Author: anadmin

Vangelis, the Greek electronic composer who wrote the unforgettable Academy Award-winning score for the film “Chariots of Fire” and music for dozens of other movies, documentaries and TV series, has died at 79.

Greek media reported that Vangelis — born Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou — died in a French hospital late Tuesday. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and other government officials expressed their condolences Thursday.

“Vangelis Papathanassiou is no longer among us,” Mitsotakis tweeted.

The opening credits of “Chariots of Fire” roll as a bunch of young runners progress in slow motion across a glum beach in Scotland, as a lazy, beat-backed tune rises to a magisterial declamation. It’s one of the most instantly recognizable musical themes in cinema — and its standing in popular culture has only been confirmed by the host of spoofs it has sired.

The 1981 British film made Vangelis, but his initial encounter with success came with his first Greek pop band in the 1960s.

He evolved into a one-man quasi-classical orchestra, using a vast array of electronic equipment to conjure up his enormously popular undulating waves of sound. A private, humorous man — burly, with with shoulder-length hair and a trim beard — he quoted ancient Greek philosophy and saw the artist as a conduit for a basic universal force. He was fascinated by space exploration and wrote music for celestial bodies, but said he never sought stardom himself.

Still, a micro-planet spinning somewhere between Mars and Jupiter — 6354 Vangelis — will forever bear his name.

Born on March 29, 1943, near the city of Volos in central Greece, Vangelis started playing the piano at age 4, although he got no formal training and claimed he never learned to read notes.

“Orchestration, composition — they teach these things in music schools, but there are some things you can never teach,” he said in a 1982 interview. “You can’t teach creation.”

At 20, Vangelis and three friends formed the Forminx band in Athens, which did very well in Greece. After it disbanded, he wrote scores for several Greek films and later became a founding member — together with another later-to-be internationally famous Greek musician, Demis Roussos — of Aphrodite’s Child. Based in Paris, the progressive rock group produced several European hits, and their final record “666,” released in 1972, is still highly acclaimed.

Aphrodite’s Child also broke up, and Vangelis pursued solo projects. In 1974, he moved to London, built his own studio and cooperated with Yes frontman Jon Anderson, with whom he recorded as Jon and Vangelis and had several major hits.

Signature piece

But his huge breakthrough came with the score for “Chariots of Fire” that told the true story of two British runners competing in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. Vangelis’ score won one of the four Academy Awards the film won, including best picture. The signature piece is one of the hardest-to-forget movie tunes worldwide — and has also served as the musical background to endless slow-motion parodies.

Vangelis later wrote music scores for Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” (1982) and “1492: Conquest of Paradise” (1992), as well as for “Missing” (1982) and “Antarctica” (1983), among others.

He refused many other offers for film scores, saying in an interview: “Half of the films I see don’t need music. It sounds like something stuffed in.”

Vangelis was wary of how record companies handled commercial success. With success, he said, “you find yourself stuck and obliged to repeat yourself and your previous success.”

His interest in science — including the physics of music and sound — and space exploration led to compositions linked with major NASA and European Space Agency projects. When British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking died in 2018, Vangelis composed a musical tribute for his interment that the ESA broadcast into space.

Vangelis brought forth his symphonic swells playing alone on a bank of synthesizers, while flipping switches as his feet darted from one volume pedal to another.

“I work like an athlete,” he once said.

He avoided the lifestyle excesses associated with many in the music industry, saying that he never took drugs — “which was very uncomfortable, at times.”

Vangelis said he didn’t ever experiment with his music and usually did everything on the first take.

“When I compose, I perform the music at the same time, so everything is live, nothing is pre-programmed,” he said.

The composer lived in London, Paris and Athens, where he bought a house at the foot of the Acropolis that he never dolled up, even when his street became one of the most desirable pedestrian walks in town. The neoclassical building was nearly demolished in 2007 when government officials decided that it spoiled the view of the ancient citadel from a new museum built next door, but eventually reconsidered.

Vangelis received many awards in Greece, France and the U.S. Little was known of his personal life besides that he was an avid painter.

“Every day I paint and every day I compose music,” he said — in that order.

Source: Voice of America

Female referees will make World Cup history this year by working games at a major men’s tournament for the first time in Qatar.

Three female referees and three female assistant referees were announced Thursday by FIFA among 129 officials selected for World Cup duty, including one man who caused controversy when refereeing a chaotic African Cup of Nations game in January while suffering with heatstroke.

French referee Stéphanie Frappart already worked men’s games in World Cup qualifying and the Champions League, after handling the 2019 Women’s World Cup final. She also refereed the final of the men’s French Cup this month.

“As always, the criteria we have used is ‘quality first’ and the selected match officials represent the highest level of refereeing worldwide,” said FIFA Referees Committee chairman Pierluigi Collina, who worked the 2002 World Cup final. “In this way, we clearly emphasize that it is quality that counts for us and not gender.”

Salima Mukansanga of Rwanda and Yoshimi Yamashita of Japan are also on the list of 36 referees preparing for the 64 games at the tournament, which will be played from Nov. 21-Dec. 18.

The 69 assistant referees include Neuza Back of Brazil, Karen Díaz Medina of Mexico and Kathryn Nesbitt of the United States.

