Dhaka, Bangladesh – This time every year, Dhaka’s intelligentsia, clad in their best, gather at the neatly-trimmed lawns of the Bangla Academy to enthrall a crowd of literature lovers with their poetry readings and animated talks.

Held since 2011, the three-day Dhaka Lit Fest (DLF) kicked off on Thursday, bringing together once again writers, journalists, historians and artists from around the world to the bustling South Asian metropolis.

But this year, one particular absence has cast its long shadow over the Bangladeshi capital’s most coveted cultural event, or “the elephant in the room” as one of the attendees put it: that of acclaimed photographer Shahidul Alam, a regular panelist in the festival’s various sessions over the years.

The 63-year-old has been held by Bangladesh’s authorities for speaking out against the country’s government. He was picked up from his home in Dhaka on August 5, hours after his remarks over massive student protests were broadcast on Al Jazeera.

Alam has been charged under the stringent Information and Communication Technology Act for “spreading propaganda and false information against the government”.

‘Orwellian nightmare’

A close associate of DLF organisers, Alam was a frequent participant in the festival’s earlier editions.

Yet, the only panelist to have so far spoken out for Alam this year has been Nandita Das, an Indian actress and director who called him an upholder of freedom of expression.

“We should all raise our voice for him,” Das said.

Alam’s wife, Rahnuma Ahmed, said she was “surprised” when DLF organisers did not even send a customary invite for her detained husband.

“Shahidul Alam did not merely attend Dhaka Lit Fest. He was an active participant, either as a keynote speaker or moderator or a panelist,” Ahmed told Al Jazeera.

Alam’s niece, Sofia Karim, said the silence over Alam’s imprisonment at the DLF is “a sign of how far things in Bangladesh have degenerated into an Orwellian nightmare”.

“My uncle has been a participant at Dhaka Lit Fest many a times and they don’t mention him? They must realise that they look ridiculous at best and complicit at worst,” she told Al Jazeera.

Karim said she was “thankful” of the Bangladeshis and foreign participants who spoke out or questioned Alam’s absence at the festival.

“Their solidarity will go down in history as will others’ silence.”

Shrinking space for free speech

Alam’s arrest has become emblematic of the shrinking space for freedom of speech in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, activists say.

The country recently passed a stringent Digital Security Act, which authorises prison sentences up to 14 years for collecting information against the government.

A draft Broadcast Law is also under consideration, which seeks to allow the government to jail a person for giving out “misleading and false” information in a television talk show.

“The ground for discourse seems to have shifted so much that mere criticism of the regime can now be regarded as treason,” wrote Kanak Mani Dixit, founding editor of Himal Southasia.

In an open letter to DLF organisers, a leading publisher and two academics said the holding of the festival in such a situation “will only operate as a cynical example of culture and art washing”.

“Any appearance of free or fierce expression or debate at the Lit Fest will be merely that, appearance, and deflect from the clampdowns and violence inflicted on those who dare cross government-sanctioned boundaries,” said the letter.

Organisers reject charges

K Anis Ahmed, one of the three DLF directors, dismissed allegations that there were no discussions on freedom of expression at the festival as “not true”.

“We called for repeal of the Digital Security Act at the opening ceremony,” Ahmed told Al Jazeera, adding that the festival directors support the stand of Das, the Indian actress.

“DLF has been held at considerable risk, for example during the killing of the bloggers. It has spoken out for all kinds of free-speech victims in Bangladesh,” he said.

At least 10 bloggers were killed by right-wing assailants between 2013 and 2016, mainly for their secularist writings.

“We have very fond memories of Shahidul ‘bhai’ [brother],” said Sadaf Saaz, another DLF director. “And he, more than anybody, would have wanted us to carry on with this difficult fight for literary space.”

“We never told a single writer that she or he can’t say anything. The government too has never instructed us to change any topic of discussion,” she told Al Jazeera.

But Karim said the organisers could have shown “more courage”.

