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Must be glove: the Japan man obsessed with lost gloves

Weird World

Tokyo, Japan | Koji Ishii can't help himself: whenever he sees a lost glove on the streets of his hometown Tokyo, he just has to stop and document it.

For more than 15 years, the 39-year-old has photographed and meticulously recorded details about thousands of lone gloves on the streets of the Japanese capital and beyond.

It's a passion, but also, he says, something like a "curse."

"I live with the constant fear that there might be a glove right around the corner. I can only describe it as a curse," he told AFP.

He's not alone. Around the world a thriving subculture has popped up documenting lost gloves, with many social media accounts dedicated to them -- such as Instagram's Long Lost Gloves and Lost Glove Sightings.

Hollywood star Tom Hanks has delighted fans with his shots of lone accessories, recently even sharing an image of a sole hospital glove when announcing he'd contracted COVID-19.

However Ishii is the elder statesmen of lost glove photography.

His obsession began back in 2004 when he saw a yellow workman's glove dropped near his home and decided to take a photograph with his new flip-phone.

"I felt a shock like being struck by lightning," he said of the experience.

In the years since, he has photographed and recorded information about over 5,000 gloves -- everything from children's mittens to delicate lady's lace numbers.

He finds them trampled on streets, stuck in drains, hanging off traffic cones or even washed up on the beach.

Ishii, who works at a restaurant, doesn't touch the gloves. He simply photographs each one and records details about its location.

- 'Dynamic phenomena' -

The appeal, he says, lies in imagining how the glove got there and who once wore it.

"I imagine people who were here, somebody who used it for work or some other person who was very kind and picked it up from the ground," he said.

"They are no longer here but certainly they were weeks ago or months ago. This is what I enjoy."

He has developed a sort of categorisation matrix, determining first what kind of glove it is -- a disposable medical glove? a children's mitten? -- then whether it is still where it was dropped or has been moved to a prominent spot by a kind bystander, and then describing the type of location.

On a recent expedition, he found a grey glove on the ground by a crosswalk.

"I'd say this is a light-duty/neglected/crossing type," he said as he crouched down to take a good look.

Closer inspection revealed it to be a mesh fabric ladies' glove, leading Ishii to extrapolate it was worn by a woman who removed it at the crossing to check her smartphone while she waited and didn't notice she had dropped it.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to many people wearing gloves outdoors for safety -- a bonanza for Ishii.

"In summer 2020, we may see as many lone gloves as in winter," he said.

As Ishii moved to another location, he pointed at a leather glove on a roadside fence.

"This is a fashion-warm/picked-up/fence type I found last week," he said.

When he saw it last week, he realised he had actually seen the same glove two months earlier -- at that time tucked into a binding on a pole several metres away.

"Lone gloves are a constantly changing, dynamic phenomena," he said, adding he often visits the same place multiple times to observe any changes, and once recorded the same glove in at least eight different but adjacent locations.

- 'Acts of kindness' -

After three weeks, it finally disappeared.

"Then I realised that not recording the location of a glove that has now gone means that I have missed an important piece," he said.

Since then he has returned to around 100 now-gloveless locations, often noticing changing scenery including demolished buildings or taller grass.

Ishii's fascination means he sometimes finds himself getting off a bus before his stop because he has spotted a glove.

But the interruptions are often a chance to see a glimpse of kindness in a massive metropolis whose residents are sometimes regarded as cold or distant, he said.

"There are people who cannot simply pass by somebody's tiny misfortune or tragedy, they cannot help picking it up," Ishii said.

"Even in Tokyo, even in this mega-city, we still have lots of such small acts of kindness."

Ishii's wife and daughter tolerate his obsession and sometimes share locations of gloves they have seen, but he is convinced there must be other like-minded people out there.

"There must be people around the world who have feelings for something that has parted with the other half," he said.

"I want to have a get-together with these people someday, I'd call it G7 or Glove Seven."

mis/sah/ric

Vera Lynn: the 'Forces' Sweetheart' of WWII Britain

The World

The singer, who died on Thursday aged 103, achieved superstar status as "the forces' sweetheart", boosting troop morale with a string of romantic and patriotic ballads.