“I would hope that in the future the selection of elite women’s match officials for important men’s competitions will be perceived as something normal and no longer as sensational,” Collina said.

Among the male referees is Janny Sikazwe of Zambia, who blew the final whistle at an African Cup group match after 85 minutes and again 13 seconds before the 90 minutes were complete, with Mali leading Tunisia 1-0.

About 30 minutes after the match, officials ordered the teams back on the field to restart play but Tunisia refused. The result was later ratified by the Confederation of African Football despite an official protest by Tunisia.

The match was played in heat and humidity in Cameroon, and Sikazwe later explained he started to become confused in the intense conditions.

Sikazwe will be working at his second World Cup after handling two group games at the 2018 tournament in Russia.

The extreme heat in Qatar led FIFA to decide in 2015 to move the tournament to the cooler months in the Gulf emirate.

FIFA has picked 24 men to work on video reviews. The VAR system made its debut in 2018.

FIFA said 50 referee-and-assistant trios began preparing in 2019 for World Cup duty, with the project affected by limits on international travel during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two referees were picked from each of Argentina, Brazil, England and France.

All the officials — who were not allocated into specific teams of three — face future technical, physical and medical assessments this year, FIFA said.

Source: Voice of America

Luanda – The public process of electoral data verification, alongside the right to complain of a possible mistake or irregularity on the electoral roll, is happening smoothly countrywide, aiming at a full participation of citizens in the general elections set to take place in August this year.

According to Fernando Paixão – the national director for the Directorate responsible for the voter registration process, functioning under the umbrella of the Territory Administration Ministry (MAT) – at least 1,272 requests for electoral registration data correction have already been received by the institution.

Speaking to ANGOP, he reminded that this correction process started last April 07, in the whole country.

Citizens have been appealed to use the mechanisms that exist to have their voter registration data corrected, where necessary.

Besides the possibility of using a free hotline (136) to make queries specifically about one’s voter registration data, citizens are also encouraged to use the online website made available by the Directorate for such end (www.meu registo.com.gov.ao) or resort to the BUAP (One-Stop Shop) that exist in every district, functioning under the MAT, for electoral data clarifications.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Pointe Noire – Angola’s minister of Interior, Eugénio Laborinho, on Thursday said his country intends to strengthen and revitalize the defence, security and border protection cooperation with the Republic of Congo.

The Angolan official manifested the country’s willingness during a bilateral cooperation meeting with the Congolese minister of Territory Administration, Decentralization and Local Development, Guy Georges MBacka, held in the Congolese city of Ponte-Noire.

According to the Angolan minister, the country intends to develop a win-win cooperation, taking into account the current dynamics of the world and the growing internationalization of criminal phenomena, including cross-border.

The Angolan minister also stressed the need to establish partnerships to protect common interests.

“The excellent neighbourly relations established between the two countries, together with the fact that they share a 201-kilometer border strip, impose the need to cooperate in the most varied areas of specific competence,” explained the Angolan minister.

The meeting, which brought together Angolan and Congolese defence and security experts, addressed issues related to illegal immigration, smuggling of goods and fuel, terrorism, trafficking of human beings, drugs, weapons and ammunition, indiscriminate slaughter of fauna and flora, as well as the counterfeiting of currency and illegal exploitation of fishery resources.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda – African Petroleum Producers Organisation (APPO) is preparing a memorandum on the position of the member countries on the energy transition, which will be taken into consideration by the heads of State still this year.

The plan was announced Thursday by APPO CEO and Angolan minister of Mineral Resources, Oil and Gas, Diamantino Azevedo, who said the memorandum will be analysed at a conference of African Heads of State, to be held in the near future.

“We have always backed the view that the energetic transition cannot be imposed. The energetic transition should be a dialogue that has to serve for the benefit of all and not to increase energy poverty”, Diamantino Azevedo told the press, on the sidelines of the closing ceremony of the VIII Congress of the organisation.

Delivering his opening speech at the Congress, the President João Lourenço urged Africa to avoid hasty end to fossil fuels, as the continent’s oil-producing countries still rely on crude for its export revenues.

The Angolan statesman also mentioned another reason which, according to him, has to do with the fact that the continent faces a marked level of energy poverty.

More than half of the population on the continent does not have access to any type of modern energy.

The VIII Congress and Exhibition of African Oil Producers revealed that more than 600 million Africans do not have access to modern electricity.

Diamantino Azevedo, who is at the helm of the organisation for one year, said that they have also defended that the first pillar of the energy transition is fossil fuels and that this change “is above all a mineral transition”.

He added that it is based on these fundamentals that the APPO will prepare the position of African oil producing countries on the energetic transition, whose proposal will be submitted to the meeting of heads of state, during Angola’s presidency at APPO.

“We tend and respect that, indeed, we have to look carefully at the issues of pollution, emission of greenhouse gases and other evils, but that this energy transition is not only at the cost of African oil countries and other countries”, stated.

The conference of Heads of State will also discuss the conclusion of the partnership memorandum established between APPO and Afriximbank, aimed to create the African Energy Bank, as well as the proposal on the creation of a paperwork system ( pipelines) that will make it possible to take a step towards achieving the internal oil market for Africa.

Source: Angola Press News Agency