will always be, unacceptable on UK soil.”
In a statement issued the same day, the Chinese embassy in London condemned the verdict, saying that the UK had manipulated the judicial process as part of its “political move.”
“Its sole purpose is to embolden those anti-China elements who are hiding in the UK and bent on destabilising Hong Kong, and to smear the Chinese government and the Hong Kong SAR government,” it said.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is addicted to money. The major labs developing AI models are intoxicated with the dollars that will finance the technology’s evolution. The three leading companies in the sector, Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX, have announced in recent days plans to go public to raise more funds in an endless race. Other long-established tech multinationals such as Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon have also launched financial operations in what is shaping up to be the biggest capital raising effort in the sector’s history.
© OLGA FEDOROVA (EFE)
Australian lawyer Samuel Monkivitch has received a fine and suspended 18-month jail term after pleading guilty to charges relating to a dine-and-dash spree across the territory.
Monkivitch appeared on Friday at the Eastern Magistrates’ Courts after dining at five-star hotels in Hong Kong without paying. He was previously fined HK$3,000 over similar charges.
In the most recent case, Monkivitch was charged with four instances of making off without payment between April 24 and May 5, as well as a criminal damage charge, local media reported.
The lawyer failed to pay restaurant bills at the Island Shangri-La’s Cafe Too in Admiralty, at the Kowloon Shangri-La’s Cafe Kool in Tsim Sha Tsui, and at two other restaurants – one in Central and another in Wan Chai. His bill at the four eateries totalled around HK$2,039, the court heard.
The criminal damage offences relate to allegations that, on May 4, he destroyed a sales terminal at the Island Shangri-La and damaged a person’s iPhone outside the Hong Kong Museum of History in Tsim Sha Tsui.
The 50-year-old was released on Friday after spending a month behind bars. He was fined HK$2,000 and was slapped with an six-week jail term suspended for 18 months, according to The Age. He was also ordered to pay HK12,539.90 to cover the damaged iPhone and unpaid bills.
A family member – who travelled to Hong Kong for the hearing – agreed to pay the fine.
He represented himself before Magistrate David Cheung, confirming that he was unemployed given his time in custody. When asked when he planned to return to Australia, he said “today, probably,” according to The Age. He pleaded guilty without seeing the prosecution’s statement of facts.
His former employer KorumLegal told the newspaper that they had parted ways with Monkivitch.
Separately last month, he was fined HK$3,000 for two counts of making off without payment and one count of common assault. He pleaded guilty to the offences the same day, local media reported.
Monkivitch was accused of dashing off after spending HK$639.10 at a Chiu Chow restaurant in Times Square, a mall in Causeway Bay, on March 23. A restaurant staff member chased Monkivitch and said he had not paid, attracting the attention of a bystander surnamed Chen, who pointed a camera at him.
The lawyer got into an altercation with the bystander and said to him, “Do you want your head smashed in?”
Monkivitch was also accused of leaving before paying a bill of HK$586 at Footaholic, a massage parlour in Wan Chai, on March 25.
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