From the battlefields of France, the Netherlands, Italy and North Africa to the Far East, whenever soldiers gathered around a radio set or gramophone, the smooth vocal tones of Vera Lynn were sure to be heard.

It is impossible to gauge whether the outcome of the war was swayed by songs like "There'll Always Be an England", "We'll Meet Again", "(There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover" and "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square".

But for countless men in uniform, the lyrics and the slim, wholesome young blonde woman who sang them seemed to offer a vision of what they were fighting for.

To modern ears, the words might sound corny but at a time when Britain stood proudly against the Nazis, their patriotic appeal was irresistible.

- Symbol of Britishness -

Vera Lynn epitomised an archetypical, essentially decent Britishness, practical and fair-minded -- notions which shone through the songs she sang.

Even her version of the German soldiers' favourite song, "Lili Marlene," managed to sound like a patriotic lament, a far cry from the darker sexual undercurrents implicit in the versions by Marlene Dietrich and Lale Andersen -- ironically both of them anti-Nazis who became the German forces' sweethearts.

Vera Lynn's most famous song remains "We'll Meet Again", recorded in 1939.

Its appeal to love and stoicism -- "Keep smiling through/Just like you always do/ Till the blue skies/Drive the black clouds far away" -- made it the perfect war-time anthem.

It contributed enormously to her popularity, even though the song itself came to be much parodied and derided in the post-war years.

But it found favour again this year when Queen Elizabeth II, in a rare public address to the nation, urged Britons to remain strong during the coronavirus lockdown.

"We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return: we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again," the monarch said.

- Child star -

Vera Lynn was born in London's East End on March 20, 1917 as Vera Margaret Welch.

She began singing in local clubs at age seven and joined a child dance troupe, Madame Harris' Kracker Cabaret Kids, at 11.

By 15, she was a teenage sensation as a vocalist with the Howard Baker Orchestra.

She adopted her grandmother's maiden name Lynn as her stage name, making her first radio broadcast in 1935 with the Joe Loss Orchestra.

She worked with another of the great names of the pre-war period, Ambrose, whose clarinettist and tenor sax player, Harry Lewis, she was to marry.

The couple had one child, a daughter.

In war-time, Vera Lynn came into her own, hosting a BBC radio programme, "Sincerely Yours", appearing in a forces stage revue, and making three films.

She also toured Burma -- today's Myanmar and the site of major battles -- in 1944.

Lynn gave up singing after the war but was persuaded out of retirement in 1947 and began a whole new international career, with appearances in the United States in 1948.

She became the first British artiste to have a US number one with "Auf Wiedersehen, Sweetheart", her most successful record, in 1952.

- Retirement and nostalgia -

Vera Lynn's career foundered in the rock and roll era and she cut back on public appearances but she was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1976.

For decades, she was a beloved figure at celebrations to mark the anniversaries of the June 6, 1944, D-Day landings in France or VE Day, the end of the war in Europe on May 8, 1945.

She made her last known public performance in 1995, singing outside Buckingham Palace at the golden jubilee celebrations for VE Day, but remained a vocal champion of military veterans.

In 2009, at the age of 92, she became the oldest living artist to make it to No 1 on the British album charts, with a greatest hits compilation outselling the Arctic Monkeys.

She published an autobiography the same year, "Some Sunny Day", and threw her support behind a website recording social history, "The Times of My Life".

Lynn was also a spokesman for children with cerebral palsy, founding a charity in 2001.

doc-ps/jmy/ri/phz/bp

Leonardo's 'quick eye' may be key to Mona Lisa's magnetism

Lifestyle

Paris, France |Scientists believe Leonardo da Vinci's super-fast eye may have helped him catch the enigmatic magic of Mona Lisa's smile.

This superhuman trait, which top tennis and baseball players may also share, allowed the Renaissance master to capture accurately minute, fleeting expressions and even birds and dragonflies in flight.

Art historians have long talked of Leonardo's "quick eye", but David S Thaler of Switzerland's University of Basel has tried to gauge it in a new study published Thursday alongside another paper showing how he gave his drawings and paintings uncanny emotional depth.