“I think most involved know deep down how much courage it took for my uncle and others like him to defend the artists’ space in Bangladesh, courage that most don’t have.”

Since the summer, when Travis Scott installed massive golden idols of his own head around the country as part of a dynamic promo campaign for his new album, ASTROWORLD, the album’s pure spectacle has been clear. By his mid-August performance at the 2018 VMAs, Scott had begun to reveal his grand plans for bringing his newest songs, and the Houston-centric concept behind them, to life.

The world had quite literally become his playground. And Thursday night (November 8), at the ASTROWORLD tour kickoff in Baltimore, Travis unveiled exactly what that meant: riding a carnival loop ride onstage and inviting his fans to do the same.

The rapper said on Instagram that he plans to bring a fan out every night of the tour to ride it, which is so generous and whimsical that I can’t help but smile about it. The dude has been known to take high-concept visions to his stage show, as with the gigantic mechanical bird he rapped on last year, but this one seems more pointedly in keeping with ASTROWORLD‘s dizzying, nostalgic theme-park concept.

In 2005, the Six Flags AstroWorld park outside of Houston, Travis’ hometown, closed down, an event that the rapper revisited when working on the album and that helped lead to its overarching concept.

“At first it didn’t really set in stone what they was actually doing to the city until I was older,” Travis told MTV News in August. “I was like, ‘Woah, we actually don’t have this place,’ when I wanted to go back when I was like 18 or something. It’s like, wow we don’t have it. That’s when it hit me.”

Check out the rest of that interview below, and scope out the full ASTROWORLD tour dates right here.

Watch Haringey Borough v AFC Wimbledon live – FA Cup first round – Live – BBC Sport

<!–

<!–

<!–
<!–

<!–
<!–

<!–

<!–

<!–

Lucas Pope sure knows how to undersell his games — which, by all accounts, continue to push the limit of what we can expect from the medium.

The one-man powerhouse first exploded onto the scene with his wildly popular and morally existential bureaucratic puzzle game Papers, Please. Five years later, he’s released the equally undefinable Return of the Obra Dinn, described on his website as “An Insurance Adventure with Minimal Colour.”

LOL — I guess that’s one way to put it!

Showing an unmatched skill for turning the most seemingly boring scenarios and basic mechanics into something ingenious, Pope’s new game is in a league of its own. 

You play as an insurance claims adjuster in the early 19th century. Brought to the merchant ship Obra Dinn (which summons similarities to the unsolved case of the Mary Celeste), you must figure out the specifics of the tragic mystery that left all its passengers either dead or missing.

Uncovering the story of their deaths does not happen chronologically, and the tidbits you get come in a jumbled freeze-frame. The full picture takes grueling detective work on your part, with only two tools at your disposal: 1) a journal with a map of the ship, log of the crew, and artist rendering of them to help keep track; and 2) a pocket watch that summons the final moments of their horrific deaths.

Obra Dinn is more immediately gripping than the multi-million dollar blockbuster Red Dead Redemption 2

You gather evidence, and the journal fills up with the added clues that you must then make sense of yourself. And here’s what I mean about Obra Dinn being as inexplicably compelling as Papers, Please: Besides these slivers of unmoving violence, most of the game takes place in that journal.

Piecing together the facts in the midst of the chaos, you deduce who died and how (and, at times, by whose hand) in each flashback by flipping back between the action and your notebook. Describing it, you’d think that sounds like the most cumbersomely tedious game ever. Just like you might assume a game about being a border patrol officer stamping papers would be.

Instead, Obra Dinn is more immediately gripping than the multi-million dollar blockbuster Red Dead Redemption 2, a game which released only a week after and likely ruined its chances of getting the attention it deserves. But while Obra Dinn may have less money and gloss, it’s endlessly more successful while using far less than most games — and maybe that’s the secret.

Pope has a masterful understanding of how to squeeze every ounce of potential out of a minimalist approach. He also uses everything that’s not there to further intrigue you. 