Professor Thaler's research turns on how Leonardo's eye was so keen he managed to spot that the front and back wings of a dragonfly are out of synch -- a discovery which took slow-motion photography to prove four centuries later.

The artist, who lived from 1452 to 1519, sketched how when a dragonfly's front wings are raised, the hind ones are lowered, something that was a blur to Thaler and to his colleagues when they tried to observe the difference themselves.

Thaler told AFP that this gift to see what few humans can may be the secret of Leonardo's most famous painting.

"Mona Lisa's smile is so enigmatic because it represents the moment of breaking into a smile. And Leonardo's quick eye captured that and held it," he said.

- Freeze frame -

"So often our memories are of a fixed image, not a movement. Leonardo and perhaps other artists had that ability to pick up the point of breaking into a smile" or emotion.

Thaler suspects the Japanese painter Hokusai -- best known for "The Great Wave of Kanagawa" -- had the same ability.

The Edo master (1760-1849) also picked up the difference in dragonfly wings, which led Thaler to wonder if "he saw (in) the same freeze-frame way as Leonardo".

Thaler applied "flicker fusion frequency" (FFF) -- similar to a film's frames per second — to try to judge Leonardo's extraordinary visual acuity in the study for the Rockefeller University in the US as a part of a wider Leonardo DNA Project looking at the Renaissance polymath.

Because of our slower FFF, we construct a single 3D image of the world by jamming together many partially in-focus images, he said.

Leonardo realised he could freeze the separate snapshots with which we construct our perception, Thaler believes.

Thaler told AFP that he was fascinated by the case of Ted Williams, an American baseball legend who claimed to have trained himself to see the seams of a baseball as it flew towards him.

"It is said that elite batters can see the seams" even when the baseball is rotating 30 to 50 times per second, Thaler said.

In Leonardo's case, Thaler estimated that to see the difference in batting dragonfly wings clearly, the artist would have to have an FFF range of 50 to 100 frames per second.

The average person's is between 20 to 40 per second.

Thaler told AFP it was not clear if the gift was genetic or if it could be learned.

- Da Vinci's 'evening' portraits -

The researcher also described in another paper how Leonardo used psychophysics -- much of which still remains a mystery today -- to communicate beauty and emotion.

He said Leonardo's mastery of the sfumato technique -- which subtly blurs the edges of images and creates a 3D effect -- allowed him to render lifelike expressions and gave an intimate gaze to his portraits.

He believes that Leonardo achieved selective soft focus in portraits by painting in overcast or evening light, where the eyes' pupils enlarge to let in more light but have a narrow plane of sharp focus.

The enlarged pupils of his sitters -- also a sign of affection or attraction -- were a mark of beauty in Renaissance portraits.

It appears to confirm what the artist himself wrote in his notebook: "In the evening and when the weather is dull, what softness and delicacy you may perceive in the faces of men and women..."

fg/bsp-gd

Photos of stolen Van Gogh handed to Dutch art sleuth

Lifestyle

Amsterdam, Netherlands | A Dutch art detective revealed Thursday he has received two recent photographs of a Vincent Van Gogh painting stolen from a museum during the coronavirus lockdown.

Burglars snatched the 1884 painting "Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring", which is valued at up to six million euros ($6.6 million), from the Singer Laren Museum near Amsterdam on March 30.

Arthur Brand, dubbed the "Indiana Jones of the Art World" for tracing a series of high-profile lost artworks, said he was handed the photos a few days ago by a source he declined to identify.

The photographs, of which AFP was given two copies, show the painting, together with a front page of the New York Times newspaper of May 30 to prove when the photos were taken.

"After three months of intensive investigation, I was handed these pictures. This is the first 'proof of life' we have that the painting still exists," Brand said, adding that valuable pictures are often destroyed when the thieves realise they cannot be sold.

He added that the photos were "circulating in mafia circles".

In the photographs, a new scratch can be seen on the bottom of the painting, which Brand said he believed must have happened during the robbery.

The New York Times issue in the photographs of the painting featured an interview with Brand and Octave Durham, the notorious Dutch burglar who stole two paintings from Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum in 2002.

It also showed a copy of Durham's 2018 book "Master Thief", placed on a black plastic background.

Asked about the authenticity of the painting shown in the photos, Brand said one of them shows the back of the artwork featuring the so-called provenance -- the history of ownership -- which serves almost as a type of fingerprint for the artwork.

"There is no doubt in my mind that this is the genuine article," he said.

- 'Great number of tips' -

Brand, who declined to divulge how he obtained the photos, said he believed there could be a number of reasons the art thieves decided to circulate them.

"It could simply be that they are trying to find a buyer in the criminal underworld," he added.

The photographs "could also be a plan to try and cast suspicion on Durham, because they used his book in the pictures," he said.

Durham however was in hospital in Amsterdam at the time of the latest heist "and has a rock-solid alibi", the detective said.

However, the reasons could be even more personal said Brand, who has recovered stolen art including a Picasso painting and "Hitler's Horses", life-sized bronze sculptures that once stood outside the Nazi leader's Berlin chancellery.

"Perhaps they want to make a deal with prosecutors, using the painting as leverage," the Amsterdam-based detective said.

"Or perhaps they just want to toy with me, because they know I am investigating the case, and that I took it personally when they stole a Van Gogh right from my back yard," he said.

Dutch police video images released shortly after the burglary showed a burglar smashing through a glass door at the museum in the middle of the night, before running out with the painting tucked under his right arm.

Police in their latest statement said "we have received a great number of tips in this case."

Asked if he had passed on the information to the Dutch police, Brand said "he was following the usual channels".

"Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring" comes from relatively early on in Van Gogh's career, before the prolific artist embarked on his trademark post-impressionist paintings such as "Sunflowers" and his vivid self-portraits.

jhe/dk/pvh

Batman and Kim Kardashian headed to Spotify podcasts

Real People

The deal announced Thursday follows a separate Spotify deal with Kim Kardashian West for a criminal justice podcast, as the Swedish platform continues to splurge on a raft of original content.

The multi-year deal with DC parent WarnerMedia for an "original slate of narrative scripted podcasts" will explore "new shows based on the vast universe of premier, iconic DC characters," the companies said in a statement.

It did not confirm which comic book characters would feature, or the cost of the deal, which will also include "new dramatic and comedic podcasts" based on other Warner Bros. titles.

But the deal comes as Spotify ramps up its podcast content, including a reported $100 million outlay last month on "The Joe Rogan Experience," the most downloaded podcast in the United States.

On Wednesday, it emerged Spotify had inked an exclusive deal with Kardashian West, the reality star turned criminal justice advocate.

The show will investigate the case of Kevin Keith, a convicted mass murderer who maintains his innocence for the 1994 deaths of three people including a four-year-old child, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Keith's death sentence was commuted to life in prison by Ohio's governor in 2010 due to unanswered questions in his case.

Several dozen former judges, lawyers and prosecutors believe he may have been wrongly convicted and had called for his execution to be halted.

Spotify confirmed the deal with Kardashian West to AFP, but declined to offer any further details.

For a little over a year, Spotify has slowly been moving into the podcast world.

In early 2019, it bought the podcasting company Gimlet Studios for around $230 million, as well as the production interface Anchor for more than $100 million.

And in February, Spotify acquired The Ringer, a sports and entertainment production studio, for between $141 million and $195 million, depending on several variables.

amz/bgs

Argentina's pandemic-hit events business reinvents itself online

Business

Buenos Aires, Argentina |Argentina's strict coronavirus lockdown has forced hundreds of party venues into bankruptcy since it came into force in March, but many owners are successfully remodelling their businesses to embrace the virtual realities of the pandemic's new normal.

Lionel Mariani, owner of four venues in Buenos Aires that cater for birthday parties and weddings, faced closure once the social distancing measures hit.

But he converted his biggest venue into a fruit and vegetable warehouse, and his 20 employees -- formerly entertainers or sound engineers -- now deliver home orders.

"I don't think you can go back to partying as before," says Mariani.

"We will be one of the last events businesses standing, if we return. And what would a birthday be like? We would have to wrap every kid in plastic. As long as there's no vaccine, there'll be no parties."

In his children's party event room in the Caballito neighborhood, vegetable boxes are now stacked next to a mothballed mechanical bull and inflatable castle.