The brilliance of Obra Dinn lies in its expert withholding of information, doling out droplets of a non-chronological narrative told only in moments of suspended panic. It’s the key to every well-told mystery, and this one never lets up on that tension.

Flashbacks become tableaus you return to obsessively, desperate to restore some humanity to the rotting pile of bones their memories left behind.

Then there’s the aesthetic, a technical marvel of 1-bit noir. Yes, you read that correctly: This game is working with seven fewer bits than your original Gameboy. And unlike in most old-school-looking games, the 1-bit rendering of Obra Dinn is not for arbitrary nostalgia. 

It adds more obfuscation to the already-mysterious atmosphere, heightening your panic as you try to make sense of these roughly drawn figures frozen in pain.

Also like Papers, Please, Obra Dinn‘s art style defies the graphics arms race of so many other games, instead establishing empathy for purposefully low resolution caricatures. The flashbacks become uncanny tableaus you return to obsessively, desperate to restore some humanity to the rotting pile of bones their memories left behind.

The jarring contrast between life and death — between 3D people caught in a slaughter and their unwitting expressions in a photograph, the living tragedy versus the cold facts in your journal — lends an eeriness that you won’t find in any other murder mystery, video game or otherwise.

This is what the real potential of video game narratives looks like. 

The future of the medium does not lie solely in excess or attempts to replicate “cinematic” filmmaking, despite what breathless coverage of triple-A games like Red Dead Redemption 2 might have you believe.

Obra Dinn shows how the non-linearity of games has incredible yet under-explored possibilities. Its stylized look takes advantage of the inherent limitations of representing humans through pixels, rather than trying to trick the eye into thinking it’s watching a movie.

I guess you could call Return of the Obra Dinn an “insurance adventure.” I guess you could call it a puzzle game. I guess its label of “indie game” will regrettably limit its reach. 

But a more accurate label for Return of the Obra Dinn is “one of the must-play video games of 2018.”

A fast-moving wildfire that ravaged a Northern California town on Thursday sent residents racing to escape on roads that turned into tunnels of fire as thick smoke darkened the daytime sky, wiping out what a California Fire official said was a couple of thousand structures.

“We were surrounded by fire, we were driving through fire on each side of the road,” said police officer Mark Bass, who lives in the hard-hit town of Paradise and works in neighboring Chico.

He evacuated his family and then returned to the fire to help rescue several disabled residents, including a man trying to carry his bedridden wife to safety. “It was just a wall of fire on each side of us, and we could hardly see the road in front of us.”

Harrowing tales of escape and heroic rescues emerged from Paradise, where the entire community of 27,000 was ordered to evacuate. Witnesses reported seeing homes, supermarkets, businesses, restaurants, schools and a retirement home up in flames. 

Officials confirmed that at least five people were found dead in vehicles torched by the flames. 

“Pretty much the community of Paradise is destroyed, it’s that kind of devastation,” said California Fire Captain Scott McLean late Thursday. He estimated that a couple of thousand structures were destroyed in the town about 290 kilometres northeast of San Francisco.

Meanwhile, portions of Southern California remained under siege early Friday as two large fires threatened numerous Ventura County communities. The National Weather Service issued red-flag warnings for fire dangers in many areas of the state, saying low humidity and strong winds were expected to continue through the evening.

The fire in Northern California’s Paradise was reported shortly after daybreak in a rural area. By nightfall, it had consumed more than 73 square kilometres and firefighters had no containment on the blaze, McLean said.

In the midst of the chaos, officials said they could not provide figures on the number of wounded, but County Fire Chief Darren Read said at a news conference that at least two firefighters and multiple residents were injured.

“It’s a very dangerous and very serious situation,” Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said. “We’re working very hard to get people out. The message I want to get out is: If you can evacuate, you need to evacuate.” Several evacuation centres were set up in nearby towns. 