- 'Bankruptcies' -

Argentina's lockdown is stricter in Buenos Aires and its sprawling suburbs than anywhere else, as the metropolitan area accounts for 85 percent of the country's more than 25,000 cases.

President Alberto Fernandez has allowed some businesses to reopen, but social gatherings and shows are still prohibited.

Despite millions of dollars doled out in state aid, the pandemic has pushed to the limit an economy that has been in recession since 2018.

Almost a million people work in the events sector in Argentina, according to an owners' association -- even more when related businesses like florists and entertainers are taken into account.

"There are bankruptcies," lamented Silvia Amarante, president of owners' association.

"While we are waiting for the pandemic to pass, many businesses will fall away, we won't be back until 2021," she said.

- Virtual magic -

Some event entertainers are embracing the new and taking their birthday party performances online.

From his house in Buenos Aires, Gustavo Pintos welcomes guests on his computer, greets the party's birthday boy and begins his routine as "Kaphu the Magician."

This evening his audience is 400 kilometers (250 miles) away, in the port city of Mar del Plata.

"It's not the same as having the audience present," says the magician, who has been plying his trade for 25 years.

"At first I was resisting, but now I'm doing three shows a day, a horizon of work has opened up that was unimaginable before!"

Actress and children's entertainer Any Gonzalez has taken the same view and started a new niche business.

"Now I have no limits," said Gonzalez, who was recently hired to do story shows with her puppet Lupe by people in other countries.

"I'm working a lot more than before," she says. "Families want to banish the drama and celebrate anyway."

Her services are tailored to different budgets, ranging from a brief virtual greeting to a story with puppets or a full hour of animation.

Gabriel Valino has been performing as Pirucho the Clown for 25 years. He misses the contact with laughing audiences but now performs 30 virtual shows per month.

"I know that celebrations in salons will not return, because even without the coronavirus, this way is cheaper for families who are going to be left without a peso," he says.

- 'Feather boas for adults' -

Online "adult" birthday parties are also booming, according to Natasha Szuka, who provides "pole-dancing" classes for women and sessions called "strip-dance-chair".

In a room in her home transformed by disco lighting and mirrors, Szuka contorts herself around a silver pole and encourages her clientele to mimic her movements.

"We send the client a box with a feather boa and a hat for the performance," she said as she prepared for a virtual show.

"This alternative is here to stay, now anyone is just a click away from celebrating."

sa/ml/db/bgs

Arab Israeli woman draws surfers to her fishing village

Sports

Jisr al-Zarqa, Israel | Standing barefoot on an Israeli beach, Hamama Jarban blew her whistle and watched her students race towards the water clutching their colourful surfboards.

Each weekend she welcomes enthusiastic would-be surfers to the shore, teaching them how to lie and then stand on their boards.

"I am a child of the sea, my father used to throw us in the water when we were little and tell us to swim," she said.

Wearing a black wetsuit and cap, the 41-year-old's surfing venture brings much needed income to Jisr al-Zarqa, the only remaining Arab village on Israel's Mediterraean coast and one of the poorest in the north.

Her father, together with her grandfather, also taught her how to fish, but Jisr al-Zarqa is nowadays subject to environmental restrictions on fishing.

Arabs constitute around 20 percent of Israel's nine million-strong population and say they are discriminated against by the Jewish state.

Jarban won qualifications as a surfing and swimming instructor, as well as a lifeguard, from Israel's leading sports training facility, the Wingate Institute.

Along with her brother Mohammed, she started teaching surfing six years ago to children and young adults from the village and elsewhere in northern Israel.

While most of the surfers are Israeli Arabs, Jarban said she once taught two Jewish girls on holiday from Jerusalem.

On one Saturday morning, some of the young recruits wore blue tops with the club's "Surfing 4 Peace" logo across the back.

Thirteen-year-old Sari Ammash said he still finds it hard to balance on the surfboard, but has gained better control since starting lessons last year.

The beach sits in an idyllic spot, close to a forest and a river that the surfers must cross before starting their lesson.

Ream, a 21-year-old architecture student, travels more than 30 kilometres (20 miles) for the lessons.

"I love sport, I used to play basketball, and now I enjoy training with Hamama," she said.

- Worlds apart -

Jarban also works as a lifeguard in summer and volunteers with the maritime rescue unit in Caesarea, a nearby upmarket coastal resort.

The contrast with her village -- with its overcrowded housing and narrow streets -- could not be starker.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has a home in Caesarea.

To physically separate the two places, in 2002 a five-metre-high dirt wall was erected, which Caesarea residents said was intended to shield them from the noise of the Muslim call to prayer, as well as village parties.

The barrier runs for 1.5 kilometres (about a mile) and has been planted with flowers and trees by the resort town's residents.

In Jisr al-Zarqa, tin shacks line the shore, while fishing boats bob at anchor, left idle by a dispute over fishing rights.

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority gave the area environmental protection in 2010, restricting fishing and coastal construction.

Villagers say they were promised development and infrastructure in return, but this never came.

A spokeswoman from the parks authority said they have worked with the village council to invest funds and build a promenade, while stopping construction work on the protected land.

"People should dismantle any building that is not legal, we have inspectors to watch," she told AFP.

Jarban has herself become embroiled in a dispute after building a wooden hut to store surfboards.

In a letter from the authority seen by AFP, she was ordered last month to demolish it or face legal action.

"We have suffered heavy losses," Jarban said of her village.

mab/rsc/scw/dwo/kir

Bob Dylan releases first original album in almost a decade

Real People

New York, United States |US folk and rock legend Bob Dylan released his first album of original songs in eight years on Friday with the ten-track "Rough and Rowdy Ways."

Dylan's 39th studio album, which comes 58 years after his first, features a 17-minute ballad about the assassination of John F Kennedy, as well as a tribute to American electric bluesman Jimmy Reed.

"Rough and Rowdy Ways" is the Nobel winner's first collection of new material since "Tempest" in 2012, although he has released a number of cover albums in the interim.

It sees Dylan mix gritty blues with folksy storytelling, his signature raspy voice delivering lyrics that switch between bleakly haunting and darkly humorous.

At times he sounds warm, at other times scathing.

In the album's opening song "I Contain Multitudes," the 79-year-old grapples with mortality.

He starts by singing tenderly, "Today and tomorrow and yesterday too / The flowers are dying like all things do."

Later he says: "I sleep with life and death in the same bed."

Dylan was asked about the lyrics in a recent interview with The New York Times, his first since he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016.

"I think about the death of the human race. The long strange trip of the naked ape," he replied.

"Not to be light on it, but everybody's life is so transient. Every human being, no matter how strong or mighty, is frail when it comes to death. I think about it in general terms, not in a personal way."

The songs run through 20th century pop culture, touch on myths and refer to historical and fictional figures -- some light, others tragic.

In "I Contain Multitudes," Dylan cites Indiana Jones, Anne Frank and the Rolling Stones in the same verse.

"Murder Most Foul," first revealed in March, retells the shooting of President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas while describing the evolution of 1960s counterculture.

The song, which rose to the top of the Billboard chart, is packed with artist name-drops including the Eagles, Charlie Parker, Stevie Nicks, Woodstock and The Beatles.

- 'Absolute classic' -

Dylan -- some of whose most-loved songs from the 1960s and 70s addressed police brutality and racism, such as "Hurricane" -- also mentions the Tulsa race massacre of 1921.

The "Birdman of Alcatraz," a convicted murderer who became a respected ornithologist raising birds in prison, gets a mention, too.

Recounting Kennedy's slaying, Dylan sings: "We're gonna kill you with hatred, without any respect / We'll mock you and shock you and we'll put it in your face / We've already got someone here to take your place."

In "False Prophet," the album's six-minute second track, Dylan sounds cocky and unapologetic as he addresses his own mythology.

"I ain't no false prophet / I just said what I said / I'm just here to bring vengeance on somebody's head," he sings over a slow blues riff.

British music magazine NME called the album "arguably his grandest poetic statement yet."

In a review on its website, critic Mark Beaumont wrote "Rough? Perhaps, but it certainly has the warmth and lustre of the intimate and home-made."

Rolling Stone magazine hailed it an "absolute classic," calling it one of Dylan's "most timely albums ever."