Residents described fleeing their homes and then getting stuck on gridlocked roads as flames approached, sparking explosions and toppling utility poles.

“Things started exploding,” said resident Gina Oviedo. “People started getting out of their vehicles and running.” 

Many abandoned their cars on the side of the road, fleeing on foot. Cars and trucks, some with trailers attached, were left on the roadside as evacuees ran for their lives, said Bass, the police officer. “They were abandoned because traffic was so bad, backed up for hours.”

Thick gray smoke and ash filled the sky above Paradise and could be seen from miles away.

“It was absolutely dark,” said resident Mike Molloy, who said he made a split decision based on the wind to leave Thursday morning, packing only the minimum and joining a sea of other vehicles.

At the hospital in Paradise, more than 60 patients were evacuated to other facilities. Some buildings caught fire and were damaged but the main facility, Adventist Health Feather River Hospital, was not, spokeswoman Jill Kinney said.

Some of the patients were initially turned around during their evacuation because of gridlocked traffic and later airlifted to other hospitals, along with some staff, Kinney said.

Four hospital employees were briefly trapped in the basement and rescued by California Highway Patrol officers, Kinney said.

Concerned friends and family posted frantic messages on Twitter and other sites saying they were looking for loved ones, particularly seniors who lived at retirement homes or alone. 

Chico police officer John Barker and his partner evacuated several seniors from an apartment complex.

“Most of them were immobile with walkers, or spouses that were bed-ridden, so we were trying to get additional units to come and try and help us, just taking as many as we could,” he said, describing the community as having “a lot of elderly, a lot of immobile people, some low-income with no vehicles.”

Kelly Lee called shelters looking for her husband’s 93-year-old grandmother, Dorothy Herrera, who was last heard from on Thursday morning. Herrera, who lives in Paradise with her 88-year-old husband Lou Herrera, left a frantic voicemail at around 9:30 am saying they needed to get out.

“We never heard from them again,” Lee said. “We’re worried sick. … They do have a car, but they both are older and can be confused at times.”

Acting California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in the area and requested a federal emergency declaration, saying that high winds and dry brush presented ongoing danger.

The fire in Southern California was being whipped up Thursday evening by powerful winds that pushed it through canyons and to the edge of Camarillo Springs and CaliforniaState Channel Islands, both of which were evacuated, The Los Angeles Times reported. The blaze broke out in the Hill Canyon area and in just 12 minutes jumped the 101 Freeway. By Thursday evening, it had scorched up to 2832 hectares (7,000 acres) and sent residents of more than 1,200 homes fleeing.

Fire officials said they expected it to burn all the way to the ocean. Television reports showed several homes on fire in the Oak Park community. Authorities shut down the 101 Freeway in both directions at Camarillo Springs Road. 

Valtteri Bottas led Lewis Hamilton to a Mercedes one-two in second practice at the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Bottas was just 0.003secs quicker than Hamilton, and Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel was just 0.073secs off the pace in third.

But Ferrari, who still have hopes of wresting the constructors’ championship from Mercedes, showed much stronger pace in race trim.

Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg had a heavy crash at the tricky Juncao corner.

The tight left-hander is one of the most important bends on the track, as it leads on to the long, uphill pit straight. Hulkenberg ran a little wide and kept his foot down as the car ran off the kerb on to the grass, which pitched him into the wall.

The incident brought out the red flag for six minutes as the wreckage was cleared.

It was the only major incident in the session.

The Red Bulls of Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen were fourth and fifth, ahead of Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen, with Haas’ Romain Grosjean best of the rest ahead of Sauber’s Charles Leclerc.

The champion’s not happy

Hamilton, who is determined to win after clinching the championship early for the first time in his career, did not sound satisfied with the Mercedes’ performance, complaining about tyres over the radio to the team a number of times through the session.

Although Mercedes had a slight edge on one-lap pace, Hamilton’s speed on the race-simulation runs was worrying – Vettel was on average about 0.5secs a lap faster.