"As Dylan pushes 80, his creative vitality remains startling -- and a little frightening," wrote critic Rob Sheffield.

Despite his years, Dylan, awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2012, has toured almost non-stop for the past three decades.

The coronavirus crisis forced him to cancel a string of dates in Japan and North America this spring and summer, but he has promised to be back on the road as soon as it's safe to do so.

pdh/jm

Sports, raspberries, but no sea: five facts about Serbia

The World

Belgrade, Serbia | Serbians will elect a new parliament on Sunday in a expected to bolster the rule of the centre-right party that has led the Balkan state for the past eight years.

Here are five facts about the former communist country that loves sports, food and has a long history of balancing East and West.

- Landlocked country -

Like neighbouring Hungary and Macedonia, Serbs have to travel abroad for a seaside vacation. But that wasn't always the case.

Under the former Yugoslavia, Serbia was joined with its Adriatic neighbours Croatia and Montenegro, plus Slovenia, Bosnia and North Macedonia to form the socialist federation.

A series of brutal 1990s wars under Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic unravelled the communist country.

Today tensions are still high between Serbia and its former province Kosovo, whose 2008 declaration of independence Belgrade has never accepted.

With no more access to the sea, Serbian navy ships now sail the country's rivers, notably the Danube that winds through the capital Belgrade.

- Balancing powers -

Serbia has for six years been in negotiations to join the European Union, its main economic partner.

But the country also maintains close relations with Russia and China.

Some Serbs have a fondness for Moscow as the country's Orthodox Slav "big brother", while China has become a growing source of investment.

Both powers crucially back Serbia on the Kosovo issue, rejecting its independence and helping shut the former province out of the United Nations.

Serbs are in fact used to looking in different directions: trapped for centuries between the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, they did not secure independence until the 19th century, though it has been constantly questioned amid the region's changing borders.

- Serbs home and abroad -

According to the 2011 census, ethnic Serbs account for 83 percent of the population and most of them are Orthodox Christians.

There are also about two dozen minorities living in the country including Croats, Roma, Albanians, Hungarians and Slovaks.

While 7.1 million people live in Serbia, several million more Serbs live abroad.

Vienna is considered the second-largest Serbian town in the world, while there are also large Serb communities in Toronto, Chicago, Paris and Australia.

Serbs also make up significant minorities in neighbouring Bosnia, Montenegro, Croatia and Kosovo.

- Sports stars -

The country's most popular ambassador is probably tennis king Novak Djokovic, the top-ranked player in the world.

Though he spends most of his time in Monte Carlo, the Serb regularly visits home and recently brought star players to his native Belgrade for a charity tournament.

Football remains the most popular sport, with a fierce rivalry -- and rowdy hooligan scene -- between Belgrade's main clubs Red Star and Partizan.

Yet Serbs seem to have more success internationally in other team sports such as basketball, volleyball and water polo, where they regularly beat world and European rivals.

The country also takes credit for raising NBA centre Nikola Jokic, a rising star with the Denver Nuggets.

- The raspberry state -

With bucolic rolling hills and rich soil, Serbia is an agricultural country that few may know is one of the world's top raspberry exporters.

In 2019, exports came to around 215 million euros ($242 million), according to the statistics bureau.

Come spring, local markets are full of strawberries, blackberries and other fruits, which can be bought dried in winter.

Yet the real national passion is for grilled meat, the centre-piece of most meals at the lively kafanas -- similar to taverns -- where Serbians go to celebrate and enjoy traditional cuisine.

bur-mat/ev/ks/ssm/bp

Serbians will elect a new parliament on Sunday in a vote expected to bolster the rule of the centre-right party that has led the Balkan state for the past eight years.

Here are five facts about the former communist country that loves sports, food and has a long history of balancing East and West.

- Landlocked country -

Like neighbouring Hungary and Macedonia, Serbs have to travel abroad for a seaside vacation. But that wasn't always the case.

Under the former Yugoslavia, Serbia was joined with its Adriatic neighbours Croatia and Montenegro, plus Slovenia, Bosnia and North Macedonia to form the socialist federation.

A series of brutal 1990s wars under Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic unravelled the communist country.