But the Ferrari was also struggling with tyres – Vettel’s rear tyres displayed blisters on long runs on both the super-soft and soft tyres.

Mercedes are in a strong position in the constructors’ championship – they will win it on Sunday, a race early, as long as Ferrari do not score 12 more points than them.

But they are concerned about their slip in pace since Hamilton’s victory in the Japanese Grand Prix and are keen to return to winning ways and to ensure they understand what happened in the previous two races in Austin and, particularly, Mexico.

@font-face {
font-family: ‘ProductSans’;
src: url(‘https://ift.tt/2OAtsuh);
src: url(‘https://ift.tt/2McnL8Z) format(’embedded-opentype’),
url(‘https://ift.tt/2KNZjW4) format(‘woff’),
url(‘https://ift.tt/2Mfpiv5) format(‘truetype’);
}
@font-face {
font-family: ‘MuseoSlabRegular’;
src: url(‘https://ift.tt/2Ox6Zho);
src: url(‘https://ift.tt/2Mfpj27) format(’embedded-opentype’),
url(‘https://ift.tt/2KNZn8g) format(‘woff’),
url(‘https://ift.tt/2McnNO9) format(‘truetype’);
}
@font-face {
font-family: ‘ProximaNova-Extrabld’;
src: url(‘https://ift.tt/2OAtxhz);
src: url(‘https://ift.tt/2McnOSd) format(’embedded-opentype’),
url(‘https://ift.tt/2OAtylD) format(‘woff’),
url(‘https://ift.tt/2McnR0l) format(‘truetype’);
}
@font-face {
font-family: ‘ProximaNova-Regular’;
src: url(‘https://ift.tt/2KOghU6);
src: url(‘https://ift.tt/2McnSBr) format(’embedded-opentype’),
url(‘https://ift.tt/2KNZsZC) format(‘woff’),
url(‘https://ift.tt/2McnT8t) format(‘truetype’);
}
#feather-nav { height: 44px; }
.fl-nav-drop {
position: absolute; top: 0px; z-index: 9999; background: #292929; left: 0;
font-size: 0; padding-left: 25px; border: 1px solid #454545;
display: none; box-sizing: border-box;
}
#fl-menu .fl-close { display: none; }
#fl-logo { display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; }
#fl-copy, #fl-copy-mobile {
display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; font-Family: “ProductSans”;
font-size: 14px; color: #fff; letter-spacing: -0.22px; line-height: 44px;
padding-left: 40px;
}
#fl-copy {
border-left: 1px solid #e6e6e6;
}
#fl-copy-logo {
display: inline-block; vertical-align: top;
padding-top: 12px; height: 32px; padding-left: 12px;
}
#fl-copy-mobile, #fl-copy-logo-mobile { display: none; }
.fl-sec {
display: inline-block; background: #292929; vertical-align: top;
font-size: 16px; padding: 14px 30px; color: #fff;
}
.fl-sec h3 {
font-family: ‘ProximaNova-Extrabld’; font-size: 20px; margin-bottom: 27px;
}
.fl-sec a {
display: block; font-family: ‘ProximaNova-Regular’; letter-spacing: -0.25px;
margin-bottom: 22px; color: #fff;
}

@media screen and (max-width: 767px) {
#feather-nav { height: auto; }
#fl-copy, #fl-copy-logo { display: none; }
#fl-copy-mobile {
display: block; padding-bottom: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding-left: 0; padding-top: 12px;
}
#fl-copy-logo-mobile {
display: block; vertical-align: top;
height: 32px;
}
.fl-sec {
display: block; text-align: center; width: 100%; padding: 0;
border-bottom: 1px solid #454545;
}
.fl-nav-drop { padding-left: 0; width: 100%; }
#fl-logo {
position: absolute; left: 50%; top: 0px; transform: translateX(-50%);
}
}

#fl-menu:hover .fl-close { display: block; }
#fl-menu:hover .fl-hamburger { display: none; }
#fl-menu:hover .fl-nav-drop { display: block; }

body, #root { background: #000; }

Americans cast their votes in the country’s midterm elections on November 6. 