Today tensions are still high between Serbia and its former province Kosovo, whose 2008 declaration of independence Belgrade has never accepted.

With no more access to the sea, Serbian navy ships now sail the country's rivers, notably the Danube that winds through the capital Belgrade.

- Balancing powers -

Serbia has for six years been in negotiations to join the European Union, its main economic partner.

But the country also maintains close relations with Russia and China.

Some Serbs have a fondness for Moscow as the country's Orthodox Slav "big brother", while China has become a growing source of investment.

Both powers crucially back Serbia on the Kosovo issue, rejecting its independence and helping shut the former province out of the United Nations.

- Serbs home and abroad -

According to the 2011 census, ethnic Serbs account for 83 percent of the population and most of them are Orthodox Christians.

There are also about two dozen minorities living in the country including Croats, Roma, Albanians, Hungarians and Slovaks.

While 7.1 million people live in Serbia, several million more Serbs live abroad.

Vienna is considered the second-largest Serbian town in the world, while there are also large Serb communities in Toronto, Chicago, Paris and Australia.

Serbs also make up significant minorities in neighbouring Bosnia, Montenegro, Croatia and Kosovo.

- Sports stars -

The country's most popular ambassador is probably tennis king Novak Djokovic, the top-ranked player in the world.

Though he spends most of his time in Monte Carlo, the Serb regularly visits home and recently brought star players to his native Belgrade for a charity tournament.

Football remains the most popular sport, with a fierce rivalry -- and rowdy hooligan scene -- between Belgrade's main clubs Red Star and Partizan.

Yet Serbs seem to have more success internationally in other team sports such as basketball, volleyball and water polo, where they regularly beat world and European rivals.

The country also takes credit for raising NBA centre Nikola Jokic, a rising star with the Denver Nuggets.

- The raspberry state -

With bucolic rolling hills and rich soil, Serbia is an agricultural country that few may know is one of the world's top raspberry exporters.

In 2019, exports came to around 215 million euros ($242 million), according to the statistics bureau.

Come spring, local markets are full of strawberries, blackberries and other fruits, which can be bought dried in winter.

Yet the real national passion is for grilled meat, the centre-piece of most meals at the lively kafanas -- similar to taverns -- where Serbians go to celebrate and enjoy traditional cuisine.

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Cobain 'Unplugged' guitar sells for record $6 million at auction

Real People

Los Angeles, United States | The guitar that grunge rock icon Kurt Cobain played during his legendary 1993 MTV Unplugged performance sold Saturday for a record $6 million, the auction house said.

The retro acoustic-electric 1959 Martin D-18E that Cobain strummed for Nirvana's career-defining performance in New York -- just five months before his suicide at age 27 -- sold after a bidding war to Peter Freedman, founder of RODE Microphones, Julien's Auctions said.

At $6.01 million after fees and commission, the instrument was the most expensive guitar ever sold at auction, among other records.

The starting estimate was $1 million.

Freedman said he plans to display the guitar in a worldwide tour, with proceeds going to benefit performing arts.

"When I heard that this iconic guitar was up for auction I immediately knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure it and use it as a vehicle to spotlight the struggles that those in the performing arts are facing and have always faced," the Australian was quoted as saying by Julien's Auctions.

The guitar was sold with its case, which Cobain had decorated with a flyer from punk rock band Poison Idea's 1990 album "Feel the Darkness."

Until now, the most expensive guitar in history was a Fender Stratocaster, dubbed "Black Strat," used by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour.

It had been sold by the musician for nearly $4 million during a charity sale in June 2019.

Nirvana's acoustic performance during the taping for the popular MTV Unplugged series on November 18, 1993 became what is considered one of history's greatest live albums.

It included renditions of Nirvana's hits "About A Girl" and "Come As You Are" along with covers including David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold the World."

In October 2019 Cobain's cigarette-singed cardigan worn during the "Unplugged" performance sold for $334,000.

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The Foreign Post is the newspaper of the International Community in the Philippines, published for foreign residents, Internationally-oriented Filipinos, and visitors to the country. It is written and edited to inform, to entertain, occasionally to educate, to provide a forum for international thinkers.