As predicted, President Donald Trump‘s Republican party held on to the Senate, but the Democrats won control of the House of Representatives.

What does a split legislature mean for the administration’s foreign policy agenda? And what should the rest of the world take away from the election?

In a new episode of The Take, host Imtiaz Tyab puts those questions to Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, Rosiland Jordan, and Patty Culhane, all veteran Washington, DC correspondents. Reporters from Tehran and Beijing weigh in too.

Learn more:

Will the midterm results affect Trump’s foreign policy?

US midterms 2018: The candidates who made history

Record number of women win House seats in US midterms

More on the US Midterms 2018

The Team:

Graelyn Brashear and Kyana Moghadam produced this episode. They had production help from Morgan Waters, Jasmin Bauomy, Jordan Marie Bailey and host Imtiaz Tyab. The sound designer is Ian Coss. Graelyn Brashear is the show’s lead producer.

Subscribe to The Take: 

New episodes of the show come out every Friday. Subscribe to The Take on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen. 

Follow The Take Twitter at @thetake_pod or on the show’s Facebook page.

A music video film set with controversial young rapper 6ix9ine and Kanye West was interrupted by gunfire on Thursday night (November 8), TMZ reports. No one was harmed, though reportedly eight shots were fired at the rented $80 million Beverly Hills estate while the pair were inside.

Nicki Minaj was due to arrive on set to be in the video as well — for a song featuring the three of them due to appear on 6ix9ine’s upcoming album — though she was reportedly not there at the time of the shooting. Kanye apparently left immediately after. TMZ has reported it as a drive-by shooting.

It’s not the first time 6ix9ine has dealt with violence. The 22-year-old rapper, who previously pled guilty to using a child in a sexual performance but avoided any jail time, was arrested in July for allegedly assaulting a 16-year-old at a mall in Houston.

Shortly after, 6ix9ine was reportedly kidnapped, beaten, and robbed of jewelry and money in New York City. His collaboration with Nicki, “Fefe” — which Minaj later performed at 2018 VMAs without 6ix9ine — had just come out days earlier.

And in late October, one of 6ix9ine’s bodyguards was reportedly shot in the stomach after an altercation at a dinner in Manhattan. (Vulture compiled a handy timeline of the rapper’s controversies as they wind into his career — you can check that out here.)

No one from 6ix9ine’s or Nicki’s camps have weighed in publicly, though 6ix9ine’s lawyer told TMZ it likely won’t affect the rapper’s probation as he was a victim. But on Friday, Kanye took to Twitter to report his safety. “Thank you for everyone’s prayers. Our family is safe and close,” he tweeted.

This is a developing story and we’ll update as more information comes in.

Raheem Sterling has signed a three-year contract extension at Manchester City, committing him to the club until 2023 in a deal worth up to £300,000 a week.

The 23-year-old England forward’s previous deal at Etihad Stadium was due to expire at the end of next season.

It is understood the new contract will make Sterling one of the best-paid English players in the Premier League.

“I’m delighted to sign. My development here has been incredible,” said Sterling.

“I felt from the minute I got here it was the right choice for me. It’s paid off and I’m really grateful.”

Sterling, who has scored seven goals for the club this season, joined City from Liverpool in a £49m deal in 2015.

He scored 23 goals last season as the Blues won the Premier League and Carabao Cup.

Capped 46 times by England, he scored twice against last month – his first international goals for three years.

City director of football Txiki Begiristain said: “This is a significant moment for the club. Raheem has improved dramatically in the past two seasons and is now one of the Premier League’s best attacking players. His statistics tell their own story.

“He’s quick, strong and excellent in front of goal – everything a modern-day forward needs to excel.”